Still not convenienced that video on your website is important? It appears 181 Americans think it is! Big numbers continue to accumulate for online video according to comScore who say some 181 million Americans watched more than 40 billion videos last month.

Video lengths are up to 6.1 minutes per video on average and ads are still at 0.4 minutes. Video ads did account for 12.2% of all videos viewed and just 0.9% of all minutes, sounds like it’s a good balance.

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Writing the subject lines for your emails can be one of the most stressful steps of email marketing. You are always wondering…Is it engaging enough? …too short? …too wordy? …too boring? Is the person I’m sending ti to going to click ‘delete’ because of it? Or will they open it? You also have to wonder if it will even get to them, or will it trigger a SPAM filter? The last of these concerns is the reason we want to give you a great resource to use.

SPAM filters can be triggered for a variety of reasons, causing your email to skip recipients’ inboxes and land straight in their SPAM box. One of easiest ways to avoid SPAM filters is by carefully choosing the words you use in your email’s subject line. Next time you sit down to write an email subject line, consult this exhaustive list from HubSpot to make sure you aren’t using any words that will get you in trouble. Make sure you bookmark this list so you can refer back to it every time you craft an email subject line.

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Those that are familiar with Cornerstone know that we are obsessed with disruption. We are always searching for ways to to help our customers find that one disruptive moment in their own business when they discover what sets them apart from the competition. Then what would happen if you exposed that discovery to the light of day? What would happen if you took one of your existing products and applied it differently? Would it create a new market segment?

We are always looking for products we find disruptive. It’s funny sometimes where you find it. In this case we found it One Pair of Eyeglasses at a Time. Enjoy!

Our Po!nt: Where have you found disruption in a product you had to have or a service you could not live without? Where are you discovering disruption in the products and services your run across? Share with us those disruptions here and tell us why you consider them disruptive.

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Not really sure if Google+ is for your business. You need to reconsider as Google+ is giving Facebook a serious run for it’s money. Here are just a few of the brands worth copying on Google+:

1. Red Bull

The first thing you’ll notice about Red Bull’s Google+ page is the animated “scrapbook” photo strip across the top of the page, which shows a cyclist spinning slowly in midair, perhaps amped up on the company’s signature energy drink.

That feature makes other name brand pages look almost stodgy, but the rest of the “Posts” page keeps the energy flowing with frequent posts, many of which embed videos of company-sponsored high-adventure events, which no doubt is exactly what its page fans want.

2. Mashable

Mashable’s Google+ page is a model for anybody in the information-sharing or content-marketing business because it combines a robust collection of fresh content and thoughtful exploration of just about every service or tool Google+ offers.

Page admins post content frequently and usually add a bit of fresh copy to introduce material recycled from the Mashable website. The page also takes creative license with the “scrapbook” photo strip across the top of the content well and includes plenty of pictures on its Photos tab.

3. Dell

The feature most worth copying on Dell’s Google+ page is its helpful “About” tab, one that many other big brands populate with boilerplate copy or ignore altogether.

Dell’s “About” tab:

• Avoids corporate-speak in its mission statement
• Provides essential contact info
• Invites visitors to connect with the company on its many social networks (multiple Twitter and Facebook sites, Flickr, YouTube, SlideShare and LinkedIn as well as the Dell blog and company website).

4. Williams-Sonoma

This specialty retailer offers a good demonstration of repurposing standard catalog photos into something fresh and useful on a different site.

Many of the photos accompany short Google+ posts that feature recipes using food or kitchen products the company sells. It’s like having a virtual recipe box on a single web page.

We wish the recipe links in the photos were clickable, but you can copy the URLs into a browser address form to reach the original content on the website.

Our Po!nt: Facebook Beware! Google+ is on its way. Share your favorite Google+ sites and why your like them here now.

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2012 is officially here, and what better way to kick off the New Year than with some data? WooHoo! In its recent US Digital Media Usage report, eMarketer estimates how digital media usage will grow in 2012 in terms of the mobile marketing and usage.

Check out these 14 eye-popping marketing stats that will effect the probable growth of mobile marketing in 2012 and emphasize why you’ll definitely need inbound marketing and how this will expand cross channel marketing this year.

• Mobile internet users will reach 113.9 million in 2012, up 17.1% from 97.3 million in 2011. Tweet This!
• Smartphone users will reach 106.7 million in 2012, up 18.4% from 2011. Tweet This!
• In 2012, 94% of smartphones users will be mobile internet users. Tweet This!
• All mobile phone users will reach 242.6 million in 2012, up 2.3% from 2011. Tweet This!
• Mobile shoppers will reach 72.8 million in 2012. Tweet This!
• Mobile buyers will reach 37.5 million in 2012. Tweet This!
• Smartphone shoppers will reach 68.6 million in 2012. Tweet This!
• Smartphone buyers will reach 36.4 million in 2012. Tweet This!
• Tablet users will reach 54.8 million in 2012, up 62.8% from 33.7 million in 2011. Tweet This!
• iPad users will reach 41.9 million in 2012. Tweet This!
• In 2012, 76.4% of tablet users will be iPad users. Tweet This!
• Mobile video viewers will reach 54.6 million in 2012. Tweet This!
• Smartphone video viewers will reach 51.2 million in 2012. Tweet This!
• Adult-aged eReader users will reach 45.6 million in 2012, up from 33.3 million in 2011. Tweet This

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Google Analytics has changed not only its appearance it also has added things your really need to be tracking now that gives you even more information about your potential customers. The lowest-hanging fruit of web analytics is counting metrics of such things like the number of visitors that come to your site and can be filtered to show what sites theyre coming from and how many of them have or havent been to your site before.

Google has broken down your metrics into three basic categories…

• Acquisition – this are numbers related to new visitors, returning visitors, geo-tracking, mobile tracking, browsers and more.
• Engagement – These numbers consider the quality of your site traffic. When visitors come to your site, theyll do one of three things: read the page they came to, click to more pages beyond their entry page, or leave. Engagement metrics focus on these actions visitors are taking once they get to your site and how good you are at keeping them there.
• Outcome – Are you driving visitors to make online purchases? Getting them to view a specific piece of content? Aiming for more newsletter signups? Once youve pinned down your site goals, make sure your site administrator enables Goals in Google Analytics in the Account Settings page.

For more details look at this details article at Mashable that goes into more details.

Our Po!nt: When using Google Analytics you have to determine what sort of analytics you are going to tract as it relates to your customer demographics. Share with us what sort of analytics are you tracking to grow your company from your website?

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Test! Test1 Test! Most people develop a website and typically forget about the performance of the site once they get everything in place and it’s all pretty as well as continue to deliver engaging website experiences time and time again.

We always recommend that you constantly test and retest your website for all sorts of stuff – performance, graphic, content, etc in order to see what produces the best results. To make it simple we found this Infographic from Monetate for you to save and use as a good starting point.

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Ok! Do we need another social media platform? Isn’t Facebook, Twitter and YouTube enough? Well I use to think so until I ran across Pinterest! I feel that it could be just as big as Facebook because it has the power to influence buyers! Yes, real buyers long term!

So what is Pinterest? Pinterest lets you organize and share all the important things you find on the web that you want to save for later to use, view or pruchase. People use the pinboards inside Pinterest to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes and so much more.

Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people to find the things that your friends like or perfect stranger pin for themselves. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. To get started, request an invite.

Best part is you can add your company into Pinterest and add “Pin It ” buttons to be sure visitors to your website add your items to someones pinboard! I have to say the clients we have introduced this to don’t like it at first but once they are in and adding their products they start to see it as a way to be pinned by thousands of people as a long term prospect-to-customer system that perpetually feeds on itself. Downside is you have to be invited to join just like you did with Facebook. Don’t know anyone on Pinterest yet? No problem, email me and I will send you an invite.

Our Po!nt: Just when you think you can’t have any thing else in your life to influence what you like, want or need along comes something we feel you won’t want to live without. Check Pinterest out and let us know what you think!

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Right from the beginning of 2011 I could tell it was going to be an amazing year for technology as far as impacting web design and the user experience. I was completely amazing at all of the innovations in the new HTML5 coding standards and the many great ideas on what technology could do for growing your business.

Take a moment to click this link to see all of the great things that 2011 gave us that you can use in 2012! Discover…

• Simple Color Schemes
• Being Mobile Ready
• Designing For Touch Screens, Not Mice (my favorite)
• QR Coding
• And More

Our Po!nt: Keep you mind and eyes open when looking on how you can improve your next version of your website. Also post some of the trends you’ve seen as well. Thanks for a great 2011 and see you in 2012!

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There is a new business economy or marketing or something taking place that all businesses need to pay attention to because in 5 years you may not be around because of it. Watch this video and leave your comments about how you feel about Social Media’s influence – Fad or a Real Business Marketing Tool?

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