It’s a funny bit of pop culture behavior, reading cereal boxes, but Mark Addicks of General Mills says that on average, a person reads the text on their box 12 times. Some of those people are looking for calorie counts and nutritional information, but many are just passing the time as they eat.

I guess it’s a habit we developed as kids, since many cereal boxes came with games and fun facts on the back. Or perhaps it’s because cereal boxes are one of the few packaged items that we actually put on the table when we eat. Think about it. I’m having a frozen pizza, but the box is in the trash, not on the table.

Whatever the reason, we do love to read our cereal boxes, so General Mills is working on ways to extend the experience using something else you have at the breakfast table, your cell phone.

Addicks spoke with USAToday about how General Mills is bringing digital to the table (literally.) Some of the tie-ins are obvious, such as a QR code that leads to a related recipe. Some are more fanciful, such as QR codes that open game apps or a recent Honey Nut Cheerios code that displayed a video all about honey.

Addicks said he envisions these apps as a digital version of the surprise inside the box. It’s true that kids are tech savvy and many have their own cell phones, but can a download be as enticing as a physical prize in a box? It’s probably cheaper to go digital, and it avoids many of the legal hassles that come with packaging toys for kids. Still, there’s nothing like jamming your hand down inside a box of sticky, dusty cereal in order to claim the prize before your siblings get to it.

But digital packaging isn’t only for cereal. General Mills is working on adding assets to their whole line of products from cake mixes to snack bars. How about a downloadable pedometer app attached to a low calorie yogurt or an interactive Olympic schedule on a box of Wheaties?

A family at the breakfast table is a captive audience. Ten years ago, we would have laughed at the concept of eating breakfast with a phone in hand. But today, the average family comes to the table with two or more cell phones at the ready. That makes it the perfect time to draw them into a brand with digital information and entertainment.

Let’s have a little fun today and share our favorite cereal box memories!

Xander:

Buffy: “You are.”

Xander: “Okay, but I can also say that I’m an elderly Dutch woman. Get me? I mean, who’s to say I’m not if I’m in the elderly Dutch chat room?”

Xander makes a good point. The one cool and also creepy thing about communicating over the internet, is you can be anyone you want to be; a high school student, an elderly Dutch woman or Snow White.

People create alternate personas in order to be better than who they are or to fit in with the crowd on a particular site. People also hide their real identity to prevent embarrassment or for a more nefarious reason. They also do it to stop websites from using their data.

eMarketer reports that 88% of people surveyed have intentionally left website registration information blank or inserted false information. That would lead us to believe that they don’t want their information out there. But maybe filling out all those forms is simply too tiresome.

The easy way around that? The social sign-in. Sign in now using Facebook or Twitter! It’s one button (or close to it) and in Facebook’s case, it means you can’t mask who you are. That’s good for marketers. It also appears to be good for consumers since 77% of online buyers said they think sites should offer social signups.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

Up until recently, I resisted the urge to go with the social signup, knowing that it would give sites the full 411 on me. But I’ve come to find that the social signup is the way to go. No more passwords, no more forms, it’s easy, not just when registering but on every visit after.

The smart companies are the ones who give out a bonus to encourage Facebook sign-ups. I work with one that offers a reward point bonus, another gives Facebook friends a discount at their webstore. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to wipe out any doubts folks have about giving you their real identity.

How do you feel about social sign-ups?

In this, I am not alone. Look at this chart from a new survey by Hearst Magazines and Fleishman-Hillard International Communications.

The women surveyed. . .

Well, two out of three ain’t bad. The numbers come from part four of the Women, Power and Money series of reports. This one is called “Game-Changers: Women Defining the New American Marketplace.“

What they found overall is that women feel responsible for the well-being of their families. That need to help often extends out to their co-workers and friends of both the physical and virtual kind.

In 2011, more than 50% of the women said they regularly influence purchasing decisions of friends and family. This is up from 31% in 2008.

33 percent had recommended a product or service in the past six months; while 19 percent recommended that someone not buy a specific product or service.

That last part really hurts.

The study shows that women are even more careful about how and where they spend their money. Much of this is due to economic stress. A full 75% of women said they shop differently than they did before the recession. 71% agreed that life is now more complex.

Choosey Moms Choose. . .

Being an informed shopper was important to most of the women in the study. They used the internet to research purchases and they also relied heavily on recommendations from others. 84% of millennials said they have or haven’t purchased an item based on a recommendation from a friend or family member.

51% said using social media to talk about what they’ve purchased makes them fell empowered. 66% said shopping was more of a game than a chore.

When it comes to choosing a product, quality and price were the biggest factors. They also want companies to provide details about the materials used in the product, reviews from users, craftsmanship notes, and elements of design and style.

The study notes that only 6% of women were interested in a company’s environmental or community impact. Guess those days are over.

Now check this out:

Price and quality, once again, top the list. What didn’t make the top 10? Celebrity endorsements, “tugging at the heartstrings” and a catchy jingle. See that Hallmark, we will no longer be easily led by your tissue-invoking ads, so just stop!

The study, which you can view for free, covers even more ground than I’ve mentioned here. If you market specifically to women, I’d recommend you give it at least a skim.

The bottom line is that women are taking charge of their spending and they won’t be swayed by flash and glitter. They want a good product at a good price and if you provide that, they’ll reward you with good word of mouth. Sounds like a win-win for everyone.

Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

Here’s a cool chart that shows how many people registered just before I wrote this:

At this rate, Twopcharts predicts that Twitter will cross the 500 million mark sometime in February. But unlike the hoopla surrounding Facebook’s approaching milestone, Twitter’s isn’t that clear cut.

As we all know, lots of people sign up for Twitter. Many people (see me raising my hand), sign up for multiple accounts. But how many people continue to use their accounts a month later? Six months later?

What do we even consider an active account?

If a person has an account in order to follow the Tweets of others but rarely Tweets themselves, is that active?

Twop tries to make sense of it on their blog with a complex series of twists and Tweets that you should check out if you like that kind of thing. They spent a lot of time and effort on it, so you should look. . . but not now. When we’re done here.

Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

What they did was check a baseline of 100,000 accounts registered around three months ago. They found that:

• 12% had been closed, maybe by Twitter, maybe by the owner
• Of the remaining, 62% haven’t changed their profile pic. It’s still an egg. (And believe it or not, I just now understood why it’s an egg.)
• 53.8% have never sent a single Tweet
• 19,721 of the accounts have no followers and they don’t follow anyone

Taking all of that and more into consideration, they’ve deduced that around 20 to 25% of accounts converted into active users, but only 10% actually send out Tweets.

My totally unscientific hypothesis matches theirs. Just looking at my own Twitter world as a microcosm for the bigger picture, a small percentage of the people I follow send out the most Tweets. There’s another 25% who hardly ever Tweet. Why do I follow them? Because they’re friends or maybe they used to Tweet and don’t anymore.

Given all of this, is it even worth using Twitter for marketing? Sure it is. Because even though the active users represent a small portion of the total pool, they are active. That means that they may see your message and pass it along to their friends.

If Tweeting brings in one new customer a month, that’s one customer you didn’t have before. The warning here is not to spend too much time on Twitter. It’s a useful tool, but most small companies aren’t going to see a return on investment if you spend two hours a day crafting Tweets.

How much time do you spend on Twitter? Do you think it’s time well spent, or are you contemplating joining the millions who have already flown the Twitter coop?

The new inanimate Doodle features the Google logo with letters sketched out of three to five laye…