There are some new numbers on mobile out from Google that are pretty compelling from a marketing perspective. 1 in 3 cellphone carrying Americans are smart phone owners. That’s nearly 70 million people (up 13% from last quarter). But what are those 70 million doing on their phones and what is the marketing potential for that group?

A recent study by Google reveals that in 2011 the opportunities marketing is high on mobile, take a look at their video that tells the tale:

Some highlights:

• 81% browse the Internet, 77% search, 68% use an app, and 48% watch videos on their smartphone.
• 90% of smartphone searches results in an action (purchasing, visiting a business, etc.)
• 79% of smartphone consumers use their phones to help with shopping, from comparing prices, finding more product info to locating a retailer

That’s tens of millions of people who are taking valuable actions related to brands because of their smartphones. Is your brand up to speed on the mobile internet? With these kind of numbers it better be, because consumers are seeing it on mobile every day, whether you’re ready or not.

If you’re already up to speed then Google has more good news for you – mobile advertising is effective, very effective:

• 82% notice mobile ads, especially mobile display ads and a third notice mobile search ads
• Half of those who see a mobile ad take action (with 49% of that group making a purchase and 35% visiting a website)

Those kinds of rates are incredible, especially when compared to the numbers associated with display ads (where for example, click-through rates are just 0.2% on average).

Is your brand taking advantage of these numbers? It’s time you go mobile and get results. MicroArts can help, drop us a line if you’d like to learn more.

[Opening paragraph data source: comScore]

Did you know that Facebook advertising is the top driver of new fans for Facebook pages and is one of the best ways to make sure existing fans see your messaging without getting lost in Facebook’s news feed filter? It’s true!

After getting to meet Xtranormal at SXSW I decided to make an Xtranormal video to explain this opportunity. I chose Xtranormal because they are famous for explaining no-brainers (like using JitterJam as part of a Social Media Media Marketing plan). Watch the video and then drop us a line if you’d like to learn more.

Here they are, in all their computer animated glory: Xtranormal on Facebook Advertising, the top driver of new fans for Facebook pages.

Data source: webtrends

As discussed previously, Facebook and Google are doing battle with each other over search. Facebook is now on par with Google for monthly visits (as shown in our friendly little graphic here) and has made plenty of headlines as it often now beats Google in terms of driving traffic to sites. Just a few days ago Facebook threw a punch at Google by unveiling a new search functionality that begins to deliver on the promise of social search as we outlined last year:

Today someone might use Google to search for a solution your company provides and see your website content well positioned within the results. They’ll click on the link and land on a landing page to learn more about how your company addresses their particular problem. But next year they might just search Facebook instead, and they’ll see that a friend of a friend had a similar need for that solution and went with Company X. This will be more valuable because they can connect directly with this friend via their friend’s connection and discover more about their personal experience with the company. They might also see a post on Company X’s Facebook page within the results discussing this particular solution, further solidifying Company X as a solutions provider candidate.

Facebook’s new search functionality begins to deliver on this scenario by leveraging their like button that they launched in April (like the one on the bottom of this post). The advent of the like button was seen as a sign that Facebook was about to open the floodgates in their war with Google. This new search functionality is the floodgates opening. Here’s how this functionality works, as described by Facebook (via Allfacebook):

“We launched the ability to see articles shared by your direct friends in the search typeahead. For instance, if your friend is on a news site and clicks ‘Like’ under one of the articles (which will then go into News Feed), when you go to search for that article on Facebook, it will [appear] in the dropdown.” Most significant is that the content displayed “is only available for articles shared by your direct friends (not globally to all users on Facebook).” Additionally, “[results are] not [shown] to you based solely on number of ‘Likes’ for the article.”

Google, not to be outdone, held a press event today about their latest effort in the search game, Google Instant. While this new functionality is important (and is actually similar to Facebook’s new search since it also instantly returns results as you type), it’s just an interface update. This announcement today certainly wasn’t an effective block of Facebook’s social search punch [nor was it necessarily meant to be]. While Google has moved forward in integrating social into search, today’s event amounts to them taking Facebook’s punch.

Google still faces a serious challenge in staving off Facebook’s social salvo: Facebook is a closed ecosystem, impenetrable to Google (except as Facebook allows), they are effectively their own “web” (also see The Great Wall of Facebook). The closed ecosystem of Facebook, combined with their massive success, is one of the reasons why Wired recently (and controversially) declared “The Web is Dead.” Clearly Facebook has changed the way the world uses the Internet and now they are rolling out a new way for us to search.

As Facebook rolls out this new search solution they will drive even more traffic to sites. Brand’s can ride this wave by embracing social search, participating in the open graph and enabling themselves to be visible in Facebook’s new social search engine. Need help doing that? Give us a call- we’d love to review your social efforts to date and a discuss how you can ride this emerging social-search wave.

South by Southwest (SXSW) is one of the largest music, film and interactive conferences in the world and it takes place every March in Austin, Texas. SXSW is a hot-spot for emerging technology (Foursquare launched there in 2009, for example) and MicroArts has teamed up with Foursquare Day (check out the press release) to propose a panel for SXSW 2011 where we’d get the opportunity to speak. Panel ideas are put to a public vote and are judged by the SXSW staff and their advisory board. We’re excited about the panel we’ve proposed, here are the details:

Foursquare Day: Realizing the Location-Based Services Revolution

Location-based services are here and are revolutionizing the way people experience the world. Events like Foursquare Day 2010 fueled the growth of this revolution, but we haven’t fully realized the future of what location-based services have to offer. See what the future holds for location-based services. Examine how Foursquare Day went from idea to grassroots international movement in 1 month and what its effects were on the growth of location-based services. Learn how to supercharge the growth of location-based services and realize their future by bringing Foursquare Day to your town or city on 4/16/11, Foursquare Day 2011.

If you’d like to vote for our panel (and we hope you do), here’s how to vote – note that voting ends Friday, August 27th!

1. Go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com
2. Click “Create an account” at the top of the page. (You are required to create an account in order to vote or comment on sessions.)
3. They will send you a confirmation email, check your email and click the link to confirm your account.
4. Go to our panel’s voting page
6. Vote by clicking on the thumbs up icon.
7. Spread the word, share this blog post!

Thanks for your support!

This month we had an interesting date on the calendar – 4/16. With 16 being the square of 4, a certain “bright-eyed” marketer realized that 4/16 could be Foursquare Day. His idea was to make 4/16 a day to celebrate and promote Foursquare- the mobile location sharing application that’s sweeping the globe. Foursquare is a mobile application that lets you know where your friends are and let your friends know where you are too. Users earn points and “badges” for using the service, making it into a game. Businesses benefit from being promoted through Foursquare location sharing and from the data Foursquare provides on service usage. The story of Foursquare’s involvement in Foursquare Day illustrates 3 important takeaways for businesses.

1. Listen: Foursquare Day wasn’t created by Foursquare, but was actually the idea of a fan who posted the concept to Foursquare’s support forums. Another fan replied a week later with another great idea – that Foursquare create a special Foursquare Day badge. That idea became the rallying point for fans to start lobbying Foursquare to officially endorse the day. Two weeks later a fan’s Tweet to Foursquare’s Twitter account resulted in Foursquare choosing to engage the community and recognize the day. By listening to what people were saying and monitoring conversations, Foursquare was able to discover a new opportunity.

2. Engage: After that fan’s tweet was posted, Foursquare engaged their fans with another Tweet, officially recognizing Foursquare Day. This single tweet ignited a firestorm around Foursquare Day and as a result, a firestorm around Foursquare. In the three weeks that followed leading up to Foursquare Day, major news organizations from CNN to The Christian Science Monitor ran stories about Foursquare Day. Foursquare continued to stoke the fire of this opportunity leading up to Foursquare Day through further communication. By engaging, Foursquare was able to help realize the full value of an opportunity that was discovered by simply listening.

3. Measure: Throughout the whole process, Foursquare and the Foursquare Day team leveraged systems that enabled them to record changes in important analytics and metrics over time. The Foursquare Day website tracked the number of participating cities and businesses. Foursquare tracked the number of people signing up for the service as Foursquare Day approached. By measuring changes in metrics over time as they engaged, Foursquare was able to discover whether or not their communications produced measurable results.

Ultimately 290 cities in 35 different countries participated and 20,000 people signed up for Foursquare in the days leading up to Foursquare day. Press coverage literally spanned the globe. Just after Foursquare Day registered users reached the one million users mark. Imagine what listening, engaging and measuring can do for you! We’d love to talk with you about it and help you power the growth of your business. Drop us a line, we’re listening.

PS: We’re very proud to say that Portsmouth, NH was the #1 city for businesses participation on Foursquare Day. Check us out on the news:

There are several ways to add more value to your Internet marketing ROI. You can create demand through services such as search engine marketing and social media marketing. You can also create more value from your existing traffic through services such as conversion rate optimization. And all of these services leave a data trail of gold—if you make the effort to mine it and if you nurture it properly. By mining your marketing database you can get even MORE value out of your current marketing through Lead Nurturing.

Lead Nurturing, defined by MarketingProfs.com as “a relationship-building approach utilizing multiple media to provide relevant information tailored to prospects while engaging in an ongoing dialog until qualified prospects are ’sales ready,’” is based on a simple principle: people who learn about your brand may not yet be ready to buy. Lead Nurturing is the process that keeps your value proposition readily accessible in the minds of your prospective customers. So, when they are ready to finally buy, you are still part of their decision, even if they first found you years ago.

Opportunities to perform Lead Nurturing are abundant, ranging from email marketing to direct mail to simply picking up the phone. Tracking Lead Nurturing activities is essential; and the tools to do so are just as abundant (HubSpot and Salesforce, to name two).

Moving forward, we will cover all this and more on an ongoing basis through this blog as part of a series. In the meantime, challenge us. Ask us questions. MicroArts offers a Facebook Application for Internet Marketing Q&A; where you can send in your question to our practice directors for further discussion. We’d love to hear from you!

It’s been quite a ride, with predictions, projections and plenty of posts, now 2009 has closed and 2010 is upon us. The flying cars aren’t quite here yet, but iPhones sure are. When you hold one in the palm of your hand it really does feel like you’re living in the future. That’s because iPhones, and mobile devices like them, are the future: They are taking over telecommunications and as a result are transforming marketing. Social networking is now mainstream and it’s likely that we have the iPhone to thank for it.

Mobiles were born to communicate. In contrast, with computer desktops communication was an afterthought. Communications tools like terminal programs for modems, email clients and web browsers were added as a standard feature in desktop operating systems (OS) only recently in their history. This reflects the inherent challenge of today’s desktop OS and explains why Google’s recently announced Chrome OS is basically just a web browser. Google has rethought the desktop because today’s desktop OS doesn’t provide the best communications experience – it just gets in the way, instead of enhancing the experience.

On the other hand, with mobiles, the addition of applications was the afterthought. Apps as part of the mobile OS wasn’t a very compelling experience until the iPhone came along. The app store model created a new paradigm and as a result mobiles can now easily adapt as new forms of communication arrive. This has set mobiles on a course to take over all forms of telecommunication- not just the telephone (which happened in 2005 in the US versus landlines), but also email, the web and social networking.

Signs of this takeover include the fact that the iPhone is now the most popular handset in the United States. That’s right, not the most popular smartphone — the most popular handset, period. Then consider the fact that Facebook is the most popular application for the iPhone and you start to see the connection between mobiles and social networking. How deep is that connection? Well, let’s compare total iPhones sold over time versus Facebook unique visits, paying special attention to Q3 2008 when the Facebook app (and App Store) were released for the iPhone:

The graph indicates a correlation starting with the Q3 2008 release of the App Store and the Facebook app for the iPhone. This correlation could be due to the rise of the Facebook app capable iPhone leading to the rise of Facebook and/or vice versa. It’s important to note that prior to Q3 2008 you could use Facebook on the iPhone through the web. However the iPhone Facebook web experience was not the same as the rich and meaningful Facebook experience that the app provides. In fact, the Facebook app is so good that some call it the most useful app for the iPhone.

This synergistically driven growth created by the iPhone and the Facebook app could be responsible for the fact that now, in 2010, social networking is mainstream. As a result, it’s now possible to make contact directly, on a one-to-one basis, through social networks and social media, through a conversation with our customers, leads and prospects, directly to their desktops and mobiles. Efficient one-to-one marketing is now a reality. The promised higher ROI over traditional one-to-many marketing is finally being realized (complete with studies showing that socially engaged brands have better financial performance).

Big brands get this — the most recent example being Pepsi announcing that it would skip super bowl ads and invest $20 million into social media marketing instead. It’s time for the rest of the marketing world to make the shift as well and complete the transformation. Investing in large ad campaigns and PR blitzes isn’t effective enough on it’s own to maximize ROI. One-to-many marketing ROI is eclipsed by the one-to-one. To paraphrase HubSpot CEO Brain Halligan: it’s the thickness of your brain that matters, not the thickness of your wallet. To market effectively in the new one-to-one market one must invest in the creative. Create content, create conversations. Use your mind and win!

MicroArts Creative Agency is ready to connect with you to launch the next generation of one-to-one marketing for your brand, contact us today!

So you’ve read our post, Three Best Practices to Optimize Blog Posts for Facebook and Twitter, and now you’re ready to share the link to your post on Twitter and Facebook. But did you know that not all days are created equal when it comes to getting the most clicks on links? If you have some content that you want to get extra attention for, or are just producing a few blog posts a week, then this is important to know! Here’s the data on when to share links in order to maximize click-through for Twitter and Facebook:

Let’s start with Facebook. A recent report published by Virtue SRM indicates that Monday through Wednesday are the optimum days to post to maximize your click-through rate (CTR) on Facebook. Thursday through Saturday were significantly lower, though interestingly Sunday stood out with a relatively high CTR.

So, as a starting point, if you have a blog post or link that you want to share and you want to ensure it gets the highest CTR then be sure to share it on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. But you should treat this only as a starting point and track your own CTR and see what days are most effective for your own Facebook presence. Ours actually has highest CTR Wednesdays through Friday with Monday and Tuesday being the low points, atleast for now. As the makeup of our Facebook network changes, so could the CTR rate change – so we will continue to test- as should you.

Now with regards to Twitter, we don’t have any Twitter-wide specific data on click-through rate but, thanks to great people like Dan Zarrella, we do have data on ReTweet rate (ReTweeting is when someone shares your Tweet with their followers). This data does provide some useful guidance towards when you should Tweet to maximize click-through rate based on two factors: the data shows what day of the week Twitter is being used most and also shows when ReTweets happen the most. From this we can infer when your Tweet is most likely to be seen by the most people and also when it has the best chance of being shared with the most people.

Based on Dan Zarella’s data it appears that Twitter is almost the opposite of Facebook: Wednesday through Fridays are top ReTweet days. Based on that a good starting point to ensure maximum CTR would be to share your links later in the week on Twitter. As before, use this data as a starting point and keep track of your own CTR information – our own data also indicates that Thursdays and Fridays have the highest CTR for us, but every network is different and will change over time. So keep testing and refining to maximize your sweet spot.

As to what time of the day is optimal, data indicates that daytime sharing on both networks, rather than early morning or sharing at night, will maximize ReTweet and click-through rates. As a starting point you might try sharing during lunch time, which some have dubbed “the new primetime” – atleast for video consumption, but it’s a useful indicator as a starting point. This is something again to test with your own network but good to keep in mind.

In sum, the best practices for when to share blog posts and links on Facebook and Twitter are: Start by sharing during lunchtime for both. Start by sharing on Facebook early in the work week. Start by sharing on Twitter later in the work week. Lastly, you should be testing your own CTR over time and adjust accordingly. Need help testing CTR or just want to ensure maximum success with your overall social media marketing efforts? Give us a call today, we’d be happy to help!

When we launched FINT, a program for businesses to get started with social networking, and the corresponding FINT 3-in-1 widget (see ours on the side of our blog!), we also launched a FINT LinkedIN group for FINTers to connect and discuss social media marketing strategy together. We hope you’ll join us in that group! Moving forward, we’ll be bringing you highlights from discussions within that group. Here we present a discussion on four best practices to market yourself within LinkedIN that was posted to the FINT – For businesses new to social networking LinkedIN group:

Question from the group:
I think Facebook and Twitter are more community based and sense people check in more frequently on these sites to see or post status updates, etc. LinkedIN appears to be more of a networking tool. Do you have any suggestions on how to strategically use each of these sites differently for a business? I could see posting the same information to each site (in my case, real estate listings), but I am trying to figure out the best use of LinkedIN for our real estate business (thinking it is to network with industry contacts such as realtor organizations, home builders, appraisers, mortgage brokers, etc.) Any ideas?

Answer to the group:
Let’s start with LinkedIN — The first thing I’d recommend doing is familiarizing yourself with the LinkedIN Learning Center – http://learn.linkedin.com/ – a great resource, especially if you are new to LinkedIN. You’ll want to use that as a guide for your experience on LinkedIN — secondly you’ll want to setup a company profile within LinkedIN – following these best practices: http://blog.linkedin.com/2008/11/17/creating-company-profiles-on-linkedin/

Now, within LinkedIN there are many different opportunities to grow your business. For now, let’s focus on four:

2. Networking, the base of LinkedIN
3. Groups (like this one)
4. LinkedIN Answers
5. Service Provider directory

1. Of course with networking the idea is simple- examine your contacts’ contacts for relevant, compelling connections. Ask for an introduction through your common contact or introduce yourself, you never know what kinds of opportunities exist within your own network’s network!

2. Groups, like this one, are also another great opportunity. As a domain expert within Real Estate you should search for LinkedIN groups that relate to your business and join them and contribute your expertise to the discussion. By contributing thoughtful and helpful comments to ongoing discussions you will establish yourself as a leader within the space and earn respect and business as a result. Speaking in general though, if there is not a group within LinkedIN that reflects your domain expertise, then you are facing a great opportunity … you could create your own discussion group and invite others to connect with you to discuss accordingly.

3. LinkedIN Answers is another great way to connect with contacts and establish yourself as a domain expert. This section of the site contains a wealth of opportunity for you as an expert to answer peoples questions within your domain *and* ask questions to experts in related domains or in other areas of business. In both cases you establish yourself within the greater community, but answering questions provides the best opportunity to gain respect and new business through LinkedIN. Further, participating in the LinkedIN Answers portion of the site can earn accolades for your LinkedIN profile that are seen by others – if your answer to a question is selected as the best answer by the question asker, your “best answer” award gets posted to your profile.

4. Finally, be sure your agents are established within the Real Estate listings in the service provider directory within LinkedIN. This again can provide access to new business because LinkedIN members can browse the directory and find service providers that are connected to their personal network, enabling people to find service providers that are recommended by their contacts, a valuable tool. As a service provider, after setting up shop within the directory, you should be sure to reach out to your network of contacts and ask for recommendations. These recommendations appear within your profile and also can help drive business and referrals to you through LinkedIN.

There are other ways to market within LinkedIN as well. Targeted advertising, for example, is one venue you can pursue. If you need help getting started within LinkedIN, or social networking in general, we urge you to get started with FINT and contact us when you’re ready to move beyond the getting started phase. Meanwhile we’ll be sharing more discussions in the future from the FINT – For businesses new to social networking LinkedIN group and we hope to see you on the group soon!

Facebook and Twitter are now taking on and taking over Google and RSS feeds as preferred methods for people to find news and information. It’s time to make sure your blog is up to speed for competing in the stream. Here are three best practices to keep in mind when sharing your blog posts via Facebook and Twitter:

Best Practice #1: Attach a hero shot

Every blog post needs a graphic, something that will help illustrate your point. When a graphic is located on a landing page MarketingSherpa calls this a hero shot, and their studies have shown that having one increases conversion rates within those pages. For blog posts the same is true – including a hero shot engages the user more effectively. In addition, using imagery within your blog will make the overall blog easier to read and digest from a user experience perspective.

When it comes to sharing your blog post on Facebook, a hero shot is vital. This is because Facebook looks for a graphic to attach to your post when you share it. Not including a hero shot means Facebook will default to something generic such as your company logo, or worse, no graphic at all. If you can leverage a hero shot that’s both illustrative to your point AND graphically compelling then you’ll get people’s attention AND increase clickthroughs.

Need some help finding the right hero shot? Here’s some tips:

• Use Flickr Advanced Search with the “Only search within Creative Commons” and “Content to use commercially” checkboxes checked.
• Use Google Advanced Image Search with the “Labeled for commercial use” filter turned on to find imagery and photos to use in your blog.

Best Practice #2: Craft a link bait headline

With almost 1,000,000 blog posts created every 24 hours your blog’s headline, along with the hero shot, is what will help you stand out amongst the competition. Make your blog headline not only memorable and keyword focused but also make it link bait. What’s link bait? Basically it’s the stuff that makes people want to share your content. Check out these excellent articles on creating headlines as link bait (that are in themselves link bait) to get started:

• 10 Sure Fire Headline Formulas That Work
• 7 Reasons Why List Posts Will Always Work
• How To Write A Killer How To Post That Gets Attention

Best Practice #3: Lead with ReTweetable copy

When sharing your post on Twitter you should avoid taking the easy road and just tweeting “New blog post: Blog title”. In some cases it’s appropriate but doing so can make your post lost in a sea of Tweets. When posting to Twitter you want to maximize your Tweet’s clickability and ReTweetability (ReTweeting is when someone shares your Tweet with their followers). One way to do this is by taking your blog post and posting it as a question to be answered.

Understand what the pain point of your audience is and how your blog post addresses it. Can you put that into the form of a question? Add that question to your blog headline and you have your Tweet. For example, consider this tweet:

“Check out our new blog post, 10 things to consider when doing BLANK: http://link.to/post”

We can make it more clickable and ReTweetable by changing it to:

“Concerned about doing BLANK? Read 10 things to consider when doing BLANK: http://link.to/post”

Finally, before you make your Tweet ensure that your Tweet is not exactly 140 characters long- you’ll want to leave enough characters for others to ReTweet (ReTweeters add RT @YOURNAME: to the beginning of a ReTweet, so you’ll need at least that many characters to ensure maximum ReTweetability). You can save the most space within your Tweets by employing a URL shortening service like http://j.mp.

By including a hero shot, Link Bait and crafting ReTweetable copy you’ll realize a higher clickthrough rate on your Facebook posts and Tweets. MicroArts employs these techniques ourselves and have experienced positive clickthrough growth as a result. If you need help getting started with social media marketing through blogging for Facebook and Twitter then connect with us today – we’ll help you grow your clickthrough rate too.