Social Media Marketing

There’s no denying that social media marketing strategy is top-of-mind with digital marketers today and businesses alike.

Finding a workable social marketing solution has become the holy grail for today’s chief marketers.

This is a very useful chart showing the different social media groups regarding:

• Customer Communication
• Brand Exposure
• Traffic to Your Site
• SEO

Click Here to see the chart

Moving right along…

Is this trivia or over the top awesome?  Time will tell.

PinReach -

PinReach is a form of Analytics. It measures your Pinterest influence.

As well as giving you an overall score, it provides easy-to-read charts and tables that show your most popular pins and boards.

Pinstamatic

With Pinstamatic you can now add locations, music, quotes, calendar dates, Twitter profile links, sticky notes and websites

Pin A Quote

Highlight any text and pin it to Pinterest.

Snapito

Rather than just pin an image, Snapito lets you screengrab an entire website and pin it on Pinterest as an image or the entire web page.

Here is the Hayehwatha Institute image posted on Pinterest:

Url2Pin

Similar to Snapito

It adds the website address of the screenshot – http://url2pin.it/hayehwatha.com

You can also upload image files on your computer

This is a secured area where you store all of your passwords.

We don’t recommend using your web browser to store your passwords or using an online password manager.  While convenient, they are accessible to the outside world and that is what you are trying to avoid.

Robo Form is the most recommended Password Manager Software program available today.

Online Reviews rank RoboForm the highest for:

• Features Set
• Ease of Use
• Security
• Help & Support

A New Social Network – Is it for you?

Over the past few months, you may have heard some chatter about a brand new social network called Pinterest. According to Compete, unique visitors to Pinterest.com increased by 155% just in one month, from December 2011 to January 2012

Pinterest is a social network that allows users to visually share, curate, and discover new interests by posting, also known as ‘pinning,’ images or videos to their own or others’ pinboards. Users can either upload images from their computer or pin things they find on the web using the Pinterest bookmarklet, Pin It button, or just a URL .

For Businesses

Any business that relies on driving a high-volume of website traffic to increase sales, should consider joining Pinterest. In fact, early research indicates that Pinterest is more effective at driving traffic compared to other social media sites, even Facebook.

In February 2012 Pinterest has been driving more referrals to HubSpot’s blog than Google+.

Links

If you are using the “Pin It” button on your pages, every single one of your pins will include a link back to the source. However, these are no-follow links and cannot be used to directly impact your SEO strategy. Yet, they still provide marketing value.

Social Sharing

Pinterest enables users to log in using their Twitter or Facebook profiles, connectivity that is critical for social media success. These sites can’t get away with being a silo, and Pinterest has recognized that out of the gate.

The site now connects with Facebook,  enabling users to automatically post new pins to their Facebook feed for others to see. This means more eyes from other channels get access to your pictures. However, remember that you cannot connect Pinterest to your Facebook business page.

When members are browsing through pins, they will also have the ability to share posts through Facebook, Twitter or email. This feature is great to boost social sharing and have others spread the word about your brand.

Affiliate Programs

What’s particularly fascinating about Pinterest is that while in beta, it is already making money. That’s especially surprising for a social networking site. What’s even more interesting is that the way it’s monetizing is not based on advertising or subscriptions.

If your website is using an affiliate program, you should take note, because that is how Pinterest is making its dough: by taking a cut of your sales from pinned traffic. They partnered with a firm called SkimLinks (that’s another story), which automatically scans through every link posted on the site to see if it goes to a retail site with an affiliate program. If it finds that kind of link, it secretly adds an affiliate code that ensures Pinterest will make some cash from sales that derive from that link.

Hmmmmm…

Invitation Only

Surprisingly enough, user access to Pinterest presently operates under an invitation-only basis. That being said, you can request an invitation, and they seem to always grant the requests.

Visit Pinterest.com, click “Request an Invite,” and enter your email address to be notified when you have access to create your account. Or you can ask a friend who already has a Pinterest account to invite you, a much quicker way to gain access than waiting for Pinterest to grant your request.

How to Use

Businesses should use the social network to showcase the lifestyle their brand promotes. If you’re a shoe vendor, a pinboard of the shoes you sell won’t cut it. A pinboard of a few of your shoes interspersed with images of places those shoes could take you, however, is the direction you should be thinking.

Your Followers

Pinterest functions a little differently than the typical” follower world” in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

A person can follow a specific board by a Pinterest user or a user’s account. When following a board you only will be notified (via your stream) when a user pins a new piece of content to that board. When following a user, you will be notified every time a user pins content to any of his or her boards.

For more information on how to use Pinterest for marketing, check out this article from HotSpot:

Article from HotSpot

P.S. You can also download a Pinterest App for your smart phone.

The new marketing piece for businesses and their brands

The awareness of a QR Code is becoming more evident than ever.

The beauty of the QR Code is the interaction with the mobile phone.

With the increasing growth of QR Codes, businesses need to find a way to increase the number of scans and stand out from the crowd.

How do you improve your QR Code Campaigns?

Here are some tips to help maximize success:

1. Use a QR Code Expert

QR Codes are extremely fragile and can be broken when adjusting sizes. Using a professional graphic designer will set up your campaign for the best possible success with a QR Code. Please note that creating a code can require much more than a free online generator might have to offer.

2. Tracking and Analytics

It is always good to know the success of your QR Code by the numbers. Using sites like bit.ly, you know the number of scans your QR Code receives by the minute. With tracking sites, you will be able to find the stats of each code scanned and hope to build on future campaigns. If you are using a mobile site with your QR Code, you should also track these pages with Google Analytics to help manage future success.

3. Call to Action

Letting your users know what they are getting can increase your scan rate tremendously. QR Codes are like Christmas presents; we want to be excited when we open them. Give your fans a hint to what will be inside. For example: “Scan to Win”, “Scan for Exclusive Content”, “Scan to like”. Giving these clues will hopefully attract the user before scanning.

4. Other Forms of Entry

Not everyone knows how to scan a QR Code. Using an alternate point of entry will help your campaign in succeeding its goal. Sites like 84444.com offer text message marketing campaigns that pair perfectly with QR Codes. Here is an example on how to incorporate text message marketing into your call to action: “Scan the Code or text “Promos” to “84444”.

5. Add Branding and Color

Standing out among a crowd can be difficult, especially in the realm of QR Codes. By branding your QR Code with both logos and colors, your code will shine. Would you prefer your television picture in black and white or full color? Taking this measure can be difficult and it is recommended to use a professional QR Code designer for the best possible scan rate.

6. Mobile Landing

Have you ever seen a movie that had an amazing preview, but the end result was dissatisfying?  If you give the user a clever QR Code or incentive to scan, be sure your result is MOBILE optimized. If your site is not mobile, your fan will have a terrible experience. Add social media links, incentives to win, and don’t forget mobilized contact information (a great way to generate leads!).

7. Testing, Testing and Testing

The final and most important step in a QR Code campaign is testing your end result. Before sending to print or any sort of live campaign, please be sure to thoroughly test your QR Code. Every smartphone device as well as scanner applications give different results (based on error). This means you should test your QR Code on at least one iPhone, Android and Blackberry device. It is recommend you also use at least two different QR Code applications to test these codes. The last thing you want to see is your campaign fail due to lack of testing.

If a user decides to scan your QR Code, they are interested in your product or what you have to offer; and this is exactly why you need to ultimately satisfy them. Going low budget on a QR Code campaign is possible, but will also limit your success.

Lack of experience may also hurt your chances of a successful campaign, which is why it is recommended to use experts. If you incorporate all of the above in your next promotion, you will be rewarded with a captivating QR Code Campaign.

About the author: Frank Mazza is the mobile developer and QR Code expert for mobile marketing firm Advanced Telecom Services (ATS), which has developed Custom QR Codes and mobile Web campaigns for clients such as Polo Ralph Lauren, CNN, Subway, Sprint, Garnier, Comcast, USL Lacrosse and the National Football League. 

Article by Website Magazine – March 2012 by Linc Wonham

• $35 credit card-sized Raspberry Pi computer sells out within hours of launch
• Designers hope mini-PC will inspire children to learn about computer programming
• Even cheaper version of Raspberry Pi in production soon, will retail at $25

(CNN) — The tiny $35 Raspberry Pi computer went on sale today, crashing its distributors’ websites on the way to selling out within hours of launch.

Looking like little more than a credit card-sized chip of circuit board, the powerful, fully-programmable PC can plug into any TV and can power 3D graphics and Blu-ray video playback.

Its British-based designers at the Raspberry Pi Foundation hope the computer, which has been in the works for six years, will spark new interest in programming among children.

“The primary goal was to build a low cost computer that every child could own, and one where programming was the natural thing to do with it,” said co-founder Robert Mullins.

The computer’s miniature uncased circuit board is crowded with an Ethernet connection for the internet, two USB ports and an SD card port for memory and is powered by a standard USB mobile charger.

The low-cost computer runs a free, open-source Linux operating system and does not include a monitor or keyboard.

The first version of the Raspberry Pi will ship soon to developers, and the hope is that they will design software that will enable children to design their own computer programs.

The project came about when a group of Cambridge-based computer programmers noticed that fewer and less-qualified students were applying for computer science courses at Cambridge University.

Inspired by computers like the BBC Micro and the Commodore 64 in the 1980s, the group of engineers set out to build a new programmable machine for a new generation.

“Each year we had fewer and fewer students applying, and most of them hadn’t really done much more than write a web page,” Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton told CNN. “So we kind of set out to recreate that feeling of the BBC Micro in the hopes it would spark a new wave of kids knowing how to program.”

Upton told CNN that an even cheaper version of the computer, which will retail for just $25, is going into production within the next several weeks.

In the long term, he hopes the computer will generate an additional 1,000 engineers in the UK each year — an “industry-changing development”, according to Upton.

“Anyone who expresses a desire to get into designing software should have a platform to do it,” he said.