<img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-6828" title="Blog 2" src="http://luminositymarketing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Blog-22.png" alt="" width="339" height="298" />Recent reports have shown that affluents are spending more and more time online, especially on social media sites. In the last year, Facebook usage among affluents has seen an increase of over <a href="http://www.millionairecorner.com/article/across-wealth-levels-social-media-usage-rise" target="_blank">20 percent</a>. What's even more interesting is what affluents are doing online. They are <a href="http://luxurysociety.com/articles/2011/11/affluent-consumers-and-how-they-use-the-internet-social-media-and-mobile-devices" target="_blank">turning to</a> the Internet to "investigate brands, form connections and make purchases." <a href="http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/158831/" target="_blank">Recent reports</a> have also found that these affluents are becoming more influenced by social media when purchasing luxury items. Of individuals with assets of $1 million or more, affluents said that comments and information on social media sites influenced which retail stores they visit (56 percent), what designer brands they buy (57 percent), and what websites they visit (59 percent). This is good news for luxury marketers. Not only will they be able to zero-in on affluent audiences on Facebook and other social media sites, but they can affect their friends and family too.

According to a recent Mendelsohn <a href="http://adage.com/article/adagestat/affluency-definitions-luxury/231388/" target="_blank">study</a> of affluents with an annual income of<a href="http://luminositymarketing.com/blog/?p=6812">[...]</a>

As an avid traveler, I am always searching for new information sources to reference while planning my trips, since that’s half the fun of any travel experience. I love reading travel guides, talking to friends, researching online, and gathering any and all information in order to make each trip – for business or leisure – the perfect trip for me.

The trip planning bug bit me back in college. My sister and I decided to visit my brother who was working in Japan. Since she was a busy professional, I took on the task of making all the arrangements and planning our route through the country. As I devoured tour books, asked my brother for advice, and researched on the internet I learned about the culture, found great little hotels, and found the best train ticket package to buy. In the end, I think I had (slightly) more fun planning the trip than actually being there.

Since then the information available to travelers has exploded. From travel books to blogs to Twitter to mobile apps, it’s almost too much for me to handle. How I plan travel now is completely different from how I planned travel in college. The main difference? [...]

Google+ has been touted by some online critics, bloggers, techies, and the like as the end-all-be-all, the thing that will squash Facebook, the thing that will seamlessly integrate as well as manage data, pictures, emails, friend circles, updates video chats, search, all other information, etc., and abolish the need for fragmented social media avenues. People won't have to log on to Twitter AND Facebook AND Skype AND LinkedIn; they can simply go on Google+. On the other hand, it has also been dismissed by critics as a quick fail, something that doesn't offer a differentiated enough social networking service, something too convoluted, and something that's too late in the game to gain the audience base that is already loyal to other social media tools. Despite these countless debates, one thing is certain: Google+ has been leveraging the media buzz and has already begun strategically marketing the product. In fact, as of late July (about a month since its launch), Google+ had acquired 25 million users.

Google+'s innovative product design would be enough to garner publicity, but it's also creating a stir for less obvious reasons: <a href="http://luminositymarketing.com/blog/?p=5204">[...]</a>

<img class="size-full wp-image-5591 aligncenter" src="http://luminositymarketing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/google+2.png" alt="" width="701" height="593" />

<img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4468" title="spg-foursquare" src="http://luminositymarketing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/spg-foursquare-300×187.jpg" alt="" width="219" height="140" />Starwood Hotels, whose properties include the St. Regis, W Hotels, Four Points, Westin, Le Meridien and Sheraton hotels, just made a smart move by incorporating the oh-so-popular <a href="https://foursquare.com/" target="_blank">Foursquare</a> into their Guest Rewards program. Foursquare has begun (starting yesterday) offering members of the <a href="http://www.spgpromos.com/socialcheckins/?EM=VTY_SPG_SOCIALCHECKINS_SPECIALOFFERS" target="_blank">Starwood Preferred Guest</a> (SPG) loyalty program additional points, badges and rewards for their checkins at participating hotels<a href="http://luminositymarketing.com/blog/?p=4462">[...]</a>

Perhaps one of the most illusive spaces in digital marketing is social media. Questions like how and when to reach consumers to what to say in the content are constantly plaguing this difficult, yet extremely important segment. If there is one place to begin, for a marketer to really understand how contact and communication works in social media, it is by understanding the rules of content decay. Not only is it difficult to understand the value of content on social media outlets, but it is also becoming more and more difficult for your content to stand out in the digital realm. And of course, now is when your content standing out in social media matters most. “Captivating attention is even more crucial today for effecting a behavior change,” Steve Rubel says in his post about Content Decay. Because this post was so smart, and here at Luminosity we love smart analysis, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to talk about ways to overcome content decay[...]