Julia Rosien Forms Social Media Consultancy

October 25, 2010  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Social Media on October 26, 2010

Julia Rosien has left eco-friendly bedding vendor Natura World to form SocialNorth.com, a  social media optimization consultancy for the home furnishings industry.

During her two-year tenure with Natura World, Rosien launched three Web sites that saw unprecedented traffic growth and brand awareness for the company. She also put Natura on Facebook and Twitter, where the company has thousands of followers on each site. She also leveraged an extensive network of independent and mom bloggers who shared their experiences with the company on their blogs and all their individual social networks.
 
With SocialNorth.com, Rosien will consult on companies' online efforts to:
* Show companies where they're losing traffic to competitors and point them to the biggest wins right out of the gate.
* Launch social media platforms based on keyword research and search engine optimization best practices.
* Offer training sessions to bring expertise in-house so social media and SEO wins continue into the future.
* Share linking strategies, content generation and keyword research that optimize findability online, now and in the future.

Rosien believes success for companies happens when they invest in developing content, smart web strategies and growing online communities.
 
"Yamaha said it best in an online conversation with someone from their community--If you're going to get naked, you better be buff," she said. "There are so many people claiming to be social media experts because they've mastered Facebook or Twitter, but they really don't have the experience or track record of success. Sitting at home in your pj's twittering does not always translate into a strategic, workable plan."
 
At Natura World, Rosien's Safe Sleep viral marketing campaign saw Natura's online traffic to Natura increase by 75 percent; and page views by 180 percent. Facebook traffic alone swelled by 1000 percent.
 
Rosien said companies seek to use social media to reduce their marketing budgets by getting involved at a grassroots level and growing a community of believers that shares a brand.

"Creating an online community is like going to a gym--you aren't going to see results if you only visit once a month, but if you're there every day, things start to happen," she said. "And going every day takes strategy, discipline and the right person leading the charge."
 
Prior to joining Natura, Rosien began her career as a freelance journalist, contributing to national publications such as The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun and Women's Health Magazine. She served as the senior editor (and managed a stable of 75 freelancers) for the second largest pregnancy magazine in the U.S. before it closed its doors in 2006. From there she took on a team of travel writers and pioneered the online space for social networking opportunities. She quickly saw quantifiable results that can be difficult to collect in the traditional marketing world.
 
Rosien managed a community that saw more than 2 million visitors monthly. She saw all manners of behavior online--some of it not very attractive--and learned the how to navigate through the social networking landscape long before the rest of the world realized its existence.
 
Rosien gives Natura full kudos for pioneering social media for the bedding industry.

"When I was hired, no one else in the industry was doing it, and Ralph Rossdeutscher created the position for me," she said. "Ralph took a big risk that social media was going to take off (this was only 2009, remember) and they reaped the rewards of being the first--and I believe, most powerful--out of the gate."
 
Rosien is a regular speaker at industry events, a member of the Better Sleep Council and a vice president for WithIt.