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Danica Kombol & Ana Flores

Society Spotlight: Ana Flores

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There’s a special place in heaven for women who launch blogging conferences. On the one hand, it seems easy as pie – pull together a group of super social women who love to blog, invite them for a weekend at a swanky hotel. Realistically, there’s so much more that goes into it – you have to invest your own time, energy and dollars into an idea that you hope will attract sponsors and attendees; then once you have them all there, you’ve got to keep them entertained and fed! So frankly, when I heard that my good friend Ana Flores was organizing We All Grow, an entirely new blog-conference aimed at her Latina community, I thought she’d lost her marbles!

I like to joke that Ana is your classic under-achiever. She’s a published author (having written the authoritative book on raising bi-lingual children, Bilingual is Better), the founder of the premiere Hispanic influencer community Latina Bloggers Connect, co-founder of the on-line community Spanglish Baby, has appeared on The Today Show, been featured in Parenting Magazine, and even graced the cover of a Corn Flakes Cereal box! That’s not all! She’s been heralded by sites like Babble as one of the Top 100 Mom blogs and is a doting mom to the most adorable daughter ever. So with all that “underachieving”, I’m shining the Everywhere Society Spotlight on Ana, whom I still sometimes refer to as LA Flowers, her original Twitter handle.

I recently caught up with Ana and asked her about We All Grow:

Q. What’s your inspiration for launching We All Grow?

Ana: Well Danica, as you know, you and I first met at a blogging conference. I’ve always navigated both cultures that way. Over the years, I attended so many general market blogging conferences and I took away so much from those experiences to help grow my blog and my business. I wanted to bring those same kinds of connections and the learning that takes place in the general market back to my community, the Latina blogging community. I very much so wanted to create a similar environment and provide a space where Latina bloggers can truly learn and grow their skills.

Q: How will this be different from other blogging conferences?

Ana: Truth? I’ve been grabbing inspiration from the best of the best blogging conferences for a while now. I’m hoping We All Grow will be an incredible mix of all these amazing blogging conferences I’ve attended over the years (like Blissdom and Evo, which no longer exist or Blogalicious and Mom 2.0). My plan is to take what I’ve learned from my favorite conferences and combine it with a healthy sprinkling of what we bring from our culture.

Q: What one thing do you hope bloggers who attend your conference take away from We All Grow?

Ana: I hope they walk out and say, “I have a skill set that I now understand and I’m taking this skill set with me back home to implement immediately and help me grow my blog.” I also hope they walk away and understand, “This is a business.”

Q. How do you find the time?

Ana: I’m never going to find the time. I find the right people. Because there is no more time! Finding amazing people is how I invest back in my business.

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Hopefully by shining the Everywhere Society spotlight on Ana Flores, it will help her find the right people to attend and help cultivate, We All Grow. I’ll be there supporting the conference in LA come February, will you?

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Internet Fat Cats: Memes and Marketing

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By Molly Daly

I’d wager to guess that almost every Facebook user has seen a meme in their day. There’s a decent chance that those memes feature cats. The Internet has had a long lasting love affair with felines and many cite the ancient Egyptians as unknowing inspiration to future generations.

The concept of Internet memes has spread from culture sites such as Reddit and 4Chan and worming its way into the mainstream and life as we know it. For “meme management” pioneer Ben Lashes, it’s a way of life. After success with perhaps one of the oldest cat memes, Keyboard Cat, Lashes left his job as a music distributor and started managing memes full time. Keyboard Cat has made several television appearances, and his likeness was even used in a Pistachios commercial, with over 2.5 million YouTube views on the ad alone.

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Photo courtesy of YouTube.com

Lashes manages other popular memes such as Nyan Cat, and Grumpy Cat, among others. There’s a bit of a feline pattern here, but that’s no surprise to a Redditor or a cat lover. (Or in my case, both.) Therefore, I am pleasantly surprised by the recent leaps Internet cats have made towards television and film.

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Photo courtesy of GrumpyCats.com

Grumpy Cat, who was boosted to extreme popularity thanks to Reddit, has hailed many accolades. Voted Meme of the Year at the 2013 Webby Awards, she now has over 1 million Facebook likes under her dwarfish belt, was a star at SXSW – and just scored a movie deal. I can only hope the proposed Garfield-style family film lands on its feet.

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Photo courtesy of LilBub.com

 

Another figure in the feline field is Lil Bub, who won big at the Tribeca Film Festival with her documentary on cats and the Internet, titled Lil Bub and Friendz. If this blog post caught your cat fancy, I definitely recommend checking out the trailer.

There’s no question that the popularity of Internet memes affects marketers in a big way. So how can brands catch the breaking memes before they become too mainstream? “Become a nerd about memes,” says Ben Lashes, in an interview with Big Think. “Watch culture websites like the stock market.” For me in particular, this advice is not hard to follow.

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Vine: Will Instagram Kill the Video Star?

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By Meredith Lorch

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Photo Credit: Gizmodo

All the foodie photos and selfie snapshots on your Instagram feed are about to be brought to life. Vine has largely dominated the video-sharing world in recent months, but Instagram has just added video features to its iPhone and Android apps, creating quite the buzz. The question is clear: does Video on Instagram mean the downfall of Vine?

Only time will tell whether Video on Instagram will outcompete its rival. Some continue to see real potential in Vine. Gary Vaynerchuk, a brand consultant and industry thought leader, is even creating a talent agency for Vine stars, called “Grape Story.” Despite this, it’s hard to believe that Vine will amount to anything more than a fad. While its novel six-second looping video format is initially charming, Vine’s brief, repetitive nature quickly becomes overwhelming. Add in the effect of camera shake and erratic Vines can be dizzying.

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Photo Credit: Tech Crunch

Both Vine and Video on Instagram employ a simple tap-and-hold-to-record feature, but Vine fails to capitalize on post-production features. The beauty of Instagram lies in the 13 brand new filters created exclusively for video—not to mention an image-stabilization tool called Cinema for capturing crisp, shake-free video. Users can also browse Instagram videos on a website—unlike Vine, which solely allows for video exploration within the app. Overall, Instagram’s new 15-second video capability allows users to share the adventure and splendor of their worlds unlike ever before, posing a serious threat to competitors.

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Photo Credit: ABC News

So what’s on the horizon? Rumor has it Instagram has potential for Google Glass integration. The possibilities are seemingly endless. With its latest update, Instagram has solidified its place as a classic sharing tool that is here to stay—and not just for the foodies.

Everywhere has a robust internship program and we invite our interns to participate by writing on our blog. Meredith Lorch is an intern from Emory University. She authored this blog post.

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Keep it ‘Pinteresting’: Secret to Pinterest

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By Leighanne Ferri

I’m sure many can relate when I say that after spending an hour (or five) on Pinterest, I often feel a strong urge to work out, bake, craft or shop. On our personal Pinterest pages, we pin things that apply to our own interests, lifestyles and hobbies.

On the consumer side, we want to see things we are interested in from the people, and companies, we follow. We want ideas on how to put an outfit together, how to bake the perfect birthday cake or plan the ideal vacation. Brands can, and should, use this to their advantage. In order to create advocates for your brand, you must actively engage your consumers. After reading up on some creative ways of how brands are using Pinterest, I’ve come up with a few of my own.

Promote your Brand’s Lifestyle

Free People, a popular boho-chic fashion brand does an impeccable job promoting not just their brand, but the lifestyle they represent. The Free People woman is free-spirited and in tune with her mind, body and soul. One of their boards entitled ‘FP Movement’ boasts gorgeous photos of women in yoga poses, inspirational quotes, health tips and beautiful photography. The ‘Festival Fashion’ board highlights style trends from booming music festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo. This is all a part of the FP lifestyle, and thus, the FP brand.

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Image courtesy of styleblazer.com

Limit the Clutter

The next thing a brand should do is limit the clutter. As a consumer, I want to hop on a company’s Pinterest page and immediately see boards that stand out to me and push me to explore further. Although Walmart is a huge, well-known company, they have 80+ boards that seem repetitive to the buyer. A good example of pinning brevity is the Nike Women page, which has 10 concise boards with relevant content that supports current campaigns, as well as workout graphics and motivation pins.

Be Relatable and Relevant

The Whole Foods shopper is typically a health-conscious individual who appreciates being kept up-to-date with current health trends. Whole Foods Market does a fabulous job relating to its consumers and staying relevant. Their ‘#HealthYeah’ board provides an enthusiastic outlook on getting healthy while tying in the trendy use of the hashtag. Boards labeled ‘Summer Vacation!’ and ‘Savor Summer’ are seasonal and valuable to the follower.

Stay consistent (if it makes sense)

For brands that have a distinct voice or social media presence (like us), it is recommended to carry that presence into your Pinterest boards. Take our example. Everywhere brands its boards by remaining consistent, with titles including ‘Everyday Everywhere’, ‘Infographics Everywhere’ and ‘Events Everywhere’. Notice a pattern? Consistency makes your brand easily recognizable and accessible. This example aside, some companies may benefit from changing up their boards to appeal to different consumers; it’s all about what works for your brand.

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Image courtesy of hongkiat.com

As a Pinterest fanatic, I can vouch for most consumers when I say that utilizing these methods to keep your brand’s Pinterest page up to par would definitely appeal to me. Executing these tactics engages viewers and can immensely benefit your social media and real life presence in the mind of the consumer.


Everywhere has a robust internship program and we invite our interns to participate by writing on our blog. Leighanne Ferri is an intern from Florida State University. She authored this blog post.

Dad 2.0 Summit

Let’s Hear It for the Boys!

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A lady marketer makes a foray into the world of dad blogging at the phenomenal Dad 2.0 Summit.
by Kelly Heisler

At Everywhere, we are a female owned and mostly female staffed agency. Over the four years we’ve been in business our “We are Woman, Hear Us Roar” war cry has formed an empire in the social space predominantly ruled by estrogen.

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We love mom bloggers. We get them. We know what they like and we know what resonates with their audience. We’ve collaborated and succeeded with these lovely ladies, hosted Wise Women Wednesday sessions and supported women empowerment initiatives in our community.

As our client list continues to expand we have found ourselves in unfamiliar territory. One in which some of our brands are better, if not equally suited for a man. It seems in our lady power party, we may have neglected a segment of very influential writers who just so happen to have a Y chromosome.

It wasn’t until my maiden voyage to Dad 2.0 Summit that I realized not only were men suitable for super manly products like shave gel, lawnmowers and shoeshine, but there is an increasing number of men taking the majority role or equal control of rearing their children and heading up the household.

Dad 2.0 Summit

Andy Hinds (Beta Dad), Random Photo Bomber, Kelly Heisler (Everywhere), Trina O’Boyle (Happy Family Brands)

Dad 2.0 Summit was filled with talented writers, businessman and entrepreneurs. In between evenings of raucous karaoke and whiskey tastings, we heard painfully funny, vulnerable and relatable stories of fatherhood. Speakers like Ted Rubin brought the crowd to tears with stories of fighting for a relationship with your children in the face of controversy. Black Hockey Jesus, spoke with poetic eloquence bringing a resounding depth to the often-bumbling stereotype portrayed by dads in the media. These men are sharing their stories and building communities that spread much further than just their fellow fathers.

As brand managers these authentic and genuine voices are just the sort of people we need. As an agency, in order to truly be “Everywhere” we absolutely must include everyone. So bring it on boys, we’re ready to share our clubhouse.

Click here for more recaps from of Dad 2.0 Summit.

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RIP Brochure. Long live the blog

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It doesn’t seem that long ago when people were still talking about brochures. Remember those tri-fold pamphlets created by expensive copywriters and graphic designers? Before we went to press, we inspected the copy and images as if it were a newborn baby. They were like oversized business cards we all handed out, as if to say, “Look at us! We’re official! Here’s our brochure.” Now the very word, “brochure” seems dated.

I’d like to hazard a guess that in today’s digital age, brochures have finally been put to rest. I’ve had my hand in far too many brochures to count and I say, “Good riddance.” The energy we once put in brochures now deserves to go whole-heartedly towards a blog. No longer does a business need to rely on dry corporate sounding information and bullet points. A blog speaks in a human voice and has the potential to showcase the people, passion and knowledge base of your business.

That said, It’s hard for businesses to abandon the corporate speak of a brochure and embrace “blogginess.” Here are a few tips to get you started:

  1. Develop a voice for your blog. What do you want it to say about you or your company? What’s the tone?
  2. Think of yourself as a thought leader. Nobody knows your business better than you. So share your expertise, show you know your stuff.
  3. Develop a blog editorial calendar. Plan out blog posts and have a plan to actually populate your blog. Don’t abandon it. Think of your blog as you would any communications channel. You wouldn’t leave your phone unattended, would you? Same with your blog. Nurture it and populate it regularly.
  4. Your blog is not a magnus opus. Think of it as a platform to share simple good thinking. A columnist for The New York Times once gave me some great writing advice. He said of his column, “You really only need one good idea.” Same is true for a blog. Take one good idea and expand on that.
  5. We live in a google-able world and there’s no better way to increase your SEO than to have a blog. A static website gets buried in the deep abyss of Google search. Take a mini cram course on SEO and blog tagging. This will convince you to take to your keyboard and pound out a blog on a regular basis.

Last but not least, take that budget you had for brochure printing and production and put it into your blog.

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Best Little Blogging Conferences

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My friends who don’t work in Social Media ask me, “But where do you GO when you travel? I thought you did everything on your laptop?” Lord knows I’ve had my share of carpal tunnel from overactive laptop usage, but I do travel, a lot. While most of my travel is to visit my clients, I also travel to blogger conferences, frequently and often.

When I do travel for fun, I like to find one cozy village or spot and camp out there. There’s nothing better than staying at a historic boutique hotel in a big city or finding a village where you get to know the restaurant proprietor and frequent the same café every morning. I have the same feeling about blogging conferences and we do go to the big ones like SXSW and BlogWorld. And while there, we believe in living large. While the huge blogger conferences provide for great story-telling, (Think “Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.”) it’s the smaller, intimate conferences I prefer.

One of my favorite little blogging conference is coming up in a week. Blogalicious bills itself as a conference celebrating “diversity” in the blogosphere. I like to joke that when I go, I’m the diversity. I’ve gotten to know the organizer of the conference, Stacey Ferguson well and ended up working with her on a few of our client campaigns. I met an amazing woman who runs something called the Digital Sisterhood at Blogalicious named Ananda Leeke. Ananda practically bowled me down at the Miami Ritz at Blogalicious last year when she learned I was involved in the Macy’s Heart of Haiti campaign. That chance encounter blossomed into a rich friendship and Ananda and I ended up going to Haiti together earlier this year. Another relationship fostered at Blogalicious was with this amazing Californian named Tracey Friley. Tracey calls herself “your every day brown girl culturalista celebrating culture, diversity, humanity and travel.” Recently Tracey traveled to Atlanta from San Francisco and we had her in for an afternoon chat we affectionately call #WiseWoman sessions with the team. We’re still referring to Tracey’s witty and wise commentary. Better yet, Tracey and I are scheming on going to Haiti together this January.

One day at a Blogalicious lunch, I sat next to a woman named Jewel Figueras and somehow our orbits kept colliding over the next year. Jewel is based in Miami and when I was there last year on a layover from Beirut, Jewel picked me up and took me out for Cuban food and Sangria.

For me, social media has never been about the technology. It’s all about the relationships. Blogging conferences are the same. They foster a connectivity that can blossom and explode into a business relationship or a new friendship. Small blogging conferences allow for a kind of intimacy and opportunity to sit down and really explore synchronicity. In just over a week, I’ll be there, at Blogalicious at the Gaylord, exploring synchronicity with friends new and old.

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The IFB: Where the Runway Meets the Blogosphere

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IFBHello readers, my name is Marleisse Stephens and I’m a Journalism student at Georgia State University and part of the “intern-to-hire” program at Everywhere. When I stumbled upon the Independent Fashion Bloggers site I was ecstatic. The site morphs my two favorite things, fashion and journalism, into one. The site for Independent Fashion Bloggers also known as the “IFB” is a home for fashion bloggers around the world to exchange and promote their content, learn and share ideas about writing to make their blogs better and to meet other fashion journalism lovers just like them.

Jennine Jacob created the site in 2007. Jacob is also the creator of The Coveted, another fashion blog site featuring popular fashion blogs, boutiques and style features. Jacob began blogging just for fun and transitioned the IFB into a monetized blog with sponsorship from the Gilt Groupe, which provides discounted prices on luxury fashion pieces on a first come first serve basis to members.

The IFB offers many opportunities and platforms for its’ bloggers. The IFB “Social Network” allows bloggers to find other bloggers in their city or who have similar interests. “Links a La Mode” is a weekly list of 20 blogs submitted by members, which yields considerable traffic and promotion for the blogs selected. Highlights from “Links a la Mode”, forums and blogger features are also profiled in a weekly member only e-newsletter that is sponsored by Gilt. Lastly but definitely not least the IFB offers Fashion Week events to members such as conferences with designers Proenza Schouler. The site notes that over 300 members have participated in Fashion Week events in New York and London this year.

Anybody who independently owns a fashion blog can join the IFB. After registration each blog is reviewed and verified by the IFB before a participant can become active on the site to make sure the site is independent and completely about fashion.

Blogs and social media over all has really benefited the fashion culture in widening the forum of available feedback and reviews on runway shows and newly showcased collections. More specifically, fashion blogs and social media allow real time coverage of Fashion Week events and runway shows. Sites like the IFB provide a source for fashion followers to get an array of reviews covering their favorite designers’ newest collections from a community of several fashion bloggers all conveniently located on one site. On the designers’ side, designers are given free promotion from reviews, videos and blogs that go viral on Youtube, or on blog sites just like the IFB. Designers are able to receive first hand feedback of how the community has received their art. Women’s wear designers such as Jason Wu or Celine, who are known and praised for mastering garments for a woman’s body, are able to see how their collections are being received by the women who are wearing it via online features, reviews, blogs and photos.

To join the IFB or view blogs go to www.iheartifb.com, via Twitter @_IFB or on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/independentfashionbloggers.