Woah. That’s a lot.

My boyfriend isn’t falling for it though. He steadfastly believes that it just isn’t for him, despite my repeated attempts to get him to join.  But still, he is not fully without social media. His one and only golden jewel of social media is his Instagram account, a social media app for iPhone and iPad that allows you to take and share pictures with friends.

Regardless of the Kyle’s (aka: non-Facebookers) of the world, it’s hard to deny the power of social media for business and for pleasure.

Sarah Evans of AdAge.com collected an impressive array of social media stats that I found thoroughly impressive. I thought I’d share some of my favorites with you to start off your weekend of social media posting (You can see the article here for source info).

• Business to Consumer Facebook results are 30% higher than average on Sundays.
• 23% of overall internet usage is devoted to time spent on a social networks or blogs.
• What people are retweeting: 92% retweet interesting content, 84% retweet humor, 66% retweet personal connection, 21% retweet celebrity status, 32% of retweets offered incentive and 26% of retweets were because some asked them to “Please RT”.
• Auto-posting things to Facebook decreases likes and comments by 70%
• There are over 100 million active Twitter users. 40% of which aren’t actually Tweeting but simply reading what is going on in their feed.
• 95% of Facebook Wall posts by fans are not answered by the brands walls they post on (!!)
• Consumers who use social media apps (Twitter, Foursquare, Urban Spoon etc) dine out more often and are more likely to be return customers.
• 20% of Google searches made every day have been NEVER been searched for before.

As you can see people are really using their social media! And it helps to be aware of some of these statistics to better utilize social media for your business. The above statistic that states that 95% of wall posts by fans are not answered by brands (Source allfacebook.com) boggles my mind! I understand that some brands are huge and inundated with wall posts, but social media (and marketing) is all about relationships and sending someone a thanks or answering a question can be a great way to connect with a new or existing customer!

Paying attention to how and why people are using social media is the first step to creating and leveraging social media that works for your business or organization.

So keep reading!

To check out more interesting social media statistics visit the AdAge.com article Stats of the Day: 50 New Social-Media Stats to Kick-start Your Slide Deck.

For additional social media  fun you can follow me on Twitter @jenniejacobs or  Web Marketing Therapy @WebMarketing_RX

Since we are all about proactive communication at the agency, I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify the “WHY” of our name.

The true nature of our name Web Marketing Therapy stems from our deeply rooted belief in the power of helping professionals and organizations help themselves.  Our name was a result of years of listening to client feedback.  We were told things like:
We feel like you just did therapy on our marketing! You just took all the overwhelm out of my marketing management.  I want to get on your marketing therapy couch.  You (Lorrie Thomas Ross, WMT’s founder) are like my marketing therapist!

So in 2009, we changed our name to Web Marketing Therapy to embrace our mission to be advisors, supportive marketing managers and help take the stress and overwhelm out of marketing!  The definition of therapy, as provided by dictionary.com is as follows:

For us, it’s all about providing a therapeutic approach to marketing for our clients. Let’s break it down:

1. The treatment of disease or disorders, as by some remedial, rehabilitating, or curative process: speech therapy.

We aren’t treating diseases of the body or mind, we are treating dis-ease of marketing. Dis, meaning apart or out and ease meaning a freedom from pain, discomfort, labor or difficulty. Our three pronged approach is based on the concepts of diagnosing the marketing problems, prescribing the appropriate cure or treatment and guiding our clients to a healthy marketing way of life.

2. A curative power or quality.

Web Marketing Therapy isn’t about duct taping your shoddy marketing plan to take you into next week. Real marketing breakthroughs happen when you start curing deep seeded marketing problems to establish a healthy marketing foundation. We wouldn’t go to a real therapist with the hopes of getting well in a day, and the same applies to our approach to web marketing. We think about marketing from a holistic perspective to provide an all-encompassing healing approach for our clients.

3. Psychotherapy; It’s about communicating issues and finding insight into problems with the goal of personal growth and behavior modification.

We want our clients to learn to assess marketing problems on their own and to understand why their old approach to marketing isn’t working for them. With training and advisory we want our clients to learn how to tackle the issues before they arise and learn to modify their marketing behavior!

4. Any act, hobby, task, program, etc., that relieves tension.

We know lots about this and encourage our clients to do what they do best, and what makes them happy, and letting us handle the parts that bog them down! If you thrive at writing blog posts, but want to cry when faced with a Tweet, don’t fret! We want to support you in the things that make you happy and relive tension, not create it!

The Wild Web Women also know that having a passion or hobby is so very important to a healthy marketing way of life. That is why we use our blog to encourage our team members and readers to take a break and have a great time. The About page on your website is the most looked at page there is and clients want to know the fun, exciting things that people in an organization do that make them unique. So take the time to go for a run, paint, play your guitar, dance your heart out… it’s good for your health, your marketing and your business!

So, as you can see, Web Marketing Therapy isn’t just for therapists. On the whole our approach can easily be applied to any type of business. To learn more about what we do and how we do it I encourage our readers to subscribe to our Healthy Marketing Advice blog and to check out our book by CEO Lorrie Thomas Ross (aka The Marketing Therapist); The 36-Hour Guide to Online Marketing and her course on lynda.com called Online Marketing Fundamentals!

The 12 chapter course featured exclusively on lynda.com outlines the fundamentals of online marketing in easy to understand and informational video tutorials. Lorrie rocks the tutorial socks off of me in this super smart and fun course. And just a little FYI: Lorrie was a whopping 8 months pregnant during the filming!

Online Marketing Fundamentals introduces web marketers, web designers, business owners and executives to the world of online marketing, and reviews how the different aspects of a business’ web site can support its marketing goals. Course highlights include information on:

• Social Media Marketing
• Search Engine Marketing
• Content Marketing
• Online Public relations
• Business Branding
• Marketing with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter
• Email Marketing
• Social Shopping Marketing with Yelp, Groupon, and Living Social
• User Experience Optimization
• Paid Search/Paid Advertising
• Online Advertising
• Blogging
• Web Marketing Strategy and more!

For those of you who do not know yet, lynda.com is a subscription based, online, video tutorial website chock full of amazing education. The lynda.com service is an exceptional value of only $25 a month and features a plethora of fun, easy to learn, video tutorials to help you in many aspects of your techy life!

If you aren’t a lynda.com  member yet you can still get a sneak peak of Lorrie’s course introduction and some other snippets from Online Marketing Fundamentals.

The Wild Web Women love lynda.com: Mary Sandor, Lorrie Thomas, Jennie Jacobs, Darla Bea Smith

As a designer,  I love all of the great InDesign and Illustrator tutorials on lynda.com for helping me to quickly learn an underutilized tool or tip in the programs. Another great feature: the Creative Inspirations documentaries on the site. The entertaining series allows you to get insight into the worlds of your favorite artists, photographers and more.

Basically, Web Marketing Therapy loves lynda.com and we think you will too! Check out the course today and let us know what you think about it below in our comments section!

Yep, it happens to us all.

I am a firm believer in the power of the mind and that the physical can affect us in a multitude of ways. The state of our physical bodies and physical spaces can have great impact on our thoughts and in turn our behavior. And, no, I did not just make this up. Feng Shui is a great example of this same exact philosophy (and it’s been around a really long time). The idea is simple: spaces affect and reflect our physical, mental and emotional states of being.

This lesson in the mind and space connection should not be swept under the rug (nudge, nudge). It applies to every aspect of our lives including the world of business and marketing. Clean and clutter free work spaces (that includes your computer hard drive, people!) can increase productivity and creativity because your mind is given the chance to focus on the important things, not just the dust bunnies swirling around your monitor.

So take this nugget of wisdom and mull it over a moment:

Put your space in order to regain clarity, rather than trying to order and control your thoughts in an unordered, unorganized, messy space.

Wow. Makes sense right?

I put myself to the test. Feeling overwhelmed and scattered this week I decided to spruce my workspace up a bit. It all began with an image my sister posted to my Facebook wall calling me to action:

“Make your office look like this!” my sister exclaimed. I gave it my best shot in the ten minutes I had available.

The Before Shot:

The after shot:

In the time I had,  I made my space feel open, happy and clean, with a dose of creative inspiration taped up to the wall, resulting in the perfect blank canvas for my mind to get working. I challenge all of the Healthy Marketing Advice blog readers to this clean space, clean mind challenge and I would love to know if you felt a shift in your thinking afterward.

On a closing note, I wanted to share some images of beautiful and inspirational work environments I found online via Pintrest and Office Snap Shots.