How Does A Solar Panel Work?

In researching the topic of “How does a solar panel”, we find contradictory information on how energy is produced by the panels and the cells themselves. A number of solar cells should be connected in series to achieve a usable voltage for use with a storage device or electric.

The electricity generated by the panel is a direct current (DC) that is usually identified by their negative and positive terminals. As also has a battery positive and negative terminals, the cells operate in a similar manner.

In a serial connection, two cells, which have 4 terminals (2 positive and negative 2) may become a larger cell when you simply connect negative to 1 on the positive (positive to negative and vice versa). What remains is just one negative and one positive, but the tension of the two panels (0.5V + 0.5V = 1V) were added. Two cells have become larger cell. Similarly, when you have 12 cells in series can be simply connected by connecting all the positive and negative aspects that will end no matter what you do with just one negative and one positive at both ends.

In a parallel connection, the same two cells, which have 4 terminals (2 positive and negative 2) are wired differently. One positive terminal is connected to a negative terminal 1-1 positive and negative (positive to positive and negative to negative). Both cells have not become a big solar cell instead began to work together to amplify the current, measured in amperes (A). Here we can probably say that two son became a great thread, in this case, two positive have become a large positive advantage and the same goes for the negative child. Parallel connections are used only when it has reached the target voltage over a series connected solar cells. A series of 36 cells can generate about 18V (36 x 0.5 = 18V) and 18V this is the ideal for charging a 12V battery voltage. If you want to charge quickly, you have to add more solar cells but must keep the same voltage (18V), and it is therefore necessary to connect the next set of solar cells in a (positive to positive and negative to negative) parallel.

If you connect three groups of solar cells connected “in series”, it is called a connection to 3 strings of solar cells and the 3 channels is called a solar module or modules. It becomes a solar panel integrated when all other components such as the chassis, the backsheet, the glass cover and the junction box.

A solar panel in turn can be connected to another solar panel also in series or parallel depending on the design of the photovoltaic system. Several series-connected solar panels, said panels 12, also considered a chain when connected in parallel to another channel or more other channels. Several strings of solar panels are then called a matrix or sun.

Importantly, in a series arrangement, the voltage (V) and then added in a parallel arrangement, AMPS (A) increases. Voltage multiplied by the amplifier results in determining Watts (VXA = W)

At this point, you should be able to understand the relationship of small solar cells on its larger counterpart, the solar panel. If you can build a solar panel, then in principle, you can also build a large solar panel equivalent to a solar power plant.

Everything depends on you to buy solar cells, but make sure you ask the right amount based on the solar panel to do what is something in this article will cover the latest how-to articles cells. Also be aware of the electrical output of the solar cell is important for the amount of electricity you need to get. Typically, a solar cell has a voltage of 0.5 V and its rated capacity is about 4Wp. I hope this information helps you in your search for “how a solar panel works.”

A Simple Guide to Overcoming Ad Blindness for Publishers

Posted by Trumplier

Ad blindness is one of the main reasons publishers must rethink their monetization strategies. When it comes to dealing with this phenomenon, advertisers typically have multiple options at hand. Still, there are steps you can (and should) take on the supply side to successfully deliver ads to audiences.

The psychology behind ad blindness: detection theory

Ad blindness is rooted in the human ability to filter out unnecessary information—the psychological mechanism studied within the framework of detection theory. Due to this inborn capability, we ignore everything similar to those advertisement types we find irrelevant or unappealing.

However, this doesn't mean users overlook all ad units. Although we might not be looking at ads intentionally, we still see them from the corners of our eyes and our brain processes them, as argued by iMedia’s Brandt Dainow. In fact, people are inherently capable of tracking and discerning fairly evanescent signals.

That’s why we notice almost everything important that enters our field of perception. In a sense, we are biologically programmed to ignore information noise, while retaining the ability to instantly detect and process everything worthwhile.

With this in mind, the bottom-line objective for publishers is to serve ads visitors find worthwhile. While this may be difficult to achieve, there are tactics you can apply to decrease ad blindness rates in a non-disruptive manner.

These tactics constitute the groundwork of an efficient monetization strategy.

Monetization fundamentals: adding value to ads

Ultimately, you need to promote ad relevance, quality, value, and viewability if you want to trigger the audience’s attention in a non-disruptive manner. Although these factors won’t provide you with an instant remedy for ad blindness, understanding them essential to ensuring you serve the right ads to the right audience.

1. Ensure relevance with real-time bidding

Consider real-time bidding (RTB) as a practical way to serve highly relevant ads on your website. This approach is based on auctioning highly targeted ad impressions with advertisers competing over the users who are most receptive to their ads. All available user-related information (e.g., demographics, location, and online behavior) is collected and analyzed to guarantee that the displayed ad creatives are relevant to the audience’s interests.

You can also opt for direct campaigns with advertisers that make full use of big data analysis. The most convenient way to do this is to cooperate with online advertising companies (including ad networks and supply-side platforms) that have both the hardware and experience needed to make the best use of these technologies.

2. Promote quality with non-standard ad formats and creative thinking

Know the industry standards—particularly, the guidelines created by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)—and make sure your advertising network or supply-side platform (SSP) follows them. In particular, keep an eye on IAB “Rising Stars”, because new, high-quality visual solutions have a good chance of sparking your visitors’ interest.

However, following best practices is just one of the ways to improve ad quality and battle ad blindness. Another powerful method is to provide support for creatives with unusual, stand-out design. In order to do this, you need to supply non-standard ad space and ensure the demand for it. You can achieve this goal through direct cooperation with advertisers, or with the help of networks and SSPs that offer custom advertising models. These two examples will serve as a good basis for your own monetization solutions:

• Homepage skins (also referred to as wallpapers) are creatives displayed in the background of the main content and user interface elements. Ad units of this type are typically paired with traditional banners.
• Custom ads with a strong emphasis on aesthetics are ideal for websites with a minimalistic layout. Full-screen ads of this type are used as one of the monetization tools by WeTransfer.

3. Choose value over volume

Investigate the possibility of cutting the amount of remnant inventory (ad space and impressions) used for low-quality, non-targeted ads. Although this tactic may cause a short-term reduction in revenue, you will likely countervail negative effects with higher profit from high-value campaigns within the course of a couple of months.

As argued by Roger Williams from Maxifier, this approach will eventually lead to better user experience, increased demand for ad space, and higher cost per 1K impressions (CPM). More importantly, it directly addresses the main cause of ad blindness: the audience’s negative reaction to the overabundance of low-quality, irrelevant ads served on many websites.

4. Increase ad viewability

Focus on viewability (i.e., the ratio of all displayed ads to the ones the can actually be viewed by users) as a key metric that will be especially important for advertisers in 2015. According to this infographic from Google, an ad unit is considered viewable if at least half of its pixels are displayed on the screen for at least one second. The average publisher’s inventory viewability was only 50% in November 2014. This implies that a very large portion of ads wasn't (and isn't) shown to the users. You can improve the situation by following these tips:

• Experiment with placing 300x250, 728X90, or 320X50 units just above the fold, not directly at the top of the page
• Opt for vertical banners that stay within users’ range of vision for longer periods of time
• Place some ad units below the fold (as this pattern accounts for 40% viewability rate)

By working on increasing your viewability, you ensure that more creatives are regularly in the visitors’ field of view, which increases the odds for these banners to be clicked on.

Ad placement tips: Hacking the detection theory

By applying the “monetization fundamentals” tactics, you promote valuable ads that have better chances at getting your visitors’ attention. You can also approach detection theory, viewability, and user experience in a more aggressive manner—and use specific placement patterns that prompt users to click on ads. While this approach is easier to implement, the effects it produces are rather short-term.

1. F-shaped reading pattern

Apply the results of eye-tracking studies to your monetization tactics. The research from Nielsen Norman Group proves that there is a very particular way most people scan through web content. Jacob Nielsen describes this near-universal reading pattern as “F for Fast.” In most cases, users read the first sentence or heading, move down and read another line, and then proceed to skim through the text vertically. Place the ads somewhere along this route to prompt people to look at the creatives.

2. Near-content placement

Place your ads closer to the main content to gain more attention from your audience. Essentially, this method works for the same reason native advertising does—site visitors care about and focus on content. For this reason, users are much more likely to fix their eyes on the ads located in the vicinity of or inside the post (e.g., between paragraphs or photos). Consequently, this setup accounts for a noticeable increase in click-through rates (CTR).

3. Welcome pages

Explore the potential of using welcome page ads on your website. This placement pattern is based on displaying a nearly blank page with an ad before showing actual content to the users. This way, the chances a visitor will actually pay attention to the ad skyrocket (compared to traditional placement patterns).

Although this approach adds prominence to commercials, users’ reactions to welcome pages may be negative, especially if they load slowly. This is why this advertising model should always be subject to A/B testing. Still, welcome page ads are successfully applied by several top-level publishers, including Forbes, The New York Times, The Atlantic and Merriam-Webster.

The bottom line

To build an effective monetization strategy, publishers must start by promoting relevant, high-quality, viewable creatives. Location patterns provide additional results, but require frequent rearrangement. You can then add other ad placement solutions to your system to increase the overall performance of your monetization strategy. Still, the ultimate recommendation is to complement your content with advertisements that users will find relevant and valuable.

(All images provided courtesy of the author.)

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Mobile Game Roundup: Cartoon Survivor, Breach TD and More

As we reach the end of another week, mobile app stores have been updated with a slew of new games for iOS, Android and other mobile devices. This week, Zen Studios released its Portal Pinball table on mobile, based on the popular Portal series of console games, while Zynga expanded its FarmVille franchise with the release of its FarmVille: Harvest Swap match-three game.

Finally, gamers looking for a deeper experience can find it in QCF Design’s Desktop Dungeons, which offers randomly generated dungeons for limitless gameplay on tablets.

As usual, this week’s lineup of new releases offers a little something for everyone. Here’s a look at some additional games released on mobile this week.

Cartoon Survivor (Free on iOS) – The debut title from Spunge Games, Cartoon Survivor is a level-based runner, challenging players to navigate obstacle courses as a colorful Doo Doo bird before time runs out and the dynamite strapped to his back explodes. In each course, the Doo Doo bird runs automatically, and gamers tilt their device to move left and right on the path. Gamers tap to jump or tap and hold to glide, and will collect coins as they complete each course. Players choose a difficulty before each stage, determining the number of stars available as rewards and the time limit to complete the course. As players collect coins, these can be spent on new costumes for Doo Doo bird, or helmets with special abilities.

Chaos Rings III ($19.99 on iOS, Android) – A full-scale RPG for mobile devices, Square Enix’s Chaos Rings III introduces players to the city of Neo Paleo and the planet Marble Blue. Gamers will control Nazca as he makes his way to Marble Blue in search of treasure, new lands and \"mythical beasts.\" The game promises over 100 hours of gameplay, including a lengthy story mode and a separate battle mode with new battle mechanics.

Snack Truck Fever (Free on iOS, Android) – This level-based puzzle game from Square Enix and Duello Games sees players tapping and dragging to create lines of matching ingredients. Each level has a different goal, from collecting a large number of base ingredients to feeding police officers coffee and donuts, and so on. Power-ups help gamers complete difficult stages, and players earn up to three stars on each level, depending on their final score.

Zombiebucket (Free on iOS) – From One More Level and Submachine Factory, Zombiebucket is a survival match-three game, challenging players to survive the zombie apocalypse by tapping and dragging to create lines of two or more touching zombies of a single color. As players create matches, additional zombies fill the bucket, with larger matches triggering the appearance of power-up zombies, capable of clearing large groups of zombies from the screen. Players will collect Superzombies as they level up or complete specific tasks (like creating a chain of 10 zombies, for instance), with the game’s overall goal being to survive as long as possible before the bucket completely fills.

One More Dash (Free on iOS) – From SMG Studio, developer of One More Line, One More Dash is a survival game based on timing. In the game, players guide an orb through a series of circles, each defended by at least one rotating barrier. Players must tap at the right time to dash forward and avoid these barriers, but have a limited amount of time to take each shot before the game ends. While it is sometimes possible to bounce off of a barrier and try again, some circles are defended by spiked walls, which instantly destroy the orb when hit. Gamers complete missions and collect currency as they play, which can be spent on new visual themes for the game.

Pits of Death ($0.99 on iOS) – Designed to resemble a retro experience from the 1980s, Rebisoft‘s Pits of Death sees players exploring tiled dungeons by swiping to choose a movement direction at each crossroad. The goal of the game is to find an arrow somewhere in the dungeon, and use it to kill a dragon also hidden somewhere on the grid. A warning appears when players are near the dragon or a pit, with falling into a pit ending the game and generating a new dungeon. Players can find rope used to escape pits, but should ultimately expect to fail repeatedly before claiming victory over the dragon. Pits of Death is also available as an Apple Watch game.

Dungeon Trackers (Free on iOS, Android) – From Joycity, this RPG mixes card collecting with traditional RPG elements as players take on the role of a summoner, capable of capturing and controlling creatures to defeat enemies. The game offers over 300 creature cards to collect, which relate to others in a “rock, paper, scissors” elemental mechanic. Users create a team and take it into battle, tapping on individual characters to attack, or swiping on character portraits to unleash special skills. Players can explore the world through the main story, or earn extra loot in special dungeons. Finally, a multiplayer mode allows users to battle other players.

Intergalactic Bubbles (Free on Android) – A 3-D bubble shooter from Hellscape Games, Intergalactic Bubbles challenges players to remove moving bubbles from the screen before they reach the cannon at the bottom. Players can upgrade a series of abilities over time, or use power-up bubbles to escape tricky situations. The game is coming soon to iOS.

Candy Crush Soda Saga (Free on Amazon) – Previously released on Facebook, iOS and Android devices, King’s popular match-three game is now available for Kindle users. The follow-up to the original Candy Crush Saga offers 390 levels at launch, and introduces players to a new square match mechanic, as well as soda bottles used to fill the screen with purple soda.

Funny Farm (Free on iOS) – Following its release on Android and Facebook, Eva Studio’s Funny Farm is now available to download on iOS devices. The level-based match-three game challenges players to defend their field from pests by completing a different goal in each stage. These tasks include removing specific crops wrapped in worms, dropping key items to the bottom of the screen and more. Players can use power-ups to complete tricky levels, and will earn up to three stars on each stage, depending on their final score.

Sproggiwood ($9.99 on iOS, Android) – A roguelike from Freehold Games, Sproggiwood takes players on an adventure inspired by Finnish mythology, challenging them to explore randomly generated dungeons and decorate their own town. Dungeons are filled with monsters and traps, and players can tackle these as one of six different classes. Sproggiwood is best experienced on iPad 3+, iPhone 5+ and iPad Mini 2+.

World of Madagascar (Free on iOS, Android, Amazon) – From JumpStart, World of Madagascar is based on the DreamWorks franchise Penguins of Madagascar. The children’s multiplayer game has been created with the help of educators, and includes grade-specific content for children in Kindergarten through 3rd grade. In the game, players join the team of spy penguins from the films, and work to rescue baby animals from Dave, an evil Octopus. The game was originally released on the Web in late 2014, and is coming soon to Windows Phone. The Android and Amazon versions are also not yet available, as of this writing.

Breach TD (Free on iOS) – Developed by Space Rhino Games, Breach TD began as a successfully crowdfunded project on Kickstarter, with the final product mixing tower defense gameplay with real-time strategy and MOBA elements. In the game, players are challenged to defeat the Void army using powerful guardians, with the goal of sealing the breach between dimensions. Before each battle, players choose from an expanding list of guardians, and choose two battle cards containing buffs like magic damage or healing effects, as examples. Each match is split into two phases: building (buying and placing guardians on a grid for battle, or upgrading structures) and combat (guardians defend their bases and battle in the middle of the lane). During battle, players can use battle cards and mercenaries to take over the opponent or strengthen their defenses. Breach TD will receive a three-on-three multiplayer mode and team vs. team battles in future updates.

Cooking Up Leads: 3 Ingredients Of An Award-Winning Recipe

The Oracle Marketing Cloud content team took home top honors at the Digiday Content Marketing Awards celebrated last night in New York City. We’re excited about the win as we worked incredibly hard to produce a compelling asset that would excite our audience and drive results. A tasty demand dish shouldn’t be kept secret, so we’d like to share 3 core ingredients in our modern marketing recipe for success:

1. Establish a compelling core offering – We produced an eBook called “The Demand Gen Pro’s Cookbook” to put a fun spin on the traditional case study format. This offer compiles modern marketing “recipes for success” around display ad retargeting, customer lifecycle management, database hygiene, marketing and sales alignment, campaign metrics, lead nurturing and social media. We targeted this asset specifically at matters central to the demand gen role.

2. Maximize your multichannel efforts – In the spirit of “go big or go home” our content, social, and demand teams collaboratively developed and executed this campaign across multiple channels. The eBook theme was carried out across email, social media, blog, and other advertising channels. Various teams met weekly to share channel metrics and develop new engagement goals to enhance the value of the program. Promoting the asset in various ways proved to be valuable for branding, engagement, and driving marketing qualified leads MQLs.

Email Design:

Landing page:

3. Make your customers program advocates – Because the eBook content centered on our customer’s stories, it was important we thanked them for their participation and allowing us to share their successes. We worked with our design partner Beutler Ink to develop caricatures of our “Demand Gen Master Chefs” that could be used in the eBook and shared with each person for use as their social media avatars. This helped create additional buzz and provided fodder for social media advertising. We also sent framed hard copies of the caricatures signed by our own VP of Marketing as a special thank you touch.

Results Were Served
“Cook Up Leads” produced 752 form submits with 360 from the email send. We had 163 social submits from blog (121 form submits) and organic social posts (41 form submits). Since this program launched in May of 2014, we have tracked 153 Marketing Qualified leads from the email send and 166 marketing qualified leads from social media. The icing on the cake was our team’s Digiday Content Marketing Awards win!

Thank you to Digiday for recognizing our team’s work as the most outstanding branded email campaign to promote a brand, product or service to consumers or an audience.

Check out the Demand Gen Pro’s Cookbook here!

What kind of stuff does your team want to strut? Share your modern marketing takeaways from a recent campaign!

Why the Social Platforms Should Not Kill Their Golden Goose

We are all aware that advertising is the main monetization strategy of the social media platforms. Facebook, Google, and YouTube all rely heavily on their ad sales and ad ecosystem to generate revenue.

Up to this point, the model for running ads on a social platform was quite simple: you create an ad-exchange, allow your users to purchase ad placements at different rates, and those ad placements would then be injected into the feed of users.

The model is straight forward, highly scalable, and fully controllable as a result of it being programmatic. Simply put, if you wanted to advertise on Facebook, you had to go through Facebook, and Facebook had full transparency of every transaction made.

A new world vs. an old model

When the platforms matured, a new model began to sweep across the social landscape, the follower model. Though YouTube had subscribers, Facebook had its fans, and Twitter had, well, followers early on, the talent pool was limited to a handful of celebrities who made the early acclamation to social media, and a few viral sensations.

As YouTube continued to mature, you had lots of talent emerge, but that ad buying was still done programmatically, and YouTube and their ad partners, were for the most part simply selling pre-roll ad spots on content creators’ pages.

As the follower model over took social, talent started to emerge from all directions. No longer were there a handful of celebrities or creators, but now there were thousands. And, as new follower-based platforms like Instagram and Vine emerged, new creators began to emerge before the platforms themselves could formalize their ad model.

Social sponsorship was no longer a tiny ad spend, but was quickly chipping away at advertisers’ digital budgets due to the new available supply of influencers on the market.

Blurred lines: Why monetizing influencer posts isn’t so straight forward

Unlike an ad exchange, the platforms have no visibility of the actual transactions that happen between influencers and advertisers. Even more challenging, assuming that a platform was able to sift through and identify influencers when they talked about a brand, how could they decipher if that influencer got paid to feature that brand?

Even more challenging, how could that platform know exactly how much that influencer got paid and verify the amount? The social platforms have successfully fulfilled their mission of empowering the individuals, and in doing so have made their revenue model moot. Now they are competing with their own users to monetize their own platform!

Don’t kill your golden goose

The seemingly simple response to this would be for the platforms like Facebook to push their own ads harder, and take preventative measures against the influencers and parties acting on their behalf to keep them from excluding the platforms from the transaction.

However, its not so simple. The major platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest are not the only social platforms out there. Everyday, new social platforms emerge, so the influencers have other options. Most importantly, we are living in an information economy and content is the currency that this economy relies on.

A platform, like Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Twitter, or Snapchat is only as valuable as the content that it hosts. Influencers, are professional content creators and are the ones creating the highly valuable content that us consumers consume. To block, or inhibit an influencer from creating content on your platform is the equivalent of killing your golden goose.

It’s a mad mad multi-platform world

All of this begs the question, why don’t the platforms just manage the influencers themselves? Well, unless the platforms want to get into the near impossible to scale and not-so-clear cut business of talent management, then managing influencers isn’t a viable option.

Even if it was, that would mean that the platforms would have to monetize and manage influencers profiles on other competing social platforms. It is easy to see how this strategy comes apart.

Harmony in monetizing a democratized ecosystem 

I believe that empowering individuals is a good thing, and that if incentives are aligned everyone can win. For example, if Facebook took an approach of leveraging influencers and their agents to conduct sponsored posts, by giving the brands a higher ROI through a new feature, then they can use that extra value created and influencers and brands would gladly pay.

For example, if Instagram allowed for links to be placed in influencers’ captions, which would give brands a more direct path to a purchase and therefore a higher conversion, I strongly believe that influencers and brands would gladly pay for that feature on a per click basis or a flat fee. Either way, Instagram would be able to leverage its users to generate revenue the way they like to generate revenue, programatically. In that case, partners could now sell ads on behalf of Facebook and influencers.

Eric Dahan is the CEO and Co-founder of InstaBrand, one of the leading mobile influencer platforms that connects brands with millions of people in an authentic and meaningful way across all social media channels.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

How to Use Your Content Platforms to Gain Valuable Customer Insights

How to Use Your Content Platforms to Gain Valuable Customer Insights written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on industry research or surveying your audience — most small businesses already have plenty of data collection tools right at their fingertips! The savviest businesses utilize their content to gain invaluable insights into their customer and potential customer base to understand what they want most- here’s how you can too!

Google Analytics

To get a good baseline for who your audience is, use your website’s Google Analytics data. On the left sidebar, click audience, then explore the demographics, interests, and geo sections. The location, age, gender, industry and topical interests of your website traffic is all displayed in these section. The interests section of your audience report contains particularly insightful gems. Affinity Categories relates to the other lifestyle interests they have, while In-Market Segments shows you their product and purchase based interests. Other Categories hones in on the most specific topics of interest or activities.

Blog Topics

Which blog posts get the most shares, views, or impressions on your blog and across your social networks? It’s important to distribute your blogs across a wide variety of platforms to get a feel for as many different segments of your audience as possible, as well as to get a better sense of the piece’s success. Sharing your blogs widely across the web also brings more traffic back to you site, and continues to feed into what your insights.

Downloaded Resources

You should make a few helpful pdf downloads available on your website. Not only is this a great way to capture emails, but it’s also a useful tool to see where your audience’s interests lie, or what problems are currently affecting them. Make sure all your resources relate to your business in some way- it wouldn’t be particularly helpful to learn what someone’s favorite color is or where they would most like to vacation.

Emailed Content

Whether you use a full on CRM like Salesforce or a simpler service like MailChimp- take note of what content your readers are clicking on. When sending them blog updates, industry news, or new services offered- note where their interests lie. Deliver more, similar content to see if you can hone in on the specific topics they care most about. Optimize your newsletters for key learnings.

Quizzes

People love quizzes, especially on social media. It’s also a genius way to learn more about your audience than any other technique. An easy tactic to start is a quiz themed to “What ___ Are You?”. Make sure you come up with questions that will help you in your your quest to understand your audience, such as “do you like to attack and solve problems, or do you seek the advice of others?”.

Facebook Insights

Immediately upon logging into Facebook, navigate to the left side menu and select Insights. You’ll find your Facebook audience demographics under the People category. Be sure to also note the section for when your fans are online to see what types of content you should be sharing to this audience. Lunch hour readers prefer entertainment, while morning browsers are primed for news. Long reads are best for the evening and weekend. For many brands, their Facebook audience consists of different groups, using Facebook at different times. Optimize your Facebook posts for greatest potential to collect the most audience data possible.

Twitter Analytics

Every user can now access their Twitter analytics. Similar to Facebook, Twitter’s Analytics lets you see basic audience demographic information (do you see any differences between your Facebook and Twitter audiences?) as well as an overview of your tweet performance. Twitter add-on Followerwonk assesses the bios of your followers to provide you with insights on their interests and how they describe themselves. You can see who else your followers tend to follow, what they tweet about and Followerwonk points you in the direction of new groups to go after (moms who love DIY or dads who like soccer).

LinkedIn Audience

When viewing your company page, select Analytics. You’ll see a concise listing of your posts’ performance as well as audience demographics. LinkedIn shares what level of professional attainment your followers are: entry-level employee through owner or VPs. You can also select Industry and Job Function from the audience data drop down menus. It’s highly advisable to appropriately tailor your content to appeal to the right level of reader: decision maker or someone who might suggest your company to the decision maker.

 

Diana Mackie is a small business writer, specializing in marketing and content. Diana writes for AllBusiness, Huffington Post, Social Media Today, Duct Tape Marketing and many other publications. She is currently the Chief Content Officer at Funding Gates. Diana attended Fordham University and now lives in New York City.

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#SocialSkim: Mary Meeker's State of the Internet, Plus 11 More Stories in This Week's Roundup

Get a sense of the scope of Mary Meeker's much-anticipated yearly State of the Internet. Learn how improved Twitter Analytics will help you better target buyers. We'll also share which social networks are most effective for marketing, and we'll surprise you with music that can be listened to only in ... Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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How Customer Photos Improve Mobile Shopping

How Customer Photos Improve Mobile Shopping written by Guest Post read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Mobile commerce is expected to grow nearly 50% in the next four years.

But even with the rapid rate of tablet and smartphone technology, there are still many advantages of web over mobile for creating a seamless online shopping experience. This is strongly reflected in the still lagging mobile conversion and purchase rates—mobile’s conversion rate lags over 3.5x behind desktop. With consumers spending more and more of their online time on mobile, brands are turning to content generated by their customers to improve the mobile shopping performance.

Mobile commerce still lags significantly behind desktop when it comes to e-commerce.

• Mobile conversion is generally terrible (0.6% conversion on smartphones in 2013 vs. 2.2% conversion on desktop)
• Consumers rate mobile as the “most difficult” method for completing an online purchase compared to other purchasing channels
• Customers rarely make purchases through mobile devices, and when they do, transactions made on mobile are on average much smaller.

Some reasons for mobile’s low reviews include:

• Low bandwidth that limits photos and load times
• Small screen that clutters and/or eliminates information
• Difficulty in mobile app downloads

User-generated content from social media has become a valuable resource to combatting the mobile commerce chasm. For one, your customers are using social media on mobile (social media usage from mobile increased 23% in 2014.)  They are browsing and posting pictures across social channels on their mobile devices.  This means that when it comes to using their phones– your customers are mostly being exposed by content generated by their friends and/or influencers they follow. By displaying customer photos within native shopping apps and on mobile e-commerce websites, your brand can begin to bridge the customer experience gap between social media and mobile commerce.

So what are the general takeaways to why customer photos and social media content are so effective at improving the mobile shopping experience?

1. Consumers are accustomed to seeing social photos from their mobile devices
2. Integrating social content into mobile commerce helps connect the shopping experience to the larger consumer mobile behavior
3. Customer photos are incredibly engaging and offer strong social proof of brands and products
4. User-generated content is more engaging than custom or stock photography

Kenneth Cole and Charlotte Russe place user-generated content on their mobile sites to enhance the customer shopping experience.

Social media plays a large role in improving the mobile experience and can be more than a channel for customer engagement. Customer photos can be leveraged to help personalize the mobile shopping experience and offer strong social proof of your brand and products. By integrating user-generated content into native apps and mobile web, your brand will begin to move the needle to drive higher mobile conversion rates and sales.

Kyle Wong is the CEO & Co-Founder of Pixlee, a SaaS platform that helps brands leverage customer photos to improve marketing. Kyle has been featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List and is a regular speaker and domain expert on influencer marketing and driving consumer engagement through social media.

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