facebook research facebook research social habit when do people view facebookHas Facebook replaced the morning newspaper and cup of coffee? According to the latest data from The Social Habit, American social media users 12+ roll out of bed and check Facebook … and another survey question confirms that about the same number check it out right before they go to sleep! As you can see in the chart above, nearly 30% of Americans who use social media check out YouTube in the morning and more than 20% read message boards, blogs and Twitter. And there is so much more. This is mind-blowing.” MORE >>

The idea of picking your own groceries from the shelves instead of ordering from a single counter was viewed as totally radical in the day. By {grow} Community Member Lou Hoffman. Companies understand the intellectual argument for embracing the digital world. Prospects, job candidates and other target audiences increasingly conduct due diligence on the Net before making decisions. That’s the easy part. Most marketing execs get this and the need to come up the digital curve. But expertise by itself isn’t the game changer. Getting Past the Fright. This is a scary proposition. Tweet. MORE >>

Our friends at Inside View created this awesome infographic that gathers together many statistics, ideas and examples about using social media to help drive leads and sales for B2B companies. Marketing Sales Social Networks infographic Inside View social selling statisicsYou can look through the stats yourself, but here are some to consider: 61% of US Marketers Use Social Media to Increase Lead Gen. IBM saw an Increase of 400% in Sales in a Social Selling Pilot Program. 55% of Buyers Search for Information on Social Media. MORE >>

For those of you who have never been in sales, I would like to take you through a sales process (or some aspects of one) from the sales representative’s point of view. Tweet Photo credit: s_falkow. In sales, we are trained to look at situations as if we were sitting in the prospect’s chair. The reason for that is that it makes it easier for a sales person to recognize what is REALLY important to the prospect. You You see, really awful sales reps will simply spout off what they are selling, assuming it is exactly what the prospect needs in the exact way they present it. MORE >>

New research from Skyword found that business-oriented web pages with images performed 91% better than those pages without images. Skyword examined the performance of tens of thousands of posts in performing the study, and was able to segment the value of images for business purposes (excluding entertainment, news and sports posts, among others). So, images don’t just make a little difference…they make a ton of difference. Of course, this should come as no surprise. In the magazine business, we had a saying that the cover of a magazine serves just one purpose…to be opened. MORE >>