My first entry is well worth the time to read it. In fact I’m going to buy the full copy ($2.99) as a reference throughout the year

_____________

15 MARKETING & BUSINESS TRENDS IN 2013 THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR BUSINESS

Every year Rohit Bhargava, marketing expert and Amazon best selling author of Likeonomics,  publishes a trend report with the 15 biggest trends that will affect marketing and business for the coming year. He uses a good process to come up with them and I think they are important insights.

You can purchase the book here. ($2.99) Note: It is an affiliate link. I set it up expressly to test the process. So if someone does buy the book using the link, I stand to gain about 12 cents.

____________

8 INSIGHTFUL MARKETING PREDICTIONS FOR 2013 AND BEYOND

HubSpot has compiled some of their “most insightful predictions — backed by several industry experts and thought leaders — into our new guide, 20 Marketing Trends and Predictions for 2013 & Beyond. ”  But before you can download the 20 Trends, they want you to read the teaser blog post with 8 of them. Maybe they ran out of large marketing funnels and they can only fit 8 in the small one? Regardless, with thought leaders like David Meerman Scott weighing in, this is some serious and solid content – or it wouldn’t be listed here, right? Right.

Read the blog post>>

Across he events landscape “platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have changed everything. Social ads allow event planners to effortlessly target a niche audience, and response websites, social backchannels and on-demand, online web conferencing (and social monitoring) have completely transformed the modern business conference, both pre- and post-event.

This infographic takes a closer look at how technology is changing events.

http://t.co/wCl2OJDQ...)…

See on www.mediabistro.com

This report reveals insights such as:

• What’s driving the continued growth of social media?
• How is consumer usage of social media evolving?
• How is social media impacting marketing?
• Who is using Pinterest?

See on www.scoop.it

 A survey of 600 small business owners across the United States indicates that 90% are actively engaged in social networking sites and 74% perceive social networking as valuable — if not more valuable — than networking in-person.

See on socialmediatoday.com

If you are planning a new marketing strategy for your business and you have no idea how to start or what path to follow that will be successful and cost effective, you should go for the social media marketing.

See on socialmediatoday.com

Many social media marketers struggle with making the transaction all the way from a top-of-the-funnel activity, like social media marketing, to revenue recognition.

In social media, the metrics of what matters and of what you can measure is different than traditional web analytics. Johnathan Green explains a straightforward and effective apprach.

See on sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com

The team behind Outlook.com revealed in a tweet that one million people signed up for the new email service in just six hours.
Microsoft unveiled its Hotmail replacement Tuesday at noon Eastern, and by dinnertime it had cracked seven digits.

See on mashable.com

A new study by Get Satisfaction validates what my real-world business experience has told me all along: make sure your web site is worthy before you drive traffic to it. Often my initial advice to a company wanting to launch their social media presence is STOP!  Don’t jump in without some solid business goals, and more importantly, GET YOUR COMPANY WEB SITE IN ORDER FIRST.  Perhaps it’s best summed up with this quote from the findings:

“Consumers don’t want brand relationships to be a part of their open social networks; instead, they want company Websites to be more like their experiences with open social networks.”

Have you performed a web site check up on your web site to see how it stacks up today’s expectations for social business?  If you haven’t touched your web site in several years, it’s time for an evaluation and an update (and I’d love to help you with that).

The survey gathered responses from 1,897 qualified consumers who actively use the Internet and represent adults from all age, socio-economic and geographic groups in the U.S.

The full article on www.techjournal.org contains a link to the full survey results. on