NYC Launch Week

For the past three days I have been all over New York City handing out pens, magnets, t-shirts, and business cards for Barter Sugar to the people I saw.
I went to various locations, some of which I’ve never been to before. I did a ton of walking and subway taking to make my way around.

I took pictures with people who were willing. I told people about Barter Sugar and let them know how easy and beneficial it would be to them.
I learned a lot not only about myself and what I’m capable of, but of the people I chose to talk to.

This experience let me test my abilities to effectively make my way around the city. I learned that sneakers are my best friend and there are more tourists than I thought. I learned to ignore the people that come up and talk to you but at the same time, I was one of them.

But overall, the past ten weeks that I’ve been doing the summer internship for Barter Sugar, I have learned so much new information about public relations and tech startups. In the classroom, I can learn from the textbook and lectures.

This internship let me work hands on with the stuff I would have never been able to do in the classroom and I am so thankful for it.

Guest Blogging

This week I had the task of reaching out to a few blogs and providing them with a guest blog about Barter Sugar. I went for the blogs that deal with money saving techniques and blogs.

I found this weeks task to be a little challenging. I wanted to make sure the blog I provided for them was something they would post on their own blog. The blogs I found were geared toward either mothers or college students.

The focus of my blog post was to show the readers how Barter Sugar can save their money and help their every day lives.

 

Talking to Strangers… Part Two

I talked to ten new people about how they would specifically use Barter Sugar…
Here’s what I found…

1. Alexandria Hirsch- a college student that lives in Oceanside, NY; “I would barter my clothes because when I came home from school I didn’t realize how much clothes I have and stuff I don’t even wear.” She said she would rather barter her clothes for something else that she needs although she doesn’t need anything specific at the time.

2. Karen Hirsch- a hair dresser living in Oceanside, NY; “In my salon I used to work in we used to barter haircuts and blow outs for services.” She said she would barter haircuts and blowouts for equal value housework.

3. Michael Jimenez- he works at South Nassau Community Hospital transporting patients and lives in Oceanside; “I could give my service of fixing computers in exchange for dog sitting services.” Mike said he goes away a lot with his girlfriend so if someone could watch their dog at their house then he wouldn’t have to put the dog in the kennel.

4. Sharon Ross- a Nurse that lives in Staten Island, NY; She would trade membership to her pool club for maintenance of the garden of the pool club. “I belong to this pool club that gives my family and I free membership if we take care of their lawns and gardens.”

5. Rachel Stein- a Physicians Assistant and lives in Far Rockaway, NY; “My daughter needs tutoring services so in return I could watch their child for free.”

6. Marianne Koppe- a Special Education Teacher that lives in Oceanside, NY; She has three children and is newly remarried. She said because they are moving into a bigger house, she would want to give away old furniture for moving services or childcare services.

7. Karen Schmidt- a teacher that lives in Seaford, NY; “I could use my service of tutoring in exchange for house cleaning or childcare services.”

8. Carol Macca- a medical biller and lives in Oceanside, NY; She would trade her medical billing services for physicians services. “If I help them with their billing, they can give me their physicians services for free.”

9. Erin Troy- a lifeguard and student living in Floral Park, NY; “I could barter swimming lesson services in exchange for helping me around the house.” She said that she could give people swimming lessons for their help of cleaning her house.

10. Jacqueline Sommer- a Registered Nurse that lives in Oceanside, NY; She said she would barter her nursing services for a wedding planner. “I could be an at home nurse for someone in exchange for a wedding planner.”

 

 

 

I love hearing how people could use Barter Sugar in such different ways. Everybody has such different lives and careers that what they would barter is so different, yet they all could use it in some way. They told me how their daily lives would become better if they could get the help they need without spending money!

Whether they have children, planning a wedding, or go on vacations frequently they all have goods and services they could barter.

“Keep Calm and Barter On”

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I’m Jamie Kemp and I go to the University of Scranton. I am a public relations and social media intern for Barter Sugar, a tech startup where people can barter their goods and services. bartersugar.com

Talking to Strangers…

Talking on the phone to strangers about Barter Sugar was the task I was put up to this week. I talked to people of all kinds. Some I knew and some I didn’t.

The art and music groups in New York City all seemed interested in our company. Some I left voicemails for and one was even going to check out the website.

When I talked to the ten random people about how Barter Sugar could benefit their everyday lives I got so many different responses. It was great to see how different everyones lives are and how people can use Barter Sugar for many different aspects of their lives.

Mary Troy: She is a school teacher with three children under the age of five. The most important aspect of her life is making sure her kids are safe. There are times where she doesn’t have a babysitter and Barter Sugar would really help her out. She could barter her service of tutoring children in exchange for safe and secure babysitting services.

Meghan O’Doherty: She is a graduate from Oneonta State College and has just graduated with a degree in English. She can offer a service of editing papers for students in exchange for a thing she needs at the time. For example, her graduation party she could use services like tent rentals or table rentals in exchange for her services.

Colleen Pereira: She works full-time and can barter her services of computer literacy and fixing computers. She could use the service of getting things fixed around her house since her and her husband work full-time.

Ashley Keenan: Since she is a bartender, she says they use bartering services a lot. If there is any time there is a party at the place she’s working at and they need tents, balloons, extra alcohol, etc, they will give the companies food and drink credit in exchange for the things they need.

Maria Cianciulli: She is a teachers assistant at a school in Port Washington and she said that she can benefit from Barter Sugar by offering tutoring sessions to students who need it. “I’m always looking for things to decorate my house.”

Toni Cianciulli (Maria’s husband): He owns his own landscaping business and is always looking for help. He said if he could save money by bartering their service for something he has would be great.

Terri Zelinski: She and her husband work full-time and have two children that they send to daycare. She said she could use a service more than a thing. Her most precious commodity is time. Having the time to do a service wouldn’t be best for her considering its the one thing she lacks. She has more goods to barter than time to barter a service.

Olivia Cassandro: A student at University of Delaware. She said she could use Barter Sugar to give away some of her stuff and clear some space in her house. She said that the one service she could barter is her computer skills. If people need help doing something on the computer that she could help them with that.

Kim & Kristen: I talked to these two women who are friends who have three children each and work in a school district. They told me that since they barely have time to do anything around the house, they would use Barter Sugar that way. They would rather get services than do one because they have more items to give away.

I found it amazing that people were able to open up and tell me the things that could be fixed if they used Barter Sugar. You have to give them the right type of atmosphere and type of voice to make them want to share things like that with you.

Brandon Stanton’s, creator of Humans of New York, video about how he approaches people. He made it simple and I used his advice. He said you need to make people feel comfortable and what are the correct words to say…

I told them their problems could be solved with the exchange of no money. And everyone pretty much liked the sound of that! I told them how the website works in the simplest of terms to make them understand what I was saying and that they could use it even if they aren’t the most tech-savvy people.

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I’m Jamie Kemp and I go to the University of Scranton. I am a public relations and social media intern for Barter Sugar, a tech startup where people can barter their goods and services. bartersugar.com

Barter Sugar Video Contest!

Barter Sugar is conducting a video competition!!! Enter a video of yourself bartering or showing how one can barter their goods and services. Submit your video to info@bartersugar.com by August 4th. The winner gets featured on our Youtube page, Facebook page, the Barter Sugar website and gets invited to our launch party.

I was faced with the task of calling schools, colleges or high schools, and having them agree to tell their students about our video contest.

Four bits of advice in regards to approaching this task:

1. Make it known who you are working for. “Hi I’m Jamie Kemp and I work for Barter Sugar. We are a tech startup that gives people the chance to barter their goods and services online…”
2. The people on the other end should most likely be someone from student affairs office or an office related to that.
3. Keep in mind what you want from them. “I was calling to see if you would be willing to tell your students about our video contest?”
4. Finally, you just need to explain what you are trying to ask… “The video contest consists of a less than two minute video explaining how Barter Sugar works…”

 

 

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Game Theory-

According to Tyler Cowen, he evaluates the use of game theory in Crimea. In this particular case, they are hoping for game theory to make for more peaceful disputes and more peaceful resolutions.

“In the formal terminology of game theory, there are “multiple equilibria” (peaceful expectations versus expectations of conflict), and each event in a conflict raises the risk that peaceful situations can unravel.” – Tyler Cowen

In an NPR article, they talk about how game theory is used in the election. They have to use different strategies. Obama needed to convince the party that the nomination won’t be worth anything if the nominations aren’t his.

Aside from politics, game theory can be used in other aspects of life. Samuel Arbesman talks about how game theory is applicable to The Hunger Games. He defines it as the outcome of ones decision depends on decisions made by others.

In terms of the movie, he sees how the players form a coalition when there’s an attack. Although their incentives to kill are strong, he wondered why form a coalition? They have to kill each other in order to put themselves in a better position in the competition.

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I’m Jamie Kemp and I go to the University of Scranton. I am a public relations and social media intern for Barter Sugar, a tech startup where people can barter their goods and services. bartersugar.com

It Went Viral.

We live in a world where social media sites are quickly changing and expanding, videos and images go viral within minutes and different audiences want different things from certain sites.

A/B testing is when you take two (or more) different designs to separate groups in a specific audience to see how well each design performs. To test it properly you need a good-sized sample, a plan for how long you are going to conduct this test and some type of software to see the results (Google Analytics).

A/B testing essentially deciphers what the visitor wants to see, and how different colors, images, headlines, navigation tools, etc, can gain certain results from the user. A/B testing can definitely apply to social media sites.

Social media attracts certain types of audiences. The company needs to figure out a way to appeal their sites to their audience. The A/B test will show them what their audience is looking for on their homepage.

There could be a few ways that A/B testing applies to social media. For example, when the site changes the layout of the homepage. After not having a Facebook account in almost three months, I reactivated my account and saw the changes the site has made. I saw that my newsfeed looked more of a blog site, rather than a social networking site.

Some sites give you the option to change the way your profile looks, for example a cover photo on Facebook, or the new layout for Twitter. If you click that you want to do that change, it shows the company that their visitors like the change and soon enough make it a mandatory thing to have.

To know what type of things appeal to each audience, we need to figure out what things appeal to the visitors of the site. Colors can be gender specific. A study called True Colors showed how different men and women view colors. Although blue is the favored color by both men and women because it represents a blue sky, clean water, authority, truth.

The study’s results found that women prefer soft colors and tints, and men like bright colors and shades. Different types of colors appeal to the different genders but blue is the most favored.

What makes something go viral depends on:

• Emotion and arousal- Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
• Social currency- You are in the know, and have more knowledge.
• Memory-inducing trigger- We share what we are thinking about.
• Lists- Promise of practical value
• Quality of the story itself

According to Maria Konnikova said that these factors help things on the internet go viral. The way you see certain articles or videos is because most of the time a friend, family member, coworker showed it to you. It appealed to them, so it would probably appeal to you.

Memes are the most common type of viral images, or Gifs. People put certain sayings on a picture to make it funny, or appealing to a certain audience. I chose The Great Gatsby meme of Leonardo DiCaprio holding up a glass is a famous picture taken from the film. This became a meme after the movie was released last spring. The grumpy cat meme is a meme of a weird/grumpy looking cat that has different words across it. According to Agileimpact.org, they wrote how the grumpy cat photo was first uploaded to Reddit.com by its owners brother in 2012. The post was met with parody editors and got more than 25,000 votes within 24 hours. The meme went viral with different sayings. It can appear on multiple social media sites and people love it. The success kid meme was uploaded by the 11-month-old’s mother to Flickr, then to Getty images and then to Reddit where it went viral and became a meme. The words you can find on it are funny sayings about little “successes”.

In closing, things that go viral depend on what audiences find appealing, and give a sense of emotion.

 

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I’m Jamie Kemp and I go to the University of Scranton. I am a public relations and social media intern for Barter Sugar, a tech startup where people can barter their goods and services. bartersugar.com

I’m sorry, can you repeat that?

Having good communication skills is crucial for a public relations person. We need to know how to convey a message to a certain audience in a way that puts our company in a positive light. In an article with Caryn Marooney- Head of Technology Communication for Facebook- she gives us some good advice about what to think about when starting a business, and advice on how to communicate effectively.

Marooney talks about the RIBS (relevance, inevitable, believable, simple) test.

• Relevant- Why is what we are doing relevant to the audience? “Fight for greater relevance. Make it a priority in your positioning,” said by Marooney.
• Inevitable- You want people to feel whatever you’re developing is bound to happen; it’s unavoidable.
• Believable- You must convince people your company is capable to make it happen. They must believe you have the ability to pull it off. “Being believable isn’t just convincing people you can win it’s convincing them that they want you to win.”
• Simple- Keep things simple because peoples lives are full of choices and can be hectic. What do you want the customers to remember? Make that a point.

When launching your company, you need to set goals. Marooney explains how there should be long-term goals, but short-term milestones are what you should think in. “And the more short-term points you rack up, the more believable  the long-term message becomes,” said by Marooney.

Marooney continues to talk about a brand lens which describes your companies personality. I think that this can be essential to new business owners when determining what type of business you are and who you will appeal to.

Tagline- A slogan, a message to the users

Attributes- List of attributes or adjectives that describe your company.

Differentiators- What makes you different from other companies?

Action- Separating internal priorities with external priorities. “Focus your external marking on where you want to go as a company, where you have to go to succeed, or what inspires your customers most,” said by Marooney.

Before reading Marooney’s advice, I was unaware that keeping the seven deadly sins in minds could create better communication skills.

• Gluttony- Don’t try to be all things to everyone.
• Greed- Focus on what you need to do not only what your resources could do for you.
• Sloth- Don’t be lazy
• Wrath- Don’t get into fights with people or brands.
• Envy- The more your eyes are fixed on other companies, the less you can do to build your own company.
• Pride- Good press could go over your head, but bad press can knock you down.

The one problem I faced when reaching out to environmentally friendly organizations was how to communicate with organizations effectively. It was my first customer discovery and my mission was to find environmentally friendly organizations in the New York City region to support Barter Sugar and what we do. I get intimidated easily, so I was trying very hard to sound confident and strong.

My goal was to tell them how we are a sustainable company by giving examples such as trading textbooks so manufacturers don’t have to waste resources on making new ones and explain how we could help their organizations. Many organizations were more than happy to hear me out and others were not as willing to listen.

It was definitely a learning experience! My biggest problem was how I approached people, however not physically because it over the phone. The creator of Humans of New York shared his secrets on how he approaches people throughout New York.

He says you need to make people comfortable by making it intimate and personal.

You need to choose the right words to say, but then he goes on to say it has nothing to do with the words but with the energy you present to the person. If you let them know you’re nervous then the vibe could get thrown off.

Keep the air calm and non-threatening by making questions broad and then turn them into more personal and emotional things.

These pieces of advice are good when you need to know how to talk to people either over the phone or in person.

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I’m Jamie Kemp and I go to the University of Scranton. I am a public relations and social media intern for Barter Sugar, a tech startup where people can barter their goods and services.

 

Decisions Decisions…

Think about all the decisions you have made today. What to eat, what to wear, where to go, or who to see. We don’t realize that these types of things are decisions because it is something we do everyday, so it comes naturally. Now think about all the choices you had when choosing what to eat, what to wear, where to go and who to see. We are given so many choices in life that the bigger decisions could become overwhelming and the smaller ones are easy breezy.

According to Sheena Iyengar- speaker for “How to Make Choosing Easier”- said that she used to shop at a high-end grocery store that gave the customers so many choices. They had 348 types of jam to choose from. She conducted a study where they gave customers a sample of either six types of jam or twenty four types of jam. 

What they found were that people were more likely to buy from the table that only had six types of jam. They found that people are more likely going to choose products when there is not as many choices- Iyengar calls it choice overload. 

For businesses, you need to remember:

• Less is more- being able to cut certain products can increase sales and decrease cost.
• Concretization- being able to distinguish the consequences of each choice being made.
• Categorization- customer has more choices when products are in categories.
• Complexity- more decision for complex products such as buying a car

These are designed to help you manage choices for you and for the people you are helping.

 

Malcolm Gladwell- speaker of “Choice, Happiness and Spaghetti Sauce”- talks about a psycho physicist named Howard that conducted studies on foods to see what the people wanted. Gladwell used the example of Ragu pasta sauce compared to Prego pasta sauce. They wanted to know what made it more appealing. Howard conducted many focus groups to see how Americans like tomato sauce. The findings were they either likes plain sauce, spicy sauce or extra chunky sauce. 

The people in the focus groups had many choices of what type of sauce they liked to eat. His focus groups changed the way the food industry made people happy. 

Howard also found that in order to make people happy, you need to give people things that are more expensive, flashy and fancy. He used Dijon mustard as an example. Regular mustard compared to Dijon mustard was that Dijon was in a glass jar, more expensive, darker color, different texture and more. 

If businesses today asked and gave their customers what makes them happy or things they want, then their business would be successful in the long run because they are fitting the needs to their customers. 

The future of businesses today is geared more toward sharing with one another. We need to know what makes our customers happy and how to make them keep coming back. According to Lisa Gansky- speaker for “The Future of Business is the Mesh”- mesh is “a fundamental shift in our relationship with stuff.”

She talks to us about how we share public things and not even know we are. 

A mesh company has three things

1. Our ability to connect with each other
2. Mobile devices that allow us to find each other and people and places
3. And physical goods that we can track that are moving. Things that are readable on a map like the train schedule.

                                              

In a mesh company, we allow the access of goods and services to become easier. Gansky uses the example of Zipcar. Zipcar allows people to rent cars for a short period of time. When I was visiting The University of Alabama, we needed to rent a car to get me to the airport. The airport is about an hour from the school, so this car was affordable and easy to access. We looked online to find the nearest Zipcars and when a car would be available so that I could get to the airport on time.

The creators of Zipcar knew that “A brand is a voice and a product is a souvenir.” They made their company fresh and cool and sexy, they used nice cars so it is more appealing and chose a certain demographic that would be more likely to use their product. They gave people the option for different types of cars depending on what they are using the car for. 

Gansky says that mesh businesses like Zipcar or Netflix make sharing irresistible and delight is contagious. If people are talking or tweeting about a certain product or service they have experienced, they are likely to see an impact.

“Mesh companies create, share and use social media, wireless networks, and data crunched from every available source to provide people with goods and services at the exact moment they need them without the burden of expense of owning them outright.” – Lisa Gansky

 

Sharing is Caring…

We live in a time period where it is easier to attain goods and services online. Collaborative consumption, according to Rachel Bostman- speaking for “The Currency of the New Economy is Trust”- is enabling a sharing economy. Businesses are starting where you can share, swap, barter, rent, or lend your goods and services. We can build this type of economy on reputation of the one giving and trust on the customer.

Before you are able to trust customers, you need to start up a business where this sharing economy can take place. In order to effectively start an online business you need to figure out certain things.

• Acquisition- How are we anticipating acquiring for your website or whatever else you are creating?
• Behavior- What are your customers/visitors expecting when they arrive at the site?
• Outcomes- What outcomes are you expecting from the customers?

According to the Digital Marketing and Measurement Model by Avinash Kaushik, he identifies certain ways to put your business on the right track to success. You have to set goals or objectives, strategies on how to attain those goals, a way to identify performance on the site, targets per week/month/quarter/year, and outcomes.

The company has to determine what you are seeking to attain out of their online business and what the customers are going to get by using their site. 

Another thing someone who is starting an online business needs to remember is that social media is here to help. Social media sites are helpful in getting a name out there. For example; I saw a promotion box on my newsfeed on Facebook in December. I clicked on it, after reading the caption. The site was called Vinted. I researched this site and downloaded the app to my smartphone. This application/business is ran online and you can sell your items or swap your items for someone else’s. You create a profile, upload items to sell, set a price, add a description, get followers and sell/swap your stuff.

If I hadn’t found that promotion box on my newsfeed, I would have never known about it. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram can be beneficial to someone who owns a business that is trying to get their name out there. Social media sites can offer the business owners a great amount of information. They can see how many times followers/customers tag their name, what they say about their brand, how it can influence their followers, what types of people are looking at their website or where are these people from that are commenting on their brand. 

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