Sarah Worsham

There is undoubtably a firehose of data in Twitter’s constantly updating stream of information.  When you connect to people in your target audience, you can learn a lot about their wants and needs, as well as build direct relationships with them.  But Twitter’s data can also be used to collect targeted information that then can be analyzed for actionable insights.  Actionable insights are key because without them, you just have interesting information.  In this slide deck, Richard Baxter walks us through how to use Twitter’s search function filtering into a Google spreadsheet for constantly updating, targeted information about your key audiences. Fascinating.

Social Media can be a very powerful marketing tool, and can be both measured and tied to business ROI.  It all starts with setting the proper expectations and objectives at the beginning.  Asking what you want to accomplish with social media will help you come up with tactics which execute those objectives.  Objectives also drive KPIs (key performance indicators), which will help you figure out how you can measure the success of your endeavors.

The first thing to do when establishing a social media strategy with real business outcomes is to set objectives.

These objectives go back to the question of why your business is turning to social media in the first place. Do you want to establish a cheaper customer service outlet? Increase sales on your website? Improve brand awareness by integrating yourself into your local community? All of these objectives can be achieved via social media – they just have to be articulated first. — How To Create A Social Media Strategy That Makes Sense For Your Bottom Line by Lauren Dugan

As more and more people move to using debit or credit cards almost entirely for payments, and with the proliferation of smartphones, it makes sense that mobile payments should gain traction.  Having a point of sale system with a connection to a credit card company can be expensive, but by using a device like Square, anyone can take a mobile payment where-ever they are.  This makes it easier for anyone to sell their products or services, anywhere they want.

Though the market is growing more slowly than previously projected, an eMarketer report predicts that mobile payments in the United States will break the $1 billion barrier this year and then hit $58 billion by 2017.

The eMarketer study defines such payments as “transactions for goods or services made by scanning, tapping, swiping or checking in with a mobile phone at the point of sale.” They differ from mobile commerce, which is defined as purchasing items on a mobile device. The researcher predicts mobile commerce sales will hit $38.4 billion this year. — Report: Mobile Payments to Top $1 Billion in 2013 by Todd Wasserman