Twitter Photo Collage, Mobile Phone Usage Trends, Gmail Users - Web Marketing Wednesdays

Welcome back to Web Marketing Wednesdays (WMW), Southwark Consulting’s weekly roundup of news and notes from the digital marketing world! This week’s edition of WMW tackles trends in mobile phone usage, explores the new Twitter Photo Collage feature and offers thoughts on what a massive Gmail user base means for Google+. As always, the goal of this column is to provide higher ed admissions and marketing staff with a quick rundown of the latest digital marketing trends. Read on for all the latest news…

Picking up on a theme that WMW has been focused on of late, we’ll kick off this week’s column with some more fun facts about mobile phone usage. The first tidbit comes from Matt Petronzio, who published an interesting – if unsurprising – piece called Are Landlines Becoming an Endangered Species. Our favorite fact from the short article: 10 years ago 97.2% of US homes has a landline; today, that figure stands at just 58.1%. In a similar vein, the folks at CNET published a story on smartphone app usage, stating that smartphone users average more than 2 hours a day using apps on their phones – with social media, messaging and games leading the way as far as app categories are concerned. Perhaps more interesting was the fact that the article also points out that mobile web usage is declining. So why does this matter to business schools? Two reasons: 1) If more and more young people have smartphones, it clearly signals the need for schools to play more heavily in that domain (so as to reach the ‘mobile first’ generation). 2) It’s not enough to merely offer mobile or responsive web sites – as smartphone users seem to gravitate towards apps. Stay tuned for a proper Southwark article on reaching today’s ‘mobile first’ applicants.

Moving from mobile phone usage over to social media, we’d like to point out two articles that offer useful tips for Twitter users. The first, from Lance Ulanoff, focuses on using a new Twitter feature called Photo Collage, offering step-by-step instructions as to how one can easily use an iPhone to create and tweet a collage of four photos. Given the importance of visual content in today’s marketplace, having admissions officers or marketing staff trained on this simple feature could really bring your alumni events, conferences – and even admissions information sessions to life on the web. And while you are training those who run your school’s twitter presence, check out this nice short piece from Amanda Nelson at Salesforce: 5 Really Fast Twitter Tricks.

Wrapping up this week’s edition of WMW, we’ll leave you with some food for thought and random tidbits:

The Gmail user base is now much larger than the population of the United States (over 424MM vs 318MM). Given how easy it is to integrate Google+ with Gmail, it would seem foolish to ignore the potential for Google+ to play a major role in social media over the long term.
If you are involved in marketing and branding, here are four must-watch movies. The Jones, Thank You For Smoking, Moneyball and Jobs. Check out the State of Digital Article to learn why.
In the spirit of April Fools and great content marketing ideas, take a look at the ‘Which Business School Are You’ quiz that Clear Admit ran yesterday on their site. It’s not just funny, but it’s actually a smart move from a content marketing standpoint.

And that concludes WMW for this week! Thanks for reading and best of luck in your admissions marketing efforts.