But they do, and I hear from them daily.

After many discussions, I have noticed several common mistakes marketers continue to make when attempting to reach the female audience which keeps them from realizing success with social media.

12 Mistakes Male Marketers Continue to Make When Marketing to Women With Social Media

• They are still trying to tell women what they want
• They are not listening to what women are saying
• If they do listen, they are still interpreting from the male perspective
• They are trying to sell before connecting
• They expect immediate results
• They have not defined valid expectations
• They try to find ways around the time required to build relationships
• They assume social media means “Facebook”
• They don’t know how to engage the female
• They open channels with little or no strategy
• They are working from a linear mindset as opposed to a multi-layered process
• Finally, and my favorite – they are looking forward to the recession ending so things can return to normal.

Bottom line, you are not going to stop the control that social media has provided people and you are not going to quieten the female voice. Quite the contrary. They are simply getting louder.

Not “getting it” is no longer an option. If social media is not working for you, try breaking through some of the barriers to reach your market on the other side.

Stephanie Holland is President and Executive Creative Director for Holland + Holland Advertising,Birmingham, Alabama. Working in an industry that is dominated by men, she is one of only 3% of the female creative directors in the country. Stephanie works mostly with male advertisers, helping them successfully market to women. Subscribe to She-conomy by Email

I just watched the recently released documentary titled, Design the New Business. A big thanks, by the way, to BI watercooler for this great find!

Seven months in the making, Design the New Business,  is a collection of interviews with business and design strategists from around the world. In it, they deliberate the role that DESIGN will, or should play, as companies address today’s ever-changing and complex issues.

Want To Market To Women? This Video Is A Must See. 

Interestingly, what you won’t find in it, is the specific mention of women. But, what you will find are creative discussions and propositions that are dead on for effectively marketing to women through “creative design thinking.”

I often tout Apple™ as an example of a brand that has always done an excellent job marketing to women. Steve Jobs did not change the way we “do” things, he changed the way we “feel” about things. Through great design Apple™ appeals to our emotions.  And, I don’t believe it’s by accident that Apple™ is one of the top brands in the world, now worth more than Google and Microsoft combined, with products purchased by both women and men.

Jobs bought into the theory that uncompromised design yields value to business – long ago. For that matter, he may well have conceived it. At the very least, he has most prominently carried it out through every aspect of Apple’s business model from product development to advertising to the retail stores.

The New iPad

Throughout the entire recession, Apple™ has never succumbed to discounts, but instead continued to introduce beautifully designed products at premium prices.

So, while I don’t view design being considered in all areas of business as a “new” concept, I am more than encouraged to see international corporations discussing the implementation of “creative design thinking” into their business models.

This level of research, interpretation and emotion will get them that much closer to listening to and responding to the female audience, ultimately leading to increased revenues.

So, How Did We Get Here?

That is, why do we have to completely rethink linear business models that have been effectual in the past? I would suggest three primary causes for the multifaceted challenges that businesses face today.

1. Web 2.0 – advancements in the Internet that have allowed for two-way conversation, giving individuals an incredibly loud voice through social networking sites that continue to explode.
2. Female consumer – controlling or influencing 85% of all consumer brands, companies simply don’t know what to do with her and her new found voice.
3. Economy – a recession of historical proportions that has lasted longer than anyone could have estimated leaving many industries unstable at best.

And, How Can Design Help? 

I purposely listed the economy last as a contributing factor because although the recession has certainly been devastating for business, it is expected that the market will eventually rebound.

But the new technologies within the digital world, such as social media, that have transformed and even eliminated types of businesses, are here to stay. And the female who has attained power  as a purchaser and wealth manager simply continues to strengthen.

So, even as the economy recovers, companies are still faced with the power that social media has bestowed upon people and more specifically, women. These are complex challenges, requiring non-traditional solutions.

These are the kinds of problems you cannot mange your way out of, you can only design your way out of them ~ Marty Neumeier, Director of Transformation, Liquid Agnecy

The design process is congruent with thinking like women. Such as, exploring all possibilities until discovering the perfect answer. Great design ignites an emotional state necessary to move shoppers to consumers. And if executed correctly, as we have seen with Apple,™ the men will bite too.

The Top 6 Reasons That Businesses Must Embrace The Design Process To Effectively Market To Women.

I encourage you to take 40 minutes to view the film in its entirety, but have extracted a few of the conversations as noted below.

1) PUSH MARKETING IS OVER

Brands can no longer just tell women what they want. Businesses must think creatively to gain the female’s trust through relationships and engagement.

I see a changing attitude towards companies in general. I have to say I look at where progressive movements are happening and there is, I’d almost say, there’s a bit of distrust when it comes to companies as organizations. It’s about credibility. It’s about being authentic. So, companies have a challenge to stay relevant in that mindset. You have to be very much aware of that type of mindset and come up with suggestions and solutions to provide value in that context. In traditional marketing speak, I think the day of push marketing is definitely over.

If you want to stay relevant, you have to be in the places where good conversations, where interactions between people is actually happening, where changes in interaction can be observed. It requires far more openness because the whole design trajectory is not as linear as it used to be. You can’t predict upfront what the end result is going to be. That is the new challenge.
Willem Boijens, Head of Research and Development, Océ

2) COMPANIES MUST LISTEN AND ADAPT

The female consumer is telling you what she wants. Businesses must think creatively to listen and interpret correctly to give it to her.

We have very close relationships with our clients and as a result we have grown to be quite adaptive. For example, we used to sell printers. Well, that’s not what they were asking for, so we started to sell prints, but that is not what they were asking for as well. So we started to give them the people who take care of their prints.

You can now go to the University of Amsterdam and see that we have a complete site of OcA, which takes care of the making and distribution of the readers that students are using. We got there by being adaptive.
Guido Stompff, Senior Product Designer, Océ

3) CONSUMERS HAVE SPECIFIC NEEDS AND LIFSTYLES

All women are not the same. Businesses must think creatively to no longer focus on her age, but instead her lifestage.

The car [Volkswagen] kind of became the symbol of a generation. But nowadays you see that more people are about having much more specific needs or lifestyles. You basically have many more different kinds of streams than you had previously. You have more and more people that are not alike anymore.”
Benjamin Schulz, Service Innovation, Volkswagen Group

We define design as something that has impact on business. We don’t look at market segments, but really try to find more patterns among several quite diverse people.”
Lukas Golyszny, Service Innovation, Volkswagen Group

4) WHAT GOT YOU THERE, WON’T GET YOU THERE

Traditional forms of reaching and connecting with women are not coming back. Business must think creatively to find and connect with her.

Big companies grow up usually with a business model that made them big. Now what is happening in a lot of industries is that those business models are expiring. The big mistake we’re making in large companies is we’re trying to use the same mindset that we applied to create our business, to create new business.”
Alexander Osterwalder, Co-Author, Business Model Generation

5) PEOPLE ARE IN CONTROL

Translation: Women are in control. Businesses must think creatively to develop relations and brand loyalty with her.

There’s been a big shift between the power to the brands to the power to the people. People today develop their own stories and publish them. The people are in control at the moment and that’s a big difference after the past few decades.

We are not in looking at a Return on Investment in a traditional way of value of money, but a Return of Investment in brand loyalty and in real connections with the audience.
Arno Wolterman, Managing Partner, Design Director, IN10

6) “SERVICE” DESIGN IS RAPIDLY BECOMING THE NEW “PRODUCT” DESIGN

Women have high expectations. Businesses must think creatively to better understand her needs and motivations to produce more user-friendly, competitive and relevant products.

The world is changing. Products and things have become all interconnected and people expect things to be interconnected. It’s not a standalone product anymore. Service design is an emerging competence that we all need to learn quicker and faster.

If you come to Philips Design five years from now, half of what we now call the product design effort is going to be reflected in at least half as much service design.
Ton Borshoom, Senior Director for New Business Development, Philips Design

The Design The New Business project was initiated and produced by Erik Roscam Abbing of the design thinking consultancy Zilver innovation and 6 students from all over the world, studying strategic design at the Delft University of Technology.

___________________________________________________________________________

Stephanie Holland is President and Executive Creative Director for Holland + Holland Advertising,Birmingham, Alabama. Working in an industry that is dominated by men, she is one of only 3% of the female creative directors in the country. Stephanie works mostly with male advertisers, helping them successfully market to women. Subscribe to She-conomy by Email

So who is the average social gamer? According to this recent Infographic created by Flowtown it is 43-year old females.

A few other facts:

• 54% of social gamers are women
• 43% are college graduates
• 43% make $50,000+ income

The study by Interpret, also revealed:

• 42% of game players say they are more motivated by social games that offer coupons, or gift cards, or other real-world rewards
• 24% of players claim they have clicked on an in-game ad to make a purchase.

With the top two reasons for playing social games being friendly competition and interaction, it should be no real surprise that women dominate. But it is the growing trend, the amount of time spent and willingness to click ads that make social games especially appealing to brands. SHE is not playing around.

Flowtown – Social Media Marketing Application

As social networks continue to grow on a daily basis, one thing remains constant:

Expectations for transparency and honesty are on the rise.

Marketers, please keep in mind:
Apologies and/or explanations are more forgiving than cover-ups.

Auburn University and Gus Malzahn, Auburn’s Offensive Coordinator are likely going to find this out – the hard way.  Kristi Malzahn, wife of Gus Malzahn, is the subject of a video that went viral a few days ago. Kristi Malzahn spoke at the Summit, a Christian conference, on Oct. 6. and was promoted to speak about “her passion for Christ, through authentic and intentional living in the wonderful world of coaching football.”

The interview, we can only assume, did NOT go as planned.

The Summit originally posted the video on their site, however, it was removed a few days ago with no explanation. This has led to speculation and even more intense ridicule. And since the Summit had no qualms about posting the video in the first place, it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that there has been pressure from either the Malzahn family or the Auburn family to have it removed, as it represents both poorly.

So, what was so bad?
In her 30-minute interview, Kristi Malzahn covers the gamut from raising serious concerns with Auburn’s recruiting practices to saying that 18-22 year old kids are not the most intelligent people out there. She calls Auburn fans, “freaking nuts,” states that Gene Chizik, Auburn’s head football coach, did not want Cam Newton, refers to the National Championship as the State Championship and even begrudges Lou Holtz for his lisp.

CLEARLY, something is desperately wrong here. So, simply address it. Explain that she had a bad day, or she took the wrong medication or maybe she forgot to take her medication. Anything. The public is forgiving of mistakes – but not cover-ups or trying to sweep it under the rug. Which is exactly what someone is doing. There seems to have been an all-out effort to remove everything short of Kristi Malzahn’s vocal chords.

Within the past few days:

The Summit deleted the video from their site (above) and removed it from Vimeo:

Kristi’s Twitter account (which she touts in the video)  was deleted:

Kristi’s Facebook account was deleted:

The video on YouTube which generated more than 130,000 views in about 48 hours was deleted (which, for the record, simply looks as though they are trying to hide something):

But unfortunately, as we all know… once on the Internet, “ALWAYS” on the Internet.

That one video has now been replaced with (as of today) “seven” more which have generated an additional 80,000+ views:

Further, the top two results, when you do a Google search for “Gus Malzahn” (who has coached since 1992 and helped lead Auburn to a National Championship just last year) is about, you guessed it, Kristi Malzahn’s video. The top one being an article in Sports Illustrated on SI.com.

Marketers, please take heed.

The public relations world has changed forever. To simply “ignore” or “spin” a situation is not a viable option. 

And to attempt to keep things quiet, simply guarantees they will get louder and louder.

I will be presenting on the power of the female consumer in a session titled: Why and How to Effectively Market to Women in Today’s Economic Climate. Are there any topics or questions you feel should be addressed? Also, I would love to know who’s planning to be there!

Stephanie Holland is President and Executive Creative Director for Holland + Holland Advertising, Birmingham, Alabama. Working in an industry that is dominated by men, she is one of only 3% of the female creative directors in the country. Stephanie works mostly with male advertisers, helping them successfully market to women. Subscribe to She-conomy by Email

Apple on the other hand offered equal functionality yet with simplicity and clean sleek design. I admit I am biased as I have always been an Apple person, but as I have played around with Google Plus, I am feeling the same differentiating factors. Google+ is simple  and smoother in design. Good friend, Ayesha Mathews-Wadhwa, recently shared a comment referring to the Aspen Ideas Festival:

Design is changing the way we talk to each other.

So true! And I believe Facebook is about to find that out. Facebook is functional and meets a need. But by incorporating thoughtful and logical design, Google+ takes the social experience to a different level.

So who wins? The consumer. I doubt Facebook is going away, but much like Microsoft, they are no longer the only ones playing and will have to step it up. Good competition means choices and ultimately better products for consumers. Google has been trying to get into the social space for quite awhile with little success. But with Google+, I think they have finally created not only something to compete with Facebook (and yes, Twitter,) but something that might even cause a switch.

For example, take a look at Chris Brogan’s (social media extraordinaire) new profile picture on Facebook. I was a bit amused, but I’m guessing Mark Zuckerberg did not feel the same.

What does all of this have to do with marketing to women? Everything. Women want to share, connect and build relationships. And Facebook has met that need. But they also want simple, clean and sleek. And it appears that Google+ has been listening.

As marketers, you need to know social is not a fad or a trend. It is now a way of life and will simply continue to be improved upon – attracting even more women!

Are you prepared to connect with the female market?

Stephanie Holland is President and Executive Creative Director for Holland + Holland Advertising, Birmingham, Alabama. Working in an industry that is dominated by men, she is one of only 3% of the female creative directors in the country. Stephanie works mostly with male advertisers, helping them successfully market to women. Subscribe to She-conomy by Email

Cloud Showing Brands That Are Creating Successful Relationships With Female Bloggers

According to a recent study conducted by BlogFrog and The Social Studies Group, female bloggers receive dozens of pitches from brands each year to work on projects ranging from affiliate programs and direct advertising to guest posts and Twitter parties.

But about two-thirds  of female bloggers reject at least half of the pitches they receive.

Why? Because some brands do a better job at connecting with them than others. The 2011 Brands and Women Bloggers Influencer Partnership Study reveals what the ideal brand partnership looks like from the female blogger perspective.

A few of the key findings include:

• 58% of bloggers have never been approached by a brand to work on a campaign.
• Social good matters. Campaigns that include an element of social good increase trust levels for 56% of bloggers surveyed.
• Women bloggers want long-term, deeper relationships with a few special brands
• Compensation matters. 90% are interested in working with brands, so long as there is some form of compensation.
• 70% of bloggers trust a brand more when that brand is promoted or recommended by someone they know from a blog or social media.
• 87% of bloggers said personal feelings about a brand influences whether they will work with that brand.

Because the product categories and types of brands favored by a blogger are typically a personal choice, brands need to get to know more about what the bloggers are writing about and who they are connecting with. Brands need to develop long-term relationships with them. Nearly six in 10 preferred to work over a long period with just a few favored brands.

Bottom line, connecting with female bloggers is much like connecting with your female audience. You need to not only know who they are, you need to understand and respect them.

Stephanie Holland is President and Executive Creative Director for Holland + Holland Advertising, Birmingham, Alabama. Working in an industry that is dominated by men, she is one of only 3% of the female creative directors in the country. Stephanie works mostly with male advertisers, helping them successfully market to women. Subscribe to She-conomy by Email

Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2011 from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.

The newly released 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report is a must read. Michael Stelzner, of Social Media Examiner, has been providing this resource for three years now. But I feel this year’s report yields the most telling results because we now have history, indexes and baselines with social media and levels of participation.

What I found most interesting is that the data reveals what early adopters have been saying all along. Social media marketing is effective and productive, but it takes time to nurture and mature. It is not a get rich scheme. Social media marketing works best for those committed to their companies and customers for the long term.

The report shows that companies with more years of social media experience spend more time each week conducting social media activities. Why? Because they have witnessed the direct correlation to time spent and results generated. They know it works and are willing to devote more and more time and resources to it.

Companies using social media 3+ years, spend the most time each week conducting social media activities. – 63% spend more than 10 hours per week. Only 41% of those with 1–3 years of experience spend that much time. For those just getting started it is dramatically less.

So, back to those with 3+ years of experience with social media:

• 91% reported an increase in traffic
• 72% report it has helped them close business
• 72% report it has increased exposure for their business
• More than 80% gained more business partnerships
• More than 65% agree that overall marketing costs dropped when social media marketing was implemented.
• More than 85% experienced an increase in search rankings

It might be helpful to compare what the companies with 3+ years of social media experience are saying and how that compares to those just getting started. Which category do you fall into?

Tools that companies with 3+ Years Experience use:

• 97% use Facebook
• 96% use Twitter
• 86% use blogs
• 84% use LinkedIn
• 75% use YouTube or other video

Tools that companies Just Getting Started use:

• 84% use Facebook
• 64% use Twitter
• 62% use blogs
• 53% use LinkedIn
• 26% use YouTube or other video

Tools that companies with 3+ Years Experience plan to learn more about:

• 59% Social bookmarking/news sites
• 56% Facebook
• 56% Geo-location
• 53% Blogs
• 48% YouTube or other video
• 45% Twitter
• 44% LinkedIn
• 32% Forums
• 32% Groupon
• 9% MySpace

Tools that companies Just Getting Started want to know more about:

• 83% Facebook
• 80% Blogs
• 72% Twitter
• 68% LinkedIn
• 60% YouTube or other video
• 58% Social bookmarking sites
• 51% Forums
• 42% Geo-location
• 29% Groupon
• 17% MySpace

People are on the Internet. They spend vasts amount of time there. Especially women. But the good news is the data reveals that for those marketers willing to spend the time and resources to reach them effectively, THE PAY OFF IS WORTH IT.

Other key findings include:

• 90% of marketers said that social media was important to their business
• The number one benefit of social media marketing is standing out in an increasingly noisy world.
• 75% of marketers indicate they will increase blogging.
• Design and development, content creation and analytics are the top three areas that social media marketers are outsourcing.
• Marketers are more likely to decrease their use of direct mail than any other marketing channel.
• A significant 55% of marketers either have no plans to use or will decrease their use of print ads.
• 8% of marketers plan on increasing radio, with 68% of marketers having no plans to use radio at all.
• 6% of marketers plan on increasing their use of TV with 76% having no plans of using TV at all.

You can download the full 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report report here.

Stephanie Holland is President and Executive Creative Director for Holland + Holland Advertising, Birmingham, Alabama. Working in an industry that is dominated by men, she is one of only 3% of the female creative directors in the country. Stephanie works mostly with male advertisers, helping them successfully market to women. Subscribe to She-conomy by Email

As if “good content” was not already becoming increasingly important in separating your site on the web, Google has just launched their +1 product for experimentation. In hopes of competing with Facebook’s “like” button, Google’s +1 will allow users to recommend sites and links to their friends and family.

For now, Google says the amount of +1’s a link attains will not impact the search ranking, but according to Google rep, Jim Prosser, during an interview with Mashable, “that is something Google is “very interested” in incorporating in some form at some point.”

When coupled with Google’s recent algorithm changes to reward “good content,” increasing search rankings for the number of recommendations  places even greater pressure on companies to listen to their consumer when developing products and advertising. For now, just being recommended within someone’s circle of friends and family will be huge.

For marketing to the female consumer, it becomes even more vital to make sure you are delivering messages that she connects with, approves of and is willing to not only share, but endorse.

This begs the question.

Do you understand the female customer pertaining to her needs and buying behavior? There is no way to get her to “share” if you don’t connect with her in the first place.

As a side note, for me, “+1” does not communicate what they are trying to say. This makes it a little confusing right out of the gate. But, if it catches on, (and I am guessing it will)  +1  provides consumers one more level of control, forcing companies and marketers  to be even more accountable. For marketing to women, you cannot afford to ignore the impact this will have.

Stephanie Holland is President and Executive Creative Director for Holland + Holland Advertising, Birmingham, Alabama. Working in an industry that is dominated by men, she is one of only 3% of the female creative directors in the country. Stephanie works mostly with male advertisers, helping them successfully market to women. Subscribe to She-conomy by Email

This is a GREAT article and chock full of statistics supporting the headline, some of which I have highlighted below. Aileen also made suggestions and asked some very poignant questions.

• More female users will likely help your company grow faster.
• Take a look at your product, your marketing, your customer base.  Maybe you would benefit from having a larger base of female customers.
• If so, what would you change to make your product/service more attractive to female customers?
• Do you do enough product and user interface testing with female users?
• Have you figured out how to truly unleash the shopping and social power of women?
• Take a look at your team.  Do you have women in key positions?
• If you’re planning on targeting female customers, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to have great women on your team.

The data is fresh and new yet continues to affirm there are beneficial rewards for companies that appeal to and connect with women effectively online. And Aileen’s thoughts are spot on.

So, why did this article strike such a competitive nerve with several men? (comments)

Did they miss the point? I think so. The findings overwhelmingly remind us that women are spending more and more time online. And those who develop products as well as advertise to meet her needs are going to swiftly move ahead.

As a male marketer or male business owner who needs to reach the female audience, it would be wise to view findings that reveal the power of the female consumer as opportunity, not offensive.

Does this mean you are going to benefit from listening to the female audience through the ears of  experienced female marketer? More than likely, yes. Because even if you don’t, someone else will.

A few of the findings:

• Comscore, Nielsen, MediaMetrix and Quantcast studies all show women are the driving force of the most important net trend of the decade, the social web.
• Comscore says women are the majority of users of social networking sites and spend 30% more time on these sites than men;
• According to Nielsen. mobile social network usage is 55% female
• Brian Solis’s analysis shows females are the majority of visitors on the following sites:
  1. Twitter
  2. Facebook
  3. Deli.ci.ous
  4. Docstoc
  5. Flickr
  6. Myspace
  7. Ning
  8. Upcoming.org
  9. uStream
  10. Classmates.com
  11. Bebo
  12. Yelp
  13. The one site Brian notes where males are greater than females is Digg. (Didn’t I just read where founder, Kevin Rose resigned as CEO and that Digg is not doing well?)

• More women use Twitter according to bloggers Dan Zarella and Darmesh Shaw’s analyses.
• In e-commerce, female purchasing power is also pretty clear. Sites like those listed below are all driven by a majority of female customers.
• Zappos (>$1 billion in revenue last year)
  Groupon ($760m last year)
  Gilt Groupe ($500m projected revenue this year)
  Etsy (over $300m in GMV last year)
  Diapers ($300m estimated revenue last year)
• Further, according to Gilt Groupe, women are 70% of the customer base and they drive 74% of revenue.
• And 77% of Groupon’s customers are female according to their site.
• There is an exciting new crop of e-commerce companies building real revenue and real community, really fast, by purposefully harnessing the power of female consumers.  One Kings Lane, Plum District, Stella & Dot, Rent the Runway, Modcloth, BirchBox, Shoedazzle, Zazzle, Callaway Digital Arts, and Shopkick are just a few examples of companies leveraging “girl power.”  The majority of these companies were also founded by women.
• Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook said:
  1. Women are not only the majority of its users, but drive 62% of activity in terms of messages, updates and comments, and 71% of the daily fan activity.
  2. Women have 8% more Facebook friends on average than men, and spend more time on the site.
  3. Women played a key role in the early days by adopting three core activities—posting to walls, adding photos and joining groups—at a much higher rate than males.

For more insight and findings, view the article in it’s entirety here.

Stephanie Holland is President and Executive Creative Director for Holland + Holland Advertising, Birmingham, Alabama. Working in an industry that is dominated by men, she is one of only 3% of the female creative directors in the country. Stephanie works mostly with male advertisers, helping them successfully market to women. Subscribe to She-conomy by Email