Posted by: Carlee Vellinga

With New York Fashion Week upon us, many of us are becoming more excited about our personal style. We know that social media is beneficial for networking, marketing, and many other activities. However, if you are looking to improve your wardrobe and save money while doing it, look to social networking. Mollie Vandor, from mashable.com, shows you how to use online resources that appeal to your fashion sense in this article filled with tips and links.

HOW TO: Score the Best Fashion Deals on the Social Web

Just because the economy is still depressed doesn’t mean you have to be. In fact, there are plenty of ways to live it up without seeing your bank balance plummet — especially if you know how to use social media to live the good life on tight budget.

Even the most reclusive social media shut-ins need to leave the house for some in-person networking at some point. And when you do, you don’t want to look like the poor slob who just threw on whichever pants were closest to the computer screen. Nor do you want to be the designer diva who can’t afford cab fare because she blew all her bucks on a brand name bag. Fortunately, thanks to a few online tips and tricks, high fashion doesn’t have to come with a high price tag.

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Posted by: Carlee Vellinga

Valerie Jennings offered tips in a podcast that was picked up by MSNBC.com. She provided advice for business owners and marketers on attracting visitors to their websites, building brand awareness, and protecting their brand online.

Jennings said that one method for driving website traffic to a page “is by using social media press releases that are highly search engine optimized.” She goes on to suggest the use of Marketwire and WordPress to increase search engine optimization.

Jennings promotes the use of sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These social media sites build brand awareness. However, she advises managers to utilize them carefully. “If these sites are set up properly and managed well, it will prevent competitors from trying to hijack your company’s brand,” said Jennings.

Posted by: Micah Pratt

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.

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Posted by: Micah Pratt

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.