Amazing Website for Chocolate Candy...YUM!

CHOCOLATE…just the word evokes a taste, a texture and maybe even a memory…and you haven’t even had a piece yet.  Well, now there’s something new to try in the world of chocolate, and it’s call Bon Bon Bon.  Their website is simple, tasteful and just lets you focus on the amazing chocolates they offer.  I like the clean lines of the website. It wasn’t fussy or busy.   All the information I needed was provided in easy to find areas.  Some websites have you searching just to figure out how to contact them, but not this one.  I liked this website, and not just because they sell chocolates.  Check out their website for yourself at http://www.bonbonbon.com. 

Their website has quotes from Martha Stewart, Tasting Table and even Vanity Fair. This helps show their product has broad appeal and also lets us “regular people” know that if this chocolate is good enough for Martha Stewart and Vanity Fair, then I’ve got to try this. I think this is a great marketing tool. 

Also on the website you will find that they currently have 57 types of “two-bite” chocolates in their rotation ranging from #1 The Hot Mess - Molten chocolate inside of a hard, chocolate shell. Some call it a folk remedy, others, "bliss" all the way to #57 Carrie Hates Pink - Peppermint candy white chocolate creme with white pepper.  The other 55 in the middle are unique as their name implies with chocolates called Bacon & Egg, Mac n Cheese, and PB & Jam just to name a few. The website does a great job of explaining what is in each one but in a short, concise description that works well. The combinations sound amazing, and I, for one, can’t wait until they come into Ann Arbor sometime this summer.  

Bon Bon Bon is a local company that started in Hamtramck, opened a shop in Detroit (only open on Saturdays) and is set to open their tiny store in Ann Arbor.  Check out this article from mlive.com from May 30, 2015 that tells all about Bon Bon Bon's business: http://www.mlive.com/business/detroit/index.ssf/2015/05/hamtramcks_bon_bon_bon_expandi.html#incart_river.

And if you’re interested, Vanity Fair said, “Crazy unique packaging and flavors only a really stoned Willie Wonka could dream up.”  If that’s not a reason to try their chocolates, I don’t know what is. 

There’s an App for That

 If you are like me then keeping up with a diet or exercising daily does not last long. As a full time student,  working two jobs it’s hard to keep track of what you eat but that all changed when I got a new app called MyFitnessPal. With MyFitnessPal I can keep track of what I eat. With over 5,000,000 foods and as well as several restaurants in their database I can quickly add what I have eaten and allows me to keep track of my daily calorie intake. I don’t have to worry about reading labels or remembering to write down and count the calories, I can easily go to the food tab and enter anything from a Jimmy John turkey tom sub to an Oreo Blizzard. The labels can bog you down, so now when I enter a fast food restaurant I already know what my better choices are. It takes the thought process out of the equation. Not only does MyFitnessPal help me keep track of my calorie consumption but it also helps me to keep track of how many calories I have burned. Everyone knows that working out is always better with a friend. MyFitnessPal enables me to add as many friends as I would like. I have the control over what I decide to share with them. One of the features I really like is sharing my daily plan with my friends and hearing their feedback. It gives encouraging and sometimes discouraging feedback on my friend’s progress. At this point we can send positive messages to each other. I really like that it feels like you have a support system because your friends have the same goal as you, to start living a healthier life. Another great feature of MyFitnessPal is the built in graphs that show my daily/weekly/monthly... progress. This I find quite useful because I can see where I went off or stayed on track. Although I am pretty much at my goal weight I can see where MyFitnessPal will be a useful tool to me in the future, especially since I was able to mindlessly put on 10 pounds. I found using this app makes it much easier for me to stay on track. 

 https://www.myfitnesspal.com/

Kenshoo:Highly Successful Social Media Tools for Marketing

Kenshoo: Highly Successful Social Media Tools for Marketing

 Kenshoo is a global company that has a reputation for being first-to-market in key areas of digital marketing technology.  They offer their clients the newest cutting edge social media marketing tools and strategies.  The companies mission is to empower every marketer in the world with technology to build brands and generate demand across all media. 

Global Leader in Agile Marketing

While working with over half of the Fortune 50 companies in over 190 countries, Kenshoo has helped business optimize their marketing strategies.  They have an impressive client list which includes Expedia, Facebook, Havas Digital, Tesco, Travelocity, Walgreens, Sears, Starcom MediaVest Group, Zappos, and Resolution Media. The company has won numerous awards and were listed by Forbes Magazine as one of 15 Social Media Companies to Watch in 2015. 

Industry Innovators of Social Media Marketing

Kenshoo has always been on the cutting edge of new social media marketing tools.  They have developed many new programs and strategies such as Intent-Driven Audiences which is the first digital marketing platform to match consumer search activity to Facebook user profiles, improving ROI by up to 110%. They also offer Kenshoo Anywhere, Kenshoo Halogen Technology, Demand-Driven Campaigns and a host of other offerings.  

Social Media Company to Watch in 2015

Its no surprise that Kenshoo is one of the industry leaders in social media marketing campaigns.  They continue to stay with or even ahead of trends in social media.  They have countless tools to help businesses analyze data, metrics and algorithms to detect target audiences, measure performance, and help budget advertising money.  Kenshoo is a outstanding company that show how powerful social media marketing can be. 

How to Manage Your Social Side with Hootsuite

Tweeting on Twitter, posting on Facebook, sharing on Google+, checking in on FourSquare, uploading images on Instagram, posting on WordPress--anything you share online with friends and family is probably going through some social media channel.

If you’ve got social media accounts, and most of us do, you probably spend a lot of time reading and retweeting and replying. If you have several accounts, it may be difficult to keep track of all of them. It can also be time consuming to share information over several social media channels when different friends and family members use different social networking services.

That’s what applications referred to as “Social Media Management Systems” can assist with.

What is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is one of these “Social Media Management Systems,” also called a social media dashboard. It allows you to read, reply, and even schedule messages on a wide variety of social media applications. You can even monitor certain keywords and hashtags that are interesting to you.

According to 7 Reasons Why You Should Use Hootsuite, you can manage all of the following accounts with Hootsuite:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Google+ Pages (currently not personal profiles)
• Foursquare
• Myspace
• WordPress blogs
• Mixi (Japanese Social Network)
• Vimeo, via.me, reddit, StumbleUpon, Instagram, edocr, tumblr, evernote, flickr, get Satisfaction, mailchimp, slideshare, storify (via 3rd party apps)
• Many more!

I know that’s more social accounts than I have. I have five, which is still enough to be overwhelming to manage at times.

How about you? How many of the above accounts do you use? Is it hard to keep track of them all?

Why Hootsuite?

Above is a screenshot of my Hootsuite dashboard.

On one tab of my internet browser I can read and retweet on Twitter, post and reply on Facebook, and schedule messages for both--usually announcements of new posts from my blog. Mostly, I use Hootsuite for scheduling and posting messages so I can send them to Twitter and Facebook simultaneously, especially on the Hootsuite app from my smartphone.

Hootsuite is regularly improving their app, most recently their UI. Hootsuite is now much easier to read and more image friendly than it was before. They also recently improved posting to both Twitter and Facebook from Hootsuite, making images and links more friendly on both channels.

Free Account vs. Paid Account

Hootsuite is free to use for up to 3 social media accounts. To monitor more than that costs $9.99/month.

For personal use, tracking 3 services with a free Hootsuite account would probably be enough. That’s what I currently use, the free version. However, for businesses, the paid account to watch more channels, and schedule posts for those channels, is a great benefit.

Summary

There are a number of applications you can use to monitor your social media channels. I use Hootsuite because I find it to be a useful, friendly, and free way to manage my social accounts.

If you would like more information, you can also check out 7 Reasons NOT to Use Hootsuite, which also has some interesting social management alternatives to Hootsuite.

PATREON Patron Crowdfunding: THE MORE THE MONEY-ER

With the 10 year anniversary of the video sharing site YouTube, comes innovation in the social media crowd funding arena. Just as YouTube opened doors for everyday people to share their ideas and sometimes gain millions of views, Patreon patron funding is paving the way for artists of all kinds to benefit from ongoing funding for their creative projects.

In contrast to the funding styles of crowdsourcing sites Kickstarter and GoFundMe, Patreon is leveraging the interest of the patron who enjoys continuous giving. Other funding sources assist the artist with gathering funds to start, tweak, or finish projects. Patreon, founded in 2013 by friends Jack Conte and Sam Yam, provides a forum for artists to present their ideas and creations while also providing access to patrons who fin their work interesting and would like to further their art endeavors by pledging amounts as low as $1 dollar on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, .This format allows the artists to create and helps them to eat too. No longer are the artists seeking funding on the Internet forced to be known as ‘starving artists’

Jack Conte’s goal stems from his experience as a successful and well-known YouTube artist who experienced success during the height of YouTube buzz. He can be seen here as part of the group Pomplamoose. The success and then eventual decline of Conte’s success on YouTube directed his attention to the arena of crowdsourcing to continue his creative work. He found that artist didn’t just need a one-time fix of funds, but to be seen as legitimate creators of relevant art, in all forms. He shared his insights (some harsh language) in an interview that expresses his excitement for the opportunity to look at art as a legitimate craft that still has usefulness. The move of art has truly has become mobile. Patreon is offering an alternative to artists being made to sign away their creative an in most ways financial freedom just to make what they believe in an  think people will also enjoy.

Android M: The Newest in Android Technology

Android M plans to offer scores of subtle improvements that promise to make using Android 6.0 a whole lot better. It’s evolutionary, not revolutionary. This newest update promises to have more substance than flash. It also plans to improve the user experience in every way.

One feature that Android M is bringing to its users is Android Pay. This tool provides a way to instantly pay for stuff not only in actual stores, but also inside mobile apps on all android phones. 

This app will be pre-installed on phones running on Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile service. There are over 700,000 stores that will be able to accept this form of pay.

Another feature that this operating system will offer is Fingerprint Support. This will allow users to unlock devices, make play store purchases, and verify an Android Pay purchase just by touching your finger to the hardware reader.

Android M will also put Google Now everywhere in Android phones. With a long-press of the home button inside almost any app, a user can receive contextual recommendations or assistance for whatever the device is being used for. Google Now will be able to look information for about a restaurant or even a recipe.

People can also expect longer battery life and faster charging with this new update. The M release will also have Android phones adopting a USB-C connector. Google is working hard with manufacturers to adopt the new cord standard, which is what will attribute to boost battery life and faster charging.

With this update, users will also have greater control over permissions. Google says the new model will let developers create more malleable permissions for users. It will be a more seamless app install process.

So two big questions users have are, what does M stand for and when can we expect these new phones? Google won’t say, but hopefully we will know soon!

Look for the Android M phones later this year!

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/google-officially-announces-android-m-latest-os/