There's an app for that--how mobile apps have changed our lives

 

Any small inconvenience (or what some call a first world problem) in life can now be minimized by an app. And people download a lot of them. According to appsolutegenius.com, Apple’s App store is about to hit 25 billion downloads.
 
One such app has helped the happiest place on earth, Disneyland, become an even more joyous place. Instead of guessing at which line is the shortest throughout the day, you can now download an app that can help you chart out your day for maximum ride-riding and minimal line-waiting.
 
Feel like your alarm always goes off in the middle of your deepest sleep? You're in luck! There is an app that will chart your sleep cycles and wake you during your lightest one that is closest to your wake-up time.
 
And paying too much for items has become a thing of the past. There are apps that allow you to scan barcodes and compare prices. Apps even allow you to find the cheapest gas price any area that you happen to be. 

Apps are changing the way we use our mobile devices. They are also influencing everything from mobile design to marketing.

The website mappdom.com has a list of the most interesting facts about apps. Here are the ones that I found most intriguing:

• ·         Half of smartphone owners have scanned QR codes and 18 percent of them made a purchase after scanning.

• ·         By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide.

• ·         16 % of smartphone users report that they’ve made a purchase as a result of a marketing message they received on their phone.

• ·         In Q3 2011, teens increased their mobile data consumption by 256% over the prior year.

I think mobile devices are quite literally becoming an extension of the human being. This is partially due to the convenience of apps. Why buy a GPS when you can just use a map app on your phone? Why clip coupons if you can just scan QR codes?

My favorite viral videos

Ah viral videos. How many hours have I wasted on you? According to HubSpot Americans spend an average of 3.5 hours per week watching viral videos.

In all of my viral video watching though, there have been a few that have really stood out from the rest. Today I think I will share my top 5.

5: Charlie the Unicorn:

Don’t act like you haven’t see it. And don’t like you didn’t like it. Charlie was the first viral video that I ever watched on YouTube. Although it was posted five years ago, I still go watch Charlie lose a kidney on his trip to candy mountain every once and awhile and laugh.

Favorite quote: “Shun the non-believer. Shuuuu—n.”

4: Bed Intruder Song with Antoine Dodson

I honestly have no idea how many times I watched this video of a song created from a news report. Words cannot describe its genius.

Favorite quote: “So you can run and tell that, run and tell that, run and tell that homeboy, home home homeboy.”

3: Kid President

I had to put an inspirational video in the post. And this is by far the best inspirational video I have ever seen. Kid President thinks we all need a pep talk. And I think he is right.

Favorite quote: “Not cool Robert Frost!”

2: OK Go: Here It Goes Again

Such a cool video. I have this on my workout playlist just so I can imagine everyone going crazy on the treadmills in the Field House at Utah State.

The treadmill choreography is so original and unique. It was destined to be a hit.

1: Lazy Sunday

Andy Samberg is hilarious. Stick him in an Saturday Night Live short rapping about cupcakes and the Chroni(what!)cles of Narnia with Chris Parnell and a viral video is born. And even better, they followed it up with Lazy Sunday 2. Which is also crazy-hilarious.

Favorite quote:
Chris Parnell: Reach in my pocket, pull out some dough.
Andy Samberg: Girl actin’ like she never seen a ten befo’.
Chris Parnell: It’s all about the Hamiltons, baby!

So what makes a good viral video? According to InnovaTonic there are 5 characteristics required for a viral video: humor, creativity, simplicity, emotional and engaging. I can see a lot of these characteristics in my top five favorite videos.

Search Engine Optomization

 

The first time I heard about search engine optimization was from my dad. I was a junior in high school and he had started a business and was trying to give it a strong online presence. I haven’t given SEO much thought since then. But if I plan to have anything to do with social media in my career, it looks like SEO will be something I will need to know how to use. 

So what is SEO?

SEO helps businesses show up early in search results. Wikipedia defines SEO as “the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results.”

Why does SEO matter?

Many business owners have realized the benefits of SEO. This is not surprising considering the following statistics from the Search Engine Journal:

-75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.

-Search and e-mail are the top two internet activities.

-Inbound leads cost 61% lower than outbound leads. An example of an inbound lead might be from search engine optimization. An outbound lead might be from a cold call.

-A study by Outbrain shows that search is the #1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%

-SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate.

-For Google, a study from Slingshot SEO shows 18% of organic clicks go to the #1 position, 10% of organic clicks go to the #2 position, and 7% of organic clicks go to the #3 position.

-79% of search engine users say they always/frequently click on the natural search results. In contrast, 80% of search engine users say they occasionally/rarely/never click on the sponsored search results.

Great. Now how does SEO work? 

Jonathan Strickland describes two philosophical strategies to SEO: black hat and white hat.

White hat strategies focus on finding keywords that people search that lead them to certain sites. It focuses on giving leads to the spiders or crawlers that are sent out to scan web pages for content.

Black hat strategies are looked down on by some in the SEO community. This strategy involves cramming keywords onto webpages to skew search results. This can be done using invisible text or text that is the same color as the web page background.