Yesterday I shared a social media infographic that illustrates how much information is shared across social networks in 60 seconds.  Later on I shared two photosharing infographics that provide further facts and figures as to how large photo sharing has become in the last few years.

Have you seen the most recent commercial for the Las Vegas Tourism Board?  It is hilarious!

Las Vegas has a reputation as “Sin City” where people tend to “party it up” in excess.  Bachelor parties, bachelorette parties, the only state with legalized prostitution, etc.  With 6 in every 10 U.S. mobile buyers purchasing Android or Iphones these days people might document “bad behavior” more than ever and then share it across social networks.  This could potentially hurt people’s current or future employment, relationships, etc.

With their “reputation” in mind the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has created a funny take about “social sharing.”

If you like the below videos let me know in the comments below.

To Your Success,

Dan Ross

6 out of every 10 phones being sold in the U.S. now are Android or Iphones based on recent mobile industry stats.  Each of these phones normally comes with a camera and most of them have video capability as well.  Most of these come with mandatory data plans as well.

Cell Phone Advances:

As recently as 10 years ago cell phones were used primarily for talking.  Then came the txt messaging functionality.  Then email was introduced, primarily to corporate customers via Blackberry phones.  Then cameras were integrated into phones (before they had intelligent operating systems with applications running on top of them – Think Nokia, Samsung and Motorola Razr phones.)  Today, consumers have videocamera powered smartphones that have constant internet access and have the ability to video edit or photo edit on them.

The ability for a consumer to highlight a poor or phenomenal experience with your business is greater than ever.  Now they not only share with their close family but they can also immediately share that experience (in text, photo or video format) with their 100-900 Facebook friends, their “FanPages” in the thousands, their Twitter followers in the thousands, their Instagram Followers in the thousands, their YouTube fans, etc.  Get the point?

Over the next week I’ll be sharing some great infographics highlighting just how much information is being shared by consumers these days.

Todays Social Media Infographic shows just how much information is shared amongst various social networks in 60 seconds.

In one minute alone:

1. Facebook has over 500,000 comments and over 100,000 photos uploaded to its service
2. Flickr has over 3500 photos posted per minute.
3. Twitter has over 120,000 Tweets and 1475 photos shared via 3rd party services that use their API.
4. Instagram, a fast growing photo sharing service, is already experiencing 1350 photos uploaded per minute.
5. Foursquare – Over 2000 check-ins per minute.  Can your business be found on Foursquare?
6. Yelp has over 20 new reviews and 2 photos posted every 60 seconds.  Is your business clean all the time?  Just ask Taco Bell and other restaurants that have been caught with bug or rodent problems in the last year.

Infographic by http://popcorn.ca

Source: Popcorn

To Your Success,
Dan Ross

Social media gives small businesses a chance to connect with prospective customers and increase their visibility in the community. For many small businesses, this is a rich opportunity, as you can see in the following infographic.

From the below infographic we can observe the following:

1. 9% of small business owners said a social media expert would be a useful hire; second only to a bookkeeper.
2. 61% of small businesses are using social media to attract new customers.
3. Overwhelmingly Facebook and LinkedIn appear to be helping SMBs more than Twitter when it comes to getting new sales leads, website traffic and recommendations.
4. 59% of small businesses indicated they attracted website visitors from Facebook.  LinkedIn was close behind at 55% and Twitter at 35%.
5. 62% of adult U.S. internet users watch videos on video sharing sites.

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How SMBs Are Using Social Media [ Infographic

To Your Success,

Dan Ross

I am not afraid to say I am disappointed in myself.  I enjoy a good self critique of my habits, daily activities, goals, etc.  I am not trying to destroy my confidence but rather build myself up through understanding what I am doing wrong so I can build a stronger foundation for long-term growth.

In this case I am disappointed with the amount of content I am creating for the blog.  While content seems to rarely get published to the blog, I am posting information and sharing information in droves on Twitter.

The problem with Twitter is that content FLIES BY on that site.  It is gone in a nanosecond.  It doesn’t have a shelf life.  So, if I share something that is valuable to people, only a small percentage of my Twitter followers are likely to see the content.  The content may get retweeted again and again but the traffic is going elsewhere, not to my blog, so I am essentially building out others platforms while not really creating anything of long-term substance here on the blog.

In an effort to create more content here on the blog I’ll be using various new media tools and sharing information in larger numbers here on the blog in the final quarter of the year.  Lets see how it works out

Key Business Point: I am not afraid to try new things. I am not afraid to iterate, iterate and iterate and try new tools / techniques until things work.  Are you integrating new tools / techniques into your business? Are you trying to grow your business through new channels.  Did you know that integrating five new growth elements into your business that generate 15% growth each will lead to 100% growth over time?

Below is a new media tool you might find handy called Cinchcast.  You can quickly record audio on the road and then embed that later on into your blog / website.  The content can also be shared directly from the phone application.  How could you use such a tool for you business to reach new customers or have a dialogue with existing customers?  One problem with the tool is that it is flash based so it won’t “play well” on an Iphone / Ipad and that is a HUGE problem in my opinion.  Cinchcast needs to make their player HTML5 compatible ASAP.

Another tool I decided to try was AudioBoo.  They also have an Iphone app.  Unfortunately I can’t embed individual recordings and I have to pos ANOTHER flash player with my entire playlist of recordings I’ve made.  I can only record 3 minutes at a time for free as well (5 minutes via Cinchcast for Free).  See an annoying trend amongst these technologies?

The final audio solution I’ve got here is this one.  I’ve installed the “audio player” plugin via WordPress (which powers my blog).  I recorded this audio directly into WordPress via “adding audio.”  I hope to try the WordPress Iphone app more and hopefully post multi-media content while on the road via the Iphone.  That would be a HUGE win for generating more content and getting it posted to the blog.

To your Success,

Dan Ross

Think Social Media Is A Fad? Think again!

I came across this amazing infographic yesterday and had to share it with everyone.

The social media infographic highlights tons of facts / figures from various social media websites.  Services included are:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. YouTube
4. Flickr
5. LinkedIn

To Your Success,

Dan Ross

I am a huge Instagram fan and use the service to take personal photos and also to take photos to share here on the blog.

A few weeks ago I wrote two articles:

1. 3 Tools / Resources to Download Your Instagram Photo Collection &
2. 3 Instagram Tools / Resources for WordPress Bloggers

Late last night I got a tweet from http://Followgram.me re: their new infographic they had created regarding Instagram and the growth of the service. Rather than wait around to write a fancy article I thought I would just share it with everyone as quickly as possible

A few of the notable facts in the Infographic below:

1. Instagram growth has been enormous since the service launched. Lets remember that it is an Iphone only product at this time.  An Android app is to be launched soon and that should generate the second stage of growth for the service.
2. 37% of Instagram users have never uploaded a picture <– That kind of fact reminds me of Twitter since so many users start with the service but abandon their account after trying the service out.
3. 5% of the Instagram user base has uploaded more than 50 pictures. I think Twitter is more like 5% of their user base generates 65%-70% of the content <–Random factoid I recall reading  - not researched for this article.  If you know the stat I’d greatly appreciate it if you left it in the comment section for everyone.

A few final thoughts

I am on Instagram so connect with me over there via the @BetterBizIdeas account.  I’ve “liked” over 10,000 pictures since joining the service and I share tons of useful links, photo apps and information about various Instagram partners over there.

Do yourself a favor and, if you are on Instagram, check out the http://Followgram.me service as they have tons of features like albums, an RSS feed, a personalized URL, “Follow Me” buttons like I have on the blog (bottom right).

If you like below Instagram infographic please retweet it on Twitter, + 1 it or “Like” it on Facebook.

Instagram Growth & Instagram Statistics via an Instagram Infographic by http://Followgr.am

To Your Success,

Dan Ross

Last Friday the U.S. released its employment numbers. In their numbers the government basically illustrated that the economic recovery from the 2008 financial crisis is very slow when compared to previous economic recoveries.  While big corporations are seeing their sales and profits improve workers aren’t getting hired, unemployment remains high and the average duration of unemployment continues to be at record levels. The below chart from http://BusinessInsider.com illustrates that!

Given the above observations I thought the infographic below, from http://MindFlash.com, was highly relevant. If you are a business owner I thought this infographic might provide some insights as to how you could utilize social media to screen employees. The obvious goal is to hire great employees and avoid prospects that might be problematic down the road (drug use as an obvious concern).  As an employee or jobseeker the goal is to get a job and keep a job so employees need to understand how companies are utilizing social media to screen employees.

Social Media Screening Infographic by Mindflash.com

To your success,

Dan Ross

I was surprised that my Google Adwords article was so well received with over 90 + retweets.  Clearly people are interested in Google and how companies are making money online.

In today’s article I want to share some charts / graphs that I think every business owner should know. They show how some leading technology companies make their money and how the Internet and web usage is changing very quickly, impact business owners in the process. I have provided some comments regarding each chart below.  The charts are provided by BusinessInsider.com, one of three websites I read every day. The other two would be Mashable.com and TechCrunch.com.  I read more sites but some I can only get to weekly like Entrepreneur.com, Fortune.com, CNNmoney.com, etc.

How Microsoft Makes Their Money - They are being attacked on multiple fronts via new competitors (operating system via Ipad / cell phones / Chromebook) and via their MS Office products) so their business is more exposed to negative implications than ever.  The key point is that innovation never stops and that competition in the technology space is fierce.  What potential implications could this have on their product development over the next 5-10 years? Businesses have to plan

What Products Is Apple Selling? - Notice how the Ipad has quickly grown in importance? They have truly been an innovator and their stock price reflects this.  Innovators are rewarded today more than ever.

Facebook’s Effect on U.S. Web Use - Facebook is Up HUGE But The Rest Of The Web Is Down! Facebook Has Attracted Consumer Eyeballs and Advertisers Like to Sell Against Those Eyeballs. This further supports my comments made in the Google AdWords Article.

People Are Spending More Time In Mobile Apps Than On The Web – As I commented yesterday smartphones are quickly emerging as a competitive threat to Google and their Adwords revenue stream so they bought the company that developed the Android operating system.  Their goal is to sell advertising against as many of the applications and websites as they can where people spend their time.

Great Ideas Float To The Top - The Huffington Post Gets More Page Views Than The New York Times! Who would have ever imagined this happening?

Where LinkedIn’s Revenue Comes From (PRE-IPO Days) - I haven’t seen this chart updated since LinkedIn announced their earnings last week.  I’ll update it as soon as I get new data. LinkedIn recently deployed website functionality so people can apply for jobs via using a LinkedIn button on a company’s website.  Instead of having to manually enter tons of information already available on their LinkedIn profile they can use their LinkedIn profile to apply directly for the job or to autopopulate various HR / recruiting tools. The goal is to get more qualified candidates to apply for jobs through reducing the amount of time it takes to apply for a job.

To your success,

Dan Ross

I’ve been trying to learn more about video creation, editing and marketing over the last few years.  Over the next few days I’ll share some tips, tools and resources I have discovered in the last two years.

Today I’d like to share with you a great presentation that was presented by YouTube at the VidCon conference in LA in late July 2011.  This conference is ideal for YouTube video creators and in the presentation YouTube shared tons of great content, ideas and tips for people wanting to create better videos and get more “views” for each video created.

If you are looking to get serious about video marketing I encourage you to flip through this presentation.

To your success,

Dan Ross

Yesterday’s article was about 3 Instagram Tools / Resources for WordPress Bloggers.

Today’s article is about learning how to download Instagram photos so we can utilize them for various photo projects. Instagram enables people to use their photos the way they want to via their open API and enables portability of data which Facebook does everything to stop these days.

Once downloaded, your Instagram photos can be imported into a WordPress blog, used for photo collages & edited through other photo / desktop apps.

Importing photos into a WordPress Blog versus using a plugin has one primary SEO advantages. Google and other search engines can index relevant, keyword loaded pictures vs importing images from another service.  The alt tags are what the search engines utilize to identify the subject matter of each individual photo.

Without further hesitation, here are 3 tools / resources you can use to download your images off the Instagram network.

Instaport.me and Copygr.am will enable you to download your photos to your computer.  Both Instaport and Copygram are simple ways to export or backup all your Instagram photos by downloading a single zip file.

Copygram & Instaport Instagram Apps

Instadrop enables you to sync an Instagram account so that each photo uploaded to the site will automatically be saved to a DropBox account.  It is a great automated solution for creating backups of an Instagram photo collection.

InstaDrop automatically backs up your Instagram Photos to DropBox

To your success,

Dan Ross

Over the last 2 months I’ve really been diving deep into Instagram, a photo sharing Iphone application.  The application has has a great API (application programming interface) that is enabling developers to create lots of neat and interesting web-based applications, all surrounding photos.   As Instagram recently passed 5 million users I was wondering, “how could businesses utilize Instagram and how do I get my images into my WordPress Blog?”

In the coming week I hope to share with everyone some of my favorite ideas, tips, tools and resources associated with the great application.  If you are an Instagram user, please follow me to get the latest and greatest tips as I come across them plus we can share some great pictures with each other!  After all, I’ve “liked” over 10,000 photos from the followers I currently have an I’ll probably be “liking” another 10,000 in the next few months!

BetterBizIdeas "Liked" stats on Statigr.am

Below are three Instagram tools / resources that WordPress bloggers may find helpful if they are creating and sharing photos on Instagram.

FollowGram.Me

1)  FollowGram.me will enable a blogger to create their own “follow me” button for their website.  When a blog reader clicks on the button and is an Instagram user they can quickly login using the Instagram API and then “follow” the blog owner on Instagram through the API.

Instagram Embed for WordPress Bloggers

2) The Instagram Embed WordPress plugin will enable a blogger to insert an Instagram photo through the use of “shortcodes.”  Having no experience using them in the past, I found the process very easy to learn.

The Instagram photos are embedded into WordPress by placing the Instagram url on its own line. For more control, bloggers can wrap the url in the embed shortcode and pass it one of three values via the size attribute.

Below are Three Shortcode Examples using one the photos I have published to Instagram

The values t, m or l correspond to the thumbnail, medium, and large sizes of the images. Medium is the default size.

Instapress WordPress Plugin for Bloggers

3) The Instapress WordPress Plugin will enable bloggers to create “flashbox” photo galleries.  It is the tool I used to create my photos in the bottom of the blog’s sidebar.

Features of the plugin include:

• how many Instagram images you want to display
• the size of the Instagram images
• whether you want to show the Instagram picture’s title or not
• whether to use fancybox or not
• whether you want to display your own Instagram feed, a friend’s Instagram feed, the popular media feed or a single image from Instagram
• to enable paging
• whether you want to show your Instagram feed as an image gallery.

In the next blog post I’ll share three addtional Instagram web apps that will enable you to download your Instagram photos to your computer.  You can then use the photos to directly embed them into your WordPress blog or use them in other photography / art projects.

You’ll find most of my tips on Twitter or Instagram before this blog as it is simply quicker to share that way so follow me on Twitter and Instagram.

To your success in 2011 and beyond,

Dan Ross

First off, let me state that I don’t consider myself influential at all.  I’ve got some network reach through building out a Twitter profile that shares lots of interesting links / articles and I’ve got a blog that is quickly approaching 2600 readers. With a full-time job in Corporate America my blog is a labor of love designed to help me share useful tools with you that will grow your business, improve profitability or solve a business problem.  My overall network reach and influence pails in comparison to some of the most influential entrepreneurs on the web who have been prolific writers for 5 – 10 years.

Who would some of these folks be?

Sean Malarkey for information on Twitter, Social Media and List Building

Lewis Howes for information on Linkedin, Social Media and Webinars.  Lewis literally wrote the book on how to use LinkedIn for Networking, LinkedWorking

Chris Brogan on Social Media. Chris co-wrote the best selling book Trust Agents and has also authored Social Media 101

David  Siteman Garland – David has a book you can pick-up on Amazon.com “Smarter Faster Cheaper”

Steve Garfield for tips about online video & video production.  Steve also as a great book “As Seen on TV” you can pick-up at Amazon.com.

What is the point of mentioning the above 5 people?  Check out their ‘influence’ scores at the below resources that measure Network Reach, Message Amplification and ‘Klout’/ Influence.

Klout is unique and mentioned first as it analyzes relationships across multiple social networks and takes over 30 factors into consideration when determining a score out of 100.  What makes it more interesting is that Klout has an API that is increasingly being utilized / integrated into various CRM (customer relationship management) software programs used primarily by large corporations.

Twitter Grader is maybe the next best known tool since it has measured millions of users on Twitter to determine a score by measuring (1) the number of followers (2) the power of followers and (3) the follower / following ratio

Whatever metric you want to look at, the above 5 people are clearly doing things right!

• Klout
• Twitter Grader
• ReTweet Rank
• Twitalyzer
• Peer Index

Two new “Network Leader” services measuring your reach, your activities and your level of interaction on platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.  They have different methods of ranking accounts though.  Social Chiefs measures activity on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn platforms. Measuring is based on reach, actions and level of interaction.  I’ve seen numerous people touting Empire Avenue lately but, after I set-up my account, I found the site to be “high maintenance” in that I had essentially joined ANOTHER social network.  Due to time limitations I am focused on (1) Creating content for my blog (2) Twitter (3) Video creation with distribution through YouTube and (4) Increased interaction / traction on my Facebook Page where I find that people are increasingly experiencing more social media success.

• Social Chiefs
• Empire Avenue

I’d love to know your thoughts on the above tools / resources.  Have you used any of them? Do you feel that they accurately measured your network “influence” on respective networks?  If so, please leave a comment below or contact me on Twitter.  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

To Your Business Success in 2011 and beyond,

Dan Ross

P.S. Stay tuned for a post later this week on network visualization tools.