One the first day of the BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL conference, the women attendees wrapped up their day at BIA/Kelsey’s special networking session “Women Leading in Local.” Our speakers for this session were Tina Paparone and Angela Giovine, founders of Happenings Media. Angela and Tina shared their story and discussed techniques for successfully striking authentic chords within communities and keys to their revenue success — marketing solutions beyond the banner including sophisticated native advertising techniques.

BIA/Kelsey’s Celine Matthiessen with speakers Angela Giovine and Tina Paparone

Here are Tina and Angela’s four rules to live and work by:

1. FOLLOW YOUR PASSION: They say that a man (or of course woman) that follows their passion never work a day in their life. Bucks Happening actually didn’t start as a business; the website was simply a hobby, while we worked to build a different business. However, soon after launching, as readers were discovering the website, we received a call from a local print magazine who wanted to write a story on us. As we sat at the coffee shop trying to steer the conversation towards our “REAL” business, it became clear that 1) There was a real need for Bucks Happening and 2) We better start making money on it or stop spending so much time working on it! We quickly went to work on developing a business strategy.

It was at one of our first meetings with an advertiser that we had a moment of clarity. We were meeting with a local coffee roaster and cafe owner who was frustrated that he didn’t understand how to get his message to the community nor did he have the time to figure it out. As I listened to his story, I knew, “We can help.” We didn’t sit there and say “let’s be innovators in native advertising.” We simply said, what the best way to tell locals about this amazing coffee. And that included storytelling.

2. BOOTSTRAP: We both entered into entrepreneurship with our eyes wide open. As the famous start-up incubator Tech Stars likes to boast, it’s essential for the early-stage entrepreneur to remain “cheap to keep alive.” While it may not sound as sexy to start a business without millions of dollars of financing, doing things our own way, on our own dime, at our own pace allowed us to discover a path to success. Now we have a scalable model without having the collateral damage that a heavily funded company may experience. Moreso, we can take our bootstapping mentality and apply it to expand effectively.

3. IT’S OKAY TO BE AN OUTSIDER: We did not come from the media world. We are not journalist. But being outsiders allowed us to think outside the box. Our content, advertising, and business model were designed to fulfill a need without any preconceived notions of the way things had to be done. Especially in a time when the media world is shifting so dramatically, our ability to identify a problem and approach it with a fresh perspective is one of our biggest assets.

4. FOLLOW THEIR PASSION. Yes, our passion for what we do is crucial, but it isn’t just our own passion that drives growth; It’s harnessing the passion of others. This is a philosophy that we incorporate into almost everything we do — the articles we write, the campaigns we design, and the publishers that we support.

One great example of this is the creation of The Happening List, our annual People’s Choice voting competition, which is one of our most successful initiatives to date. We allow readers to vote for their favorite local people, places, businesses, and events. Through careful design and planning, this contest helps generated hundreds of thousands of email subscribers, massive branding awareness, and thousands of advertising leads.

BIA/Kelsey organized a special networking session during our LEADING IN LOCAL conference in the Fall of 2013. The initial meeting was such a success that the Women Leading in Local session has become a permanent installment at all of our conferences.

BIA/Kelsey’s MacKenzie Lovings at the Women Leading in Local networking session

The post At BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL: Four Rules to Live and Work By appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

When it comes to local shopping, female consumers interact much more on social media than their male counterparts. According to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor™, 49.1% of females interact with or use social media regarding local purchases compared to only 37% of males. Seventy-one percent of women cite Facebook as their preferred social media site for local shopping. Women also strongly value the opinions of the Facebook Friends with 51.9% considering them to be a trustworthy or very trustworthy source of information for local products and services. Men were not as quick to trust their Facebook Friends with only 44% considering them to be a trustworthy or very trust worthy source.

Women are also heavy general users of social media sites. Approximately 77.4% of women actively use Facebook while only 63.3% of men do the same. Pinterest is dominated by females with three times more women actively using it then men.

Social media is not the only way for local businesses to to reach female consumers.  Women are also active on their mobile devices. In my previous blog post I discussed that men were more engaged than women on their mobile devices and are more willing to try the new and exciting technology that is emerging on the local front, but more women use their mobile devices for local shopping more than men in general. About 39.1% of women use smartphones when shopping locally while only 34.8% of men do the same. Women are also using their mobile devices on the go much more than men. Approximately 74.8% of women use smartphones in store as opposed to 58.8% of men, 72% of women use them in public as opposed to 64% of men, and 66.1%  of women use them in transit as opposed to 51.5% of men.

To learn more about women and their shopping habits check out BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor page.

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For the ladies who attended BIA/Kesley’s Women Leading In Local session at our December 2013 conference in San Francisco, you may remember that one of our speakers was Jayla Siciliano, CEO of Bon Affair. Jayla is the young, ambitious entrepreneur who dropped everything to run with her idea to create Bon Affair, the wine spritzer company created by women, for women.

Bon Affair had been picking up some serious momentum in California and now she will be taking the next step with her idea this Friday at 9 p.m. on ABC’s hit show Shark Tank.

Jayla is a woman who is looking to make her idea a success and that is what lead to her decision to try to get on the show. “I figured I should go for every opportunity out there,” said Jayla. “Once I started doing research on the show and realizing what a great platform it is for exposure and potentially partnering with an amazing investor I was really hoping I would get on.”

Once her decision to try to be on the show was made, the actual process of getting on was her next challenge. “I applied by sending an email in February 2013. Four months later I got a call saying I made it to the next round (I had actually forgotten that I applied at that point) and now I’m getting to air almost a year and a half after initially applying. It’s definitely a lot of jumping through hoops but over all I had a really positive experience.”

To prepare for her actual presentation on the show, Jayla tackled it like it was a college final. “I studied everything there was to study about the show. I was waking up at 4am watching episodes and taking notes on the questions asked, the pitches, the valuations and researching each of the sharks. I practiced my pitch until I was saying it in my sleep and I did a lot of yoga and visualization the week before to stay calm and confident before going in there.”

Jayla is an inspiration for all entrepreneurs out there and to all those who are thinking of taking their idea to Shark Tank. Jayla says: “Go for it! Life is short and business can be a grind. It’s a great platform for exposure and all of the research I did on the ‘sharks’ made me realize they are all really great people who are there to help entrepreneurs. Just know it’s a long process and can be torture at times but if you get to go in and pitch to the sharks try to have fun with it.”

Big things are expected for Bon Affair in the future and it will be exciting to see where this little wine spritzer company goes. To read more on Bon Affair and Jayla, check out my blog post about our Women Leading in Local session in San Francisco where we heard about Jayla’s inspiration for her company.

The post Women Leading in Local Speaker Jayla Siciliano to be on ABC’s Shark Tank appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

For the ladies who attended BIA/Kesley’s Women Leading In Local session at our December 2013 conference in San Francisco, you may remember that one of our speakers was Jayla Siciliano, CEO of Bon Affair. Jayla is the young, ambitious entrepreneur who dropped everything to run with her idea to create Bon Affair, the wine spritzer company created by women, for women.

Bon Affair had been picking up some serious momentum in California and now she will be taking the next step with her idea this Friday at 9 p.m. on ABC’s hit show Shark Tank.

Jayla is a woman who is looking to make her idea a success and that is what lead to her decision to try to get on the show. “I figured I should go for every opportunity out there,” said Jayla. “Once I started doing research on the show and realizing what a great platform it is for exposure and potentially partnering with an amazing investor I was really hoping I would get on.”

Once her decision to try to be on the show was made, the actual process of getting on was her next challenge. “I applied by sending an email in February 2013. Four months later I got a call saying I made it to the next round (I had actually forgotten that I applied at that point) and now I’m getting to air almost a year and a half after initially applying. It’s definitely a lot of jumping through hoops but over all I had a really positive experience.”

To prepare for her actual presentation on the show, Jayla tackled it like it was a college final. “I studied everything there was to study about the show. I was waking up at 4am watching episodes and taking notes on the questions asked, the pitches, the valuations and researching each of the sharks. I practiced my pitch until I was saying it in my sleep and I did a lot of yoga and visualization the week before to stay calm and confident before going in there.”

Jayla is an inspiration for all entrepreneurs out there and to all those who are thinking of taking their idea to Shark Tank. Jayla says: “Go for it! Life is short and business can be a grind. It’s a great platform for exposure and all of the research I did on the ‘sharks’ made me realize they are all really great people who are there to help entrepreneurs. Just know it’s a long process and can be torture at times but if you get to go in and pitch to the sharks try to have fun with it.”

Big things are expected for Bon Affair in the future and it will be exciting to see where this little wine spritzer company goes. To read more on Bon Affair and Jayla, check out my blog post about our Women Leading in Local session in San Francisco where we heard about Jayla’s inspiration for her company.

The post Women Leading in Local Speaker Jayla Siciliano to be on ABC's Shark Tank appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Recently I have found that talks about “professional brand” have been coming up a lot. Here at BIA/Kelsey we define professional brand as “a promise of the value you’ll deliver” aka your professional reputation. It can also describe your potential to clients and those you work with.

This topic can be fairly controversial, especially among female professionals. Women constantly struggle with how they want to be identified in the workplace and for everyone of them their professional brand is different. This controversy makes it it a perfect topic to be discussed at next week’s Women Leading in Local session at our LEADING IN LOCAL: The National Impact conference in Atlanta.

The session will consist of a panel of five different speakers from the media industry with very different professional brands and with them very different opinions. Kimberli Lewis, CEO and Founder of Global Business Therapy will be coming to Atlanta from Europe and discussing her experience as a woman in the industry there and her thoughts on whether or not she even agrees with the term “professional brand.”

We will also hear from Beth Bowers and Jaleigh Long from Cox Media Group about their brand as a team. They will highlight the idea of working alongside other women in the office as opposed to competing against them.

Wendy Hurwitz from Clipper Magazine will be sharing her professional brand and what it means to her in the professional environment. Finally, Kelly Thomas Nojaim from Bing will talk about her years of experience in the search industry and how her own brand has been built.

To hear the discussion come to the Women Leading In Local session at the LEADING IN LOCAL: The National Impact conference next week in Atlanta on May 7 from 4:30-5:30. If you are not already registered to attend please click here to do so.

The post Professional Brand: Topic for Discussion at Next Week’s Women Leading in Local Session appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Recently I have found that talks about “professional brand” have been coming up a lot. Here at BIA/Kelsey we define professional brand as “a promise of the value you’ll deliver” aka your professional reputation. It can also describe your potential to clients and those you work with.

This topic can be fairly controversial, especially among female professionals. Women constantly struggle with how they want to be identified in the workplace and for everyone of them their professional brand is different. This controversy makes it it a perfect topic to be discussed at next week’s Women Leading in Local session at our LEADING IN LOCAL: The National Impact conference in Atlanta.

The session will consist of a panel of five different speakers from the media industry with very different professional brands and with them very different opinions. Kimberli Lewis, CEO and Founder of Global Business Therapy will be coming to Atlanta from Europe and discussing her experience as a woman in the industry there and her thoughts on whether or not she even agrees with the term “professional brand.”

We will also hear from Beth Bowers and Jaleigh Long from Cox Media Group about their brand as a team. They will highlight the idea of working alongside other women in the office as opposed to competing against them.

Wendy Hurwitz from Clipper Magazine will be sharing her professional brand and what it means to her in the professional environment. Finally, Kelly Thomas Nojaim from Bing will talk about her years of experience in the search industry and how her own brand has been built.

To hear the discussion come to the Women Leading In Local session at the LEADING IN LOCAL: The National Impact conference next week in Atlanta on May 7 from 4:30-5:30. If you are not already registered to attend please click here to do so.

The post Professional Brand: Topic for Discussion at Next Week's Women Leading in Local Session appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.