Getting online — not just in line — to find the best deals.
This holiday shopping season, brick-and-mortar stores are out to match e-commerce sites with the latest and deepest discounts, and even encourage in-store shoppers to buy online. About 85% of online retailers will offer special promotions on Monday when people return to work. And now there’s an entire web site to check out all the deals called cybermonday.com.
For the first time in fact, more of us will go online than will go to stores to do get our gifts — 52% of shoppers are expected to use the Web, tablets or smartphones to buy presents. A mobile device may be more important to bring Christmas shopping than your wallet.
Mobile shopping
Sales made on a mobile device will be 21% of all online holiday sales this year, according to the Adobe Digital Index 2012 Online Shopping Forecast. Two-thirds of those sales will be made on tablets, and the other third on smartphones. Phones more than tablets are used to research prices and find store locations and sales, and tablets to make a purchase.
And as retailers encourage shoppers to use multiple channels, more mobile sales are being made at the actual store. Walk into Best Buy with a smartphone, scan a QR code, and it takes you to the Best Buy web site. If you see it cheaper online, they’ll match that price in store. Or …buy something online and pick it up at a store near you — that same day. This saves you shipping costs and gets you that holiday rush of being with the crowds. Read More »
We redesigned and updated the blog incorporating many new features designed to improve the blogging experience! Here are some of the major changes you will notice as you explore the site:
The Cisco.com banner is now at the top of every page, hover over the logo to select either the blogs homepage or to go directly to Cisco.com.
The Blogs at a Glance module now has a sleek and clean design. We added LinkedIn and Google + social icons to make it easier to share content.
What do you look for when choosing social media training programs you will participate in? It can be daunting, given the variety of information, organizations, and strategies out in the socialphere. On top of that, learning methods and preferences are different for everyone, making it even more important that we each find the type of learning environment that works best for us.
We are continuously learning and absorbing new social media insights, news, strategies, techniques, since the landscape changes so frequently. And we gather this information in a variety of ways, from researching on our own to attending formal courses to one-on-one consulting. While we can educate ourselves quite a bit from gathering information on our own, participating in more formal learning settings can push us forward in our social media skill sets much faster. And at the same time, we have to be careful in choosing the right social media training program that meets our individual needs.
So it leads me back to my original question…what do you look for when choosing social media training programs to participate in? We’re interested in your insights around social media learning. Here is a link to a quick anonymous social media training program survey as part of an informal research project to better understand followers’ social media training preferences.
And below is a quick checklist I use to discern which training programs and formats to participate in:
Reputable organization and teacher
Education format that matches my preferred learning style (self-serve, group, or one-on-one settings)
Focused content around learning, not a sales pitch
Educational tone rather than just presenting the information as though it was a meeting
Mixture of content to help me learn the principles and then see it in action
Variety of tangible and credible examples
Short durations to keep my interest and not overwhelm me
Key takeaways and ideas I can use right away
What does your checklist look like when choosing social media training? I’m interested in your experience!
I look forward to your comments through this blog post and more of your insights through this short anonymous social media training program survey? This survey will remain open until Friday, December 7, 2012 by 5 p.m. PT. Thank you for your help and participation!
From recipes to ride sharing, collaborative consumption is changing how we get and give.
It’s almost time to buy the Thanksgiving turkey and pull out the Christmas lists. But as the Web explodes as a place many will go to shop, so are sites where we share what we have or do — and you can make money, or save some.
Lauren Anderson, director of CollaborativeConsumption.com says online sharing takes a lot of trust because, after all, you’re staying in someone’s home and eating scones baked by a stranger. Social media is helping many people make that leap of faith through more two-way reviews and visibility to online reputations.
Throughout the recent years we have seen an uptake in a new group of SMB’s – the “Progressive SMB,” organizations that are increasingly encroaching on the territory of their larger competitors. But what makes a SMB progressive?
Check out the infographic below to see what you can learn from progressive SMBs, including how they are going against the grain and investing heavily in technology to improve collaboration, productivity and long-term business bottom line results.
Do you consider yourself a progressive SMB? If so, we would love to hear how you are investing in IT to gain a competitive edge.
