A visualization of the time people spent (in minutes) on social networking sites during the month of January 2012.
Time spent (in minutes)
Facebook: 405
Pinterest/Tumblr: 89
Twitter: 21
LinkedIn: 17
MySpace: 8
Google+: 3
Google+ comes in at 3 minutes, nearly a third of MySpace’s command. Will Google+ ever catch up to Facebook? Or perhaps we should ask, will Google+ ever catch up to MySpace??
Data source: comScore.
5 psychology techniques to get more commerce from your commerce
There’s a great article posted September 21 on Social Commerce Today that reverse-engineers another article’s tips for making smarter, less impulsive buying decisions. The reverse of this is 5 techniques to get your buyers to buy quicker and more often. Pretty handy!
Infographic! Another great one from GetSatisfaction.
Google Plus is the Social Backbone (and Facebook is not)
This is a very interesting article from O’Reilly’s Edd Dumbill on why Google is the only real candidate to deliver a universal social backbone.
Bloomspot has solved merchants’ biggest problem: profitability!
Plus, it involves nice rewards for customers. So can everyone be happy now?
Bloomspot’s new program, called Bloomspot PRIME, was developed to track customer spending beyond the initial voucher. It also serves a tool to incentivize members to buy more from its merchants. For each additional dollar spent, Bloomspot rewards the customer with 20% in Bloomspot credit. Sweet!
Apparently, this is working quite well as you can see in this anonymized merchant dashboard Bloomspot sent me today:
When customers are rewarded and their purchases are tracked, we would expect more profits for merchants. Okay, so not all merchants are created equal, but it comes back to the point I keep harping on: the key for merchants is to turn new customers into repeat customers by being AWESOME.
On average, Bloomspot members are now spending 2.6 times more than the certificate. For restaurants, that’s about $90 above the certificate, with tips around 20%. For spas and salons, average member spends a whopping $139 above the certificate, tipping around 20%.
Bloomspot’s demographic is reportedly more educated (over 75% hold college degrees, compared with less than 50% for both Groupon and LivingSocial) and more affluent (over twice as many with household income over $100k as Groupon and LivingSocial—source: RapLeaf). Plus the average pricepoint of Bloomspot deals is above $75, over double that of other sites.
With all that in mind, I see good things ahead for Bloomspot. What member doesn’t love rewards? And what business doesn’t love better ROI?
Groupon And Living Social Are “Gorillas Among Ants” via @alleyinsider
I’d love to see what’s really happening down there among those “ants”. Who’s really in third place?
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-daily-deals-sites-unique-visitors-groupon-livingsocial-competitors-2011-6#ixzz1PCV9SVqG
![“It’s simple… [Social] shares drive sales!” via @socialtimes. See article: http://socialtimes.com/social-commerce-infographic_b62963](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llglid7MjZ1qg1oj8o1_1280.jpg)
“It’s simple… [Social] shares drive sales!” via @socialtimes. See article: http://socialtimes.com/social-commerce-infographic_b62963
Know your demographics. Infographic via @AdAge.
Infographic!
2010 was a banner year for e-commerce plus we gained f-, m-, and s-commerce. (Infographic via @marsattacks)
Yelp. Love it or Hate it?
I have a love-hate relationship with Yelp. But I have a feeling I am not the only one.
There are many reasons to love Yelp. How else can I find a good taco joint with legitimate reviews near the very spot where I am sitting at my desk? And there are many reasons to dislike Yelp, especially for small businesses where every review counts. Remember the old saying: a hater will tell 10 people they hate something, while a lover will sit silently by.
This is nothing new. But what is new is a trick I recently discovered — a new use for Yelp that has me loving it more and more.
Let’s say you have an idea for a new business, a hair salon. But you plan to offer something slightly different, maybe a focus on blow drying (blowouts). The single best way to research your brand new business idea, from choosing locations to pricing to handling customer service to making your clients feel 100 times better than when they walked in the door, is to read Yelp reviews on other similar businesses. It is pure gold, my fellow marketers/friends.
You will learn so much from this exercise that it will set you up for success. Try it and let me know how it goes.
I think you’re gonna love it!
