10 Reasons Why Brands Should Be on Snapchat

There is no denying Snapchat’s growth. Since November, the messaging app has gained another billion views bringing it to seven billion views, Business Insider reports. The number of views has been growing exponentially for the brand, which has tripled its views nearly six months earlier. It is still just shy of Facebook’s 8 billion video views a day, but with Snapchat’s growth points that they will be passing Facebook very soon. As 2016 gets underway, it is clear that Snapchat is one of the social apps that marketers should have their brands on.

So what should you know about Snapchat before diving in?

1. Everything is short-lived; Snaps and stories only last one day on the app. Snaps are individual pictures or 10 second videos; while Stories are the compilation of the day’s stories. The ephemeral nature of Snapchat means users are continually checking in on their favorite channels and users. Users create about 800 million snaps and videos per day.

2. More than 60% of smartphone users, between 13-34 years old, use Snapchat. 37% of Snapchatters are between the ages of 18-24 years old.

3. There are at least 200 million people using Snapchat; about 100 million users are snapping daily. They are highly engaged and they are staying with the product. Snapchat thrives on engaging their users through user created content that never stays the same.

4. Snapchat Discover allows brands to get in on creating their own content. Like Stories, Discover allows brands access to 24 hour storytelling for their company. Snapchat’s layout of vertical videos and full screen layout are conducive to easy viewership. Brands like Food Network, Refinery 29, IGN and Wall Street Journal are just a few brands that are taking advantage of Snapchat Discovery.

5. Snapchat Live is a unique feature that curates user created content. Users who are at the same event location have an opportunity for their snaps to become part of the Snapchat Live story. In Brixton, London fans spontaneously gathered to celebrate David Bowie, and the snaps and videos were curated as a tribute which runs through the end of January 12th.

6. Snapchat counts video views that are less than a second; however, the user has to proactively play the video for the tally to count. Other social media giant, Facebook considers three seconds to be a view, but their videos will automatically begin to play as the user scrolls past. According to Business Insider, 90% of all brand advertisers are repeat advertisers. While it is still difficult to really monetize the ROI with Snapchat, the audience keeps bringing advertisers back. Why? It is the “in” place to be. As we said before, Snapchat tripled its video views per day in six months, and added another million views per day over the holiday period.

7. Lenses and filters are two ways that marketers can reach users on user created content. Lens is a type of feature that allows users to change their appearance. Brands can sponsor the 24-hour lens, like Beats did on Black Friday. A lens will cost a brand about $500,000-750,000. Filters (geofilters) are tied to a location or event and allow users to put a sticker, frame or drawing that overlays their snap. McDonald’s created one of the first sponsored filters which allowed users to add a burger and fries to their snap whenever they were near a McDonald’s location.

8. Snapchat is growing quickly outside the US. In the UK, Snapchat users account for 25% of smartphone users and in Norway 50% of smartphone users. The app itself is also expanding offices to the UK and taking along some powerful social media presences with them. The former director of agency partnership at Facebook in the UK, Claire Valoti, and former members of Twitter, AOL and Buzzfeed have, joined the Snapchat UK offices.

9. Snapchat is building an application programming interface (API), according to Digiday. This will allow advertisers more precision and better execution with their marketing campaigns. While the API maybe a few months off still, Snapchat has made advertising growth their focus for 2016. “Snapchat’s ambition going into 2016 is to have many more opportunities for e-commerce on the platform and other stuff that is more about building audiences,” said an ad agency executive with direct knowledge of the plans.

10. The numbers do not lie. Snapchat has set themselves up to be one of the strongest contenders in 2016. Their quick growth and their highly engaged users make Snapchat a great place for marketers to stretch their creative muscles, and tap into that hard to reach 13 to 34 year old market. With their promises of stronger e-commerce opportunities for the upcoming year, Snapchat is where marketers want to be. 

Source :http://bit.ly/1OxpDio

5 Biggest Ways Social Media Will Change in 2016

Here's how to stay one step ahead of the social curve.

Death and taxes used to be the only two things we could all rely on. Now we can add a third: that social media will roll out all sorts of weird changes. Entrepreneurs will then scratch their heads, wonder what this is all about, and finally jump on the bandwagon and try to catch up.

So before you scratch your heads, here's a heads-up. Five major changes are currently rumbling away in social media, and they're going to break out in 2016. You need to be ready for them.

1. Live Streaming Goes Mainstream

Live streaming is already out, but it's going to get bigger. Within months of its launch, Twitter's Periscope service already had 15 million registered users who could employ their smartphones to share instant content. Big companies have been quick to spot the opportunity. In July 2015, GE's Droneweek exercise took viewers into the company's factories and showed audiences, including the engineering graduates the company needs to attract, how jet engines, wind turbines, and locomotives are made and tested. The company got to tell its story through a week of live, authentic content.

Other kinds of content that companies can broadcast live include conferences, interviews, customer support, product demonstrations, and special offers. For small businesses, the select audiences who tune in are the most loyal customers. They're the people you want to hug closest, and live streaming brings them about as close as they can get. If you're not broadcasting live yet, expect to push up a Periscope in 2016.

2. On-Platform Content Opens Up

In 2015, Facebook snatched distribution from established content creators. Instead of publishers bringing Facebook users to their own websites, Facebook's Instant Articles program let publishers distribute their content on the social media platform. The content would load up to 10 times faster, more people would see it, and the publisher could earn advertising revenue. But the users would stay on Facebook, reducing the publisher's own brand value.

Despite the risks, 350 publications have now signed up, including The New York Times, BuzzFeed, and Huffington Post. More than 100 publications distribute their content through Instant Articles every day.

The program started on iPhones and expanded to Android devices at the end of 2015. It's still limited to select publishers, but expect registration to roll out more broadly--and force all of us to compare the benefits of showing our content on Facebook with the advantages of bringing users to our webpages.

3. Smarter Use of Snapchat

Of all the head-scratching moves in social media, few have created a greater risk of a bald spot than the rise of Snapchat. You spend time and money creating unique content for a targeted audience only to see that content disappear as soon as it's used. It's the exact opposite of the quick burst and slow burn that a good YouTube video or blog post can achieve.

And yet, companies as big as McDonald's, Acura, and Heineken have all waded in, keen to connect with the platform's young audience--and scared to be left behind.

The quality of the content has improved over the past couple of years, and it's going to get better. There are enough good case studies available now for anyone to be able churn out effective Snapchat content quickly and easily. Now that businesses no longer need to scratch their heads for good ideas, expect companies with youthful customers to start churning out disposable content.

4. Video Will Continue to Beat Static Content

At the start of 2015, the news was that Facebook users were posting 75 percent more videos than they were the previous year. In the U.S., it was closer to 100 percent, and Facebook was pushing 360 percent more video content into people's news feeds. Between April and November 2015, Facebook doubled average daily video views from four billion to eight billion. Even though the company counts a three-second glimpse as a "view," that's still a huge amount of video watching, and it shows how keen Mark Zuckerberg is to eat YouTube's lunch.

Those figures are only going to grow. Facebook has already made clear that it prefers video content to link posts and even images, so to build any kind of successful social media campaign, you will need to pull out a video camera and get shooting this year.

5. Virtual Reality Content Will Make Its First Appearance

When Facebook bought Oculus Rift for $2 billion in 2014, even the most savvy social media watchers were left bemused. But the idea is starting to become clear. Just as video is a more engaging form of content than still imagery, so virtual reality will be the next and most engaging step forward for content. The New York Times has already started creating virtual reality content that works with Google's Cardboard virtual reality viewer, and Paul McCartney invited a VR firm to film one of his concerts. It's still early days for virtual reality, but as we approach the end of the year, expect to see more moves toward a new kind of engaging content--and start scratching your head for a way to use it yourself.

Source :  http://bit.ly/1Q64UH5

FIVE RULES FOR CONTENT MARKETERS IN 2016

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: 2016 planning. With the New Year around the corner, we know content marketers are looking for insights and trends that will shape the year ahead and help their content stand out.

This morning, we released findings from one of the industry’s largest and broadest global surveys of consumer views on digital content. We surveyed more than 12,000 consumers across six countries to get a deeper understanding of evolving consumer expectations and how they are fueling marketers’ challenge. The report, titled “State of Content: Rules of Engagement for 2016” sheds light on five rules for content marketers to follow in optimizing engagement with their target audiences.

Design for the Multiscreen Reality

Consumers report using five different devices and, on average, 83 percent use 2.23 devices at the same time. While the majority of consumers report feeling good about it (81 percent entertained, 80 percent connected, 76 percent productive), nearly half (47 percent) say they are distracted. As attention spans shrink, good design and optimization are paramount. Consumers ranked display (65 percent) as the most important aspect when it comes to content experience in their personal life, and 54 percent listed overall good design, such as appealing layout and photography as important. Content marketers can’t attempt to “get away with” a one-size-fits all approach to content distribution: content must be well-designed and optimized for each viewing device.

Don’t Fall Victim to #TLDR (Too Long, Didn’t Read)

Consumers report lower patience for sub-par content experiences – with length a key factor. Nearly 9 out of 10 digital device users would switch devices or stop viewing content altogether if it fails to meet their quality, length and formatting expectations. Sixty seven percent of consumers would stop engaging if content is too long, and 79 percent would do the same if the content doesn’t display well on their device. Marketers need to deliver content in the right format, get to the point and optimize or consumers might say #unsubscribe.

Humor Makes Brands More Relatable

Seventy percent of global consumers agree that humor makes companies more relatable, but just 14 percent rate company-created content as entertaining. Globally, “making people laugh” was identified as the top personal motivator for sharing content. Content marketers should work to create authentic activations that entertain to help drive brand engagement.

In Our Relationships We Trust

In an era of high skepticism, authenticity and trust are critical. Consumers are more likely to engage with content they trust, but many are highly skeptical of most content they view online: 50 percent of consumers question whether negative comments or reviews have been removed, 49 percent wonder if an author was paid or incented to write a positive review, and 48 percent question whether a news article is biased. However, consumer trust in content increases as their relationship with the source grows stronger. Only 23 percent of consumers trust content from companies whose products they don’t buy, but if the source is a company from whom they do purchase products and have a relationship, that number nearly doubles to 43 percent. Brands need to work on building trusted relationships with their audience, which includes disclosing any endorsements, sponsorships and affiliations.

Don’t Show Up Uninvited

The majority of consumers understand the value of predictive recommendations, with 73 percent noting they are willing to share at least one piece of information about themselves and 71 percent reporting they are open to predictive recommendations from brands based on past behavior. Among consumers not willing to share their information, 40 percent believe companies could do something to ease their concern and 25 percent suggested “asking permission to access data” would make them more comfortable. This maps back to trust; consumers are most comfortable sharing information with brands they trust.

In addition to these insights shaping content marketing in 2016, the study also unveiled interesting findings about online engagement and behavior. For instance, there’s a rising fear of digital footprints. Twenty-six percent of U.S. consumers have cleared their browser history to hide content they viewed from a friend or loved one, and 17 percent have hid or embellished the truth about the content they regularly consume.

Source : http://adobe.ly/1OYCQGA

16 content marketing resolutions for 2016

Though some have embraced "anti-resolutions," many still make resolutions and goals about their lifestyles, habits, personal outlooks and more. 

Here are 16 resolutions to live by this year:

1. Produce higher quality content. Bad content is the nemesis of content marketing. We need to produce high quality content to capture our audience, otherwise we will lose them in an increasingly cluttered media space—especially with recent updates to Google algorithms and the rise in ad blockers.

2. Use mobile responsive email marketing. Mobile use will continue to dominate in 2016. Litmusreported that in June 2015 desktop email represented 22 percent of all email opened, webmail ranked in at 29 percent and mobile was up to 54 percent. It’s time to make sure your emails are mobile responsive in order to give your users the best possible experience. Without it, you risk losing their attention.

3. Live where your audience is. With so many channels available to us for content distribution, it’s easy to lose focus and want to be everywhere. Instead, we must concentrate on where our audience is. 

Conduct research to collect insight on which channels your target customer spent the most time using in 2015. Was is Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? Snapchat? Your company blog? Maybe a combination? What about email? What are the projections for 2016? Find out where your content will gain the most traction and be there.

4. Repurpose your stuff. Strong content takes time to create, so don’t let it go to waste after one use. Much of the content your team produces is recyclable. 

Take the time to break it down into pieces that can be used across various channels and on different occasions.

5. Leave the corporate speak out of it. A jargon-filled corporate blog will hinder the development of your brand. Your audience is bombarded with messages every day, to make sure yours have the most impact, leave out the corporate speak.

6. Flex your social media muscle. Make sure you are consistent in providing your audience with interesting updates, photos, videos, quick facts, etc. Don’t forget to work on being social. 

The beauty of these social channels is that you can engage with your audience and learn more about them. This contributes to your bottom line, and builds goodwill towards your organization.

7. Create internal ambassadors. Your people are your most valuable assets. 

Actively promoting your brand and engaging employees through internal channels can be extremely effective. Your employees believe in your organization, and thanks to social media, their reach and amplification potential is greater than ever. Plus, the messages they share with their networks can be more effective than more stream-lined marketing messages.

8. Stop using content marketing buzzwords. For an emerging field, content marketing has created an embarrassing number of buzzwords. 

In a January 2015 Contently article, Joe Lazaukas predicted 10 terms that would be overused in the next year, which include “storyscaping” and “culture of content.” We could certainly add others for 2016, but in the interest of demystifying content marketing for our clients and partners, tone it down.

9. Increase content team collaboration. Effective teamwork is vital to content marketing success. 

Whether it’s brainstorming, production, or process, your content team needs to run like a machine. A good way to increase collaboration is to hold structured meetings for different purposes—creative sessions, working meetings, or administrative gatherings. Make sure all team members come prepared in order to increase efficiency.

10. Develop a content strategy. Research from the Content Marketing Institute shows that content marketers with a written strategy are more effective, but only 27 percent of B2C and 48 percent of B2B marketers have one. 

A strategy will serve to guide all of your content marketing efforts. It will also allow you to define what success looks like and determine what you need to do to achieve it.

11. Mix up your content types and formats. Look past the traditional article and experiment with video, e-books, white papers and webinars to spice up your content roster.

12. Post visual content on social. We are more attracted to posts with photos, videos and infographics because the brain processes visual content faster. Visual content also generates more engagement on social media, which leads to increased traffic and conversion rates.

13. Measure your efforts. All too often, measurement is overlooked by content marketers. This year, make it a priority to define what success looks like. 

What are your goals? How will you measure them? This will allow you to gauge the impact of your content marketing efforts on audience building, lead generation, sales and brand awareness.

14. Get a content marketing platform. You may have been putting this off because of the research it takes to find the right one for your organization, but 2016 is the year to invest in the right content marketing tool. 

A platform that fits your needs will optimize all of your content marketing efforts and save your team time and money. Here is an awesome list of tools grouped by purpose. It’s a great place to start.

15. Integrate your content marketing efforts. Great content can come from the cool things your organization is doing, many of which might stem from your other marketing and PR efforts. 

Events, ad campaigns, media pitches, fundraisers and employee engagement initiatives can all be great story opportunities. Your new content strategy (see No. 10) should be integrated with your overall communications strategy to help identify great stories derived from other tactics.

16. Contribute to a content marketing culture. Parts of your organization may not be on the content marketing bandwagon yet. Education is crucial to helping people understand what content marketing is and why it is so powerful. Make the case for content marketing in your organization; use success stories from others to back you up

Source : http://bit.ly/1ndGpw7

5 TRENDS THAT WILL CHANGE HOW COMPANIES USE SOCIAL MEDIA IN 2016

SA LOOK AHEAD AT THE SOCIAL TRENDS

THAT ARE FAST RESHAPING HOW COMPANIES DO BUSINESS.

There are now more than 2 billion active social media users worldwide, and that sum is growing at a brisk clip of 25% each year. Businesses haven't failed to noticed the runaway expansion of social media. Nine out of 10 U.S. companies are now active on social networks. The same overwhelming percentage of those are reporting seeing increased exposure as a result, and more than half say their social media efforts are boosting sales.

So what’s in store for 2016? Here’s a look at five trends that appear set to change how businesses use social media in the year ahead.

1. SOCIAL NETWORKS STORM THE WORKPLACE

For years now, we’ve been promised that a new generation of internal social networks—for use within companies by employees—will put a swift death to email. No more hunting through your inbox for information. No more endless reply-all threads from hell. And yet email has lumbered on.

But maybe not for long. Slack has proven a game-changer. Its intuitive interface, built around themed chat rooms and searchable archives, has propelled it to more than 1.25 million active business users in just two years' time, from the team at NASA to the team at your local coffee shop. And Slack already has a sizable cohort of competitors going after a piece of the pie.

Meanwhile, Facebook at Work is currently in trial mode with select companies, and itmay soon be opened up to general use in the coming year as a freemium tool. Considering that much of the world is already on Facebook, expect adoption to soar once Facebook at Work finally becomes available.

2. COMPANIES TURN TO EMPLOYEES FOR AMPLIFICATION

Nearly 80% of businesses now have a dedicated social media team. But many still struggle to reach an audience. 2016 will see companies turn increasingly to an underused resource in the effort to get the word out: their own employees. Employee social advocacy programs, which encourage staff to share updates about the business on their own social media accounts, have grown by 191% since 2013 and are due to take off in the year ahead.

When done right, the payoff can be impressive; companies not only expand their social media reach dramatically, they also get measurably better results. Content shared by employees, by one recent measure, gets eight times more engagement than content shared by brand channels. A new generation of tools to facilitate employee sharing  should help this approach go mainstream in 2016.

3. COMPANIES WADE INTO SOCIAL MESSAGING

Here’s an eye-opener: There are nearly 4 billion global active users of messaging apps, from WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to WeChat and Kik. In fact, the top five apps in the world in terms of frequency of use are all messaging apps. Users are popping them open more often than even Facebook or Instagram.

What does this mean for companies?

So far, not much. Messaging remains largely in the murky realm that's come to be known as "dark social." Right now,

 it’s kind of a mystery as to what type of content is being shared among messaging app users and how that affects web traffic and "conversions." Intrepid brands from Hellman’s to Absolut to HBO—are testing the waters, but by and large messaging’s huge potential remains untapped.

Still, 2016 may well be the year that analytics and insights become more readily available, allowing companies to develop full-fledged strategies around social messaging. All the major social platforms now have messaging components, and it’s only a matter of time before they figure out how to make that data available to businesses for marketing purposes.

In the meantime, messaging is already emerging as a key channel for one-on-one social customer service. Twitter lifted its 140-character limit and follow requirements on direct messages earlier this year with customer support in mind, and Facebook Messenger has been busy piloting customer service features of its own

4. SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING HITS ITS STRIDE

Haven’t noticed the exponential increase in ads on your social media feeds? That probably means they’re working. In contrast to old-fashioned banner ads, the new generation of "native" social media ads like sponsored posts on Facebook and Instagram and promoted tweets on Twitter look and act a lot like normal updates from friends and followers. They’re also targeted with increasing precision. Advertisers are now able to drill down not just by age and gender, but by interests, location, company affiliation, role, and more. So the ads you get are probably the ones you actually want to see.

For all those reasons, companies ramped up social media advertising in 2015, with spending increasing 33.5% to nearly $24 billion—a figure that's all the more impressive, because just a few years ago that number was $0.

Expect to see those trends continue. By 2017, social media ads may account for a full 16% of all digital ad spend globally. Fueling the growth is a host of new tools that let small businesses design and pay for social media ads in a few clicks, simplifying a process that was once the exclusive domain of high-priced media buyers.

5. SOCIAL VIDEO EATS THE WORLD

In case you missed it, social video is exploding. Last year, Facebook more than doubled its daily video views to 8 billion, reportedly overtaking YouTube. Twitter launched native video of its own in 2015, while Snapchat now reports 6 billion daily video views in its own right. In total, adult users now consume a total of 66 minutes of online video each and every day.

Expect that total to climb to lofty new heights in 2016. Facebook is preparing to roll out features like Suggested Videos and maybe even a dedicated video feed, andSnapchat Stories are growing ever more popular and feature-rich. Little wonder that70% of companies now say video is the most effective tool in their online marketing belts, and two out of three businesses expect it to dominate their strategy going forward.

Despite these stats, many companies are still reluctant to get into the social video game for one reason: The cost of professionally shot video can be prohibitively expensive. But alternatives are multiplying. Shorter formats, from eight-second Vines to 15-second Instagram videos, not to mention streaming video like Periscope and Meerkat, offer a hassle-free entrance into the arena. Meanwhile, crowdsourcing campaigns and tools are gaining popularity as a way for companies to create and share video content.

The biggest trend of all for 2016, however, hardly requires a crystal ball to see. Around the world, social media is quickly becoming standard operating procedure at companies. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other networks have fundamentally changed how companies reach and interact with customers, offer products and services, communicate with employees, and—in a nutshell—do business. And that wave hasn’t even begun to crest.

Source : http://bit.ly/1RRrJOU

How Video Can Increase Your Site’s Visibility on Search Engines

An increased amount of video content has been one of the most noticeable online trends of recent times. Vido now accounts for more than 60 percent of all online traffic, and that number is expected to rise to 80 percent over the next five years, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index.

In addition to offering the benefit of retention of information, video can also improve a company’s search engine optimisation. It should, therefore, come as little surprise that businesses have responded, with research showing that the use of online video in marketing has doubled over the last year.

So how exactly can you effectively include video content

 in your search marketing?

1. Get the Content Right

You could hire the best SEO company in the world, but if the actual content of your videos is poor, that part of your search marketing strategy is doomed to fail. For this reason, producing quality content should always come before employing any SEO tactics to boost search rankings.Video content should aim to solve problems or provide new information; it also should be interesting, entertaining and, ideally, interactive. Based on attention span statistics released by Statistic Brain, videos should also be short, as the average human attention span now stands at just eight seconds.

2. Host Your Videos on YouTube

For SEO purposes, videos should be hosted on YouTube rather than on your own site for three main reasons. First, it will reduce page load times, which is important given that Google’s algorithms take page performance into account. Second, a study by Wistia found that more than 90 percent of video thumbnails displayed in Google search results were hosted on YouTube, suggesting strong algorithm bias towards the video hosting site. And finally, although many don’t think of it as being one, YouTube itself is a search engine–the second largest in the world–which means it will give you access to a huge potential audience if video optimisation is done correctly.

3. Label Videos and Provide Backlinks

While video content cannot be read by search engine algorithms in quite the same way as text-based content, you can still utilise your existing SEO keyword strategy when it comes to naming videos, providing descriptions and tags for them, and so on. Think carefully about the labels you give your videos. Meanwhile, if you are hosting videos on YouTube, it is important to include backlinks to your website, as some viewers will find the videos through searching YouTube itself, or through social media shares.

4. Provide a Transcript

Wherever possible and appropriate, place a transcript into the HTML of the page where your video is embedded. Transcripts of videos can be enormously beneficial to your SEO strategy, offering visitors an option to read during times when they are unable to watch videos, while also providing search engines with keyword rich content to crawl and index. Moreover, a transcript can be used as a starting point to expand further on the information in a video, effectively making the video and its transcript an introduction to longer, more detailed written content.

Source : http://bit.ly/1Z5cvb5

May I have your attention ?

Sign-up for daily updates directly in you email, no adds.

The Real Unicorns Are Female Angel Investors

Despite the attention over the past year, the lack of diversity in tech — both in race and gender — has not markedly changed. Only 3 percent of tech CEOs are women, and just 15 percent of startups have at least one female founder.

Most agree that something needs to be done, but much of the attention is misplaced into a caricature. You see the issue raised on SNL and the other late-night shows — and then there is the hyperbole that penetrates into pop culture (see HBO’s Silicon Valley).

To be fair, programs have popped up to teach women how to code, while others drive awareness of the developer career path for adolescent teen girls. Even some VCs have developed funds for women or minority-owned startups — Golden Seeds and 500 Startups among them.

What’s missing in these solutions? The role of women as angel investors — not just founders or developers.

Women make up just 4 percent of venture capital partners. And though the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Venture Research said there are more than 50,000 female angel investors, my experience from raising $1.2 million in seed funding in Chicago suggests otherwise. I sought a female angel — but could not find her. I asked all of the contacts I met for a recommendation. They all said, “I’ll think about it,” but never got back to me. I do have one female investor, who I am thankful for, but even she backed us alongside her husband.

To get more women in tech today, we need women investors.

Women investors are important because they signal to women You belong here. In a study co-authored by MIT economist Esther Duflo, she saw that an increased presence and visibility of female politicians in local government raises the academic performance and career aspirations of young women in India. “[MM1] We think this is due to a role-model effect: Seeing women in charge persuaded parents and teens that women can run things, and increased their ambitions,” said Duflo, a co-founder of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.

To get more women in tech today, we need women investors — and we need them early in the process. That means female angel investors.

Progress is being made. Over the past decade, women have begun taking more leadership roles in business. As a result, women are excelling financially. The number of wealthy women in the U.S. is growing twice as fast as the number of wealthy men. And by the next generation (or perhaps sooner), more families will be supported by woman than men.

But more wealth will not automatically translate to more angel investors. Women tend to be more conservative investors that may even lack confidence, a critical element in becoming an angel.

We haven’t yet tapped into that next wave of female angels.

That’s why groups like 37 Angels andBroadway Angels — groups of women angel investors who fund early stage startups regardless of the founder’s gender — are critical. 37 Angels, for example, requires its members to be active investors, making at least one $25,000 investment each year from the 35 to 50 companies it finalizes as candidates each year.

But as great as those networks are, they don’t do much to drive awareness of angel investing and teach women to make the leap from investing in stocks and mutual funds to investing in early stage startups. The Pipeline Fellowship is one group that is trying to make a difference with a six-month angel investing bootcamp. And in four years, Pipeline boasts more than 100 graduates — it’s a start, but not nearly enough to make a dent in the deficit of women angel investors.

We haven’t yet tapped into that next wave of female angels — the ones currently succeeding in Corporate America. If that happened, we would see more female founders.

Source : http://tcrn.ch/1FbJpRW