We made a recent post in the Addoway University, exclusive for our Pro Members only, but we thought it was very important to add a blog post for the general public about Pinterest. A lot has been going around on the importance of Pinterest and if sellers should be using it "to pin" their items for the world to see. I am not sure if you noticed, but it was just identified that Pinterest is now the 3rd largest social network. Now while it might not seem like Facebook or even Twitter, Pinterest is very much a social network. I will even argue it is much livelier than either of the previous two networks mentioned. I am not going there to see how my friends are doing or what celebrity is saying today, but I am going to see what my friends are selling and that's why it is so important.
 
So should you be using Pinterest?

Let me put it into perspective...  Read More

So what does "Sharing With A Purpose," really mean?

Sharing with a purpose means to share items with a valid reasoning and purpose that generates interest from those you share them with. 

The key word is not sharing. It is interest. Your shares generate interest among your audience. 

So if you share your items on Twitter, you need to think about your audience at hand and make sure you are making your tweets interesting to them. Your audience on Facebook is a little different for the most part, so your shares there will be different too, but it's all about ensuring that you are sharing your listings with purposeful messages behind them. Don't just have your share say, "I found  this or I am selling." These are the most common share messages and they will get lost in the other hundreds of thousands of posts going out every single...  Read More

Social media explained was a portion of our David & Goliath presentation that our Pro Members have access to inside of Addoway University, but I wanted to spend some time helping define social media a little here in this context, as well as explaining all of the different social networking portals that are out there and what you should think about when using them.

We know the process is difficult and time consuming because there are so many to choose from, but we thought we could make it simpler with this exercise below.

Think about the act of eating food.

Now read below and you will know where you would discuss the act of eating on the various popular social networks. Hope you enjoy. 

We initially began discussing what we called "HI" or "Human Interaction" when we first launched Addoway back in April of 2010. It was an easy way for us to define the return on investment of your time spent in the social sphere. We built Addoway on the notion that people want to buy from people they could trust and the easiest way to show you how you could trust someone is to show you their “social activity” online. Show you where they are, what they are doing, and how active they are online. Hence one of the reasons we introduced Klout scoring into the equation. People love talking with each other, so you could use this to your advantage.

Just to bring you back up to speed, Human Interaction or what we call “HI” is the act of communicating openly to another individual. It can be online or offline, but the key is that it has a...  Read More

There is no denying the fact that social media is an effective tool to drive user engagement (conversations), sales, and awareness for your brand. We all kind of know it works. You post your items online in your news feeds combines with other informative posts and people come and check out what you have to sell. Sometimes they comment and sometimes they share and the cycle continues. 

They know who you are, so they are interested in seeing more from you, so you continue to provide this information weekly, sometimes daily.  But often times an important question arises as you get more involved – Which medium should I use more of Twitter or Facebook? And then this spawns other questions like: When should I tweet? How many times should I post a message? Who should I follow? Why doesn’t anyone like...  Read More

With the emergence of the “social” concept in business there should be no denying the fact that there are enough social networks, blogs, forums etc. to shake a stick at nowadays. The times have shifted and everyone is online and if they aren’t yet, they soon will be. More and more tools are available to meet and greet; provide customer service; and even sell to your clients, but sometimes we can find ourselves selling more than doing anything else. Why? Well because it’s what we do. It’s in our nature to sell. We want to sell our products, our services, and most importantly…ourselves.

Well as you are moving along in the social graph just make sure you remember it’s also there to be so much more than just a selling tool.  To keep it simple and easy at Addoway, we make sure we “passion post” each and every day. How many times doesn’t...  Read More

I am not the first one to tell you that social media is playing a huge role in the way companies do business today. Companies like Dell, Best Buy, and Jet Blue are coming up with creative marketing campaigns designed around promotions and discounts and making it work to their advantage on Twitter and Facebook.

But with every company that is using it effectively, there are some that are just not.

For example, take a look at US Airways. But before I begin, I want everyone to know that I love them as a company and I love flying them. I did this experiment, because I wanted to change my flight and they wouldn’t let me without paying a lot of money.

This is just about social media effectiveness right now. You can view them on Twitter @USairways and when you do, look directly to the left of the screen. You will notice something interesting:

...  Read More