Pinterest is one of the hottest social media platforms of 2012.  If you have a good idea, cool product or unique service with a   quality visual to accompany it — you have an opportunity.  The Pinterest community will help to spread the word.

Pinterest is a visual sharing community.  People pin items they find interesting to their personal digital bulletin boards.  Members often have multiple themed boards.  Some people will collect ideas for their new home, create a visual grouping of material goals or collect craft ideas.

Community members may follow other members or boards they find interesting. They can repin or share their favorite pinned items found within the community or around the web.

One nice side effect of your images being pinned within Pinterest community are the search engine optimization (SEO) benefits.  Pinterest links to the original webpage the photograph or graphic is located.  Pinterest also delivers traffic from activity on their website from people interested in more information about the subject.  For marketers and business owners that is good news for their product or service.

Other websites such as Quora are experimenting with similar bulletin board features.  As with any new social media concept you never know what website will be the last standing, but for now Pinterest is worth your attention.

Rosh

It really doesn’t matter what mistakes you make and who you offend if you are not focused on the right target.

You need to know who your audience is.  Too many professionals focus on connecting with people in their industry.  It’s not a bad idea to practice social media with people you know or members of  your community.  You can certainly learn a lot from experts in your field.  When it comes time to develop business relationships you need to leave the nest and knock on doors that are not as comfortable.

The people who need your product or service are generally not leaders in your field.  You need to ask yourself: “Who is your target market and what would they type in Google to find you?”.  Once you answer that question you should start blogging about it.  What topics would your target market talk about to people in their industry?  Can you add to the conversation?

Adding to the conversation is not immediately placing a link in a specialty group declaring you have the answer.  Adding to the conversation starts with listening.  Then begin asking questions, answering questions and sharing helpful examples other than your stuff.  When appropriate, after earning a little credibility and trust you can share some of your solutions.  I say that with caution because every group and social media platform has different tolerance levels.

If you feel you don’t have the time and patience for this, then social media is not right for you.

Building relationships takes time online or off.  Make sure you are spending your time wisely with the right people who may actually buy your product or service.

Rosh

Why would you take the time to review your LinkedIn Analytics?

Did you know Analytics are available for your business page? Search for your company in the search box on LinkedIn.  If you are an administrator for your company page you should see a tab for Analytics

LinkedIn Analytics are not very deep, but if you are sharing products, services or recruiting it is important to know if people are looking at your information.

Even if you are not taking advantage of the business opportunities LinkedIn offers it is good to review the over all trend. Are more people searching for your company?

If you are running a branding campaign your LinkedIn statistics can be used as one measure of increase company brand awareness.

We have been following the increase in mobile traffic through many of our clients’ websites.  Over the last couple years, mobile traffic has at least doubled year over year.

For many of our retail clients, mobile is 20% of their total website traffic.  If your website is not designed for mobile users, you may be disappointing up to twenty percent or more of your prospects.

In the past, some companies designed smaller alternative websites designed specifically for the new mobile traffic.  In the future, your new websites should be designed with mobile in mind. Smart phone and tablet users accept nothing less than the full information and experience of what your company as to offer.

Smart phones and tablets could easily represent half of your visitors in a few short years.

The time to prepare is now.

Rosh

Social media is designed to be social. People don’t want messages they are not interested in hearing, seeing or receiving.  Unfortunately, many social media marketers use old school methods and shotgun messages to everyone.  Messages that don’t resonate with recipients and doesn’t foster social communication and relationships.

Google+ offers account holders custom circles to segment their community.  Segmenting in social media is just as important as it is with email.  Delivering the right messages to the right people keeps the community engaged.

Google+ also offers an excellent feature called the hangout.  Video chat for up to ten people.  This is valuable for small groups, training, seminars, presentations or customer service.  These live chats may be offered to a specific circle or to the public.

Spark is another nice feature that gives you the opportunity to search for or subscribe to relevant content and topics to share with your community.  This is helpful to fill the gaps between your promotional content keeping the signal to noise ratio low.

Knowing Google, they will continue to integrate new features that will support your efforts to connect, share and track your social media community engagements.

Rosh

If your goal is to develop relationships than focusing on a few blogs is the way to go.  If your goal is search engine optimization (SEO) than the more blogs you comment on the better.

Blog quality plays a role in SEO.  You want to comment on blogs highly regarded by Google. The best way to find such blogs is to use Google search.  Once you have found a few blogs as a starting point -  follow the blogrolls and links to other valuable blogs.

If you wish to develop relationships through blogs then look for quality blogs with few comments.  Before you engage too deeply review past posts to see if the blogger is responsive.  A good blogger will respond to comments.

Comments are not the best indicator of the quality of the blog.  A blog with a lot of comments can mean multiple things.   Some bloggers are great networkers while other bloggers write great posts that encourage engagement.  I believe being highly active in the social media encourages participation with your blog more than quality or expertise.

Comments are also good for driving traffic and introducing your expertise – keep humble.

Commenting should be thoughtful.  We (Synectics Media) often comment on various blogs for SEO purposes, but we have a policy.  If you have nothing relevant or of value to add to the conversation – don’t comment.

Rosh

• A) tumbler passes WordPress.
• B) Google image and voice search.
• C) Twitter integrated into new Apple ios (no Facebook).
• D) Google Calendar appointments.

• A) Forget the coffee.
• B) Give them a title.
• C) Let them have fun.

5) Action item: Get an intern!

Don’t wait.

Too many companies decide to use social media as part of a campaign before they have opened up a single account.  The companies that already have an established community do much better than the ones asking agencies to open new accounts to support a looming goal or deadline.

Sometimes it’s the agency’s fault.  They schedule opening new social media accounts as a company’s new website is launched or when a new campaign begins.

On paper, launching everything at once may seem logical.  Unfortunately, every social media account starts with zero followers and it takes time to add friends and build relationships.

If there is any hint that social media might be employed in the future, open the accounts immediately and start building rapport.

Rosh