But, guess what? There’s no magic—anyone (yes, anyone) can create engaging content if they follow these very easy-to-implement steps.

1. Know Your Audience: Before you can create engaging content, you have to decide who you want to engage. How does this person spend their time? What do they find funny—or offensive? These characteristics, or psychographics, help you create content that will resonate with the people you want to engage. An example of this is a dotcom era software developer who created software that appealed to a niche, highly technical audience. He knew that while the rest of the world was browsing Internet Explorer to search for products, more than 90% of his prospects were early adopters of Google Chrome and bypassed the Google search page altogether. This understanding, along with other key insights, helped him use his ad budget wisely and also create content that was targeted specifically for his audience to grow a loyal fan base.
2. Just Add Video! I’m not saying this simply because Cinsay is a video commerce tool, I’m saying it because video is the best way to engage customers. Why? Because static copy, no matter how interesting, is one-dimensional.  There’s a reason why social video viewership increased 40% in Q1 2012 over last year’s figures. Video provides a multi-sensory experience. High-quality videos can be created with just about any smartphone, so there’s no excuse to not leverage the power of video—and if you use Cinsay, even better.
3. Optimize! Be sure to have in-house experts, or outside resources, to manage your SEO efforts. This ensures that the people you have created this content for, actually find it. SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation—even more than social media—so don’t ignore it. The worst thing you can do is create great content without optimizing it to engage prospects.

There you have it, engaging content, demystified!

Now, if the purpose of your content is simply to engage users, you’re all set. But, if your bottom line is business, stay tuned for next week’s post where I explain how to go beyond the “Like” button to get true ROI from your social commerce efforts.

“If I had to guess, social commerce will be the next area to really blow up.” –Mark Zuckerberg

In business, the key to success is location, location, location—in other words: being wherever your customers are.

Today, the new hotspot is online and in the world of online retail, people are spending 23% of their online time on social networks, making social networks prime real estate and the smartest retailers are meeting their customers there, too, ushering in our evolution from eCommerce to the age of social commerce.

You read Christian’s blog post about how smart SMBs are tapping into Facebook’s F-Commerce platform and selling products directly from Facebook.

Now, while the fact that social networks are the watering holes for customers is a huge draw, the biggest benefit for SMBs is the fact that these customers can also easily share their purchasing decisions with the connections they have on these networks. And since people are more likely to try products and services recommended by friends, if your customer shares information about your brand, their friends are more likely to try it.

So, you see why SMBs—who don’t have the big budgets to get leads by pouring money into paid tools like SEO—are jumping on the social commerce bandwagon.

But it doesn’t end there.

Creating a page on a social network does not automatically make your content shareable any more than having a store automatically means someone will buy your products. Your content must elicit the desire to share.

According to a new study by Brodeur Partners, Gen Y consumers prefer a “more social, expressive and sensory-driven” shopping experience.

And to create that, you need to do more than create a Facebook page.

Stay tuned for next week’s post where I explain exactly how to create content that elicits the desire to share.

PART I:

“If You Can Remember This, You’re Too Old.”

If memory doesn’t fail, Stewart Alsop – genius journalist/VC, editor-publisher of PC LETTER, and one class act – launched DEMO as the “anti-PowerPoint,” a sane, upscale alternative to the brutal gauntlet of crucial, but boring, listless computer industry trade shows that chewed up organizational budgets back in 1991.

The first DEMO was, by most methods of reckoning, small: it was held in Palm Springs, CA at the foot of the La Quinta (the Resort & Club, not the motel…it wasn’t THAT small) as a prestigious hang. DEMO has been filled with heady names such as Apple, Dell, Microsoft, and Borland (the latter constitutes being too old. Are you?)

Since its humble beginnings in 1991, DEMO’s come a long way, baby. It has been the launching platform for many of the best and brightest tech companies to date, like Adobe Acrobat, Salesforce, VM Ware, Liquid Planner and Skype.

Stay tuned for Part II of the Idiot’s Guide to DEMO tomorrow, when we paint a portrait of those notables who (for better and/or worse) have played an integral role where the DEMO Conference is concerned, during the last 21 years.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll fall in love over again. Honestly.

And be sure to follow the Cinsay team’s DEMO journey on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter!

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Johnny Dripp is known by many names and titles, most visibly as consumer advocate ‘The Patient Guy’ (descriptive of his medical status rather than his temperament) at Direct2Care.com, as Yma Lumberjack (Mrs.), Editor-In-Cheese of The Daily Python — official webbagerie of Python (Monty) Ltd — and as The Triviologist (for global community fan site TotoNetwork.com). His alter ego’s byline has appeared over the last 30-something years in news media such as the Dallas Times Herald (until it was absorbed by The Dallas Morning News, for whom he’s also written), for B2B publications as diverse as MIX magazine, The Office (when there was one, decades before the brilliant BBC and less-so NBC television series), Electronic Buyers News, EE Times (not to be confused with e.e. cummings), Telephony, Government Computer News, and e-zines including The May Report and ePrairie/MidwestBusiness.com, where his weekly columns “Raising Minnesota” and “The New Religion” ran until someone pulled the plug, making three years of questionable journalism unprovable except at  http://ow.ly/amIBy.

SANTA CLARA, CA – APRIL 18, 2012 – Cinsay, Inc., a Texas-based next-generation social video commerce provider, is launching its Smart Container™ technology at DEMO Spring 2012 today before the technology industry’s most prominent media, analysts, investors and entrepreneurs. The Smart Container is an easy-to-use eCommerce storefront aimed at helping individuals, first-time entrepreneurs, small and medium-sized businesses and enterprises make money online without a website. Customers will be able to use video, photos and other images to sell their goods and services, take an order and complete the transaction from within the Smart Container’s video player.

“We are delighted to host Cinsay and have them showcase their new technology this year,” said Matt Marshall, executive producer of DEMO. DEMO Spring 2012 is being held April 17-19, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara. Cinsay’s six-minute DEMO stage time is scheduled for 4:40pm today, April 18th, and its DEMO kiosk is #D14.

“Everyone here is excited to have been chosen as one of the DEMO Conference’s presenting innovators,” stated Cinsay, Inc. founder and CEO Christian Briggs. “We feel honored that they invited us to participate.” Named one of “America’s Most Promising Companies” by FORBES, Cinsay will also announce the public beta launch of its Smart Container.

eCommerce For Everyone

Briggs asks the question, “What if selling on the Internet was as easy as uploading video to YouTube or sharing a post on Facebook or making money on Craigslist?” He believes the Smart Container’s ease-of-use will make eCommerce a simple action, interaction and transaction for businesses and consumers.

Smart Container’s eCommerce, social media, analytics/reporting, CMS and security functionality make it the perfect tool, even for individuals wanting to sell just about anything.

“We started Cinsay to bring eCommerce to everybody,” said Briggs. “With just a few clicks and our iPhone app you can create a viral video online store. It’s a bit like ‘YouTube Meets eBay.’

“It includes a free merchant account so anyone can sell online on their Facebook, website or blog,” he said. “Anyone can shoot a video or snap a picture with their iPhone, put them in our viral video shopping cart and start selling on Facebook,” Briggs stated. “Using our Smart Container store anyone can be in business, because customers can run credit card transactions from inside the player on Facebook, their blogs, websites, or wherever their customers are,” he noted.

“They can also collect leads, or donations, or link out to any page on the web,” said Briggs. As a host/SaaS (software-as-a-service), the Smart Container employs the first comprehensive eCommerce merchant system and content management system disguised as a video player. “Our Cinsay Smart Container ‘takes the store with it’ wherever it is embedded, whether on social websites such as Facebook, blogs, other websites or mobile devices,” Briggs emphasized.

Social Commerce Made Real

The Cinsay Smart Container is a social sales engine that can be deployed anywhere the customer may be,” said Cinsay senior vice president of marketing and media services Kyle Nelson. “Our clients can take our Internet storefront viral by sharing it with their friends, just like they do with photos and videos today,” said Briggs. Smart Container is also a lead-generating machine that allows prospects to contact clients from within their videos. This extends the engagement and tells vendors whether leads are qualified, and interested. Once deployed, users can manage Smart Container storefronts from one simple interface, update videos, change products and pricing, launch special promotions and more. Their stores are updated everywhere – mobile, social, web — instantly.

“To Market, To Market….”

Cinsay will help its clients 1) attract, 2) interact and 3) transact on social platforms to drive a meaningful ROI through ReferredMEDIA.com, its Affiliate Network that attracts an audience of 7 million buyers daily. According to Nelson, trends show the bulk of time people spend online is on Facebook, blogs and other social media sites rather than focus on pay-per-click campaigns, in order to drive prospects to their websites.* “We place our storefronts in front of people where they actually are,” he stated.

This referral network allows merchants to promote special offers to their affiliates’ loyal audiences and drive promotional transactions such as sale items, coupons, discounts, rewards programs, giveaways and sweepstakes from within affiliate blog sites and Facebook pages.

(*See “Facts on Video boosting brand engagement and E-commerce” – SOURCE – eMarketer: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008957&ecid=a6506033675d47f881651943c21c5ed4)

How It Works

The Smart Container, and the Cinsay Social Commerce Platform overall, help businesses attract new audiences online to their brands and products, make it easy to make a transaction, and then enable interaction between current customers and their trusted networks, on social platforms such as Facebook. Cinsay’s social commerce platform lets anyone create an online store. Its patent-pending technology makes Cinsay the only company that can deliver a credit card transaction inside a viral video player wherever it may be, so that:

   • Sales leads can be collected, and linked out to any page on the web.
   • Users can build a store using the Cinsay iPhone application.
   • Business (and commerce) can be shared on the web, and they can watch it go viral.
   • Storefront owners can run transactions through a free merchant account.
   • They can also change products, prices and videos in their network of stores, any time.

Cinsay’s social commerce platform has the only in-player transaction processing solution protected by several pending patents. As with Amazon’s “one-click,” Cinsay sees its Smart Container transforming eCommerce in the social and mobile marketplace with storefronts that can be shared anywhere and go viral. Cinsay’s technology leverages best-technologies and open environments to create a scalable, secure, cloud-based environment that can be expanded, as needed by the user. This eCommerce platform provides a rich API, an established developer community and a stable foundation. It is built on a secure transaction processing platform and a content management system that expedite rapid expansion utilizing resources from Akamai, Amazon and RackSpace®.

About Demo

Produced by the IDG Enterprise events group, the worldwide DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products innovations, which are hand selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying cutting-edge technologies and helping entrepreneurs secure venture funding and establish critical business. For more information on DEMO conferences, visit www.demo.com.

About Cinsay

Cinsay has created a next generation eCommerce, viewer interactive, video-based platform that anyone and any-sized business can use easily. Cinsay’s SaaS based technology enables anyone to sell products, display printable coupons, capture donations and generate leads all inside the patent-pending Smart Container. Cinsay also manages end-to-end social media and blogger campaigns through its 10 million plus blogger network. Customers are offered a complete turnkey business via merchant account services as well as an exclusive on-demand solution featuring dozens of personal, brandable products like T-shirts, caps, mugs and iPhone covers. Self-managed and managed customers benefit from Cinsay’s in-depth reporting tools and real-time statistical data. Cinsay’s embeddable platform is compatible with web and mobile HTML-5 devices and is highly scalable via its enterprise-level hosting and distribution network.

For more information on Cinsay, visit www.cinsay.com or use these links:

Cinsay Information Links

   • Corporate ‘About’: http://www.Cinsay.com/about-us/
   • Corporate Fact Sheet: http://www.Cinsay.com/corporate-fact-sheet/
   • Smart Container Features – eCommerce, social media, analytic and reporting, CMS, security http://www.Cinsay.com/features/
   • Competition and Comparison http://www.Cinsay.com/compare/
   • Self-Managed Support Pages (how it works, getting started, FAQs, glossary, etc.) https://Cinsay.zendesk.com/home
   • Managed services case studies (Swisa, Living Direct, Montel Williams) http://www.Cinsay.com/customer-stories/

TO SCHEDULE AN INTERVIEW WHILE AT DEMO SPRING 2012 THIS WEEK CONTACT:

David Burrows – CINSAY, INC. – Kiosk #D14; 214-674-3283; dburrows@cinsay.com

FOR ADVANCE INTERVIEWS AS WELL AS REAL-TIME DEADLINE SUPPORT 24/7, CONTACT:

   • Kenni Driver – 972-978-6455; kenni.driver@driverpr.com
   • John KatsantoniS – 847-526-3622; jpkattt@att.net
   • The Katsantonis Group – Associate, Pinnacle Worldwide

DALLAS, TX–(Marketwire – Apr 13, 2012) – Cinsay, Inc., a startup technology company, will debut its first product at DEMO Spring 2012. The DEMO conference will be held April 17-19, 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara.

Produced by IDG Enterprise in conjunction with VentureBeat, the DEMO conferences in the U.S., China, Brazil and Singapore focus on emerging technologies and new product innovations. Historically, DEMO conferences have a reputation for consistently identifying cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launchpad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Salesforce, Webex, Tivo, VMware and thousands of others.

DEMO-presenting companies have six-minutes in which to tell their story on-stage, to the media, industry and financial analyst groups, and the other high-level technology business influencers who are in attendance. In many cases, these companies secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. DEMO is owned by International Data Group (IDG), the world’s leading technology media, events and research company. IDG brands reach an audience of more than 280 million technology buyers in 97 countries.

“It is exciting to be part of this year’s selected DEMO Conference innovators,” stated Cinsay, Inc. founder and CEO Christian Briggs. “We feel honored that they invited us to participate,” he said.

Two members of the Cinsay organization — senior vice president of marketing and media services Kyle Nelson, and vice president of product marketing management Andy Wilson — are no strangers to the rigors and rewards of DEMO. Nelson was president and Wilson was Chief Strategy Officer at OpenACircle.com (OAC), which was voted DEMO Spring 2008′s “People’s Choice” winner. The two were principal architects of OAC’s web-conferencing and collaboration product, which was based on a proprietary, high-speed video streaming technology.

About Cinsay

To learn more about Cinsay, please phone 855-TryCinsay (879-2467) or visit www.cinsay.com. To keep up with Cinsay during DEMO/Spring 2012 follow the company on Twitter @Cinsay, or using DEMO hash tags #DEMO12 and #DEMOcon, as well as on Facebook and Pinterest.

About Demo

Produced by the IDG Enterprise events group, the worldwide DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products innovations, which are hand selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying cutting-edge technologies and helping entrepreneurs secure venture funding and establish critical business. For more information on the DEMO conferences, visit http://www.demo.com

And we know that for our customers—busy, small business owners—saving dollars and cents matters just as much as saving time, which is why we chose BrainTree Payments as our merchant services provider.

Watch Melissa Robert, our Director of Merchant Accounts, explain why Cinsay chose to join the ranks of LivingSocial, OpenTable and more in choosing BrainTree to help you keep more of your online retail revenue in your pocket.

These people are obviously interested in your product–they took the time to add products to their cart—so, why are they aborting before completing the process?

One of the top reasons customers quit mid-transaction is that many online retailers have a complicated, disconnected checkout process. Customers want a one-stop-shop that serves up everything they need. They have to learn about your products, add them to their cart and checkout, and they want to do it without going down the rabbit hole that is your entire website.

And, what advice can you get from Alec Baldwin that will help you achieve this?

“A-B-C—Always be closing!”

Alec Baldwin drilled those words into the minds of his cowering sales force in that memorable scene from the 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross. And, whether it’s goods, services or selling yourself to an audience, those ABC’s are the basic building blocks of any good salesperson.

But, what does “Always be closing” mean for eCommerce?

For today’s online retailers, to “Always be closing” means to apply the same persistence to your shopping cart to keep customers from leaving.

Cinsay’s smart container lowers your cart abandonment rate by keeping your sales material—your video—intact with your online store so that the customers don’t have to navigate away from your content to complete the transaction. The shopping cart is a part of the video, which means customers have access to it the entire time they engage with your video. And, if you’re questioning the importance of video, don’t. Online shoppers are 64% more likely to buy products accompanied by a video.

And just to prove that we at Cinsay eat our own dog food, check out LivingDirect. LivingDirect used the Cinsay Smart Container to sell their products and got an 81.9% click-to-purchase conversion using our all-in-one eCommerce solution. See their results below!

These survey results revealed that it’s not the large companies that are taking advantage of F-Commerce, it’s actually the small business owners who are driving the adoption of the social platforms as a storefront.

Another key takeaway from the survey’s findings (my favorite little tidbit) is that 60% of the survey respondents like using the Facebook storefront because their customers don’t have to leave Facebook to purchase products—everything happens in one place. And, 61% pointed to the inherently social nature of the platform as another value of F-Commerce.

We all know that the more pages and the more clicks your store has, the more your transaction abandonment rates increase, which is why all-in-one solutions are ideal for any online retailer. And, using a platform that is social by nature helps reduce the cost of customer acquisition. If it costs $10 to acquire a customer, when that customer shares that product with their connections who also purchases, the cost of acquiring those customers is split in half.

A platform that enables transactions to occur in one place and has built-in social sharing capabilities—sound familiar?

But, let’s take it a step further. Imagine if the store were also inherently engaging, like, say, video, then add to the decreased customer acquisition rate, the increase in sales conversions. It’s a fact: Online shoppers are 64% more likely to buy products accompanied by a video.

That’s why Cinsay’s all-in-one Smart Container is the ultimate solution. It combines video with social commerce to strengthen your eCommerce presence and significantly reduce customer acquisition cost and transaction abandonment—achieving what we call C-commerce.

Patrick Seaman and Stan Woodward both will report directly to CINSAY’s CEO and Founder, Christian Briggs.

Cinsay, Inc. was recently named to Forbes’ List of the 100 Most Promising Companies, and the firm has thus far raised over $47 million in private equity and institutional funding. With increasing international interest in Cinsay’s Smart Container(TM) technology and complete eCommerce solutions, the Company has expanded operations significantly.

Cinsay’s patent pending Smart Container(TM) technology platform uses proprietary intelligent internet objects, which appear as video players and can be shared across the web and other connected networks and mobile services. The smart containers can be configured in a variety of ways to address the entire value chain of online marketing and shopping — including impressions, clicks, lead generation and transactions. One of the most appealing forms of media for sales and shopping is video, which provides a life-like representation and creates richer product browsing and/or shopping experiences.

Stan Woodward was CTO of GoKnow Mobile Learning, CEO of LTF, and CEO and founder of Reflect Systems, Inc. immediately prior to joining Cinsay. Prior to that, he served as Vice President, Business and Enterprise Services for Yahoo!. From 1997 to 2000, Woodward was Vice President of Business and Enterprise Services at broadcast.com. While at broadcast.com, annual revenues of the company’s business-to-business broadcasting services grew 161%, accounting for 70% of broadcast.com’s total revenues prior to its acquisition by Yahoo. Woodward sits on the board of Austin College, in Sherman, Texas, the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), Tixie, and several other non-profit advisory boards. He holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Oklahoma State University.

About Cinsay

Cinsay, Inc. is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices in Dallas and Los Angeles. The company offers comprehensive social commerce services that include social media, marketing, video eCommerce solutions, and SaaS.

Cinsay has open:

• Senior Sales Executive positions in Dallas, San Jose, Atlanta, Chicago, and New York
• Inside Sales positions in Dallas
• Customer Service positions in Dallas
• Technical Support positions in Dallas
• Account Managers in Dallas
• Director, Product Marketing in Dallas
• Sales, Marketing & Finance Interns in Dallas
• Experienced on-demand management, production, distribution/fulfillment, warehousing, inventory management, merchandising, etc.

Email jobs @ cinsay.com for more information:

CONTACT US for more information. (jobs at cinsay.com)