Capping off 2019 with some highlights over the past year
2019 has been a busy year for the ThumbStopper family!
Over the past year, we’ve spent each day building upon our technologies to be better partners for our customers. By expanding our staff, incorporating new features into our brand manager and much more, we’ve evolved into a full-service digital marketing solution for brands and retailers.
As we enter the new year, we want to give a special thanks to all of the partners who have been with us along the way. To cap off 2019, here are five highlights from our eventful year:
Brands. Retailers. Connected
We’ve made sure that connecting to ThumbStopper is seamless for brands and retailers. This year, we added over 3,000 retailers across 20 new brands in the Automotive, Watercraft, Firearm, Farm & Garden and Retail verticals.
Afternoons are for Your Content
Over 455,000 pieces of content were published by our partners in 2019 using ThumbStopper’s Brand ManagerTM ! Among those numbers, we found that 94% of the content pushed out was published during the afternoon.
Adoption Rates are Skyrocketing
We go above and beyond to ensure brands are fully on-board our platform within 30 to 45days – from contract signing to content deployment. From there, we work with our partners to ensure a brand’s retail network maximizes its adoption rate on our platform.
This year, our staff successfully maintained an 84.6% on-board rate across all our brands within the first 90 days!
Engagement is at an All-Time High
A record 896,436 unique social media users engaged with content deployed through ThumbStopper’s Brand Manager, seeing the highest engagement in Automotive and Watercraft brands!
ThumbStopper For Bikes is Picking Up Speed
We recently launched our “ThumbStopper for Bikes” solution, a new program delivering custom-curated content to bicycle retailers’ social feeds. Since launching our program in September, we’ve on-boarded 13 retailers in the bicycle vertical and plan on switching into high gear next year!
We want to wish all of our brand and retail partners a Happy New Year as we enter 2020 and look towards building upon our success in connecting brands with our retail networks!
Featured Resources
BLOG
Lifehacks that Every Big Brand CMO Needs to See
CASE STUDY
How STIHL Canada Drove a Successful Co-Op Marketing Campaign Utilizing Marketing Technology
GUIDE
How to Get Retailers to Participate in Your Channel Marketing Program
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Key Points:
Companies should understand the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to ensure their websites are accessible.
Brands that concentrate on accessibility on social media demonstrate care for their customers and build a positive brand reputation.
Brands should always consider inclusive design, such as plain, straightforward language, in their social media posts.
Accessibility may not be a term you usually associate with the internet and social media. You might picture wheelchair ramps, directional signs in braille, or sign language interpreters at live performances. The landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 dictates the legal necessity of these and similar accommodations in public spaces. As we’ve come to rely on the internet for everything from entertainment to buying groceries, it’s become clear that the internet is now also a public space. It must be accessible to everyone. And like other applications of ADA, businesses that do not comply are liable for damages caused by inaccessibility.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are an international set of standards to provide instruction on meeting accessibility needs. It’s important for companies to understand how this applies to their websites, especially if they engage in e-commerce. In terms of social media, the requirements are less concrete. But prioritizing accessibility on your company’s social media is essential to your reputation, even if the legal requirements are uncertain. We’ll look at why it’s important to your customers, how it affects the perception of your brand, and how to make these changes efficiently.
Social Media for All
The cornerstone of accessibility is inclusive design: products or experiences that are accessible for everyone regardless of disability. The most important place where this shows up is on company websites where most users expect to also find links to the brand’s social media profiles. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of websites are not accessible, despite the fact that the application of ADA to the internet is over 20 years old. Making websites accessible is a complex process without the use of specialized software like Accessibe or EqualWeb.
Unlike websites, making sure your social media is accessible is a straightforward, ongoing process. Every social platform has been quick to release optional accessibility features. These features are important to many users even if they don’t rely on them to use social media.
Making your social presence accessible tells users that your brand cares about people, not just profits. It’s the same idea as the push for the representation of different body sizes in fashion or more expansive skin tone ranges in beauty products. Brands that meet the needs of underrepresented groups endear themselves to others as well. And while optimizing your brand website for accessibility might be a larger project you aren’t ready to tackle yet, starting with your social media pages is a great way to show customers that you’re listening to their concerns.
Making Content Accessible
Shifting to accessible content means incorporating inclusive design into your creative process. The practice varies by type of media. For platforms that have graphics or videos with captions, it means not only adjusting each component but also being mindful of how they interact with each other.
For example, YouTube’s automatically generated closed captions and subtitles are often inaccurate. It's one of many examples where the caption generation software has issues picking up strong accents and mumbled words. This could be remedied with handcrafted video transcription services. If that’s not in the budget, the video creator could add their script or transcription to the video description.
None of the technology for accessibility is perfect yet. Teaching computers to digest complex information for human understanding is difficult, and the variations in disabilities further complicate it. The majority of adjustments creators need to make revolve around helping assistive technology better understand their content. Let’s look at how to make different kinds of content accessible.
Text
Use plain language that’s easy to understand
Avoid text in all caps
Capitalize the first letter of each word in a hashtag, like #SocialMediaMarketing, a practice called camel-case
Videos
Provide descriptive captions. Instead of just displaying the words people on-screen say, explain background noises and other sounds that are relevant to the scene.
Add your own subtitles or enable auto-subtitles on the video platform of your choice
Many users find their new favorite brand through social media. When disabled people (who make up 26% of the population according to the CDC) can’t access your brand’s social posts, you miss the opportunity to connect with a demographic that’s eager to engage in online communities. On a hyper-local level, that kind of connection goes even further.
That’s why ThumbStopper exists to help brands distribute their social content to their retailer network. Retailers can connect with their local audience - with your accessible, branded content - in a more personal way. And since content goes to their page automatically once they sign up, retailers can effortlessly promote your brand online while focusing on running their business.
Companies should understand the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to ensure their websites are accessible.
Brands that concentrate on accessibility on social media demonstrate care for their customers and build a positive brand reputation.
Brands should always consider inclusive design, such as plain, straightforward language, in their social media posts.
Accessibility may not be a term you usually associate with the internet and social media. You might picture wheelchair ramps, directional signs in braille, or sign language interpreters at live performances. The landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 dictates the legal necessity of these and similar accommodations in public spaces. As we’ve come to rely on the internet for everything from entertainment to buying groceries, it’s become clear that the internet is now also a public space. It must be accessible to everyone. And like other applications of ADA, businesses that do not comply are liable for damages caused by inaccessibility.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are an international set of standards to provide instruction on meeting accessibility needs. It’s important for companies to understand how this applies to their websites, especially if they engage in e-commerce. In terms of social media, the requirements are less concrete. But prioritizing accessibility on your company’s social media is essential to your reputation, even if the legal requirements are uncertain. We’ll look at why it’s important to your customers, how it affects the perception of your brand, and how to make these changes efficiently.
Social Media for All
The cornerstone of accessibility is inclusive design: products or experiences that are accessible for everyone regardless of disability. The most important place where this shows up is on company websites where most users expect to also find links to the brand’s social media profiles. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of websites are not accessible, despite the fact that the application of ADA to the internet is over 20 years old. Making websites accessible is a complex process without the use of specialized software like Accessibe or EqualWeb.
Unlike websites, making sure your social media is accessible is a straightforward, ongoing process. Every social platform has been quick to release optional accessibility features. These features are important to many users even if they don’t rely on them to use social media.
Making your social presence accessible tells users that your brand cares about people, not just profits. It’s the same idea as the push for the representation of different body sizes in fashion or more expansive skin tone ranges in beauty products. Brands that meet the needs of underrepresented groups endear themselves to others as well. And while optimizing your brand website for accessibility might be a larger project you aren’t ready to tackle yet, starting with your social media pages is a great way to show customers that you’re listening to their concerns.
Making Content Accessible
Shifting to accessible content means incorporating inclusive design into your creative process. The practice varies by type of media. For platforms that have graphics or videos with captions, it means not only adjusting each component but also being mindful of how they interact with each other.
For example, YouTube’s automatically generated closed captions and subtitles are often inaccurate. It’s one of many examples where the caption generation software has issues picking up strong accents and mumbled words. This could be remedied with handcrafted video transcription services. If that’s not in the budget, the video creator could add their script or transcription to the video description.
None of the technology for accessibility is perfect yet. Teaching computers to digest complex information for human understanding is difficult, and the variations in disabilities further complicate it. The majority of adjustments creators need to make revolve around helping assistive technology better understand their content. Let’s look at how to make different kinds of content accessible.
Text
Use plain language that’s easy to understand
Avoid text in all caps
Capitalize the first letter of each word in a hashtag, like #SocialMediaMarketing, a practice called camel-case
Videos
Provide descriptive captions. Instead of just displaying the words people on-screen say, explain background noises and other sounds that are relevant to the scene.
Add your own subtitles or enable auto-subtitles on the video platform of your choice
Many users find their new favorite brand through social media. When disabled people (who make up 26% of the population according to the CDC) can’t access your brand’s social posts, you miss the opportunity to connect with a demographic that’s eager to engage in online communities. On a hyper-local level, that kind of connection goes even further.
That’s why ThumbStopper exists to help brands distribute their social content to their retailer network. Retailers can connect with their local audience – with your accessible, branded content – in a more personal way. And since content goes to their page automatically once they sign up, retailers can effortlessly promote your brand online while focusing on running their business.
