@Companies – Tweeters just aren’t that into you

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In recent marketing history every brand and their mother have been talking about using the most popular social media outlets at hand, in this case, Twitter, for promotion. Well, the companies may be tweeting, but is anyone listening? A study just came out today suggesting that companies still aren’t in on the conversation.

Now this study only considered a sample of 1,800 tweets, which you can only imagine is a fraction of the eternal chirping going on, but if we did assume that the results are a fairly accurate representation of the whole, the study concludes that brands are still having a one-way conversation.

So here’s the deal: 90% of tweets are posted by individual – or “real” – people. Of these tweets, only 12% mention a brand name. Which brand name do you think constitutes most of these shout-outs? Yup, Twitter itself. What other companies made the short list? Apple, Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Blackberry, Amazon, Facebook, Snuggie, ebay and Starbucks, in that order. Continue reading →

Riding in cars with (mobile) toys

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Over the past few years we’ve witnessed the compilation of the perfect storm: The economy is still hurting; everyone is going green; smartphone and mobile technology is growing by the minute; and the youngest generations no longer associate a sense of freedom with the reaction time of their cars, like their parents did, but instead they see freedom in the reaction time of their mobile screens.

What does it mean?

It means there’s been a paradigm shift. We’ve changed, our expected norms have changed, and the U.S. car culture has changed. Fewer and fewer younger people are driving, says a new Ad Age article that is based on data from the Department of Transportation, and they don’t really want to. While 92% of 19 year olds had a driver’s license in 1978, the number decreased to 77%  in 2008. Continue reading →

Want more business? Try an app for that.

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How did the world function before cell phones? When wireless technology didn’t exist, people were tied down to a place and a time. Before constant access spoiled the world with instant gratification, communication required patience and effort. Prior to the consumer appeal of mobile applications for entertainment, function and general amusement, businesses struggled to find a more personal way to create client relationships. Then came the app.

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Consider these numbers: 7 billion. This is the population of the world right now. And 4 billion. The number of people who owned a cell phone last year. Next is 680 million, which is the number of smartphones in the world in 2009. That’s 17 percent of all cell phones. Finally, the number that is most crucial to your company is 1 billion. This is the number of people who will own a smartphone in the next three years. Continue reading →