The Price Group

56 percent of Facebook users and 67 percent of Twitter users visited a retailer's Website prompted by a post or tweet. Interestingly, while the number who follow retailers' blogs is far lower than the populations using Facebook and Twitter, blog followers click through, research products, and comment on brands at a far higher rate than do the users of the major social networks.

62% say that a positive product experience is the biggest motivator for them to talk with others about a brand. 33% most wanted to share coupons with friends.

29% report that email is still the top way that they want to hear from companies

Tumblr is the fastest-growing of the three companies though, boasting 166% growth in the last year. LinkedIn’s U.S. audience rose by a strong 58% in the last twelve months.

(53.7%) cite Facebook's targeted display ad offering as a reason for continuing with Facebook Ads and 49.3% cite new business. 

35% of local merchants who say they would not advertise with Facebook again, 69.0% say Facebook Ads didn't help them to find new customers and 34.5% say the program was too expensive.

Facebook is the top digital channel among local merchants (65.7%), followed by Google (53.3%), LinkedIn (45.7%), Google Places (38.8%), and Twitter (32.1%).

22% of local businesses say they are now using Facebook Places to market their business, compared with the 32% who said so in in MerchantCircle's 1Q11 report; similarly, 7.3% are now using Foursquare, compared with 9% in 1Q11. 

fewer than one in ten local merchants (9.4%) say they have used some type of group-buying site; among them, 77% say they would offer a daily deal again:

18% report doing any sort of mobile marketing or advertising.

71% of merchants say they don't have a good idea of how to reach consumers via mobile marketing. 

61% are spending less than $2,500 a year on marketing. 73% have no plans to raise their budgets this year.  37% cite lack of time and resources as their top marketing challenge.

You’re doing well if you see conversions in the 0.4% to 0.5% range.

Happy Women

Women who look overjoyed, free and are looking directly at the camera convert best.

Colorful Logos

Recently, experts say logos have been converting better

Headshots

In general, happy pictures where people are looking directly at the camera work best.

2. Optimize for Mobile Search Marketing

So whilst ‘mobile SEO’ doesn’t really exist at the moment because the search results are almost identical, a mobile optimized website will certainly perform better from a user experience and conversion point of view. 

in fact Google says 95% of mobile searches are for local products and services.

Be committed.

How to Improve Your On-Page Optimization

Use your keyword phrase through the body of the post.

Test your beliefs.

keyword analysis tools

Start blogging!

Start creating new blog posts of 300–700 words 2–3 times a week.

Start your post title with your best keywords.

Brainstorm your keyword phrases.

Link to appropriate pages on your website.

Keyword Questions: Struggling with blogger’s block? This tool from WordTracker returns popular search engine queries based on your keywords.

All In One SEO Pack

This plugin allows you to easily add unique meta-descriptions, meta-tags and titles to each post, improve the page title format and reduce the chances that the search engines will get confused by duplicate content on your blog.

Off-Page Optimization

There are a number of variables that affect how important each link is.

How Do You Get More Incoming Links?

create quality content that’s valuable to your audience.

Numbered lists:

How-to articles

Guest blog

90% of mobile subscribers have an internet-ready phone.

text message use continues to grow while mobile phone calls (remember them) have been relatively static for the past five years.

Text messaging is the key communication tool of the modern era," said Neil Strother, practice director at ABI Research in Oyster Bay, NY. "It is a great place for marketers to communicate with consumers."