There are no “come in please!” signs at trendsetting Paris bars like Experimental Cocktail Club and Silencio, and the bouncers are sure to give you a dubious up-and-down. That sense of exclusivity is reflected online. ECC, with bars in Paris, London and New York, has a Facebook group with under 1,000 members, and New York is its only outpost with a Twitter account.

Maintaining privacy is one way of being cool, but three Paris bars are changing the city’s scene by serving high-end cocktails, giving people a good time, and welcoming online interaction.

Starting in 2011 with taqueria and cocktail bar Candelaria, founders Josh Fontaine, Carina Tsou, and Adam Tsou have since opened Glass and Le Mary Celeste. Glass is a shabby-chic Pigalle bar serving impeccable cocktails and a selection of hot dogs. They welcome different musicians and DJs each night, and a sound-proofed interior means people dance until 4 a.m. without disturbing the sex shops next door. Alternatively, Le Mary Celeste provides oyster happy hour and serious cocktails out of a bright, clean space in the North Marais.

Each bar brings a different look and feel, so Arash Hajianpour, director of special operations, approaches the building of each online presence accordingly. With more than 1,200 followers on Twitter, Candelaria connects with an international cocktail community and keeps loyal customers apprised on their latest taco offerings.

“People do get excited about that,” Hajianpour said. “It’s crazy how much people really love tacos.”

Though Glass and Le Mary Celeste have smaller Twitter audiences, they’re growing at a steady pace. “We’ve noticed any time we’ve written a tweet, we get two more followers,” Hajianpour said. “And if we put somebody’s handle on there, then their followers start following us. It’s very geometric; it’s not one-to-one, it’s two to four, to eight.”

With Glass, Hajianpour focuses on publicizing nightly events via Facebook, aiming to establish an overarching concept at the same time. The bar’s cover photo is a psychedelic-patterned schedule for the week, and DJ sets or musicians are announced with corresponding images. Posts are in both English and French, making rock n’ roll nights accessible to an international clientele.

“We want people to keep Glass in mind,” Hajianpour said. “[We want] to make sure people are aware of what we’re going for at the bar, kind of gently beat it into their heads.”

At Mary Celeste, the attention is on the menu and the cocktails. Tweets on tête de cochon and asparagus meet Facebook posts on milk punch and bloody mary. The restaurant opened in December, and it now has a few thousand Facebook likes.

“We use social media to make sure that people know this is a cocktail bar, it’s a place to share great food with friends, it’s all these elements together,” Hajianpour elaborated.

Perhaps these tactics wouldn’t be out of place on the New York bar scene, but this trio is setting a trend for high-quality Parisian locales. Each one makes their ambiance clear online through original content, while their overall purpose is to instigate a shared experience. Hajianpour responds to all tweets and recognizes any mentions in the press, of which there are many.

“[We do] the social media thing because we don’t want to feel disconnected from the people who come into the bars, or the restaurant,” Hajianpour said. “If we didn’t have that [online] presence, and people weren’t able to throw a shout out or something and get a response, then we’re missing the point of why we’re in this in the first place. For us, it just makes sense to be involved.”

Glass will soon have a Tumblr, and Hajianpour says all the bars will keep pace with whatever digital developments his customers want.

“We’re not marketing a brand,” he added. “We just want to hang out with people and have a nice time, and have people enjoy themselves when they’re with us. So whatever can aid that and whatever people appreciate, we’ll be there.”

There are still no “come in” signs on the door, but anyone searching for these bars online will find an immediate welcome.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

You’ve seen it —  the 2-years-olds who are master photographers with their parents’ smartphone cameras and the 6-year-olds who can already type faster than most developers.

Kids these days have bedrooms jam-backed with TVs, video game consoles, and computers — they’re spending less time outside exercising and more time hanging out on the couch playing Call of Duty.  But is multimedia all bad?

The following infographic from Now Sourcing explores two important sides of this question. Is media bad or good for kids? Well, yes and no.

Is Media Making Kids Stagnate?

For good reason, 73% of parents like to limit their kids’ TV time, and 66% talk to their kids about the dangers of social media sites. Surprisingly, only a small proportion of respondents actively monitor their kids’ social presences and privacy settings — despite concerns.

Then there’s the perspective that media harms intelligence — 42% of Americans agree that in 2020, young technology users will have major cognitive problems including an inability to focus, lack of long-term foresight, and limited critical thinking ability.

Ouch.

Is Media Making Kids Smarter? 

In the classrooms, teachers perceive media and technology as invaluable teaching tools. Only a small proportion of respondents — 26% — feel that incorporating tablets in the classroom would be a distraction to learning. The rest? Well, they think tablets are just what the classroom needs.

Where teachers agree with parents is in the areas of attention span — without checks and balances, online media can really hurt a kid’s ability to focus.

As with all great things in life (junk food, play dates, and study-time), what kids need most is balance. Too much, too little — there is a fine line. To say that digital media’s kids are going to grow into lackluster adults, however? That may be a stretch.

Hats off to today’s brilliant, media-savvy kids who will inevitable pioneer tomorrow’s technology.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Platforms like LinkedIn are power tools because they:

1. Nurture long-term business relationships with minimal investment
2. Leverage content as the driving force between strong interpersonal bonds
3. Promote a ‘network effect’ between sales reps and decision makers
4. Facilitate an unobtrusive communication channel

Think – the beauty of online dating for the powerful world of sales.

LinkedIn has partnered with Aberdeen Group to help educate businesses about social selling – which is inseparable from your social content strategy. Think of content marketing as your introductory handshake. Platforms like LinkedIn are the digitized conferences, parties, and industry directories that help make those handshakes happen.

Why This Visual Rocks

LinkedIn and Aberdeen Group have done a great job illustrating why sales teams should be more social: boost customer renewals and increase quotas. LinkedIn is a platform that’s experiencing rapid growth and provides a powerful platform for connecting with new prospects.

The infographic simplifies three core components of social selling:

1. Finding prospects, and understand their values
2. Reaching out – connect to learn more, or just say hi
3. Sharing insights – here’s where content marketing comes in to help build the relationship

Finally, props to LinkedIn for projecting their brand and leveraging content marketing to advertise their sales solutions platform. Some brands shy away from being salesy, but LinkedIn pulls it off. Remember that content marketing is a powerful way to help move prospects through your conversion funnel. Self-promotion is totally acceptable along the way.

Room for Improvement

The infographic is conceptually strong but suffers from a lack of clarity. First of all, LinkedIn should define the concept of social selling. What is it? How is it different from traditional selling? An introductory section could do wonders for unifying the rest of the content within this infographic – as is, the core messaging is a bit fragmented.

Then there’s the section about the LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI). The section is convoluted and difficult to understand. What exactly is the SSI, and why should non-LinkedIn employees care? What value does this quantitative framework bring to typical sales groups?

LinkedIn could also share examples of best-practices for finding prospects, building connections, and sharing insights. Here is a perfect opportunity to bridge a direct connection to content marketing.

The idea behind this visual is strong, so look past the conceptual disjoints and gray areas to focus on the message’s core value. Get social about your sales.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Jeri Yoshizu, sales promotion manager for Scion, explains that this allows the company to make the most out of the Open Mic concert series it created around the car brand.

Yoshizu talked with The Content Strategist about Scion’s latest Open Mic concert, headlined by the Grammy Award-winning Atlanta rapper Killer Mike. The March 20 show at Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s Public Assembly was the first of Scion’s events that required the use of social media to get in the door.

In order to get a ticket, fans needed to tweet or post to Instagram, mention “@ScionAV,” and include their hashtag #ScionOpenMic. Scion collects the hits, to both build a guest list and track the building buzz. According to Yoshizu, by the end of March, the Killer Mike event accumulated a whopping 3.8 million impressions, which includes both social media and editorial placement.

Scion doesn’t use Facebook for events, she said, because it does not fit their scale.

“[Facebook] isn’t nearly as good for managing statistics, and running contests there is expensive, as you have to use their approved partners,” Yoshizu said. How expensive exactly? Sticker-shock caliber: “The cost of entry to organize a Facebook contest for an event like this is $20,000 alone,” she said.

Users receive a notification that @ScionAV “favorited” their post, confirming their entry has been received. Later, the winners are notified they had won a ticket, and asked to email in their full name and Twitter handle in for confirmation.

Since the organizer eventually builds an email list, the social media method is an upgrade over the email-to-RSVP method. And Yoshizu explained the unique upside: “You can tell a lot more about a perspective audience member from their social media account. You see their followers, you see their community.”

Another key to building a strong community is consistency: “A lot of brands flip-flop around, but you need to focus on specific genres to develop your platform.”

Atlanta rapper Trinidad James, 22, who headlined the brand’s February Open Mic event, had advance respect for Scion. Yoshizu said that James “remembered stories about great Scion events from when he was a teenager. Trust is important, since musicians are also building brands; they need to be seen working with brands with good reputations.”

Within a single genre, though, you have a variety of artists with distinct followings. “The Killer Mike RSVP list filled up, but it didn’t happen as fast as a more hyped or trendy rapper, like [previous Open Mic event headliner] A$AP Rocky,” she explained, adding that the audience was “more of an artist’s artist crowd, less VICE [Magazine] kids; and this difference adds a dimension of street cred to the show.”

The venue filled to capacity for the March show, with more than 200 fans, and they were treated to a show more akin to one of Mike’s concerts than the average promotional event. And as a bonus to the audience, Brooklyn rapper/producer El-P, who produced Killer Mike’s new album R.A.P. Music, stopped in to rock the stage.

And that stage doesn’t need anything more than the artists,Yoshivu advises. “Don’t spend any more money putting on the event than is necessary, there’s no return on money spent on stagecraft,” she said. ”I’d always choose a small venue over a large one, and we’re staying in Brooklyn for now, not looking at Manhattan.”

Media coverage helps, but Yoshizu recommends brands focus on outlets tied to the content: “Complex will always cover our shows, so that’s a press entry worth giving out, but a generic entertainment publication, asking for two passes? It’s not going to happen. Those slots need to be going to energetic fans. The artist can tell who’s here for them.”

A lesson learned from the event, Yoshizu explained, is to understand an artist’s promo schedule before setting the event schedule. For intance, Killer Mike’s recent David Letterman appearance could have been a great way to raise awareness for the event, but the timing was wrong.

“The RSVP had been closed by this appearance — which would have boosted hype,” she explained. Already planning upcoming shows, she added, “Next time …”

The social media sweepstakes for tickets for Scion’s next Open Mic event on April 17 in Brooklyn, featuring Rockie Fresh, Worlds Fair, Julian Malone, DJ GetLive!, is already underway.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

The March 8 symposium in New York was organized after Hyperallergic writer Ben Valentine penned “Tumblr As Art” last June and caught the attention of Tumblr arts evangelist Annie Werner. Werner said that she hoped the symposium would shed light on the artistic community that exists on Tumblr and help it to grow.

The event featured disruptions of various types — vocal audience members, chaos when a very NSFW Tumblr was projected and live streamed, and members of the panels who were unapologetic about taking Instagram photos of one another. As Tumblr artist Brad Troemel said, during a Q&A session, “Artists should be defining visual culture, not advertisers.”

Sociologist Tricia Wang, in her presentation, “Tumblring Our Elastic Selves,” said the reason Tumblr users gravitate toward the platform was because it was an “unbound” experience that allows for expression and allows oneself to be “elastic.” Wang’s description of elasticity as a means of identity means being able to create as many accounts – and identities – as possible.

Before her presentation, Wang shared her mantra that “you have to go to the edges to get what is really happening.” If content marketers want to know what is “next” for content, perhaps they should look to the artists who have made Tumblr fit their calling.

The common sentiment from panelists and audience members was that the more corporations try to “monoplozie and monetize” content and art, the more creators will rebel and try to disrupt the system, whether its the marketing system or architecture of Tumblr itself.

“Artists should be defining visual culture, not advertisers.”

San Francisco-based net artist Ian Aleksander Adams said during an open panel session that his project Friendster Friday was inspired out of the experience of having his friends becoming angry at him for trying to “tumblr” on Facebook, crowding their newsfeeds, and breaking the natural order.

Christiane Paul, professor of visual arts at The New School, was asked to define Tumblr Art during the first panel, ”Past, Present, Future: Why Should I Reblog This?” She said it was a “corporate art form, not an art medium.” Tumblr is a platform that many artists share their work through, but the collection of collages, video art, engagements and reblogs are not a united art form, she said.

A few possible content strategy lessons from the Tumblr Art Symposium: The platform from which you post your content does not make your content, more people will engage and react to content more “unbound” it feels , and you will get more attention the more you want to “break” something.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

A wildly disproportionate number — 87% — of US sign-ups to Pinterest have been from women, according to data from comScore. If you contrast that with the struggling Google Plus — a service that SocialStatistics.com says has a 70% male user base — it would be easy to come to the conclusion that Google Plus is from Mars and Pinterest is from Venus.

It’s a conclusion that most analysts endorse. “In a sentence: It is Pinterest’s lack of linearity that puts off men and attracts some women,” says Lief Schneider, social media guru and director of Schneider Bartosch Communications.

Others have suggested that Pinterest’s visual strength lies behind its appeal to women.

“Pinterest is a beautiful site that lets imagery sing,” says James Howard, community manager at The Sense Network, “It deserves to be populated with gorgeous content, and women — in general — are superior seekers and curators of the finer things in life.”

These are easy conclusions to make when you look at Google Plus, a service where the ratio of men to women is flipped. Though boasting 100 million active users, the male skew could easily be attributed to the service’s tech-heavy focus. Many of its biggest hitters are technology bloggers or Silicon Valley CEOs, using the platform for top-down communication.

The differences are stereotypically male vs. female. Text vs image, technology vs art, information vs. conversation. But maybe that picture is too simple.

Female persuasion

Statistics from the UK suggest that Pinterest isn’t quite the babe magnet it seems to be across the pond. In the United Kingdom, the Pinterest user base is more balanced between the sexes, with a slight bias towards male users. Data from Visua.ly shows that 56% of British Pinterest users are blokes.

Digging deeper, it seems that Pinterest’s stateside sex appeal isn’t completely organic either. Part of its gender success came from clever marketing.

“(Pinterest) offered a batch of invites to the audience of Etsy (itself around 70% female) and cherry picked influential females to populate their boards,” says James Howard, “As a result boards were created around female interests skewing the appeal of the site towards women.”

In the UK, there was no such campaign. News of Pinterest’s existence crept out by virtual word-of-mouth, on blogs, Twitter and tech news sites. So, the UK stats show a more traditional spread of technology’s early adopters.

The gender that spends

Why did Pinterest so aggressively target women in the US? Perhaps they saw a growing market that online services neglect at their peril.

“Women — in general — are superior seekers and curators of the finer things in life.”

It’s a cliché that women like to shop, but online statistics show that it has some foundation. Women spend on average 20% longer on retail sites than men. Facebook may drive more through-traffic to these sites, but Pinterest users spend more.

Pinterest actively wooed and won a generation of women to its take on social media with clean design and savvy marketing. They fought hard for the female dollar. When targeting women consumers with content, it’s worth bearing that in mind — and so is Pinterest.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Then, there’s the question of value. Can Quora yield an effect that’s directly translatable into the language of business — that is, revenue and sales?

“Quora has brand marketing value because it can help brands and experts generate thought leadership and expertise in their given field,” explains Freya Waldern, a PR professional with a background in fashion, tech, and video for both consumer and enterprise organizations.

Then there’s the other end of the spectrum and the typical answer to the question — ‘What the best use of Quora good for ?’

“Procrastination,” says professional author, political consultant, and Daily Stag Hunt co-owner Patrick Atwater.

Quora and the Content Ecosystem

But if you’re not participating in the discussion, you’re at a potential disadvantage.

Content marketers may be surprised to learn that top Quora answers drive massive viewership numbers.

“Quora tells me active writers get over 30,000 monthly views and 350,000 annual values,” wrote Josh Constine for Techcrunch. “Its most hardcore contributors can get over 1 million views a year, and most great answers go viral and get tens of thousands of reads.”

That’s a big reason why Quora evolved its platform by launching a blogging platform. As of late January, Quora users can create blogs and posts within them.

“Authors can tag their posts or entire blogs with any of Quora’s 300,000 topics that are relevant to their content,” says Constine.

A natural next step is the ability to drive traffic back to your website. But will content marketing actually have a clear place in this ecosystem? Atwater has already jumped in and given the process a go, however, he’s still working on cultivating an effective audience development strategy.

“We’ve already carried over a Quora blog from the old boards program,” he says. “We’re still trying to figure out how to best integrate that venue with our existing Daily Stag Hunt website.”

Content that Transcends Traffic

Quora’s core value proposition is that it is not a sales tool or traffic-driving machine. The platform is, at is heart, a trustworthy place to exchange knowledge. If you start beating people over the head with an aggressive marketing message, you won’t be met with open arms. Your content will instead, be downvoted into total obscurity.

“Quora weighs thoughtful, considerate, and valid responses much higher than vapid, salesy plugs,” Waldern says.

It’s that dynamic that might be scaring marketers away, she suggests. “These types of responses require more time and energy to think through and thus contribution is not as widespread.”

But if you’re not participating in the discussion, you’re at a potential disadvantage.

“Businesses miss out if their competition responds to questions pertaining to their space because they gain name-brand recognition and could be considered more expert than those companies that don’t respond,” Waldern says.

Think Like a Leader, Not a Marketer

To succeed on Quora, you need to think past your content marketing agenda to zero in on personal connections, intelligent dialogue, and valuable information.

“I use Quora mostly to follow topics and people of interest both personally and professionally,” Waldern says.

Will content marketing actually have a clear place in this ecosystem?

It’s especially powerful in bridging connections with new audiences.

“Quora’s exposed me to fascinating thinkers I wouldn’t have found otherwise, like Venkatesh Rao,” explains Atwater.

Stop trying to sell, and start focusing on leading, influencing, and connecting instead. That in a nutshell, is how you’ll make Quora work for your brand.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Marketers like Red Bull and AmEx trying to reach a critical mass of consumers can distribute content through sponsored posts on Facebook and Twitter or distribution platforms like Outbrain.

But B2B marketers trying to reach a very specific type of professional face a serious challenge. LinkedIn wants to help B2B content marketers tackle that challenge head on.

“One of the things that we’re increasingly focused on in 2013 is going to be the opportunity to support content marketing,” LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner declared in a call with investors and analysts last month.

With over 200 million professionals and 2.4 million companies on LinkedIn, the platform hopes to become a giant information exchange where users can swap exclusive content like white papers, presentations, and expert discussions. We’ve already seen this effort underway through LinkedIn’s integration of Slideshare, and the release new products like LinkedIn Today, which aggregates top professional news for users, and LinkedIn Influencers, where a hand-picked crew of 200 celebrity professionals present exclusive content.

LinkedIn Groups have made it easier for people in niche industry roles to share and spread tips, tricks and updates with each other.

“One of the areas where we’re making strong traction in is LinkedIn as a professional publishing platform. You see with the momentum we’re generating now in Influencers, LinkedIn Groups, Slideshare, people are increasingly turning to LinkedIn to publish professionally relevant content,” Weiner said on the call. “We think that’s going to create a very strong platform and very valuable context for large enterprises, for small-medium businesses who want to target [and] engage with professionals.”

Basically, LinkedIn wants to become the first place professionals come to both distribute branded content and consume content that will help them do their job better. The benefits for LinkedIn are obvious: the more time people spend consuming content on LinkedIn, the more advertising dollars the company will see, and the more proprietary data they’ll collect about people’s professional content consumption habits.

In addition, LInkedIn is planning on rolling out its own version of the Facebook’s Sponsored Story called Sponsored Content, which will allow a brands to promote the whitepapers, infographics, and other branded content they produce to specific segments of their followers. For many B2B marketers, it may present the content distribution solution they’ve been craving.

We all already know that content is a commodity, but LinkedIn may soon take that idea to a whole new level.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Nan Palmero

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

Accuracy of exact numbers aside, Pinterest is serious business that your content marketing team needs to at least consider. Sure, if you’re running an online dictionary website, Pinterest may not be the best fit for your social strategy — or is it?

You may not realize it, but Pinterest is a strong fit with a variety of advertising agendas. Love sharing quotes? Create ‘quote of the day’ boards to inspire your community. Need a place to house your customer testimonial videos? Take a lesson from Salesforce’s customer success stories board.

The value in Pinterest is that it’s beautiful, transforming ordinary content into a visually stunning format. That’s why brands like Sephora and Z Gallerie are so active on the platform — because they rely on beauty as a marketing medium to sell. And boy, does Pinterest have them sell. According to The Social Times and VentureBeat article, Sephora’s Pinterest followers spend, on average, 15 times more on Sephora products than the company’s Facebook fans.

So here’s a how-to guide from Prestige Marketing compiled in true Pinterest visual spirit — as an infographic.

Why this visual rocks:

For content marketers and social strategists who aren’t quite sure where Pinterest fits with their brands, this breakdown literally tells you what to do, step by step. It tells you (in data) why Pinterest is important and how to understand your audience.

It breaks down the key dimensions of a successful content strategy — you need to think beyond product promotion to build a true community around your brand.

Room for improvement:

The awesomeness of this infographic would be amplified with some concrete brand examples. What exactly does a Pinterest strategy look like in action?

The infographic tells a great story, but a case study would do wonders in bringing the argument down to Earth.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently

The hackers changed the profile picture to the McDonald’s logo, and re-skinned the background with a picture of McDonald’s new Fish McBites (a sign that the hack was likely carried by a band of seafood-loving stoners). A new bio declared, “Just got sold to McDonald’s because the whopper flopped.” 

At 11 a.m., the first hacker tweet came out, announcing: “We just got sold to McDonalds! Look for McDonalds in a hood near you.”

Things just got weird from there. Tweets that followed over the next hour included a shoutout to Chicago rapper Chief Keef — best known for illustrious rap sheet — and a threat to Wendy’s customers. (“if I catch you at a wendys, we’re fightin!”)

There was also an advertisement for bath salts, and a picture of a man injecting a dirty needle into his arm with the accompanying text, “We caught one of our employees in the bathroom doing this …”

At 12:15 p.m., after an hour and fifteen minutes, the account was suspended.

On Monday night, the Burger King account was stripped of any logo, bio or skin, and the offending tweets bizarrely remain up. Later in the evening, the account was restored, with the offending tweets erased, an new tweet that vaguely acknowledged the events. “Interesting day here at Burger King, but we’re back! Welcome to our new followers. Hope you stick around!”

One curious result of the hijacking was that the numbers of followers more than doubled overnight. As of Tuesday at noon, the number of followers had climbed to more than 112,000.

Since the hack, Burger King has been quiet outside of a bland PR statement that read: “We have worked directly with administrators to suspend the account until we are able to re-establish our legitimate site and authentic postings.”

Their Facebook account has been silent since tweeting a $0.25 coupon for coffee this morning.

As Burger King tried to return to business as usual, the rest of the Internet was busy tweeting and posting countless jokes and memes about the hack. It ended up being the web’s water cooler gossip of the day, but it felt like Burger King was stalling, wondering about how this darn social media thing went wrong.

A strong brand publishing platform and culture would have come in handy. After the hack, Burger King’s best strategy would have been to deftly communicate what happened with the hack, and then join in on all the memetacular fun. They already had the blogosphere’s attention; if Burger King would have landed a few good jokes on one of its other social media platforms, it would have been a big win for their social media efforts.

There, however, lies the catch: you can’t successfully respond at a pace that keeps up with the rest of the Internet unless you have an always-on content marketing culture in place. If you have a team in place creating content every day, they can respond in real-time. You can see this in how Oreo’s command team allowed it to capitalize immediately on the Super Bowl blackout.

Burger King got hacked and it was really, really weird. There are many jokes to be made. Discussions about cyber-security to be had. Brand publishing is what allows you to do all those things.

The Content Strategist is a daily magazine for forward-thinking publishers and content marketers, sponsored and created by Contently