It’s that time of the year, where it’s freezing cold in NYC, you can’t feel your face and you’re anticipating the return of Social Media Week. It’s not just a NY conference, it’s a global conference. In a few short weeks, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Lagos, Miami, Milan, Washington D.C., Paris, Singapore as well as NYC will be celebrating from February 18-February 22.

I’ve been attending SMW since its inception five years ago. This is a great opportunity to learn about the social media space as well as mingle and network. Social Media is a big part of our every day lives. It’s impact in a few short years is astonishing. Emerging technologies have changed how we communicate and how we engage with the world around us. SMW allows us to share information about developments in the social media world.

The social media stats are pretty staggering. Did you know? If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest and 2x the size of the U.S. population! Oh! And remember the East Coast Earthquake? Well, New Yorkers received tweets 30 seconds before they felt it. (I can personally testify to that!) Lastly, being that the Superbowl is around the corner, here’s on for ya–the Ford Explorer launch on Facebook generated more traffic than a Super Bowl Ad in 2012.

Like a good marketer, I’ve already registered for a few events. One event in particular that I’ll be attending is Sustainable. Stylish. Social. – The Social Media Blueprint for the Eco-Fashion Entrepreneur hosted by OBV Media and moderated by Sherrell Dorsey. It’s on Tuesday February 19th from 6-8pm at Greenspaces. In two years the sales of organic and natural products will reach $14 BILLION! Why would you not want to attend this event and learn how to

• Develop strategic partnerships with eco-influencers for lasting brand growth
• Creating content that sticks and motivates consumers to not only support your business, but the eco-movement as a whole
• Serving as an informative resource in the sustainable style industry and not just a product pusher
• Creating a following that allows you to listen in on the conversation, gather feedback and understand the needs of your community

With all of this “inside scoop” from some of the best in the Eco Beauty industry, I’ll be in the front row. I hope to see you there! Now I’m off to Facebook.

A few months ago I taught a Skillshare class. For those of you that don’t know what Skillshare is, it’s basically a community of teachers and students. You can learn anything from anyone anywhere. It’s an amazing community marketplace. From the moment I found out about Skillshare I was hooked.

Each summer they have a “semester” concentration. This summer was advertising. With many nudges from the good folks at Skillshare, I agreed to teach a Presentation Skills & Pitch Strategy class. This was my first Skillshare class I’d ever taught and I had so much fun. My students were amazing, the atmosphere was very laid back.

The class was fully booked and I had a lot of “watchers”.  After much consideration, I’ve decided to re-open the class. Public Speaking is the #1 fear in Americans, even greater than death. That statistic always gets me, because it really isn’t so bad. I do understand why one may be afraid to speak in public, but when you give any fear a lot of energy it tends to grow into an uncontrollable monster. This was one of the reasons why I decided to re-open the class. I love learning new things and I love sharing things.

Now-a days tons of people have greats ideas and they need help expressing these ideas. I’m a big believer in project base learning, this class is very hands on. (Check out my blurb for Skillshare.)  In an hour and a half you can learn the basic skills necessary to be a better presenter, as well as how to deliver a pitch.

Click the link below to sign up. I hope to see you in class. As always, I want to hear from you.

Presentation Skills & Pitch Strategy Class

Here’s a great infograph on the Science of Social Timing.

Steve Jobs, the visionary that has built the world’s largest tech company is dead today at 56.

 You know him not only for his black turtleneck, but for the fact that he’s changed the world with the iMac, iPhone, iPod, iPad, Pixar etc.  He revolutionized the way we live and the way we interact.

For the past few days I’ve been aching to write about the disaster that is Netflix.

I cannot remember the last time a company has annoyed me as much as Netflix has. They have managed to do everything wrong in a very short amount of time. The Netflix disaster is a perfect example of what not to do when your business model is working. I foresee this will most definitely be used as a case study in marketing classes.

As a former customer of Netflix, paying $10 a month was not a bad deal, though I would have much rather them provide a newer movie  selection with streaming capabilities. I know of many people who share the same sentiment and working on this problem would have made perfect sense. Netflix, however, decides to do the #1 worst thing that a company can do – ignore the needs and wants of their customers. What do they do instead? Increase their plan by 60% with no increased service value to customers.

Netflix was the premier leader in the instant streaming/DVD industry. One huge mistake followed by many other stupid mistakes and that little red vending machine touch screen box that is Red Box is looking pretty enticing. I was only interested in Netflix because of the movie option, but one night with Red Box and I was left wondering why I paid $10 a month when I could never find a movie available to stream or have mailed to me. It’s safe to say, I’ve found a new movie home with Red Box. With $1 per movie per night, you can’t go wrong. They are definitely all about creating a good user experience.

Here’s a list of things that Red box is doing right: (Netflix please take note.)

• Understanding of supply & demand
• Fulfilling the needs & wants of their target market
• Better than the competition
• Price Friendly
• Free movie offer after signing up = shows appreciation
• Good customer service
• Easy to use
• Easy to return

= Great User Experience!

Here’s a look at the impact of Netflix’s 60 % price hike:

• Loss of 1 million customers in the first week of price hike
• Stock dropped 19% in one day & was down $39.50 in after hours trading
• Loss of $2 billion in value and counting
• Feedback of CEO Reed Hasting’s blog post aka fake apology had a 73% negative feedback
• Manage to anger just about everyone

Now, let’s talk about the fake apology from the CEO of Netflix, Mr. Reed Hastings. As if angering just about everyone with an instant streaming device wasn’t bad enough, Hastings has written one of the worst apologies I’ve ever read. You want to ask your customers to come back, but you create absolutely no goodwill? It’s kinda like when you were young and your younger sibling would kick you under the dinner table and then say sorry just because your parents made him/her say it, and then two minutes later you get kicked again. Feel my sentiment? And, yes I have younger siblings, and I don’t like getting kicked. To top everything off Hastings introduces the new DVD only plan by Netflix–Qwikster?! Worst idea ever! Now we have to manage two separate websites with two separate catalogs and two completely different queues. Not only did they not improve their user experience but they made it worse. In fact, Netflix has lost all value to me.

This whole Netflix disaster is an unnecessary shift in brand and the miscalculation is proving to be devastating. Now, here’s the icing on the cake. If you’re a Tweep and you’ve visited the Qwikster Twitter account (at the time this post was written) you will NOT find the DVD rental company Qwikster, but rather a foul-mouthed Elmo whose Twitter profile consists of illegal drug usage. As if it couldn’t get any worse, the Qwikster2 Twitter account, which features Bert and Ernie (friends of the Elmo Qwikster) as the profile pic, engaging in none other than illegal drug activity.

Netflix, if you were going to create such a stupid idea as Qwikster, at least have the decency to do your research first. You should have taken care of all aspects of your launch, including making sure that a drugged up Elmo is not the owner of your new Twitter account.

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What do you think? Are you just as annoyed with Netflix? Did you cancel your account? Please leave all comments in the box below. As always, thanks for reading. Be sure to share!

Like any proud entrepreneur would be, Jack Dorsey, co-founder of  Twitter must be on cloud nine today. Twitter announced earlier that they have 100  million active users. This announcement comes only 5 years after the very first tweet by Jack himself. Twitter is now officially a phenomenon, and numbers don’t lie.

The Chief Executive of Twitter, Dick Costolo outlined the company’s projection for gaining new users and increasing revenue. Twitter has set the goal of being on 2 billion devices world-wide. Mr Costolo also provided Twitter’s amazing breakdown of participation usage.

Here’s the breakdown:

• Tweeps are now sending 230 million tweets a day, this number is up 110% from the beginning of the year
• 50 million people log onto Twitter everyday
• Twitter has a total of 200 million registered users
• Twitter host 1 billion tweets every 5 days
• Has recently set a new record of 8,900 tweets per second

Twitter is healthy and growing at impressive numbers. This growth is highly due to the usage of mobile platforms. 55 million Twitter users log onto Twitter from their phones and tablets every month. Twitter’s website traffic is estimated at 400 million visitors a month, this number has jumped from the 250 million that was originally reported at the beginning of the year.

Stay tuned, because Twitter has projected the addition of 26 million active users between now and the end of the year.

So, are you one of the 200 million registered users or will you be one of the 26 million new ones?

Which ever you are, be sure to follow @scharipaul.

Happy 13th Birthday Google! 

Let’s see, 13 years ago my dilemma was signing onto AIM after school without getting in trouble, because we all know it was going to interfere with the phone line. This was when I thought AOL was the internet. Fast forward 13 years to 2011, I know better now, Google is the internet . OK, it’s not the internet, but it’s pretty much THE search engine beast.

The debut of Google in 1998 would change the web as we know it. The founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have reinforced Google as a household name to billions of people around the world. So much so, the word “Google” is now an official word in the dictionary. And, if you’re anything like me, you’re googling your life away.

Basically, it comes down to this–if you don’t know it, you Google it. It’s the modern-day encyclopedia, used by senior citizens, toddlers and even parrots. Yes parrots, I caught my Quaker parrot using his beak to type into the Google search engine. I couldn’t make this up if I tried. He doesn’t know how to spell, but he gets an A+ for effort! Case and point, Google is the search engine used around the world.

So what makes Google so special?

Here are the top 5 reasons:

1. There’s an old saying: Less = More. The simplicity of Google puts it in a league of its own. It’s user-friendly and this enables Google to attract and retain users.
2. Google indexes billions of webpages so that people around the world can search using key phrases and/or keywords.
3. Google itself. Google is one of the most recognized brands in the world. 
4. Innovative Business Model:  Google’s biggest revenue is their advertisements. They have mastered the art of tailoring ads that are as relevant and useful as the search results themselves. This enables an all around better user experience. 
5. The importance of the Google experience. Google’s main concern is its users. The search engine is built for optimizing the user experience. If the search engine is a fail, the user experience is a fail. So, their strategy is to optimize the user experience first and then the revenue second. The better the user experience, the more easily money will follow.

So here’s to 13 years of making the world wide web a smarter, better place! Happy Birthday Google!

Earlier this week, while I dismissed the possibility that I was experiencing an earthquake, replacing that thought with a more logical one—I was experiencing the side effects of lack of sleep, it occurred to me, that I was indeed experiencing an earthquake! My desk moving forward to attack me solidified everything. So, I did what any sensible person would do—I grabbed my phone and ran outside. After all the commotion died down, I turned to the one place that I knew would have the latest coverage: Twitter. See, the rest of the news outlets are a few minutes behind and as a New Yorker, we make every minute count.

In a matter of seconds, after I made my first post about the earthquake, the earthquake hashtag exploded all over my screen. Hashtags everywhere, #Earthquake, #DCquake, #VAquake, #NYquake, but none better than the #Earthquakepocalyse. Now, that’s just classic!

So, what does all this mean? Well, here is it in a nutshell. Social media is an unstoppable force. It connects people in real time. It’s relevant information at your fingertips. In a matter of seconds my friends around the world in Australia, Abu Dhabi, Egypt, Cambodia,Costa Rica knew about the East Coast Quake. About 15 minutes later, I saw the “breaking news” on the news. See, one of the most interesting components of social media is that is enables everyone to be a journalist/news correspondent. I’ve even heard rumors that it travels faster than the speed of light, but since I’m not a scientist, I can’t confirm it.

Just how fast is Social Media really?

Here’s a great example. Twitter says that more than 40,000 earthquake related tweets were sent within a minute of its occurrence. That basically breaks down to 5,500 tweets per second. (Refer back to my faster than speed of light theory.) More than 10,000 people had checked into Foursquare’s Earthquakepocalyse at the time of the occurrence. Those numbers speak volume as to how strong a medium social media really is.

Fast-forward to the end of the week—Hurricane Irene! Now, don’t get me wrong, I kept an eye on the television news coverage, however most of my Irene coverage came from Social Media. Social Media kept me informed, it gave me the information that I needed, the information that I was interested in viewing. I didn’t have to wait around during a commercial break, it was right there at my disposal. It was my timeline that first informed me that Irene had been downgraded to a Category 1 Hurricane, instead of the Category 3 Hurricane that was expected. It was social media that informed me that the NYC was shutting down public transportation in preparation for Irene. It was social media that informed me that Osama Bin Laden was killed. I can go on and on.

Image via Wikipedia

Here’s a quick look at what makes Social Media different than other media:

• It exist digitally
• It’s real time information
• It is everything that there is to know
• It’s an open forum
• Social Media is quickly changing & expanding
• You can reach thousands of people
• It’s easily accessible
• Social Media=User Friendly. You don’t need to know any special skills to share information
• Permanence-you can’t alter a newspaper once it’s printed, but you can alter a blog post or a tweet. This is a great asset in the social media realm

With all this being said, the world is changing by volume of information and we must be able to process it.  Social media has removed the middle man, you can publish anything, there is no longer a barrier, and there is nothing to stop you. Participation has changed everything and thus, behavior is constantly evolving. In marketing we always want to grow with the trends and because of this, marketing is more effective than ever and it’s all because of influence!