Becoming a social influencer is hard work, and building a large following takes a certain level of marketing know-how and finesse. Fortunately, we caught up with Torri Webster, lifestyle and beauty influencer, about how to build a massive following on Twitter. Individuals and brands, take note: This 21 year old knows what she’s doing. 

DMN: How did you get your first 10K Twitter followers?

Webster: I was able to lock in my first 10K followers on Twitter nearly 5 years ago when the platform was extremely popular. The way I was able to grow a following was by having other creators, and influencers tag me in their tweets. This drove traffic to my page, and ultimately allowed me to grow my own audience. 

DMN: What is your most preferred strategy to increase your twitter followers?

Webster: I think people look to Twitter for a few reasons, but one of the primary reasons these days is to stay up to date on pop-culture topics and news. A really fun way to increase Twitter followers is to be active on Twitter during big events (think the Oscars, or the Superbowl). By tweeting witty, funny, or shocking things during these events (using the unique hashtags) you can end up on the trending page, and ultimately drive more views to your page and increase your following. 

DMN: How do you increase engagement among your twitter followers?

Webster: I think it is very challenging to grow your engagement on Twitter today. The platform is not nearly as popular as it once was. However, a simple way to increase engagement is to run a giveaway (for products or concerts) for your followers in order to drive engagement. 

DMN: Do you have any secret which you used to increase your twitter followers?

Webster: I don’t think there is any one recipe to garnering a dedicated following. I think if you have high quality content it will be easier to get people to pay attention, but it is also important to stay authentic in order to make sure your fans remain engaged. 

DMN: If you had to start again from zero, what would be your #1 trick of gaining twitter followers?

Webster: Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate! In order to gain a following it is essential to get your name in front of as many eyes as possible, and collaborating with other creators can help you reach audiences you may not otherwise have access to. 

Featured Post: Marketing: Meaning, Strategies, and Careers

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Do you want to rank high on Google? This article will discuss how to do superfast SEO to rank more quickly for relevant keywords. However, the items are not what you think. Black hat SEO techniques will worsen your page ranking.

7 Tips for How to Do Superfast SEO

1. Set up a Google My Business profile

Set this up and get all of your business details uploaded. Google My Business will enable you to appear in local search results specific to the area you’re operating in. Even broad searches with large volumes are now showing local results which is something business owners can capitalize upon.

2. Make your site mobile friendly with Accelerate Mobile Pages (AMP)

 AMP generates a mobile version of your site and will increase your SERP in mobile browser. Approximately 80% of internet traffic comes from mobile, so make sure your site is built on a flex template and optimized with AMP.

3. Understand your online audience

Obviously as marketers, this goes without saying. But, who is your typical customer? What are they looking for and how do they spend their time online? What kind of content do they like to consume? When you understand your audience, you will know what you need to do online to grab their attention.

4. Optimize your homepage meta description

This is just plain best practice. Get those top terms into a description that isn’t too gimmicky or spammy, and is a clear indicator of what your website is about. The rule of thumb here is to get your most important keywords into your homepage title and meta description. 

5. Research keywords and competitors

Keyword research is essential to understanding your site’s SEO and your competitors’, but luckily, you do not have to be an SEO guru to know which keywords to use. Use free tools like SEM Rush to research your current and potential keywords related products and services, your audience’s topics of interest or other aspects of SEO. 

6. Make your site load faster

A study shows that most of the visitors wait under 7 seconds for a page to load. If your page doesn’t load before that time you risk losing traffic. If you’re running on an open source CMS , deleting any unnecessary plugins will help speed things up!

7. Keep an eye on your back-links

Your external links are a big factor in whether your page ranks on the first page of Google. Pages that are linked the most by outside sites are likely to be viewed by search engines as the most relevant and important. It’s not enough to get the most links to your site. Your site should also earn the links of sites that are respected and have high authority in their field or niche.

Related Post: A Guide to SEO at Any Age

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In a March IAPP panel in London, which saw leaders across the EU, and from the IAPP, convene to discuss the effectiveness of the law, Stephen Eckersley, head of enforcement, UK Information Commissioner’s Office, said the U.K. had seen a “massive increase” in data breach reports since the May 25 implementation date. According to a February survey issued by international law firm DLA Piper, approximately 60,000 data breaches were discovered in the first eight months since GDPR came into effect.

The Netherlands, Germany, and the U.K. topped the table in the report with approximately 15,400,12,600, and 10,600 reported breaches respectively. The lowest numbers of reported breaches occurred in Liechtenstein, Iceland and Cyprus with 15, 25 and 35 reported breaches respectively, the survey shows.

According to Ross McKean, a partner at DLA Piper specializing in cyber and data protection: “The GDPR completely changes the compliance risk for organizations which suffer a personal data breach due to revenue based fines and the potential for US style group litigation claims for compensation,” he said. “As we saw in the US when mandatory breach notification laws came into force, backed up by tough sanctions for not notifying, the GDPR is driving personal data breach out into the open. Our report confirms this with more than 59,000 data breaches notified across Europe in the first 8 months since the GDPR came into force.”

While the breach notifications are nothing to ignore — in fact, it’s quite an accomplishment in the realm of data privacy — the most valuable takeaways have to be that consumers whose information may have been stolen have been identified, regulators and developers can better understand and mitigate the causes of breaches, and researchers and legislators can work on understanding the impacts and damage of the breaches.

Light fines

With regard to implemented fines, this is where French Regulator Mathias Moulin stressed that the first fiscal year of GDPR “should be considered a transition year.” According to a report published by the European Data Protection Board, approximately 55,955,871 euros were imposed as penalties and fines in the first nine months of GDPR. Almost impressive — until you consider the fact that 50 million of those euros were pinned on Google in late January. So that’s about 5 million in fines levied against other companies world-wide for the entire first year of GDPR. Now, remember when we touted the fact that a GDPR fine could be up to 4% GAR fine or up to 20 million euros of a firm’s global annual revenue? Well, not so much, when you look at what Google brought in this year. After $136.8 billion in revenue, the fine levied against the tech giants accounts for only 0.04 percent of GOOG’s GAR.

A transition year indeed, Mathias Moulin. Fines and appropriate fiscal actions taken will have to be a main priority for the EU government going into year two of GDPR enaction.

The effect on U.S. tech startups

When it comes to collecting and utilizing first party data, US-based company Braze, a customer engagement platform, has been at the forefront of championing and implementing GDPR globally.

“For us, our consumers are inherently global anyway. It’s not worth the confusion for us to build two different levels of data privacy,” said Jonathan Hyman, Co-Founder and CTO, echoing the Apple method of GDPR implementation. “If US companies treat their US consumers differently to their EU consumers, there is going to be a huge reckoning when similar data privacy provisions become effective and adopted in the US,” he said, pointing to the inevitable data regulation legislation in the US.

As for how GDPR has affected their day-to-day operations, GDPR has certainly been part of the weekly conversations at Braze, especially when it comes to designing products. According to Hyman, the firm has been diligently working on re-structuring their data warehousing.

“A big part of that project is making sure we’re deleting data from our data warehouses consistently with respect to GDPR information deletes,” he said. “We’ve had to ensure that our projects have a focus on data privacy, as GDPR has mandated, and that we bring data privacy into the fold when thinking about projects.”

Braze is now expecting the same from the vendors they work with.

“We’re now asking to understand the data they’re storing. If we’re using a vendor for a certain set of functionality, they need to tell us what other information they’re storing on end users, and if they have the ability to delete that data,” he said.

“It’s definitely affected the way we’ve conducted business internally and externally.”

Data regulation in the U.S.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued his latest plea for increased internet regulation, including widespread adoption of data privacy laws, in a Washington Post op-ed and blog post published last month. Zuckerberg laid out four areas of the internet that require a “more active role for governments and regulators.” According to Zuckerberg, one area is a common framework for comprehensive privacy regulation such as GDPR.

“New privacy regulation in the United States and around the world should build on the protections GDPR provides. It should protect your right to choose how your information is used — while enabling companies to use information for safety purposes and to provide services,” wrote Zuckerberg. “It shouldn’t require data to be stored locally, which would make it more vulnerable to unwarranted access. And it should establish a way to hold companies such as Facebook accountable by imposing sanctions when we make mistakes.”

Zuckerberg isn’t the first tech CEO to endorse GDPR globally. Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook called for federal privacy regulation and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has also praised Europe’s laws. And like many other professionals involved with GDPR compliance, Neil Lustig, CEO of GAN Integrity, a global compliance management system, points to examples of new GDPR- spurred or inspired privacy laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the introduction of the Washington State Privacy Act and Congressional action on a federal privacy bill.

“Data regulation similar to GDPR is coming to the US,” he said. “It’s inevitable. But when it does, it needs to be federal, as opposed to state-level, and it’s crucial for tech companies to take a seat at the table to educate our legislators on data privacy.”

GDPR is still young and both companies and regulators are still busy figuring out how it works, but for Lustig, he believes that US companies are eager to have the necessary talks to implement regulation in the states.

“Very few people, very few companies wake up and say, “How am I going to violate privacy today?” he said. “Companies want to protect consumers.”

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The tech scene in New York City is hitting its stride, and Jeff Kupietzky, CEO, PowerInbox, thinks it’s primed to surpass Silicon Valley as the premiere destination for tech startups. With its diverse culture, ample pool of VC funds, and large talent pool, New York is positioning itself as the antithesis to the San Francisco startup world.  

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Apple CEO and long-time data privacy advocate Tim Cook issued a rousing call for new digital privacy laws in the US. At an October privacy conference in Brussels, Cook cautioned that modern technology has resulted in a “data-industrial complex” where personal information is “weaponized against us with military efficiency.”

“Platforms and algorithms that promised to improve our lives can actually magnify our worst human tendencies,” Cook said. “Rogue actors and even governments have taken advantage of user trust to deepen divisions, incite violence, and even undermine our shared sense of what is true and what is false. This crisis is real. It is not imagined, or exaggerated, or crazy.”

For any brand who relies on programatic advertising in order to micro-target its customers, the enforcements of a US GDPR is looming and should be a wake-up call. For stateside brands, the reforms abroad should be understood as an indicator of what’s to come.

Cook’s speech was calculated and on-brand, serving as a reminder that Apple has long positioned itself as an advocate of data privacy — the company famously refused to unlock phones for the CIA following the San Bernardino shooting.

“Our own information — from the everyday to the deeply personal — is being weaponized against us with military efficiency,” said Cook. “These scraps of data, each one harmless enough on its own, are carefully assembled, synthesized, traded and sold.”

Cook later proposed a series of rights, similar to those found in GDPR, for the U.S. to enact “a comprehensive federal privacy law” that focuses on four key tenets:

The right to have personal data minimized. “Companies should challenge themselves to de-identify customer data—or not to collect it in the first place,” Cook said.

The right to knowledge. “Users should always know what data is being collected and what it is being collected for,” he continued. “This is the only way to empower users to decide what collection is legitimate and what isn’t. Anything less is a sham.”

The right to access. “Companies should recognize that data belongs to users, and we should all make it easy for users to get a copy of, correct and delete their personal data,” Cook stated.

The right to security. “Security is foundational to trust and to all other privacy rights.”

Cook praised Europe’s “successful implementation” of GDPR, and said that “It is time for the rest of the world … to follow your lead. We at Apple are in full support of a comprehensive federal privacy law in the United States.”

It’s clear that Tim Cook is willing to walk the walk, but former Facebook CISO doesn’t have the brightest opinion of the Apple CEO. Take a look at this thoughts posted to Twitter and let me know what you think (shoot me an email hillary.adler@dmnews.com) about his tweet storm:

Related Post: Experian CEO Retires After Long Career

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China’s exploding consumer market

Late last year crowds gathered in Shanghai’s retail hub for Starbucks’ grand opening of the 30,000 square foot Shanghai Reserve Roastery — a store that takes up about half a football field in size and is the largest Starbucks in the world. In only one day, the Shanghai outlet became the company’s biggest revenue earner.

“We shattered every sales record in the history of the company,” said Howard Schultz, Starbucks chairman. With those results in mind, Starbucks has since planned to double the number of storefronts in China by 2022, from the current 3,200 to 6,000. That means an expansion of more than one store opening a day.

But Starbucks isn’t the only multinational corporation poised to heavily expand in the market, either. With 1.4 billion market consumers, The World Economic Forum predicts Chinese consumption will grow 6-7% in the next decade, nearly doubling its purchasing power. In an effort to bolster the presence of MNC’s in China’s big cities, namely Beijing and Shanghai, President Xi Jinping pledged early last week to open China’s growing consumer market wider.

“It is our sincere commitment to open the Chinese market,” Xi said in a speech to an audience that included a slew of foreign dignitaries. The Chinese president also promised to “stimulate the potential to increase imports,” including by cutting costs for importers and improving consumer spending power.

Growth opportunities drive investment in China

In a report published this week, The Trade Desk teamed up with Forbes to survey more than 200 Chief Marketing Officers in global companies with more than $500 million in annual revenues to gauge current business goals and metrics. According to the report, investment in China is among the top concerns.

“CMOs cite driving revenue as a top goal for marketing and they clearly see China as a big opportunity for growing their global customer base,” said Susan Vobejda, CMO, The Trade Desk.

With 772 million internet-connected consumers and a burgeoning middle class, it is no surprise that 80% of the CMO’s surveyed expect their investment in marketing to China to increase over the next 12-18 months.

“Through our launch of programmatic media buying in China, in partnership with the country’s leading media companies, The Trade Desk can connect multinational brands with millions of potential customers in the region,” Vobejda said. 

Driving this growth is the increased access to broadband and high-speed internet. 

“Online video monetization is starting to scale,” said Vivek Cuoto, Executive Director, Media Parters Asia. “Strong digital ecosystems are emerging, especially in China while telcos are also becoming important aggregators of video services in markets such as Australia, India, and Southeast Asia.” 

Outlook for CMOs

According to the Trade Desk report, three of five companies currently include China in their global ad campaigns, and half the companies not yet focused on this market expect to invest there in the next one to three years. But, while the push to build market share in this Asian powerhouse is driven by the swing of global economic forces and the sheer size of the market (Figure 8 in the report), effective marketing is not always as easy to come by as in other geographic areas.

“Two factors in particular present challenges for organizations seeking to effectively include China in their global ad campaigns,” the report cites. “Political barriers and censorship (30%) and lack of media transparency (28%).”

A challenge, yes, but not one which is insurmountable. Companies are still attempting to enter the Chinese digital landscape in droves.

“A quarter are working with or actively seeking a marketing or advertising partner to expand there, while a third are working to build their capacity there in anticipation of a future presence in that market,” said Vobejda.

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“What is you could easily connect with your closest friends and family and feel like you’re in the same room — even when you’re miles apart?” Facebook declared. 

A revolutionary concept. Except, well, the telephone was invented in 1876 and Apple released iPhone’s FaceTime in 2010. All of which is to say, we didn’t need your take on video chat Mark, but you need our data. If I sound salty, it’s because I am. 

The Portal device isn’t just a camera to connect you with your loved ones from afar. It’s an internet-connected video camera and microphone that has the ability to track user movements. I get it. Facebook wants to ride the smart display wave. But, as Farhad Manjoo from the New York Times said, “Portal feels like the digital Eye of Sauron.” And it is. 

After nonstop privacy and security screw ups over the last two years, it baffles me that Facebook wants us to trust it even more with a camera that watches you at home, especially considering the fact that Facebook makes about 98 percent of its $41 billion annual revenue by collecting and selling our personal information for the purpose of targeted ads.

What’s more, when the device first hit the market, Facebook was adamant that the company understood potential privacy concerns with the device. The company state then that four forms of protection were integrated into the device: 

• A physical cover for the camera when not in use
• No video recording capabilities
• No data collection
• A mechanical switch to physical disconnect the camera circuitry

Comforting. However, not even a week later, Facebook reversed its position. In an email to Kara Swisher’s Recode, a company spokesperson blew the whistle: 

“Last Monday, we wrote: “No data collected through Portal — even call log data or app usage data, like the fact that you listened to Spotify — will be used to target users with ads on Facebook.” We wrote that because that’s what we were told by Facebook executives.

But the company has since reached out to change its answer: Facebook Portal doesn’t have ads, but data about who you call and data about which apps you use on Portal can be used to target you with ads on other Facebook-owned properties.

“Portal voice calling is built on the Messenger infrastructure, so when you make a video call on Portal, we collect the same types of information (i.e. usage data such as length of calls, frequency of calls) that we collect on other Messenger-enabled devices. We may use this information to inform the ads we show you across our platforms. Other general usage data, such as aggregate usage of apps, etc., may also feed into the information that we use to serve ads.”

Did it stop there? No. According to Rafa Camargo, the product manager for the Facebook Portal, while the data could be used for ad targeting, the company doesn’t intend to do so — though “potentially, it could be used.” 

Maybe let’s all collectively agree to stick with Apple when we want to video chat. 

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At the tail end of 2017, I said: “One thing is for sure: [brands] no longer have the option of sitting on the sidelines watching political discourse bounce back and forth like a tennis match. In many cases, they’ll become players themselves.”

Not to toot my own horn, but, it turns out I was right. In a talk with Sandy Rubinstein, CEO of DXagency, we discussed the role that brand activism had in 2018. And, for Rubinstein, her viewpoint on brand activism is decidedly more cautious than mine.

“It is imperative for brands to make sure than brand activism is part of their core values or consumers will see it as a marketing took rather than earnest support of an issues,” she said. “Brands [also] need to weigh the possible backlash they’ll receive from consumers against the value of making a political or social point.”

And perhaps she’s right. If we look back to 2017, we’ll see that those on the far right of the spectrum caused a great deal of backlash whenever a brand sided with the left – the mass boycotts of Volvo, Keurig, Reddi-whip, and others when they pulled their ads from the Fox News Sean Hannity segment.

According to Rubinstein, “It’s important that brands take the time to consider knee-jerk reactions to supporting controversial topics.”

In other words, it is good to support things that are important to the brand, but do your due diligence and think through the right messaging strategy as to not potentially alienate your customers.

“People with differing opinions can be open to differing opinions if presented in an open and inclusive way,” she stressed.

That said, Rubinstein and I agree: In 2019, the trend will continue to grow. Activism is increasingly important to the younger members of our workforce and corporate America is seeing the push from within their organizations to advocate for issues.

“As long as brands are true to their core value, their mission, and their goals,” said Rubinstein, “supporting issues will feel like a natural extension of who they are.” 

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“Every life moment is deeper, more meaningful and more enjoyable when experienced with the sound on,” said Brad Minor, VP, Head of Brand Marketing, Pandora. “At Pandora, we’re obsessed with helping our listeners live their lives at full volume, by turning the sound on with the right music and audio content at the exact right moment.”

According to a company statement, the ongoing strategy for the brand’s narrative will be to seize cultural moments and demonstrate how Pandora makes that experience better through its product features and content — including playlists, offline listening and podcasts.

As a brand marketing campaign designed to reach listeners at scale, across the country, the first manifestation will be a 360-degree, multi-channel brand campaign rolling out nationwide in Q4 — focused on the precise moments during holiday travel that we all experience. This campaign will take a precisionist approach — developing 1,200 iterations of creative to reflect the specific culture and tenor of each location. In other words, Oakland will be different than Nashville, etc.

“Because the first Sound ON campaign is focused on holiday travel, our media plan will center on key travel hubs like the Atlanta airport, Penn Station and San Francisco’s BART trains,” Minor said. 

From November 2018 through January 2019, Pandora’s campaign will be featured in high-traffic travel centers across airports, buses and railroad stations in Atlanta, Miami, Nashville, New York City, Oakland, San Francisco, and more. Pandora will also run a custom 250-ft LED billboard at the World Trade Center station’s Oculus transportation hub in New York City.

It’s an exciting time for Pandora, in an industry saturated with key-players like Apple Music and Spotify. The campaign sets the stage for the future, for how the company plans to connect with listeners in a more personal manner. 

“Our new brand narrative draws on our heritage while also taking us into our next phase of growth,” said Lauren Nagel, VP, Executive Creative Director, Pandora. “We’re [looking to] further establish the unique role we play in connecting people to the music and audio content they love through effortless, personalized and innovative ways.” 

The initial holiday travel campaign is just the beginning for Pandora’s Sound On campaign. The company plans to continue extending the brand into key cultural and life moments that Nagel feels can instantly be transformed by turning the sound on. 

Phone out. Beats on. Press play. 

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