Are you looking for a cost-effective and easy-to-use self-service option to gain fans, get new likes and increase your social brand awareness across Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest?

PromoJam’s self-service social promotions platform has the perfect solution for you. Sign up for our Free webinar with PromoJam’s CEO Matt MacNaughton who will demonstate how to create social promotions, contests and campaigns under 7 minutes!

Dates and Times:

Wednesday, May 1st 2013 – 11AM PST
Thursday, May 2nd 2013 – 2PM PST

Sign up today for our free webinar!

New to PromoJam? Here’s a quick look at what you can achieve with our easy-to-use hassle-free platform:

BUILD

TRACK

MANAGE

Plans start at $249.99 for a single promotion.
Sign up and check out PromoJam today with our 15-day FREE trial.

The post Webinar: Looking for a Self-Service Social Promotions Platform? appeared first on PromoJam.

The team covered lots of ground today as we explored and networked our way across downtown.

TechZulu Trend Lounge at Eighteenth over Austin

The lounge was an awesome hub of activity today – the morning started off with an inspiring mimosa brunch hosted by Women 2.0 and Intel Capital. With roundtable discussions and startup demos, it was an amazing opportunity to meet women leaders in the tech industry.

With livestreaming interviews by TechZulu reporters Amanda Coolong and Kyle Ellicot, it was great to see influencers and startup entrepreneurs share their thoughts and perspectives of the digital and technology space.

As the day warmed up, the activity at TechZulu certainly amped up! Crowdfunding site Indiegogo hosted a riotous panel discussion on crowdsourcing and featured some of the company’s most successful projects and stories.

Interactive agency Rapp also concluded their amazing poptag #POPPINSXSW twitter contest (powered by PromoJam of course!) with the announcement of the winner of a Makerbot Replicator 2 3D printer – congrats to Quincy Russell of San Antonio, Texas!!

With a packed house and a setting sun as our backdrop, the lounge transformed into Happy Hour with fried chicken and beer on the house! We saw many friends both new and old wander through and it was great to network with the 360 view of Austin behind us!

SXSW Street Scope

The team also managed to get some time to check out some of the other events situated around Downtown.

The Yahoo! lounge was an amazing hub for networking – situated right by the convention center, the lounge was packed with media executives from all over the globe. We even met with a couple of other special ‘muppet’ friends!

Over at the Samsung Galaxy lounge, visitors could charge their fancy Samsung smartphones and tap to win cool prizes – the best part however was the awesome performance by Talib Kweli.

With live music and fun interactive activities, Day 4 is definitely shaping up to be a great day! Stay tuned for more updates as we cover the night scene of SXSW – till then, BE SOCIAL and keep on jammin’!

There’s alot more partying and networking to be found in SXSW – so check out our Facebook Page for more fun photos and updates from the Interactive conference!

PromoJam Facebook Album: Day Four at SXSW

The post PromoJam at SXSW: Day 4 Recap appeared first on PromoJam.

Here’s a recap of what went down on Day 2 and 3 of the Interactive Conference

Day 2 – Saturday, March 9, 2013

Despite the rain and cloudy weather, SXSW-ers were out and about (literally) soaking in the atmosphere that is SXSW! Over at the TechZulu Trend Lounge, it was a great day of intimate chats and cool hangouts with emerging startups and entrepreneurs.

We met with some budding and future developers – Black Girls Code – and kids from the education program of SXSW dropped by learn more about technology and coding. Armed with tons of enthusiasm and a great sense of learning, it was awesome to see the next generation getting invested in technology!

The lounge also hosted a Fireside Chat with executives from interactive agency – Rapp. Hosted by Zihla Salinas and Craig Elimeliah, the panel covered topics about customer experience and how Poptag was bringing an added element of interactivity for social users.

When the sun set, the PromoJam team hit 6th Street to cohost the #SXSW Band Jam party at Parkside with Digital LA / Dynamite Network & Planet LA records! Featuring some awesome local bands, Parkside was packed with partygoers from near and far. No amount of rain could put a damper on the festive spirit as evidenced by the throngs of drenched people running in the rain

Day 3: Sunday, March 10, 2013

Sunday Funday indeed! The sun came out and with that, a certain buzz that filled the air.

PromoJam was thrilled to be selected as one of 20 startups featured in the Sunday Funday Startup Showcase hosted by DigitalLA and Radix Collective at Frank, just off Congress. Together with other great LA based companies such as Mobile Roadie, Scopely, Adly, Glossi and so much more, it was an amazing day of networking and knowledge sharing!

Packed house at the #SBSF Sunday Funday Startup Showcase at Frank

PromoJam’s Demo of our hassle-free social marketing platform at the #SBSF Sunday Funday Startup Showcase at Frank

The fun continued with a series of great events and the transport of choice for the night? One of the many pedicabs that you can find on the streets of Austin.

The party trail started with the Fast Company Grill, where the team hung out with executives from Target, Evite and MediaTemple. From there, we ventured forth to the Driskill – a gorgeous hotel with plenty of old-world charm and Texan wonder. The night ended with a quick walk back to the Hilton Garden Inn for the AT&T/ American Airlines party and hackathon.
Fun times, awesome local bands and fantastic people – I think it’s safe to say that SXSW has been a hit with this crew so far!

Target #Tarcade at the Fast Company Grill during SXSW featuring some great retro video games!

Stay tuned for more recaps and for all of y’all in Austin – hope to see you around and don’t be a stranger now!

For more fun pics, don’t forget to check out our Facebook Page!

PromoJam Facebook Album: Day Two & Three at SXSW

The post PromoJam at SXSW: Weekend Recap appeared first on PromoJam.

Team PromoJam is beyond psyched about being a part of the coolest Interactive conference of the year and because sharing is caring, we’re gonna bring you our daily recap of all the craziness that is SXSW!

PromoJam @ TechZulu Trend Lounge (#TZTL)

We’ve claimed prime real estate on the 18th floor of the Hilton Garden Inn Downtown as part of the TechZulu Trend Lounge with Rapp Agency, Rambus, Mlove, Indiegogo, Side-car, PulsoViral, Women 2.0 and Flurry!

It was a great day with lots of intimate chats with influencers and marketers from all over the world! The day also included livestreaming by TechZulu and influencer interviews with Amanda Coolong.

From Fireside chats with Rapp to happy hours and PromoJam’s #SXSELFIE Party, We’ve got more exciting events happening at the lounge – check out the schedule now at http://techzulu.com/techzulu-trend-lounge-schedule/

Companies participating at the TechZulu Trend Lounge at SXSW: Rapp, Rambus, Flurry, Indiegogo, PromoJam, PulsoViral, Side-car, Women 2.0, MLove

Cheers to an amazing Day One at the SXSW TechZulu Trend Lounge!

PromoJam hit the streets!

Once we wrapped up at the TechZulu lounge, Team PromoJam hit the streets to get a real taste of the buzz during SXSW! We hopped from party to party and mingled with familiar faces and new!

And in case you haven’t heard or seen the images of Abe Lincoln all over the streets of Austin, we just launched our brand new Instagram Photo Voting Contest. It’s really easy – just snap a photo of yourself on Instagram, tag it with the hashtag #SXSELFIE and check out your pic at www.promojam.com/sxsw! Look at the some of the amazing #sxselfie’s that we’ve gotten so far! Thank you Austin for showing us your best and keep those pictures coming in!

Love taking #Selfies? Tag your best Instagram picture with the hashtag #SXSELFIE and vote for the best pic of the conference!

Oh and did we mention that there’s FREE Beer involved? Yep – you heard right! To thank you for participating, we’re offering you a free beer! Just print out your coupon and reach out to any one of the PromoJam team (@MattMacNaughton, @melslife @mei2lam) to claim your drink!

There’s alot more partying and networking to be found in SXSW – so check out our Facebook Page for more fun photos and updates from the Interactive conference!

PromoJam Facebook Album: Day One at SXSW

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We all know brands must be present on social media to converse with their audience, compete with their competitors and to promote their business, but many times leveraging these platforms in your favor can be challenging. Which platforms are the most relevant for your brand? How can you engage users? How can you stay up-to-date on these ever-changing mediums? What separates your brand online? These can be tricky questions to answer, but here at PromoJam, we’re all about simplifying social marketing. Not only does our platform make marketing online infinitely easier and hassle-free, but through our “Social Stories” video series, we are also sharing tech experts’ tips to help you better understand how to market in the digital space.

In today’s video, marketing experts will be sharing their insights on what they find the most difficult about social marketing.

“What are the biggest challenges in social media marketing?”

Jennifer Chang: “I think that the biggest challenge facing social media marketers today is creating quality content. With Facebook now having 1 billion+ users, it’s getting harder and harder to surface within the newsfeed, and the only way to really do that is to create the kind of content that is engaging and increases sharing across the network. And so I think it’s really important that marketers focus on working together to produce the kind of content that really represents their products and company.”

Travis Kurtz: “The number problem that social marketers have is to make engaging videos that people want to watch; get their name out there.”

Check out more Social Stories on our YouTube Channel!

PromoJam Social Stories:
PromoJam has developed this video series to give tips from tech industry professionals to inform and educate users on how to effectively market on social media. The professionals speaking in our videos are innovators and socially savvy marketers from the Silicon Beach Start-Up scene, who are happy to share their predictions, their challenges and their methods to success with you! So make sure to tune into “Social Stories” as we pick the brains of those who are changing the face of social media marketing daily.

The post PromoJam Social Stories: What are the biggest challenges in social media marketing? appeared first on PromoJam.

Our Digital Women VC / Angel Investing Panel featured top women investors with years of experience investing in multiple sectors. The panel is the first in the series of quarterly Digital Women events featuring all-women tech speakers. Digital Women is a quarterly series dedicated to connecting leading women entrepreneurs, investors, innovators and professionals through educational networking and relationship building events. Run by LA Tech leaders Kevin Winston (Founder of Digital LA), Amanda MacNaughton (Co-Founder of PromoJam), Holden Steinberg (Co-Founder of PageWoo), and Nicole Jordan (Founder of Radix Collective), Digital Women fosters business opportunity and growth for LA’s enterprising female community.

Moderator: Shira Lazar, What’s Trending; Alexa Fischer, Correlation VC; Eva Ho, Factual; Angel Investor; Renee LaBran, Rustic Canyon Co-Founder, Fortis Ventures; Esther Nordlinger, CAA Ventures

Digital Women VC / Angel Investing Panel

Highlights:

- What VCs Want: Great idea, integrity, revenue model. And something crazy and out of the box. “When I hear your idea, I want to think, that’s crazy,” said Eva Ho, angel investor who works at Factual.

- CAA Ventures looks for a good management team, prior entrepreneur experience, passion, and depth of team experience, said Esther Nordlinger of CAA Ventures. CAA Megafruit Ventures is looking for 20-30 consumer facing startups to invest in this year.

- Your Pitch: Be able to pitch your idea in 30 seconds, 1 min, 5 min or an hour. You should know your idea so well that you can pitch its essence in 30 seconds, and have thought about its development and execution in detail to talk about it for hours.

- What do you bring to the table? A good idea is great, but what do you bring to the table? Experience, technical skills, contacts, patent, relentless energy, business plan? VCs are going to want to know why they should invest in you.

- Tech Talent: If you can’t event inspire a developer to build a demo for you, you won’t be to inspire a VC to invest in you. Find technical talent to build a prototype via friends, or find at the dozens of networking events in LA. There’s a hackathon nearly every weekend in LA lately. You don’t need to be a techie, but you need to be able to talk technical. Take classes, read books, or hire someone technical to help

- Network: Investors more like to invest in people they know, are a part of the community, so attend networking events, etc. That said, investors do invest in great ideas from unknowns too.

- Raising Money: Raise a small round of just enough money that your need to get to the next stage

- What’s hot: Quantified self (health and fitness Internet stats), and more traditional industries like education, energy, clean tech are ripe for disruption and entrepreneurial activity. Also: multi-channel networks that aggregate content and can figure out a business model and exit

- What’s not: Subscription services, photos, and travel are crowded sectors with a lot of players and competition – you’ll need something really amazing to stand out and compete. Content creation plays can make money, but difficult to find hits or make huge returns.

Digital Women VC / Angel Investing Panel

Thanks to our amazing speakers.
- Renee LaBran, Rustic Canyon co-founder, Fortis Ventures
- Esther Nordlinger, CAA Ventures
- Eva Ho, Factual; Angel Investor
- Alexa Fischer, Correlation VC
- Moderator: Shira Lazar, What’s Trending

Thanks TheStartupAngel.com for livestreaming. Watch the livestream at http://thestartupangel.com/ when it’s posted.

Thanks to all our event partners Digital LA, PromoJam, PageWoo, Radix Collective and our sponsors Intern Sushi, Pretzel Crisps.

Thanks to ROC Santa Monica for hosting and to PulsoViral for the social media wall – not just a Twitter wall; also includes Instagram and Vine hashtags.

Thanks to our audience for great tweet notes! PulsoViral reporter that 110 people tweeted more than 350 tweets with an estimated reach of millions.

—

RT @GiangBiscan: “You can put any icing you want on it but if it doesn’t start with a good idea, it doesn’t matter” #digitalwomen

RT @promojam Thank you @digitalla @pagewoo @nicolejordan @ROCsantamonica @InternSushi @pulsoviral for making the 1st #DigitalWomen event such a success!

Digital Women VC / Angel Investing Panel

See the full photo gallery on Digital LA’s Facebook: Digital LA: Digital Women Panel Album

About Digital Women:
Digital Women is a quarterly series in LA dedicated to connecting leading women entrepreneurs, investors, innovators and professionals with one another through educational networking and relationship building events. Run by LA Tech leaders Kevin Winston (Founder of Digital LA), Amanda MacNaughton (Co-Founder of PromoJam), and Holden Steinberg (Co-Founder of PageWoo), Digital Women fosters business opportunity and growth for LA’s enterprising female community. Backed by Digital LA – Los Angeles’ largest networking organization of digital professionals in startups, movies, TV, web series, music, games, marketing, and social media – reaching more than 50,000 people weekly via their newsletter, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, Digital Women is LA’s top women’s networking organization.

The post Last Night’s Digital Women VC / Angel Investing Panel with Rustic Canyon and CAA Ventures was a Huge Hit! appeared first on PromoJam.

The online social scene can be hard to navigate, but thanks to PromoJam 2.0, things just got a whole lot easier. PromoJam is excited to launch not only our new PromoJam 2.0 platform, but we are also sharing our “Social Stories” video series to help you gain a better understanding of social marketing from some of the top tech industry professionals.

In this video series, Silicon beach start-up innovators and socially savvy marketers will share their predictions, their challenges and their methods to success with you! So tune into “Social Stories” as we pick the brains of those who are changing the face of social media marketing daily.

To get the ball rolling, we asked tech influencers:

“How do you measure Social Media ROI?”

So how DO they measure Social Media ROI?

Akvile Harlow: “The way that we measure social media marketing ROI is through engagement, followers and shares”

Lauren Hornstein: “We measure social ROI through user engagements.”


Thanks for sharing how you measure Social Media ROI with us!

Check out more Social Stories on our YouTube Channel!

The post PromoJam Social Stories Video Series appeared first on PromoJam.

We were even more ambitious this year when we set about to build the best social promotions platform on the planet. I knew that if we didn’t accomplish building the best, the most useful, and the easiest to use social marketing platform, it wasn’t worth doing. A quote from a very smart man named Ben Horowitz stuck with me and helped put this all in perspective. Ben says

The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that’s at least 10 times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing.

That was our goal and nothing less. We had to not only build best product we could, we had to build a product 10X better than anything else available out there.

I am proud that our team at PromoJam is ready to unveil what we consider to be the 10 times better solution for modern marketing teams. We call it PromoJam 2.0 and we can’t express how excited we are to be opening up our Beta invite program and welcoming our customers on to this brand new platform.

It’s been an incredible last few months preparing to ship the PromoJam 2.0 platform. We listened intently on what our customers were asking us for, we looked at every pain point in the path of building and launching social promotions and built a hassle free solution for it into PromoJam 2.0. We started from the simple pains of needing to push pixels around and built dead simple controls to solve these sophisticated front end challenges. When our customers play around the 2.0 platform they keep saying the same thing “It’s SO easy!” Can’t tell you how much we love hearing that!

Another cool announcement for PromoJam is that we partnered up with a company called Esri, the worldwide leader in geoinformational systems software (GIS). With this groundbreaking data partnership PromoJam and Esri are teaming up to give social marketers the industry’s first access to Esri’s “geo-demographic” data set known as Tapestry. This means marketers will be able to not only see exactly where their customers are coming from down to the block level but better yet they can dive deep into demographic insights provided by Esri’s industry leading demographic data sets.

We’re are hoping that our customers will help us be even more ambitious in 2013 and help us continue to build PromoJam into the best solution to social marketing’s many hassles.

- Matt

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Here are 5 key takeaways from his keynote speech at Social Media Week Los Angeles:

- Create content tailored for social sharing – content made for retweets, likes, and comments

- Provoke a reaction and make people talk

- Live by the mantra “If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead” -Henry Jenkins

- Blogs and media need things to talk about and you could be that thing – create the news

- When coming up with content, start small and know your space – post on sites relevant to that content and to your brand; the earned media will follow.

Check out these articles about American Apparel’s campaigns:

Jezebel Article about “Yo Mama” http://jezebel.com/5222868/american-apparel-spurts-its-stuff-all-over-pregnant-women

Refinery Article about “Yo Mama” http://www.refinery29.com/american-apparel-is-not-above

Fashionista.com article about “Advanced Basics” http://fashionista.com/2012/07/exclusive-meet-jacky-american-apparels-new-advanced-model/

Melissa manages the Media, Fashion and Beauty division of PromoJam, helping brands like Marie Claire Magazine, Style Network, and E! Entertainment run innovative social media promotions. To find out how Melissa can help your brand BE SOCIAL – reach out and contact her at melissa@promojam.com.

The post “Trust Me, I’m Lying” : 5 key takeaways from Ryan Holiday appeared first on PromoJam.

Twelve cities, 988 events, 27,000 registrants and over 340,000 participants globally – that was the full reach and scope of Social Media Week 2012. This year, the city of LA hosted a week of entertainment-centric social media panels and events, allowing us to connect through processes of collaboration, learning and the sharing of ideas and information.

With a lineup that featured mega-stars such as Larry King, Krista Smith of Vanity Fair, Beverly Jackson from The Grammys, and PromoJam’s very own founders, Matt and Amanda MacNaughton, the fall batch of PromoJam interns were eager to participate in this incredible week, and to share their experiences below:

About the Writer
Patrick Frawley is a senior at the University of Southern California studying Business Administration with a dual focus in marketing and international business. He is a huge sports fan and loves playing any sport ranging from football, soccer, to even tennis.

The Debate: Who is the Better Marketer, Global Brands vs Global Celebrities?

Speakers: Omar Epps (Actor, “House), Freddie Laker (CEO & Founder of Gui.de), Darren McColl (VP Global Strategy and Marketing, Sapientnitro)

• Global celebrities may not come up with the products/services being sold, however, with their endorsements and social media followings, they hold the most power in launching the product and making it profitable. They can even hold the power to create a whole new brand image for the product or company.
• Even though global celebrities may hold more power in launching or marketing a product, the global brands still carry the most weight when it comes to the future innovation of marketing products or services. Given that the top global brands spend over ten times on research and development than the top 10 global celebrities make in a year combined, global brands have a large advantage when it comes to marketing innovations.

How to Perfect Your Pitch in TV, Web, and Film

Speakers: Spencer Griffin (Executive Producer, VP of production at CollegeHumor Media), Nikita Adams (Development Executive at Juntobox Films), Alex Boylan (founder, Around the World Productions), Gaurav Misra (TV production and Digital Media Exec), Beverly Nuefeld (Development Executive, Juntobox Films)

• Come prepared with a script or an outline for your idea.
• Research the company/person you are pitching to beforehand.
• Do NOT use gimmicks in your pitch because it will distract from your actual idea.
• Have confidence in yourself and don’t be timid or rely on notecards.
• Do not try to sell the business side of your idea, and how you think you would market the
T.V. show, web series, or film. The people you are pitching in front of are interested in
your IDEA, and then they will then decide how to market it or get people attached to your vision.
• Practice your pitch many times in front of an audience

About the Writer
Libby Craig is a senior attending the University of Southern California. She loves yoga, grapes and all things social media.

Startups Go Social

Speakers: Amanda MacNaughton (co-founder and CMO of PromoJam), Jeff Jackel (CEO of BuzzMob), Fei Xiao (Co-founder of Planana), Jaime Sarachit (CMO of Ticketmob), Marni Borek (founder of Vyclone)

• People love pictures. Attach pictures to your facebook posts and tweets. They will get more likes, comments and retweets than posts without photos.
• Don’t push things on your fans. You want to make you fan feel like a star—retweet them and do engaging things like picking a follower of the day.
• Follow those in your space, such as tech writers or industry bloggers, to see what they’re writing about.
• Don’t just retweet—add your own two cents and quote their retweet.
• Beyond the big social networks, consider newer spaces like Pinterest, Instagram and the revamped Myspace to market your brand
• Remember, social media buzz can decrease marketing costs and increase profitability for a startup.

Future of Mobile and Social Entertainment

Speakers: Eric Rice, co-founder of Smash Networks, Kasian Franks, founder of Mimvi, Jennifer Van Dijk, VP of Wasserman Media Group, and surprise panelist rapper King Chip.

• The facts are undeniable: people are accessing the internet on their mobile phone nearly as much as they do on a computer, with the number growing each day.
• Professionally done, user-curated video content is the future.
• Soon, every company will have a mobile app
• Adding a social component to apps makes them more powerful
• Social media brings fans together. It connects the avid fans—those who are actually at the game or watching the game from home—with the casual fans, who weren’t watching but know what happened thanks to social media

About the Writer
Jennifer Pemberton recently graduated from the University of Southern California and is a music fan and intern with PromoJam.

Genreless: Decoding Music Fusion in the Digital Era

Speakers: Asher Roth, The EC Twins, Vibe Media, Pasquale Rotella (Founder of Insomniac), Lainie Copicotto (Owner of Aurelia Entertainment), and Gary Richards (Destructo/Hard Events)

• The most notable affect the digital era has had on music is in the merging of styles and genres. An artist may produce singles that dabble in pop, rap, and electronic beats all at the same time.
• Music festivals may feature a variety of artists, each coming from a different musical background with a different fan base. This allows music lovers to engage with one another regardless of their artist/scene preferences.
• Another huge affect the digital era has had is in the accessibility of music to fans.
• Fans can use social media to discover new artists and genres, share music with their friends, or even to broadcast themselves as an up and coming artist.
• Social media is a great marketing tool for artists. Musicians can simply upload the song/video to MySpace or Twitter and receive immediate market research through users responses (though with all the social sharing and uploads comes illegal downloading and declining profits)

About the Writer
Megan Richardson recently graduated with a degree in Business from Cal State Fullerton where she was also part of the women’s basketball team.

TV Goes Social

Speakers: Karen Woodward (Consultant, Comcast), Dana Robinson (Senior Director, Social Media, NBC Digital), Jay Bushman (Transmedia Writer and producer, Fourth Wall Studios), Sean Besser (EVP of Business Development, GetGlue), Ian Aaron (CEO and Co-founder, ConnecTV), Nick Walsh (Social Media Manager, Trailer Park), Peter Szabo (Director of Sales, Shazam), Olivier Delfosse (VP Interactive Mobile and Digital, Fremantle Media), Matt MacNaughton (Founder and CEO, PromoJam)

• Fans want to engage as much as possible even when shows are not on air
• PromoJam’s Matt MacNaughton talked about how content unlocking is a successful way to get people excited quickly and generate buzz. Brickleberry got 50,000 followers after 4 days of PromoJam’s promotion.
• Get Glue offers check-ins, stickers, and/or badges for viewers who check-in live during a show. Get Glue helped “Days of our Lives” fuel engagement when the show was not on the air by holding a Q & A with the actors of the show. The audience would ask questions and get responses from actors.
• Concept of “split-screen” viewing has arisen. This means viewers are using their mobile phones to engage in a show while actually watching the show on the television
• How to build buzz for a new show? – Pick actors with a lot of social followers, cross promote with other shows or parent company, release shows online before television

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