Pinterest is a fun, fast growing social media product that is all about images. With over 70 million users worldwide, Pinterest now drives over 40% of e-commerce traffic from social media. The folks at Omnicore have put together this infographic showing 30 reasons why Pinterest will be the social media site to pay attention to in 2014.
![30-reasons-pinterest1[1]](http://www.the.vg/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/30-reasons-pinterest11.png)
The folks at Usablenet put together this infographic showing us how mobile is quickly becoming THE preferred device. Over 526 million mobile devices we activated in 2013 adding up to a total of 7 billion mobile devices, and that number will be eclipsed in 2014. What is your mobile strategy? Is your website mobile friendly? To keep your practice competitive in 2014, now is the time to get your website up to par, or miss out on the next revolution in internet use and technologies.
![Usablenet_US_Mobile_Infographic_small[1]](http://www.the.vg/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Usablenet_US_Mobile_Infographic_small1.png)
Practically 8 in 10 consumers say posts on social networks influence their purchase decisions. 2/3 of consumers say they would be more inclined to shop at a brick and mortar store that offered mobile checkout facilities and more than half of consumers are now using their smartphones to check and compare prices. Here is an infographic from the folks at CMSWire that show even more statistics on how mobile and social are working to change how we shop.
![mobile-social-consumers1[1]](http://www.the.vg/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/mobile-social-consumers11.png)
Here are some great facts and trivia about social media that you may or may not be aware of from the folks at CashSherpa. Did you know more 18-34 year olds watch YouTube than any cable network? Or that the fastest growing demographic on Twitter are 55-64 year olds? Well you do now….and more!
![10-shocking-social-media-facts1[2]](http://www.the.vg/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/10-shocking-social-media-facts12.jpg)
We are all familiar with the old proverb “measure twice and cut once” that warns us to double check for accuracy in our lives. Let’s take that advice to our online activities. As you certainly know, everything you do online is trackable, whether you do it yourself, or let the NSA do it for you. The problem is of course, the NSA doesn’t share very well.
Do you have a website? If not, let me once of the first to welcome you to the 1990’s. Of course your practice has a website. Do you measure your website traffic? You or your web developer should be measuring your web traffic and your audience. You can purchase all sorts of audience measuring software, or you can install Google Analytics on your website for free (www.google.com/analytics).
Google Analytics is embedded into well over half of the world’s websites. With it, you can easily measure who comes (not individually) to your website, from where, and with what they are viewing your site with. You can review the browsers used, the speed of their internet, what pages are viewed, and how long people stay on each page. Best of all you can review where your visitors are coming from. In Google Analytics visits are broken down most simply into direct traffic (those who typed your URL into their browsers), search traffic (those who found you from searching Google, Bing, or Yahoo), and referral traffic (those who might come from a link such as from www.theopticalvisionsite.com) . In a perfect world everyone knows your name (hearing the Cheers theme song in my head), or in a mostly perfect world, your traffic would […]
We work with a number of companies who work trade shows and events. We help them with their social media during the events. This infographic from Marketo outlines our efforts seamlessly in a beautiful and concise manner. If you are involved in conventions and trade shows, take a look at this infographic and see how your company might improve your social media at a trade show. Try it out at next week’s Vision Expo East for example. We hope to see you there.
![social-media-events-planner1-640x1621[1]](http://www.the.vg/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/social-media-events-planner1-640x16211.png)
Are you and your business new to Twitter? Hastags and at symbols have you confused? Well, the folks at Render Positive have put together this infographic to help us all on how to use Twitter more efficiently and effectively for our businesses.
![business-guide-twitter1[1]](http://www.the.vg/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/business-guide-twitter11.jpg)
Many of us blog on a regular basis, trying to share great information and at the same time build audience for our websites and our businesses. The folks at LinkedIn took the idea of regular blogging and turned it from a guide of how to nurture our businesses to a sort of food group and nutritional guide for our online businesses. Take a look, I think you will enjoy.
![LinkedIn-Food-Graphic[1]](http://www.the.vg/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/LinkedIn-Food-Graphic1.png)
As 2013 came to a close, a lot of companies measured all that happened during the year, including what happened in social media. The folks at ShareThis came up with this report, showing the huge growth of Pinterest and the decline of email as a sharing medium.
![sharethis-social-sharing-20131[1]](http://www.the.vg/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/sharethis-social-sharing-201311.jpg)
Yes, most of us use Google for so many things, but there are two other very strong search engines that are used by millions as well, Bing and Yahoo. We shouldn’t ignore them, In fact, since the competition for the race tot he top is so cutthroat and in the case of Adwords, expensive, advertisers might want to consider Bing and Yahoo as a clever move to bypass the competition. Take a look at this infographic from the folks at Market Domination Media that gives us a number of reasons not to forget other search engines.
![Stop-Treating-the-Yahoo-Bing-Network-Like-the-Red-Headed-Stepchild-637x51661[1]](http://www.the.vg/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Stop-Treating-the-Yahoo-Bing-Network-Like-the-Red-Headed-Stepchild-637x516611.jpg)
