Young Internet users may believe that their parents do not have a place on Facebook or Twitter, but studies show that older adults have a different view. A new article shows that the number of social media users over the age of 55 has increased rapidly in the past year. Read this article by Samuel Axon at mashable.com to see the statistics.

Older Adults Nearly Double Social Media Presence

A new study from Pew Internet found that between April 2009 and May 2010, social networking site usage grew 88% among Internet users aged 55-64, and the 65 and older group’s social networking presence grew 100% in the same time frame.

Young people still dominate social networks like Facebook, but their usage only grew 13% during the year covered by Pew’s report. Older adults are catching up at an incredibly quick pace, though it remains to be seen whether they will pass the youth or hit a ceiling at or below the usage levels reported by young adults and teens.

Read More

Social media has changed the world dramatically. We are seeing more and more charitable actions carried out by social media channels. For example, Twestival is the largest global grassroots social media fundraising initiative to date, raising over $1.2 million within 14 months for 137 nonprofits. Under disastrous circumstances, like the BP oil spill, Tumblr promoted awareness and raised funds by offering a new background color. When earthquakes devastated Haiti and Chile, Google Earth launched special search engines to help families find their loved ones.

Valerie Jennings, the founder and CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing started the company in 2003. Coinciding with the US social and economic conditions, Jennings has been through the unstable post-9/11 period, inflation, recession as well as natural disasters. As a small business, Jennings not only survived, but thrived during the past 7 years. All of these made us reconsider our values and beliefs. Why are we here, what do our families mean to us and what are our life purposes?

Jennings Social Media Marketing is a full service company that utilizes the art of online storytelling with the science of measuring quantifiable results. Jennings creates comprehensive social media marketing and web advertising strategies from website design and development to viral videos. The company represents publicly traded to medium-sized businesses across the U.S. and overseas including technology, sports, sustainability, entertainment, travel, financial, health care and real estate.

Follow Valerie Jennings on Twitter @ValerieJennings

Like Jennings Social Media Marketing on Facebook here

What do you use your smart phone for most? Is it to find the nearest bakery, or get directions to the airport, or is it to check the latest scores of the Royals vs. Angeles game while at work? Whatever it is you use your phone for the fact is life is made a lot easier with it. Here is an article from mashable.com about the top five mobile commerce trends in 2010.

Top 5 Mobile Commerce Trends for 2010

The mobile trends series is supported by Samsung. Read more about the Samsung Galaxy here.

Considering that most people would rather lose their wallet than misplace their cell phone, it’s fitting that the mobile world is quickly becoming a new hub for business. For many of us, our cell phone never leaves our side. It holds a place at the dinner table, is easily accessible in your bag’s front pocket, and often, somehow it even manages to end up sharing your pillow at night. Busy schedules mean people are often on the move and when marketers and companies can’t reach consumers at their computers, on TV, before the previews at the movies, with billboards, or magazine and newspaper ads, they must feel assured that they can still reach them on their cell phones.

Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, is simply the ability to conduct business transactions through a mobile device. With smartphone sales rising 49% in the first quarter of 2010, never before has it been so easy to shop, anywhere, anytime from the palm of your hand. There is an enormous amount of ongoing market research, and though there has been a variety of numbers estimated and reported, they all conclude that mobile commerce is a profitable and rapidly growing market.

By 2015, it’s estimated that shoppers from around the world will spend about $119 billion on goods and services bought via their mobile phones, according to a study by ABI Research released this past February. In the United States alone, mobile shopping rose from $396 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion in 2009, and mobile campaign spending also increased by 25 to 30% over the past year, with companies shelling out just under $313 million according to the same study. Senior Analyst Mark Beccue, said that he’s forecasting U.S. sales to reach about $2.2 billion in 2010.

Here are five mobile commerce trends to keep an eye on for the remainder of 2010.

1. Bargain Hunting

It would seem that mobile purchasing often lends itself to an impulse buy. Maybe you just have to suddenly download that song from the iTunes Store or really want to make sure you have tickets to that hot concert. In this case, it’s the savvy shopper that has taken note of mobile commerce. Beccue said that in the fourth quarter of 2009, he started to notice something unexpected and a bit “weird.”

Bargain hunting has become extremely popular with apps like RedLaser that allow users to scan product bar codes and discover it’s various prices at different retailers. Shoppers are melding the two worlds of online/mobile shopping with actual physical shopping to make sure they get the best prices.

READ MORE

Smart phones are becoming more and more popular and advertisers have begun using them as a tool to reach large audience with the use of applications. Here is an article from mashable.com about how people are welcoming advertising with smart phone applications.

Consumers Embrace Mobile Advertising

Advertisements on mobile devices are both welcome and effective, a recent study from mobile audience media company JiWire revealed.

This is especially true of advertisements that appear in apps. Of the roughly 1,000 smartphone users surveyed, 52% claim they have acted on an advertisement in an app and 18% have made a purchase directly from an ad in an app in the last month.

In addition, 53% said they were willing to share their location to receive more relevant advertising and a full 76% said they would prefer to download a free, advertising-supported app instead of paying an upfront fee for the same app.

This is great news for social gaming apps like Foursquare and Gowalla, which enable users to unlock special deals from advertisers based on their locations. It’s also great news for Apple, whose mobile app advertising platform, iAds, will debut this summer with the iPhone 4.0 OS.

Have you ever wondered how much time the average person spends on the Internet? And have you ever wondered how much of that time is spent on social networking sites? Thanks to Neilsen, we now know that people spend more time on sites such as Facebook and Twitter than on any other site. Here is an article from mashable.com by Adam Ostrow about the Neilsen findings.

Social Networking Dominates Our Time Spent Online [STATS]

Social networking now eats up twice as much of our online time as any other activity. According to new stats from Nielsen, sites like Facebook and Twitter now account for 22.7% of time spent on the web; the next closest activity is online games, which make up 10.2%.

The stats also show the degree to which social networking is displacing other forms of communication, with e-mail as a percentage of online time plunging from 11.5% to 8.3% from June 2009 to June 2010. Instant messaging also saw a significant drop in share, with a 15% decline from last year.

However, e-mail use on mobile is still on the rise – from 37.4% to 41.6% — presumably as users continue to migrate to smartphones from feature phones.

READ MORE

Twitter Lists have become a popular way for people to talk to a group of people who share the same interests, are in the same profession or who want to be informed about a current topic. CEO’s, CFO’s and other top business executives are increasingly taking advantage of Twitter Lists in order to stay updated on the latest information concerning their industries. Here is an article from mashable.com by Erica Swallow about the top lists for business executives to follow.

15 Twitter Lists for C-Suite Execs to Follow

This series is supported by The Awareness Social Marketing Hub, a leading enterprise-grade application for marketers struggling with the social media chaos of managing multiple social channels. Click here to learn more.

Twitter Lists are a great way to follow a group of like-minded Twitter users. By following a List, you can get an overview of a particular subject by simply taking a look at the stream from time to time. A well-curated Twitter List can be focused on a specific topic, industry or interest.

With the increase in C-level executives joining and taking part in social networks across the Internet, there are bound to be questions. While Twitter is one of the simplest social media tools out there, Lists are one of the more complicated features for new tweeters to comprehend.

We recommend using tools like TLists, Listorious and TweetMeme Lists to scope out and follow Lists of interest. To get you started or to beef up your current List inventory, here are 15 Twitter Lists for C-suite executives to follow, separated into categories for CEOs, CMOs, CIOs and CTOs, and CFOs.

Twitter Lists for CEOs
For the latest business, management and leadership tweets, here are three Twitter Lists for CEOs to follow:

CEOs: If you’re a CEO and not on this Twitter List, send a friendly tweet to Brand Strategist Valeria Maltoni, and she’ll likely add you to what seems to be the most comprehensive list of CEOs on Twitter. Look to this List for the latest tweets from over 150 CEOs. The List seems to be highly concentrated on digital and technology.

Business News: Curated by The New York Times, this compilation is a short list of the most essential business news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Reuters Business and Silicon Alley Insider.

Management & Leadership: This TLists SuperList compiles the top tweeters from 216 Twitter Lists, tweeting about management, leadership and power.

READ MORE

Last Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg sat down for a rare public interview with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer to discuss the continued success of Facebook along with the latest pressure it has faced. Facebook, the largest social networking site, recently hit a major milestone of 500 million users but along with fame has come issues dealing with privacy and a lawsuit that Zuckerberg sold a portion of the ownership in exchange for work in the early years of Facebook.

Watch the interview here.

Here is a podcast from Valerie Jennings, entrepreneur and CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing.

“Hi this is Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing. I want to offer a few tips about how you can use social media to protect your brand, build awareness on the Internet and drive traffic to websites like your blog or primary company website or even a landing page. Some of the things that we look at are competitor analysis reports, so that we can see how competitors are appearing on the Internet in comparison to some of our clients. Additionally, we try to make sure that we have all of the holes plugged as far as having a Twitter account, Facebook page and do they have their LinkedIn site set up properly. These are some simple things you can do as a business owner to make sure that you have all of your social networking sites reserved so that a competitor does not try to take the name or hijack your brand.”

Click below to listen to the rest of Jennings’ tips on how to use social media to protect your brand and drive website traffic.

With more than 70 million members in 200 different countries, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network.

Not only is LinkedIn great for building a professional network, but it is also recommended by social media professionals to increase search engine optimization, also known as SEO.

Here are a few tips to search engine optimize your LinkedIn profile. First, complete your profile with search engine optimized keywords. Second, customize the URL to your LinkedIn profile with your name or your company’s name. Third, be sure to include the maximum amount of allowed hyperlinks in your profile.

LinkedIn is one of the best sites to take advantage of to improve your SEO. Sign up for LinkedIn today, complete your free professional profile and watch your search engine rankings increase. To join LinkedIn, visit linkedin.com

This video brought to you by Jennings Social Media Marketing, a global company located in Kansas City, Missouri.

Jennings Social Media Marketing is a full service company that utilizes the art of online storytelling with the science of measuring quantifiable results. Jennings creates comprehensive social media marketing and Web advertising strategies from website design and development to viral videos. The company represents publicly traded to medium-sized businesses across the U.S. and overseas including technology, sports, sustainability, entertainment, travel, financial, health care and real estate.