Today, we’ve publicly released our guide on creating powerful and lasting mobile marketing strategy. We give you some tools to sell your co-workers on mobile tactics,  teach you to ask the right questions, and then we list specific tactics and examples to help you succeed.

You can download the entire PDF from slideshare, or browse through the embed below.

To get first dibs on these documents as they are published, and download our Quarterly Trend Report, head to our subscribe page.

Social Ad Spend on the Rise: Social ad spend in 2011 was $3.8 billion and is expected to jump to a whopping $9.8 billion in 2016. This represents a 21% compound annual growth rate and is a good sign social media is here for the long run.

Slow Go for Google+: Research shows that traffic from marketers and users is slow for Google+ as it comes in a distant fourth to the infamous “pin it” button.

Facebook Tests Global/Regional Fan Pages with Shared Like Count: For all the global brands wanting a better way to segment by location or region, Facebook is on it. Here are some key facts from the article:

• Users who visit a page will be automatically directed to the version specific to their region, but they can access any regional or global page through a drop-down menu.
• It will allow each page to display the same total fan count, encouraging brands and organizations to expand their regional efforts without worrying about the perception of having pages with a low number of Likes.
• Pages can be completely customized with different cover photos, posts, about sections and apps.
• Although the total Likes will be the same across global and regional pages, each individual page will have its own ‘Talking About This’ count displayed.

The Future of Mobile Advertising: Mobile game and app ad network, Kiip, works by rewarding mobile phone users the further they get inside a game by essentially bribing them to click on ads and then collect their prize.

God’s on Twitter: Have you received a Tweet from God?

To get our monthly social media trends newsletter, head to Room214.com/subscribe. You also get a free download of our Quarterly Social Media Trend Report which covers Instagram For Brands, Mobile Strategy and Facebook Parent-Child.

Get the juicy details below:

Facebook Offers Now National: Facebook’s in-stream offers are now national. This is a huge new feature for any brand on Facebook.

Pinterest Drives More Sales than Facebook: For one particular marketer, simply adding “Pin It” buttons has proven to be a big payoff. More evidence of Pinterest’s massive referral power.

Experian 2012 Digital Marketer Report: This thing is packed with useful insights.

• 91% of today’s online adults use social media regularly
• Revenue per email averages 2x higher for ‘Friends and Family’ campaigns
• 28% of smartphone owners watch video on their phone in a typical month
• Pinterest is now the 3rd most popular social networking site behind Facebook and Twitter

Google+ “Hangouts On-Air” Launch: Google’s new video broadcasting platform could be a huge challenger to UStream/Justin.tv. Your Hangouts can be posted on your G+ stream, YouTube Channel or website.

82% of Time Spent on Mobile Happens on Apps: Apps are still the king of mobile attention.

To get our monthly social media trends newsletter, head to Room214.com/subscribe. You also get a free download of our Quarterly Social Media Trend Report which covers Instagram For Brands, Mobile Strategy and Facebook Parent-Child.

Here are links to see the new season pass finder app and season passes info app for the 2012-2013 season in all of their 810 pixel width glory. I’ve posted screenshots below as well.

What the season pass finder does is help users determine what pass is best for their needs, based on the number of estimated days the user plans on skiing at each resort. The application’s logic determines all available pass options and then outputs the best pass option based on lowest calculated cost per day. Additionally, there is still a backend CMS that allows page admins to change pricing, images and copy on the fly. When pass or resort pricing is adjusted, the app’s logic still works its magic, outputting the best pass option based on lowest price per day. It’s pretty awesome if we do say so ourselves. Let’s take a look at what the apps look like:

Season Pass Finder Header

We built a new header module with additional functionality to mirror the epicpass.com website, where users can hover/click on each resort logo and get a nice summary of the mountain, in addition to adding the Like button which allows users to easily subscribe to each resort’s Facebook updates.

Initial State

Clicked State

Season Pass Finder Main Functionality

The core functionality of this app is pretty similar to last year, but the app now looks much clearer, which should help increase engagement. We also had to add in another resort, Kirkwoord, as the Vail Resorts family continues to grow. The first screenshot here shows the default landing state, while the second screenshot is showing how the app adjusts when users select different days on different resorts.

Initial State

Selected State

Season Passes Info Application

In addition to the season passes app, we created a separate new standalone app that outlines all of the pass options and information in an interactive, visually appealing way. To see all the pass info, we utilized styled modals to keep the main state cleaner.

Initial State

More Info Modal State

We’re really excited to continue to build customized, integrated Facebook applications in the new 810 pixel wide space – it’s almost like applications can now exist as microsites within Facebook. What are some of your favorite examples of new apps taking advantage of the new 810 pixel width?

Facebook’s New Ad Creation Interface: Facebook has made some updates to the popular ad creations interface. Age Targeting has changed, you can now target ads to as young as age 13. When you create an ad or sponsored story, instead of choosing a particular Facebook advertising program, all you’ll need to do to get started is answer a few questions about what you want to promote and your objectives. Also, if you are promoting a Page, app, or event you can enter its name in the field marked Destination. Once you’ve selected your destination, you’ll then see other options about what you want to promote, and what you want people to see when they view your ad or sponsored story.

Cadbury’s Approach to Google+: ”Cadbury has put significant creative muscle into Google+ efforts, with buzzworthy events such as recreating its page entirely out of chocolate to celebrate hitting the 500K fan mark and unveiling a new candy bar on the platform.” A great article on how Cadbury has built a following of 1 million+ on Google Plus.

Wrap Bribes Visitors For Data: How much is your personal data worth? Wrapp will give you a $5 gift card for access to your personal data… and people are taking the offer.

Kraft’s Likeapella Video: Kraft made an a capella video to thank all 4,632 people for liking one of their Facebook posts, literally naming every single one of them.

Here are some highlights:

Messages: A new feature for brand pages, which can be turned on or off at will. Now fans can send private messages to your brand page. We recommend that you use this feature to take customer service conversations to a private environment. You could also use it to administrate contests and giveaways.

Pinning and Highlighting Posts: Your Facebook posts have become much more flexible. You have the ability to give posts more visibility with the highlight option, which will make the posts much larger and more eye-catching. You can also use the pinning function to keep a post at the top of your timeline for seven days. This is a great option for promoting contests, applications, or ongoing campaigns.

Designing Your Timeline: Between photo covers, milestones, and customizable app/tab images, there are a lot of great new options to give your timeline a very unique personality and look. Use these options to create a real personality and story for your brand. Remember not to put calls-to-action, pricing information, or contact information in your cover photo. Focus instead on the emotion and personality behind your brand.

All About Content: The majority of your fans are still interacting with your page through their home feeds, and not on your page. Content strategy is still a huge focus for brands on Facebook. We walk you through our simple “rule-of-thirds” content strategy. Get all the juicy details in the presentation below.

Be An Expert on Facebook Timeline

Burt’s Bees Music From Nature: A great piece of content marketing from Burt’s Bees. They worked with a composer to create a musical track made entirely from sounds from nature in celebration of Earth Day.

Paid Media Coming to Fourquare in June: The location-based social network is aiming to launch a paid-media platform in mid-June and is pitching brands to become launch partners.

10 Great Facebook Timeline Examples: We’ve seen a bunch of creative work for Facebook Timeline on brand pages. Here are some more really nice examples of well designed Facebook pages.

Spotify and Coca-Cola Partner To Share Music: It’s interesting to see brands leverage music in the social space to build relationships with users and ultimately increase the intangible value of the brand. Coke is working to not just sell soda but create lifestyles and identities for their consumers.

Online Consumers Vastly Prefer Email for Direct Marketing Messages: Marketing Charts reports that Email is still king for delivering marketing messages that convert.  Here are the highlights: 77% of respondents chose email, with direct mail (letter, catalogs, postcards, etc. – 9%), text messaging (SMS) on a cell phone (5%), Facebook (4%), and phone (2%) trailing distantly.

Smart Car uses Twitter as a Flipbook: Go to Smart Car’s Twitter account for Argentina, scroll down and you’ll see flipbook-style visuals in which they’re creating an animated story/commercial for the brand — all in a venue that’s supposed to be reserved to 140 characters of text. Awesome.

Facebook Ad Text Best Practices:

As it was often stressed before, simplicity will be of the utmost importance in the text for ads. This is even more important with reduced space to work with now. Make sure you only refer to one offer or subject in your text, and do it in as few words as possible.

The best copy won’t be a statement about your company/brand/product, but will refer to an offer, play off of the target’s ego, or ask a compelling question.

Facebook Image Best Practices:

You have about 1/10th of a second for your ad image to make an impact on viewers. Make sure your image is fascinating. Stick to visually interesting subjects, smiling faces (human connection), or aspirational items. Remember: the image also must be relevant to your ad or it will get turned down.

Great tips on ads in the slideshare below:

How to Apply:
Please email us with your resume, a link to your linkedin account or online resume, examples of your web work, and an email detailing your salary expectations.

As part of Room 214’s dev team you will be working on engaging social apps for multiple, high profile clients – including but not limited to custom Facebook applications, WordPress development, and mobile-enabled web pages. This is a great opportunity if you are skilled in HTML/CSS/Javascript but aren’t afraid to get your hands into PHP or Ruby.

What to Know About this Position:

• Developers at Room 214 have been known to describe the agency as “easy going.” To some, this might indicate a lack of structure or hard work. To us it means getting work done within an atmosphere of camaraderie, humor and humility. We all learn by doing, and we all learn from each other.
• There is no substitute for working with cool people. It’s almost equally as cool to see the product of your work supporting the efforts of iconic brands nationwide. Taking pride in your work here is easy.

Ideal Requirements:

• You have beginner to intermediate programming skills with recent web experience. You are interested in taking a design from a static file and working to make it a full featured web app.
• You have proficiency on the front-end side of the user experience, knowing how and when to leverage AJAX/JavaScript/CSS/HTML5. Your understanding of PHP and MySQL gets you through as needed, and you look for opportunities to learn other languages like Ruby on Rails.
• You are a self-starter who can take direction, but more importantly figures out what to do without being told.

Bonus Points for:

• Proficiency using Git
• Linux skills
• Computer Science background
• Mobile / responsive design experience

What it takes to be successful at Room 214:
We have a high “competence” culture. We value the individual as an expert and we set high expectations on performance. We value each other as a team and encourage debate, but we don’t believe we must have consensus on all decisions. To be successful here, you should be someone who:

• Does whatever it takes to do the job and works to be on top of their game.
• Is focused; can turn off distractions and socializing, but still likes to have fun.
• Is motivated to go above and beyond the call of duty without being told.
• Is comfortable working on their own and can quickly learn expectations.
• Understands the difference between productivity versus activity and drives deadlines with productivity.
• Can handle the pressure professionally and can become more engaged as situations get tighter.
• Is not concerned about job titles and climbing the ladder.

So, what’s in this thing? Expect 20 juicy, knowledge-packed pages on the following:

1. Instagram for Brands: Many organizations are adopting Instagram to extend the essence of their brand through photos and graphics. We outline the incredible growth, emerging opportunities and practical tips for leveraging this fast-emerging social media platform.

2. Mobile Strategy: We highlight the adoption and usage patterns that support mobile as a critical marketing channel. Mobile is now a leading communication channel that consumers use every day to learn, connect and make purchasing decisions. We teach you to define goals and develop strategies that result in winning campaigns.

3. Facebook Parent-Child: Facebook places listings are a common struggle for retail brands with multiple store locations. We explain how the Facebook Parent-Child feature provides brands with the ability to promote retail locations and drive traffic by providing relevant content and running engaging check-in deals.

We’ve worked hard to make this thing valuable, but also readable and digestible. What good are recommendations if you can’t take what you read and put it into action?

To instantly download the report just head to our social media trend report page!

Have questions? Shoot us an email at socialmedia[at]room214[dot]com.