I just made my album. I did my best. And I uploaded the video just to YouTube. That was all.
—Park Jae-sang, better known by his stage name PSY i
… it’s that anyone with a web connection can start a global conversation. Yes, it helps to be famous in real life. But the rise of social networks has leveled the playing field, allowing unknowns to command audiences rivaling those of real-world leaders, even if by accident.
—The 30 Most Influential People on the Internet, TIME ii
What impact have social media and networking tools had on exporting? They are redefining the way we connect with people and how we innovate and conduct business across the world. Anyone with an Internet connection can start a global conversation. Social should be a business enabler. Using blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook , YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+ to globally establish and build your brand on the Internet is a great way for customers to find you online—so that it doesn’t have to work the other way around. Once that happens, you can open the online door to export your goods to a worldwide customer base. You’ll see how here.
The Big Shift
Only a decade ago, brick-and-mortar retail operations, such as specialty bakeries, dry cleaners, and businesses displaying their newest fashions in store windows, hummed along nicely based on a local community of loyal customers. When the customers fell short, the business owner ramped up his marketing efforts by way of telephone solicitations, direct-mail pieces, cross-promoted coupons, a big display ad in a telephone book, billboards, or in-store banners to get the word out to the neighborhood that the shop was not only still open for business but also had some very cool things that they had just gotten in for sale. That marketing effort, considered a staple back then, always involved the same customer base: a local one. The business owner had a single-minded view of the possibilities of where his customers could come from, and he didn’t have the means to go beyond those places to reach them. He also didn’t have the time nor the means to make a change that might lead to a brighter future.
Fast forward to now, when companies and individuals are making the big shift away from the old, entrenched way of doing things by offering goods and services to a new export market-driven way of creating growth by developing a digital presence. This digital presence has the potential to reach more than three billion people and save—across all businesses that export—thousands of dollars in the costs of printing, real estate, education, distribution, human capital, and customer acquisitions. Further, when Alphabet Inc. launches its much anticipated balloons, referred to as Project Loon, into the stratosphere in such parts of the world as Indonesia and Sri Lanka, an additional four billion people, who had little or no Internet access, will have it. iii
The need for all businesses to have a digital presence is here to stay and will only continue to evolve and grow in new ways. Individuals and businesses who fail to adapt and make the big shift will fall to the wayside and become irrelevant. Those who embrace the shift, leverage it, and discipline themselves to stay one step ahead of technology will allow every aspect of their business to prosper. The digital world represents one of the greatest challenges and opportunities facing individuals and companies today.
Note
Think of the last time you were at a formal business gathering and a discussion came up about Facebook or LinkedIn. Did everyone jump in to talk about it? Those who don’t are either shy or probably won’t be part of tomorrow’s workforce. Will that be you?
Thanks to digital tools and resources, anything—from a book, to a watch, to a political campaign—can be launched, produced, or exported worldwide fairly cheaply. More and more companies are therefore using the Internet, particularly social media platforms, to enhance the way their business is established, discovered, and operated outside their physical boundaries and, as a result, many are growing by leaps and bounds. After all, more than 43 percent of the world’s population is online. iv The same folks who have a big online voice are redesigning how their teams work, reassessing how to best serve their customers—no matter where they come from—and changing the very nature of their business.
What will your customers want tomorrow? Where will they be located? Provided you are curious and have the drive, the Internet allows you to find new customers, create the products they want, and export to them.
The Art of Getting Online Attention: Finding Digital Export Success
How do you make a digital dent in the online universe? Not everyone is as lucky as PSY, who had a music video in 2012 that exceeded one billion views on YouTube. Or, take Katy Perry, who has the largest Twitter following in the world with more than 82 million followers. v Perry outpaces any pop star or person (including the president of the United States) on the social network. Getting online attention (usually) requires not only one single act of greatness but rather thousands of attempts at greatness spread across many online platforms over a protracted period of time—that’s how you capture attention and develop a following. There is not a one-size-fits-all digital strategy. Succeeding in the digital world requires hard work, discipline, organizational skills, something remarkable to talk about, and a long-term view.
What’s digital-export success ? It’s people worldwide finding you and opening their wallets to buy something from you, and you fulfilling their requests profitably. To be found, you must participate and be active on as many of the top online platforms as possible. To have customers open their wallets requires developing a relationship with them, garnering their trust, and offering products they want. That causes people to take action. Don’t think for a minute you can foster online success with a single stunning Instagram platform. It’s a start but must be supported with a Twitter, Facebook , LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+ presence. Putting all these social platforms to work in concert creates a winning online strategy, provided you stick to one topic or theme you are knowledgeable about. Think TOMS, Dell, and Eli Lilly—all good examples of companies utilizing social platforms with a unified marketing message, and oftentimes associating their brands with a noble cause. vi
The goal is to have a holistic or big-picture view of what you are trying to accomplish with your export business and make sure the right messages get in front of the right people at the right time. The beauty with this approach to online marketing is that any person at any age now has the capacity to create content, be consistent, control messaging, engage people’s hearts and minds to build a brand, integrate multiple platforms, and measure results—all things that are central to online success.
Tip
If you sell kiwifruit, for example, your goal is to get as many people who need kiwifruit to buy kiwifruit. And the biggest challenge is to reach people who don’t yet know they need kiwifruit. That’s where online platforms can serve as a door-opener to the world, offering you the most potential for global growth.
PSY, of course, is a rarity. He came out of nowhere with his YouTube video sensation. After being propelled to global stardom, he must now harness the attention and energy of Internet users worldwide, sustain the momentum—even raise the bar—and turn his stunning one-hit wonder into a profitable enterprise that supports his goals and values in life. It took Madonna decades to reach her pinnacle of global superstar success. Had she had the luxury of the web at hand when she started out, she could have shortened the discovery of her talent to that of PSY’s or Perry’s. When it comes to stardom, the Internet gives equal access to everyone—of all ages, backgrounds, and ethnic nationalities—and can make success happen overnight, provided all the social platforms are put to good use.
Caution
Don’t underestimate the power of the unexpected. Clayton Christensen, one of the most influential business theorists of the last fifty years, coined the expression “disruptive innovation.” vii An example of disruptive innovation is Coursera, which offers high-quality courses online for anyone to take for free, which is beginning to impact the education industry and could demolish the status quo. Other examples are: Veristride ( http://www.veristride.com ), Kolibree ( http://www.kolibree.com ), and Oculus ( https://www.oculus.com/en-us/ )—each having the potential to dramatically disrupt existing businesses and industries. Disruptive innovation can blindside your business and tear down whole industries. Be on alert for every new online tool that comes your way, keep an open mind to it, and master it to strengthen your export business.
The Internet: The Social Capital of the Universe
Which social media platforms are best for getting your message across and motivating your audience? All of them. However, if one platform is more widely used in a foreign market, such as WeChat in China ( http://www.wechat.com/en/ ) or Russia-based VK (originally VKontakte), the largest European online social networking service ( http://vk.com/club200 ), that’s where you should take your messaging. Tell your remarkable story across multiple social media channels so that you can gain followers, retain those followers, and move a social media conversation to e-mail, the telephone, or direct conversation for further business development. Your first step, if you haven’t done so already, is to establish accounts on several different social media platforms.
When you set up accounts on different social media platforms, ensure that each reflects your brand (whether it’s you or a company) and be consistent when you complete your profile on each platform. Use a real name when possible to ensure transparency; add a nice photo of yourself (or logo of your company if that’s your brand); select a gorgeous background design that’s in line with your profile; include a URL link to your most popular online location (Web site, blog, or LinkedIn); and declare yourself the go-to person on a particular subject matter.
In my case, each of my accounts—on LinkedIn , Facebook , Twitter—shows a photo of me, says that I am the president of GlobeTrade.com, features a background design image that reflects my experience doing business around the world, includes a link to my Web site, and indicates my passion for helping entrepreneurs and small businesses go global. That way, people clearly understand what I do, expect me to stay focused in that area of expertise, and, thus, know who to turn to when they need a resource or help on going global. This clarity of purpose also helps for SEO purposes.
For example, if you run a bakery that makes exotic cakes, you should state on your Twitter account, for example, that you’re the CEO and include your photo or your company’s logo, have a beautiful background design of one of your most popular cakes, include a short description explaining what your bakery does, include a link to your Web site, and share that same information across all your social platforms. If you are a mechanical engineer who designs, develops, builds, and tests airplane engines, insert your photo, show a cool engine you built as a background design, write a nifty bio about your talent, include a link to your Web site or blog, and start sharing success stories about your engineering capabilities. How else will Boeing, Airbus, or Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China find you? This same practice holds true for building working relationships with journalists and pitching stories.
Become a Digital-Export Rock Star
As you establish your online-platform accounts, stick with using the same profile information about yourself, as mentioned earlier. Consistency matters. Focus on this question: where do you want to go with your export business? Take your messaging to where social platforms are used the most in overseas markets.
Let’s take a look at the top social platforms on the web—which I’ll call the magnificent seven—and see how each is vital to setting the world stage for becoming a digital-export rock star.
Considered the world’s largest professional network, LinkedIn ( http://www.linkedin.com ), recently acquired by Microsoft, is a social Web site service used for professional networking and showcasing business talent. As of 2016, LinkedIn had more than four hundred million networked business-oriented members in more than two hundred countries and territories and in twenty-four languages around the world. The membership grows by approximately two new members every second.
As of 2016, the countries with the most LinkedIn users were:
United States: one-hundred twenty-four million members
India: thirty-four million members
Brazil: twenty-three million members
United Kingdom: twenty million members
China: sixteen million members
Canada: twelve million members
France: eleven million members
Spain: eight million members
Mexico: eight million members
Italy: seven million members
Tip
Map out where the LinkedIn users are in your export strategy. If you plan to export to Norway and find there are hardly any LinkedIn members there, that will indicate a piece of your online export pie might not work! Go elsewhere with your online social strategy—try China, for example, which is one of the fastest-growing countries using LinkedIn.
LinkedIn makes it easy to connect and stay connected with everybody all over the world—old friends, colleagues, suppliers, vendors, employees, independent contractors, classmates, people you meet during international travels—in order to spread the word that you are looking for a serious business opportunity. Their main app has gone through a complete overhaul, with new features such as: Home, Me, Messaging, My Network and Search—all aimed at making communication faster, more casual and expressive. It also offers multiple ways to keep in touch with your global base—from your own LinkedIn feed, to posts and comments of groups that you join, to direct messaging and group conversations. It enables powerful introductions to valuable new contacts and even allows you to give and receive endorsements. If you use it in a meaningful way, you can channel the activity to benefit your export business.
LinkedIn allows you to set up a company page that is static until you change it. Visitors can click on tabs to access the sections of your company page they are most interested in. Think of it as another mini Web site—furthering building your brand. It helps others learn more about your company’s job opportunities and products and services.
LinkedIn also supports the formation of special interest groups. The largest groups are related to finding employment; however, all sorts of professional and career issues are central to LinkedIn’s focus. Joining a group is a great way to make connections peer to peer, share tips and experiences, ask and answer questions, and be on the lookout for customers and potential partnerships worldwide. Choose a group that is active and is central to your export business. A couple of groups that I belong to:
China Trade Group
Exporting Guide Group (MOOD)
Global Intellectual Property & Business Lawyers
Global Sourcing
Global Trade Central
Go Global—Internationalization Forum
Import/Export Global Trading Group
International Business
International Entrepreneur Club
International Trade Network
Trade Professional.Net
WAIB: Women of Academy of International Business
Web Globalization
Women Entrepreneurs GROW Global
World Entrepreneurship Forum
Tip
If you can’t find a group that interests you, start your own! It’s a great way to declare your authority and develop a following. Whether through your own individual LinkedIn account, a company page, or a group membership, maintain a daily and consistent presence.
Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com ) is known to be one of the fastest-growing and most popular web activities in the world. As such, it has been able to reach over half the U.S. population in 2016. viii Facebook was founded in 2004 with the mission “to make the world more open and connected.” People use Facebook to connect with friends and family, to comment on and like activities, to discover new things in the world, to stay relevant, to pass time, and to share and express what matters to them. With Facebook’s Messenger, a mobile instant messaging app, and its acquisition of the largest chat-based service in the world, WhatsApp, our ability to control the way we interact with people and businesses globally just got better.
As of December 2015, Facebook had more than 1.59 billion active monthly users, of which approximately 83.6 percent resided outside the United States and Canada. ix As a whole, 21 percent of the entire Internet world was using Facebook as of November 2015. x So, Facebook alone offers more than billion and a half users a month that your export business can reach. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has noted that “the next billion users will come from regions outside North America. xi
Tip
Facebook is the force to reckon with in North America, but there are other social networks that play in the same space, including Xing ( http://www.xing.com/en ) in Germany; Renren ( http://www.renren-inc.com/en/ ) in China; Twoo ( http://www.twoo.com ) in Belgium; and MyMFB ( http://www.mymfb.com ) in Pakistan, a Muslim alternative to Facebook that is becoming popular in other parts of the world. It can’t hurt to look into these and, when you are ready, become a part of them through an intermediary who knows the lay of the land and the language.
YouTube
YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com ) was founded in 2005 with the sole intent of helping people broadcast themselves or their business. YouTube is an online place to share videos with friends, family, colleagues, and the world. By subscribing to a channel, you can connect with an individual or a company you are interested in and keep up to date on their activities.
YouTube Viewership
Now owned by Google, YouTube has more than one billion users, with 80 percent of its traffic coming from outside the United States. YouTube is localized in more than 70 countries and across seventy-six different languages.
Thousands of channels earn money from their YouTube videos by becoming a YouTube partner. When you become a YouTube partner, you can display ads on your videos, and when people click on those ads, you earn a percentage of revenue.
There is a bit of competition to YouTube. French company Dailymotion ( http://www.dailymotion.com/fr , or in the United States, http://www.dailymotion.com/us ) also lets users share videos. It competes against YouTube. Dailymotion is owned by Vivendi. Other newcomers are: Vessel ( http://www.vessel.com ) and Amazon Video Shorts ( http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=9013971011 ).
Tip
To earn money on your videos, you must set up an AdSense account ( http://www.google.com/adsense ).
Twitter ( http://www.twitter.com ), established in 2006, is an online social networking and microblogging service comprising a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What’s important to you? You can answer that question via your phone or right on the web with an instant text-based message of no more than 140 characters.
Tip
Link your Twitter profile to your other social media accounts and apply the use of hashtags to better organize and cement brand loyalty. A hashtag is a # symbol used before a relevant keyword or phrase with no spaces to make up a Tweet. It’s used to categorize Tweets and help them show up more easily in a Twitter search. For example, “#globalsmallbiz” is one I use often in my Tweets; it relates to expanding globally. If people do a search on “#globalsmallbiz,” my Tweets will show up.
Twitter Users
Twitter has 320 million monthly active users with 79 percent of the accounts located outside the United States. xii The service is available in thirty-five languages. xiii
To see who’s tweeting right now, visit A World of Tweets ( http://aworldoftweets.frogdesign.com/ ). Twitter is a great way to quickly share information and make strong global connections. Its new tab called Moments will allow you to discover the best of what’s happening on Twitter in an instant.
Instagram ( http://www.instagram.com ), established in 2010 and subsequently sold to Facebook in 2012, is a free, fast, and easy way to share your photos with friends, family, suppliers, colleagues, and prospective customers. You can snap a picture and then post to Instagram, where you can filter it several different ways to transform its look. You can easily share posts to Facebook and Twitter, too.
Instagram has more than 400 million monthly active users, with more than 75 percent living outside of the US and more than half living in Europe and Asia. xiv The fastest growing countries for Instagram use are Brazil, Japan, and Indonesia. xv Its new video app, Boomerang, lets you turn everyday moments into something fun and unexpected.
Launched in March 2010, Pinterest ( http://www.pinterest.com ) is a content-sharing service that allows members to “pin” images, videos, and other objects that interest them to their virtual pinboard. It is a tool for collecting, organizing, and sharing things you are passionate about.
Although Pinterest’s global reach is not as strong as Instagram’s, it is still a popular Web site in the United States. Pinterest has more than 100 million monthly active users. xvi
With Pinterest , you can browse other pinboards for inspiration, re-pin images to your own pinboards, and find a new and a more passionate audience to build your brand.
Google+
Established in 2011, Google+ ( https://plus.google.com ) is a social networking and identity service owned and operated by Google that gives you yet another unique way to build a social network, share information, and connect with people all over the world.
According to Business Insider, there are about 2.2 billion Google+ profiles and of these, 9 percent have any publicly posted content. xvii Your Google profile is what people find when they search your name (mine is: https://plus.google.com/+LaurelDelaney ). You can include a brief bio, picture, links to other online platforms, and so forth. It becomes your online calling card to the world.
The concept of Google+ Circles is a major benefit to using Google+. This is where you choose who you want in your contacts. Circles lets you compartmentalize and keep the silos of your life separate. You can have a friends circle, a family circle, a colleagues in Japan circle, a suppliers in Korea circle, a customers in Germany circle, and so forth. Google+ allows you to share what you want with whom you want, making the control issue a major boon to this social platform.
Another great feature of Google+ is Hangouts. As the name suggests, Hangouts provides a virtual place for you and a group of up to 150 people to hang out. Through your computer or mobile app, the group can talk and see each other. This works great for impromptu gatherings or scheduled meetings to discuss status updates from around the world.
All of these Google+ tools and resources—from the Circle, to Hangouts, to hosting virtual meetings—allow you to reach a global audience and better manage your business relationships as you grow your export business.
Digital Road Map to the World
Remember the export business plans we covered in Chapter 2? My Laurel export business plan included a section on information technology and asked you what technology you will use (order taking, mailing lists, social media, finances, or e-commerce sales) and how you will use it. Let’s take a moment to map out your social media and networking strategy. It might look like the following list, using the airplane engineer we talked about earlier as an example. Don’t forget to assign someone to champion the cause—that champion can be you.
“Facebook—post once a day”: You might post a daily photo you’ve taken of one of your most successful projects, such as a shot of the latest airplane engine you built, and include a short paragraph on why it’s unique from any others on the market.
“YouTube—feature one video every month”: An informative video that you could come up with in a month would be one that shows a complete installation of an airplane engine, where you talk about what could have gone wrong technically but didn’t because you conducted five thousand hours of research beforehand.
“Twitter—post three times a day”: In order to get three Tweets up a day, you might first tweet about your upcoming presentation on how airplane engines are developed nowadays to optimize and reduce fuel usage. Then you can tweet about a dramatic improvement on your airplane engine. Your last tweet can be about a survey that was conducted on airplane engines manufactured in China and should include a link to the survey results. Be sure to track the most talked-about stories in your industry via Moments.
“Instagram—post once a day”: A daily Instagram photo might feature an airplane engine you spotted in an open lot that was ready for the trash bin.
“Pinterest—post once a day”: A post for Pinterest might be an infographic on how a clean airplane engine performs more efficiently than a dirty one.
“Google+—post twice a day”: Post a couple of related articles each day. The first could be about airplane engines, describing the maintenance and offering the contact information for your supplier in Korea; the second could be an article about airplane engine efficiency, which you send to all of your Circles.
“Blog—post three times a week”: You might make blog entries on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday sharing your own original content on designing, developing, building, and testing airplane engines. Your blog will allow you to intersperse your posts with other articles from outside sources that support your message.
You can understand why it’s important to be passionate about what you do—because you must sustain the communications across all the social platforms for a very long time and never tire.
Tip
Posting on a blog, whether once a day or once a week, counts toward your digital road map. I’ve always felt that blogging is the real meat and potatoes of your digital marketing strategy.
Emerging Social Media Networks That Will Shake Up the World
Emerging social media networks allow you to connect with new user groups beyond the magnificent seven. Here are a few to watch. These can be good places to broaden your brand reach, test new campaigns, and develop a following before your competitors do. Add these networks to your digital road map once you get comfortable using them. Think along the lines of: What do people need to know more about your business? What would they like to know more about? How can I be helpful to them?
Snapchat
Established in 2011, SnapChat ( http://www.snapchat.com ), a video messaging application, allows its users to send self-destructing images to each other, which is unlike other social networks where what you post online stays there forever. Millennials describe Snapchat as awesome. xviii There are three key ways to communicate via Snapchat: through photos or videos, a story, and one-to-one text chatting.
Blab
Blab ( http://www.blab.com ), founded in 2012, is a world news aggregator that lets users add news from any news website and share and comment on news stories. Blab enables brands to target specific audiences. With its predictive visualization tool that highlights up-and-coming topics at any given moment, it can help companies decide which conversations they should join and which topics they should focus on.
Slack
Founded in 2009, Slack ( http://www.slack.com ), is a team-based cloud collaboration tool that provides services such as real-time messaging, archiving, and search for 21st-century teams. It offers one-on-one messaging, private groups, chat rooms , and direct messaging as well as group chats organized by topic. Everyone has a transparent view of all that’s going on.
Periscope
Periscope ( http://www.periscope.tv ), established in 2014 and bought by Twitter the following year, is a mobile app that allows users to livestream whatever is happening around them for anyone who wants to watch. Unlike YouTube where a viewing experience is passive, Periscope is active. Viewers can comment, ask questions, and heart broadcasts in real time. Even The White House is on Periscope: https://www.periscope.tv/WhiteHouse .
Wanelo
Wanelo ( http://www.wanelo.com ), launched in 2012, is a social shopping app that allows you to peruse millions of different products offered by major brands, online retailers (more than 550 thousand stores) and even independent artists. Think of it as mall-browsing, with a click. You can create wishlists, make connections, and discover what your friends are interested in.
Summary
Your social media and networking presence will allow you to broaden and deepen existing relationships, attract new prospects around the globe, build thought leadership within your industry, create strong brand awareness, and grow your business. Be open to new experiences. Once you’ve mastered the basics, you are ready to use eBay, Amazon, Etsy, CafePress, and Zazzle—and even the popular Chinese site Alibaba—as stepping stones to exporting.
Notes
Jae-sang is a South Korean singer, songwriter, rapper, dancer, and record producer who is often considered the most famous Korean in the world. Jae-sang’s hit single “Gangnam Style,” which went live on December 21, 2012, exceeded one billion views on YouTube, becoming the first—and only—video to do so. As a result of his popularity, Jae-sang was invited to perform at the White House’s Christmas concert in 2012 and at South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s inauguration ceremony in 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psy .
“If we’ve learned anything from the Dress That Broke the Internet, first posted to Tumblr by a 21-year-old singer from Scotland, it’s that anyone with a web connection can start a global conversation. Yes, it helps to be famous in real life. But the rise of social networks has leveled the playing field, allowing unknowns to command audiences rivaling those of real-world leaders, even if by accident.” ß This quote appears in the body text. –LP http://time.com/3732203/the-30-most-influential-people-on-the-internet/ .
“‘Project Loon’ Is Aloft in Sri Lanka,” accessed February 21, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/project-loon-is-aloft-in-sri-lanka-1455661492 .
“Here’s How Many Internet Users There Are,” accessed February 21, 2016, http://time.com/money/3896219/internet-users-worldwide/ .
Twitaholic: http://twitaholic.com/top100/followers .
“10 ways brands are using social media marketing for good,” accessed February 21, 2016, https://www.clickz.com/2016/01/27/10-ways-brands-are-using-social-media-marketing-for-good .
Disruptive Innovation, Clayton Christensen:
http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/ , accessed February 21, 2016.
“Facebook to reach over half the U.S. population this year,” VatorNews, accessed February 21, 2016, http://vator.tv/news/2016-02-08-facebook-to-reach-over-half-the-us-population-this-year .
Company Info | Facebook Newsroom, http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/ .
Internet User Stats For All the Americas on November 30, 2015, World Total, http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats2.htm .
“Facebook ‘internationalizes’ awards with global bracket system,” Campaign US, accessed February 21, 2016, http://www.campaignlive.com/article/facebook-internationalizes-awards-global-bracket-system/1378099 .
Company About, accessed February 21, 2016, Twitter: https://about.twitter.com/company .
Ibid.
Celebrating a Community of 400 Million, accessed February 21, 2016, http://blog.instagram.com/post/129662501137/150922-400million .
Ibid.
“Pinterest finally shares its size: 100M monthly active users and counting,” VentureBeat, accessed February 21, 2016, http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/16/pinterest-finally-shares-its-size-100m-monthly-active-users-and-counting/ .
“Google+ Active Users,” Business Insider, accessed February 21, 2016, http://www.businessinsider.com/google-active-users-2015-1?r=UK&IR=T .
“How to Use Snapchat,” The Wall Street Journal, accessed February 21, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/snapchat-101-learn-to-love-the-worlds-most-confusing-social-network-1452628322 .