Ralph Lauren Organizes Facebook Send-Off for Olympic Athletes. At seaports and airports, in small towns and in large cities, Americans have long gathered to send their native athletes off to the Olympic Games in various capitals of the world. For the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Ralph Lauren is aiming to get more fans involved by organizing a digital send-off through Facebook. From Tuesday until Sept. 9, users can write a message and upload photos from their Facebook albums, hard drives and webcams to "cheer" on athletes through Ralph Lauren's as well as Macy's Facebook Pages. Cheers can also be uploaded through the mobile version of Facebook's website. Those messages will be showcased on Ralph Lauren's Facebook app and screened to U.S. athletes during team processing and throughout the USA House in London. For each cheer uploaded through the app, the fashion retailer — which has also designed the official Team USA Opening Ceremony Parade uniforms — will donate $1 to the U.S.
Olympic Committee, up to $25,000. Will you participate? 5 Ways Brands Use Pinterest To Authentically Connect. Here's the big shocker: If you don't think about strategy before you dive into Pinterest marketing, your pinning efforts are very likely to be a giant waste of time. The first thing you need to do--even before you create your boards and pins--is to define your company's Pinterest strategy in order to determine which individuals you are trying to reach with your marketing efforts.
And the more you know, the better your chances of being able to truly connect with those people. Defining Your Ideal Client One of the best ways to create detailed, useful buyer persona profiles is to connect directly at the source; that is, to interview people. You want to know as much as possible about each group of people, so ask as many questions as you can. Use the answers you gather to create a detailed profile on each type of client you are trying to attract to your business.
Oreck (@oreck), maker of vacuum cleaners, air purifiers, and other small appliances, focuses on women as their ideal clients. Science Makes Its First Acquisition: Pinpuff, A Klout For Pinterest That Measures ‘Pinfluence’ Science, the eight-month-old LA-based technology incubator / studio that brought us the Dollar Shave Club and most recently e-commerce site Uncovet, is making its first acquisition: it is buying Pinpuff, a fast-growing “Klout for Pinterest” that measures and tracks the influence of Pinterest users — “Pinfluence” in Pinpuff parlance — that was launched only in February of this year.
The deal is yet another a sign of how the ability to curate and mine social media information can be considered as important as the social media platforms themselves. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Mike Jones, the CEO of Science, says that the acquisition will be used to help build out other businesses in Science’s portfolio, using Pinpuff’s social know-how to extend growth virally. It will work in conjunction with its existing in-house agency HelloSociety. Since launching in 2010, Pinterest has captured the attention of a particularly proactive consumer base.
Pinterest-Like Web Store Wisemarkit Pays Members For Sales. We've seen the numbers: Pinterest is turning out to be a real driver of purchases on the Internet, and Pinterest users spend more cash on average than members of other social networks. So why doesn't Pinterest have an affiliate program so that you get paid whenever someone buys a product off of your Pin-board? That's the fresh twist to the pin-it-buy-it chain reaction being offered by a service called Wisemarkit, which goes live July 2. Wisemarkit gives you a chance to earn back a little cash when people buy the products they recommend through the site.
"We are empowering people to be their own entrepreneur and own their own store," cofounder Oliver Ripley tells Fast Company. "It's quite exciting [to] allow people to upload their own products. " That's an approach that's been adopted by curate-and-sell fashion sites like StyleOwner before. But Wisemarkit sees a market far beyond just fashion, on the shoulders of its Pinterest-like interface. The 'Pinterest for Ecommerce' Introduces 2% Discounts for Referral Sales. The Fancy, a startup often described as the "Pinterest for ecommerce," is rolling out an affiliate scheme Monday to incentivize users to share products they find on the site. Now, every time a user clicks to share an item they've "fancy'd," they'll receive a URL with a unique referral code.
If someone makes a purchase using that link, they'll receive 2% of the sale price 30 days after that item has shipped. As far as affiliate programs go, 2% isn't great. Amazon's begins at 4%, and is even higher for apparel and accessories categories: Affiliates get an 8% cut of referral sales at Amazon's flash sales site, MyHabit.com, and 15% of purchases at Endless.com. StyleOwner, a startup that encourages users to create online fashion boutiques, offers a 10% cut of sales made on behalf of its partners, which include big-name retailers like Saks and Nordstrom.
SEE ALSO: Oscar de la Renta Sells Runway Look Exclusively Through The Fancy.