'World of Mouth'

That headline is a thought-provoker quote from a video shown at the National Retail Federation's recent Shop.org summit and on the NRF blog. (Reblogged by Retail Traffic Court blogger David Bodamer)

And it's only one of many of the data bits provided by socialnomics.com that highlight the exponential power of social media.

"If facebook were a country, it would be the world's fourth largest."

"80 percent of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. People update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?"

"Generation X and Y believe e-mail is passe. In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshman."

Watch the video. Makes you believe if you're not on the social media bullet train, you'll be left behind.

Cha-chinging for jobs

More than 24 million people work in retail across the United States.
The National Retail Federation underscores the import role retail businesses play in the economy with its new state retail online database.
Click on a state in on the database map to see how many people are employed in retail businesses, the number of retail businesses and the total retail sales there.
You can drill down even further by clicking your congressional district.
Based upon U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics information, the database shows our district, the 13th Congressional District, contains 2,939 retail establishments that employ 53,222 people. Almost 20,800 of those work in restaurants and bars.
Retail businesses in our district generate a total of $9.9 billion in sales annually.
The statistics bring home the employment reasons why retail sales are a barometer of the economy.