• Facebook often has more than 750 million photos uploaded to its site in a single weekend. [TechCrunch]
• Twitter sees about 170 million tweets each day, and 1.25 percent of those are linked to a photo sharing service. That equals more than 2 million daily tweets that include pictures. [Sysomos]
• More than 3,500 images are uploaded to Flickr each minute. [Search Engine Journal]
• Mid-2011, Instagram hit a big milestone after only nine months in existence: 5 million users. The site and app are now seeing 1.3 million photos uploaded each day — a rate of 15 photos per second. [TechCrunch]

Recognizing the importance of these numbers, marketers are eagerly seeking ways to capitalize on their audience’s obvious fondness for photo-sharing.  Resulting campaigns like this one from Tiffany’s, aim to use photos to encourage engagement with the brand.  I predict campaigns like these will continue to blossom. What do you think?

Be sure to stay tuned for my next post, in which I’ll share tips for creating marketing strategies that engage your audience using photo-sharing social networking sites.

Follow me on Instagram to see just how much I love photo-sharing!

• There are about 328 million wireless connections in the U.S.
• There are about 312 million people in the U.S.

There are more wireless devices than people.

That’s right. There are more wireless devices than people. When you consider the opportunities for brands to have a presence on smartphones and tablets, there is no turning back: mobile marketing is here to stay.

Luckily, the mobile marketing industry is so expansive that there’s something to suit every brand’s targets and goals. Chances are, just one or a few of these approaches could translate into valuable results:

• Location-Based Services (LBS): From publishing “check-ins” to friends’ news feeds to getting more traffic looking for good deals, tools like Gowalla and Foursquare have made it easier than ever for brands to get their feet in the mobile marketing door.
• Applications: There’s a wealth of possibility in creating smartphone applications or display ads for those apps. Not only will that extend your brand to the functional mobile space, it may help keep happy customers with an easy-to-access tool.
• Mobile-Optimized Websites: Hopefully, if a user clicks on a display ad within an app, they’ll be directed to a mobile website, but that’s sadly not always the case. Having a site that is optimized for mobile devices can provide the consumer a more satisfying mobile experience.
• Augmented Reality: If this isn’t the wave of the marketing future, I don’t know what is. Read up on AR if you haven’t already. Some cool things are coming our way.
• QR Codes: There are so many uses that I just can’t stop raving about them.

The possibilities don’t stop there. There’s still mobile gaming, SMS marketing and more, so keep your eyes peeled for this 2012 trend. After all, big things are coming on small screens.

Source: Linkedin.com

With more than 135 million members in over 200 countries and territories, LinkedIn has to be constantly evolving – but how can it increase sales leads or help a business find a great vendor or partner? It’s easy… just pay attention to its key components:

Top Headlines. Look here for articles that are relevant to your industry and the economy in general. I’m constantly sharing articles that are featured in the “Top Headlines” area of the site. The articles are worth reading and give you a good reason to follow up with leads by sending articles relevant to them or their business.

Updates. Take a look at this area. It lets you know who’s made a move, if your contacts are linking up with people who could be valuable to you, or if they’ve written something interesting. I’ve found that tracking “Updates” gives me something I can always use to start a conversation.

People You May Know. Go on, do a little stalking. Connect with anyone who shares a mutual contact. Just explain why you are connecting without sounding like a sales pitch. There’s a good chance they’ll want to be connected to find out why you may be valuable to them and see what your contact list looks like.

Groups You May Like. Join as many LinkedIn groups as you can to find out which provide the best information and go from there. You’ll find interesting discussions specific to your industry, making it really easy to stay up to date on industry trends, particularly if you sign up for the email threads that share discussions on topics specific to each group.

Companies You May Want to Follow. This area lists several of my competitors, but again, is a good place to stay up to date.  You need to know what competitors are doing, and following this section of the site makes it easy to keep track of innovation in your industry.

More. This little drop down is oh so helpful, offering even more resources on LinkedIn. The answers function allows you to ask and answer popular questions similar to Quora. You could even become an expert in a certain area and be featured on LinkedIn’s home page. The Amazon Reading List allows you to enter and search books helpful to your industry. There’s also a place to search and add industry events, and research polls on various topics.

While I’ve been a member of LinkedIn for a few years, I’ve just recently come to appreciate its power. I like knowing what I can about someone before I meet in a professional setting and this intelligence is equally beneficial for businesses reaching out to make sales connections or find a good partner. So before you decide LinkedIn is just a place to post your resume, take an afternoon to spend some time updating your profile and researching the site’s tools, and don’t forget to download the app to your smart phone. As you’ll see, its basic components can increase your industry knowledge and networkability.

If you have not already, we suggest you read up on SOPA so you can follow this newsworthy bill’s progress. Here are a few articles that explain more about SOPA, break down the potential effects, and share both sides of the soap:

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/17/technology/sopa_explained/index.htm

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57329001-281/how-sopa-would-affect-you-faq/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/technology/web-protests-piracy-bill-and-2-key-senators-change-course.html?_r=1&hp

http://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/headlines/20120118-wikipedia-google-protest-u.s.-antipiracy-proposals.ece

What are your thoughts about SOPA? Are you in favor or against?

If you segment your audience, you'll find a suite of sweet benefits.

In marketing, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t do any favors for a company’s audience. While it sounds counterintuitive, when we try to reach everyone, we usually reach no one. But, when brands create content that aligns specifically with a person’s wants, needs and preferences, that’s the marketer’s sweet spot. That spot houses a suite of sweet benefits, such as helping brands:

• Understand their audience on a closer basis and develop better relationships with them.
• Anticipate different needs and incorporate those concerns in marketing efforts.
• Maximize ROI and budget efficiently by only using marketing tactics that reach the intended audience.
• Promote brand loyalty by positioning the company as one that cares for an audience’s specific needs.

To find your sweet spot, separate your target audiences into manageable, reachable pieces. In the industry, we call this audience segmentation, and it has proved sweetly fruitful for big and small brands alike.

For a quick refresher on segmentation, here are a few tips. Overall, keep in mind that you want to learn as much as you can about them, because information about your audience’s demographics, ages, behaviors, incomes and geography can play a large role in how messages are created, delivered and received.

• Message Creation: By categorizing their audience, brands can tweak their messaging to attract a very specific group. In other words, focus on aspects of the company that are most likely to resonate with your target audience.
• Message Delivery: Consumers do not all follow the same magazines, radio stations, social media channels or websites. Because different audiences subscribe to different mediums, companies should deliver their messaging through the right channels to attract the right people.
• Message Reception: Some audiences find some marketing tactics humorous, while others find them dull. The key to market segmentation is anticipating the reception and rethinking your messages to cater to that anticipated reception.

Many big brands have successfully segmented their audiences with the strong results to show for it. Most notable is Old Spice, whose Old Spice Man fell in a spot so sweet it inspired a viral following.

The key take-away is to craft content with your audience in mind, and you’ll find your sweet spot. Craft one-size-fits-all content, and you’ll be sourly disappointed.

What’s your marketing sweet spot?