Let me guess, you heard about Pinterest. Or more like, you can’t spend 15 minutes online without hearing about it…

And now you’re thinking, “should I jump on the wagon too?” or “another social network to keep up with?” and on top of that, everybody is talking about using it for marketing and getting tons of traffic and, you just don’t see it.

Alright, I hear you. I’ll give you everything you need to know about Pinterest and a bunch of resources so you can decide if you or your business are ready to join the hottest trend online.

Let’s start with what it is…

Pinterest is another way of collecting and organizing stuff (images) you find online. Think visual bookmarking, publicly and with a social network in it. Some see it as a vision board, some as a catalog and others as a great way to promote your products or generate traffic to your site/blog.

This content is organized in “Boards” that work as categories you create and the images you pin in them are called… yes, “Pins”. See how fast we’re moving here. Pins are like posts on a blog or a Tumblr and other people can “repin” them or comment on them, as well as like them or tweet them, of course.

You can follow people and they can follow you.

Some Demographics

Some think the majority of the users are females, they’re right. According to data Ignite Social Media collected on Google Ad Planner, only 20% of Pinterest users are men. That’s pretty one-sided, don’t you think? This tendency gets started by how Pinterest presents itself to the market, which I personally think you should totally ignore.

But there are other interesting numbers in this data, for example that the biggest age groups are between 25 to 44, 60% of its users have some college and largest percentage of household income is between $25 to $75k. In case you see your target market waving at you here.

How big is Pinterest

I understand, you need to know if it’s worth putting some of your marketing energy into something before you jump in. Here goes, according to a study conducted by ComScore back in November, Pinterest had already joined the big leagues in Unique Visitors with 4,855 million right behind Google+ and it takes the 3rd spot on Time Spent on Site with 88.3 minutes only behind Facebook and Tumblr. That’s pretty impressive.

Then in December, Compete reports that Pinterest reached 7.2 million visitors in the US only. Experian Hitwise on the other hand, reported 11 million total visits during the week ending December 17.

But Pinterest is really rising eyebrows for becoming one of the highest referral traffic sources. I can tell you for personal experience, just so you don’t think this is only for brands and retail websites, that with just a couple of Pinning sessions, it has already started sending traffic to SocialMouths and in the last week, it’s actually in my top 20 traffic sources (overall).

Update Feb 3: Just ran a traffic report for this blog, Pinterest is the #7 traffic source in the last 2 days above StumbleUpon and LinkedIn. That’s not including traffic from “m.pinterest.com” (mobile), which is #30.

Just a couple of day ago, Shareaholic published a report on Referral Traffic from Social Networks, the big surprise: Pinterest is referring more traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube. Combined! And it’s now breathing on Twitter’s neck.

I’m adding an infographic at the end of this post for other related and fun facts.

How do you get in?

Pinterest is still on an “Invitation Only” stage. Some people have told me they have been waiting for a while so at this point you have better chances to get in if you ask a friend to share an invite with you.

How to use it to promote your business or website

You need to get passed the idea the site is only a collection of wedding gowns images to get creative on how to promote your business, website or blog. Chances are you can already find brands and competitors using the network, find them to see some examples and get inspired.

Here are a few ideas entrepreneurs and brands are already implementing and some of the benefits you can leverage from:

Promote your products

Create a specific board for your own products, each pin should link back to that product page on your website. When you add a price in your description, make sure to use the $ character because Pinterest generates a price label on your image.

It’s pretty obvious here that depending on your line of work or services, there is more or less potential to do this, a photographer or a cupcake ninja can really do something interesting here with portfolios.

Content Marketing

This could also be good to integrate in you content marketing strategy and how you distribute blog content as well as creating exclusive Pinterest content. If you’re a chef, how about creating special recipes for the Pinning crowd.

Another form of content is “user-generated”. You can set a board to accept content from other users, meaning they can also add pins. Although it can be tricky and you’ll have to expect to run some kind of moderation, this can be fun for your followers.

Content Curation

This is probably one of my favorite things about how to use Pinterest. We all know content curation can be a very powerful way to build authority around a topic. Select a couple of topics related to your industry and create boards to curate all kinds of content around them.

If you are a heavy user of any of the other networks, chances are you already curate content at some level. Do a test and bring some of that content you already share on Twitter or Google+ and start dumping it into a board.

Promotional

As soon as we talk about showcasing products on specific boards, the next step is pretty obvious, you can run exclusive contests and promotions for Pinners or you can use it to complement existing campaigns.

Market Research

It’s nature also provides a great environment to conduct all kinds of market research for future products and services. Imagine the possibilities for crowdsourcing or focus groups.

Network

Connect, comment, like and repin others, this is a s-o-c-i-a-l network after all. Interact with others as you do on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

You can also expand your reach by getting out and sharing Pins on other networks. Or promote specific boards. Pinterest is also ready for frictionless sharing on Facebook’s environment, in other words, you can set your pins to go automatically to your timeline.

Humanize your Brand

This is a great opportunity to humanize your brand or really take your personal brand to the next level. Think about how to add lifestyle to your brand, you can’t be strictly business all the time.

With the rise of visual-centric and timelines in the social web, we are presented with great potential for storytelling. Don’t miss this opportunity.

SEO

When you pin something, specially from your own site, make sure to leverage that description box below the image. Use it wisely to write a keyword-rich description. Think of it as the meta description on your blog post.

Smart use of images

The next time you are searching for a good image to use on your post, wherever you get your images from or if you create them yourself, think of how they will be posted on Pinterest to maximize its potential. Your images are becoming more and more important with this kind of image-centric bookmarking.

How to Pin Content

The easiest way to pin content is through the “Pin It” browser bookmarlet. You can just drag and drop the button provided here to your Bookmark bar.

Mobile

Another way to create and add pins is through the iPhone app, where you can Repin, Like and comment on existing pins or you can use your camera and add location to your images.

You can stay tuned for news regarding other platforms on the Pinterest blog.

Good Examples of Pinterest Use

I’m adding a few examples here, of course I’m not showing Redbull, Whole Foods, and the rest of the usual suspects but rather smaller businesses and personal brands so you get to see real examples.

P.S. – I made this…

University of Pennsylvania

Chobani

Evan Sharp

Integrate Pinterest into your Website

“Pin It” Button

Obviously one of the best ways to make your content “pinable” is to add the “Pin It” sharing button on your site or blog. This is as easy as choosing the kind of button you like and grabbing the code from the “Goodies” page.

If you use a sharing floating bar such as Sharebar you can add the button through the plugin. If you use the Thesis Framework on your WordPress blog, Derek Halpern has a great tutorial on how to add the Pin It button on their User’s Guide.

Follow Button

If you want to take it even further, you can also add the “Follow Me on Pinterest” button. Same thing, head over to the “Goodies” page and grab the code from there to place wherever you want on your site. I added mine here so you can see it:

This is clearly missing a shiny Infographic

The post couldn’t be complete without the shiny Infographic. And since I know you’re not going to read anything below it, I’ll add my closing before.

Over to You

It’ll be awesome if you participate in the comments by sharing how you are already using Pinterest or any new ideas you’re planning to implement as well as any questions you have.

If you want to connect with me on Pinterest, here is my profile: pinterest.com/francisco << Check out my profile URL, a clear sign of an early adopter (virtual high-fives!)

Happy Pinning evrybody!

Infographic courtesy of Monetate.

This week started on a high note. The results for the Top 10 Social Media Blogs 2012 from Social Media Examiner arrived on my iPhone while I was getting my first coffee on Monday. SocialMouths was named #1.

The afternoon wasn’t that fun when my server crashed welcoming all the traffic from the post, even though SocialMouths does not live in a shared $5 server at GoDaddy… still crashed. But that’s a whole different story.

Then today my friend Jessica Northey pointed out that I was also included in the Top 100 Influencers in Social Media from Social Technology Review with a list of people I admire and lots of friends.

So I’d say it’s been a pretty good week.

Shameless Self-Promotion

Sorry for the totally intended and shameless bragging here.

Seriously, I have always said here on the blog and to my clients that you should not feel bad about promoting yourself, as long as that’s not all you do online. Believe me, I know some people that take self-promotion to a new level.

Besides the self-promotion, I really wanted to share that one with you guys.

Social Proof

I have a few issues with social proof online, how we present it and how people are starting to percibe it. Social Proof is social, it’s how we are recognized for the work we do by others, not by algorithms.

I recently removed my Adage badge and a couple of others I had on the blog’s sidebar for that reason and because I never had any of my clients say that they hired me because I’m on the Adage list.

I see this different, the Top 10 list has been put together by people, by the audience through their nominations and by the people at SME. That’s why I’m seeing this as social proof but more importantly, I’m taking it as validation of my work. So I’m telling you right now that I will be rocking the shiny badge for a bit.

And Gratitute

Thank you Mike Stelzner, Cindy King and the rest of the team over at Social Media Examiner (and thanks for crashing my fancy server) as well as Bonnie Boglioli-Randall and the team from Social Technology Review.

And thank you guys that come here every week to read the blog, share the love through a like or a tweet or we have conversations around the interwebs. You guys rock, seriously!

If you are an entrepreneur using Twitter as part of the marketing strategy for your business or you are a blogger trying to improve your traffic, one of the most important metrics you look at is how many clicks your tweets are getting, specially when those tweets are containing links to your own site.

One thing I’ll tell you right off the bat is that, marketing in general works different for each one of us and it delivers different kinds of results too. Twitter is no different and, while I always say that you should not rely on anybody’s advice but instead run several tests until you find the most effective way, the data in this infographic offers a very nice starting point for you to do so.

The infographic is from Dan Zarrella, I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with his work but if you’re not, click on that link and bookmark his blog or subscribe to his RSS. What I like about Dan is that he gets simple things we all need to know and he goes very deep into the data to provide you with tips you can take action on.

The formula here compares the number of clicks against the number of followers in a Twitter account at the moment of that tweet to calculate CTR (Click-through Rate).

Number of Clicks / Number of Followers = CTR

With this formula, Dan is able to look at which tweets perform better depending on:

• The length of the tweet
• Where you position the link
• The frequency of your tweets
• Some of the most common terms used
• and when we tweet

Do your own testing…

So the way you’re going to keep track of your results, in a simple way, is to write the number of followers you have when you post the tweet and then at the end of the day, look at how many clicks it received. More importantly, include the actual tweet and the day/time in your report to track exactly what you did. No need to make things complicated, you can actually do this on a simple spreadsheet.

I will try to do the same exercise and come back to you guys later to share my own results with you.

I’d love to see what you guys have to say about your own experience, if you have tested some of these tactics or what is giving you good results to get more clicks on your tweets. Enjoy!

Infographic from Dan Zarrella.

This is a guestpost by Brad Shorr from Straight North.

Like many social media participants, I “joined” Klout without really knowing it, without really caring one way or the other. Towards the latter half of 2011, Klout became quite prominent — and controversial. Despite a lot of criticism of it from people I respect and my own ill-defined angst, I kept playing along.

Eventually I decided not only that Klout has fatal flaws, but also that I needed to put my money where my mouth is and disconnect from it. So I did.

The purpose of this post is to share my reasons for opting out and how it’s positively affected me – in the hope that you will kiss Klout goodbye, too.

My Top 10 Reasons for Disconnecting from Klout

1. No understanding of how the Klout algorithm works. It scores my “True Reach”, “Amplification”, and “Network” – but what do those things mean and how are they measured?
2. Perceived inconsistencies in rankings. Lots of tweeps have noticed, for instance, person A has a Klout score of 60, while person B has Klout score of 40 – even though their social media numbers and reputations match up equally. Scoring doesn’t mesh with perception and common sense.
3. Sweeping changes to the algorithm. Klout infamously “improved” its scoring formula in October 2011, and scores changed radically. Had our scores been that far off since 2008? Why should we assume the scores are accurate now? Read the 1500+ comments on Klout’s explanation of the change and judge for yourself.
4. Motives are suspect. Why is Klout collecting all this data? Klout has come under fire for collecting private information on adults and children. Klout claims it does not and has no interest in selling data to third parties for advertising. In the long term, I don’t believe it. A company that spends as much money as Klout collecting data is going to look at every option for monetizing it.
5. Difficulty of measuring influence in principle. Lots of people have pointed out the difficulty in measuring something as abstract, subjective, and nuanced as “influence”. Look at it this way: would you say that two people with identical Klout data have, by definition, identical influence? I do not think it follows at all. Every piece of social media data and its impact are unique. Furthermore, one of Klout’s underlying assumptions, that influence requires the constant driving of action, is questionable at best, and unquestionably self-serving.
6. Built-in accuracy problem. Because people focus on their scores, lobby to get “Perks” and “+K” endorsements – activities Klout aggressively encourages, of course — you have a situation where marketers are talking to marketers about marketing. Klout enthusiasts can up their scores by working together in their little Klout ecosystems. But is this score-inflating activity reflective of genuine influence? If I’m adept at lobbying for +K endorsements, does that make me a social media sage? I think not.
7. Time wasting and manipulative. Getting caught up in the Klout score mentality, as outlined above, became more and more obviously a waste of time. Klout exploits our competitive spirit to suck people into the game: you see your score every time you turn around, and you want to make it go up. You see you’re only five points behind your best social media buddy and you want to pass him/her up. Nobody said Klout isn’t smart.
8. Klout is a self-proclaimed “standard”. By virtue of smart marketing and a big budget, Klout is squeezing out competitors. But does that make it the best, or even a good, arbiter of influence? In addition, Klout’s insidious opt-out (rather than the more ethical opt-in) policy ensures that the vast majority of social media users will at minimum passively go along with the program, giving it enormous strength in numbers. But a big user base doesn’t make Klout good, reliable, or even useful.
9. Currying favor with Perks. Last year I got a nice Perk from Klout – a jar of eye-health vitamins. (I soon discovered refills were about $50 and I could only find them at one place, but that’s a different story.) If Klout is such a reliable “standard”, why are they schmoozing users with freebies? Answer: To generate advertising revenue and get people to use the platform more actively. There’s nothing wrong with either of these things, but neither gives me confidence that Klout is a neutral observer of influence. Rather, its objective seems to be identifying users who are ready, willing and able to promote its advertisers’ products.
10. Opt-out difficulties. Disconnecting from Klout – or any type of email list or social platform, for that matter – should be easy. Not the case. I had to dig deep into my Google account to turn it off. Klout tentacles unexpectedly showed up in Facebook and LinkedIn. (Here are instructions on how to get your profile and data completely disconnected from Klout.) Just another indication that Klout relies on heavy-handed tactics to muscle its way into a position of dominance. I’d have to see some pretty amazing membership benefits to play (or more accurately, play the pawn) in that game. I didn’t see any.

Life without Klout

I’m happy to report that after a couple of Klout-free months, I’m still in one piece. Actually – I’m in much better shape. Here’s what I’ve experienced:

No More “Status Anxiety”

The brilliant John Scalzi wrote a great piece at CNNMoney titled Why Klout scores are possibly evil. Here’s a passage that resonated with me:

“But what purpose does it serve for Klout’s members? Aside from the occasional quid pro quo freebie, it seems that what Klout exists to do is create status anxiety — to saddle you with a popularity ranking, and then make you feel insecure about it and whether you’ll lose that ranking unless you engage in certain activities that aren’t necessarily in your interest, but are in Klout’s.”

It is truly wonderful to be rid of that anxiety: God knows we all have enough things to be anxious about without manufacturing silly new ones.

Tuning Klout Out

One of my fears in disconnecting was that I would then hypocritically continue to judge tweeps based on their Klout scores. As it’s played out, I haven’t paid any attention to scores at all. Instead I’ve gotten back to simply interacting with and following people based mutual interests and what they have to say.

Better Interactions and Influence

Perhaps the biggest deal is that I’ve experienced more conversations and better conversations since leaving Klout, which I attribute to getting back to focusing on people rather than scores. I feel as though I’m being influenced more, and also influencing more people — even though I can’t clearly describe, let alone measure, what this influence is or is worth.

No Backlash

When I de-Klouted, I thought I might be shunned for not playing ball, or called out for not having a score. None of that has happened. In a way, this indicates Klout’s inherent irrelevance … or perhaps mine. Either way, it hasn’t disrupted anything in my little corner of the social media world.

No More Free Vitamins

For everything there is a price.

What Will You Do?

Within social media, there has always been tension between the purist mentality and the marketing mentality. Purists emphasize authenticity, transparency, relationships, and relevance. Marketers emphasize branding, conversions, reach, and metrics. Klout takes the cause of marketing too far. It threatens to disrupt the delicate balance between conversation and commerce that has so far enabled social media to thrive for B2Bs and B2Cs.

Klout can only succeed by keeping its members in the fold; its greatest strength is its universality. It plays on our instincts and counts on our passivity to keep us in their game. To paraphrase Edmund Burke, all that is necessary for Klout to win is for enough good social media people to do nothing.

The obvious question is, what would a Klout win look like? I fear it would look like this: a shift away from authentic social media conversation and toward a massive gaming of the platforms; a greater and greater reliance on faulty or rigged data for important corporate marketing decisions; a communications environment in which quantity is valued above quality, and action above the nature of the action. It’s true that social media platforms are extensively gamed already, but if Klout runs rampant it will legitimize gaming, something that could prove quite dangerous.

To me, these are big deals, but more important, what do you think? And most important of all, what are you going to do?

Images by: marcusnelson

Brad Shorr is Director of Content & Social Media for Straight North, an Internet marketing, Chicago-based agency. They specialize in middle market B2B, with clients in niche industries such as truck GPS tracking and military flame retardant clothing.

This is a guest post by Eugene Farber from ContentStrategyHub.com.

More and more business are hopping on board the content marketing train. Marketers across all industries are recognizing the power and effectiveness of content for producing an online business presence.

Statistics show that a vast majority of marketers believe content is a key to future marketing success. And a majority of B2B marketers plan on increasing their content marketing budgets compared to last year.

And yet, even with this recognition and mindset shift, most are likely to get lost along the way and find themselves in a whirlwind of confusion.

Recognizing the importance of content marketing is one thing. Having an actual strategy to use content to promote your business online is on a completely different level.

And this is something that most businesses are still missing: strategy.

This is an absolutely essential ingredient that can mean the difference between creating successful, efficient campaigns and getting lost.

Here’s why…

1. Strategy Means Having a Destination

You can just jump right into it and begin creating content. Or, you can start with a strategy and create a target to shoot for; a final destination to move towards.

Knowing you want to use content for marketing purposes is a good first step in the right direction. But what are you using it for? What are you trying to accomplish?

Without identifying the goal, how are you supposed to achieve it?

2. Strategy Means Having a Direction

Once you define a goal, the next step is to figure out how you’re going to get there.

Strategy is the answer here again.

You know where you are right now (point A). And, hopefully, you know where you want to be (point B). What tactics are you going to connect the dots and get from point A to point B?

A strategy creates a road map for you to follow.

3. Strategy Means Having Something Measurable

If you jump right into the line of fire without having a plan, there is nothing for you to measure.

Having a strategy to obtain a specific goals gives you something you can follow, benchmark and analyze. Did it work? How far off were you from the target?

Was the strategy a miserable failure? Or maybe it wasn’t all bad. Maybe it’s something that can be tweaked or altered for better results?

4. Strategy Means Being Able to Take Detours

Speaking of tweaked…

Having a road map is nice. But what if there is a traffic jam and you’re in a hurry? What if there’s construction? You need a detour.

Sometimes you will see that something you are doing isn’t working. Or maybe you see an opportunity to accomplish your goal faster, cheaper or more efficiently. Having a strategy means you can alter you strategy and change direction. It’s hard to do that when you’re not sure which direction you are going in to begin with.

5. Strategy Means not Being Overwhelmed with Tools

Did you hear about the latest and greatest tool on the market? Don’t worry… you’ll hear about a different one tomorrow.

It’s important to remember that tools are just tools. They help you get the job done. What is actually important here… is the job itself.

Having a mapped out strategy allows you to decide what tools you are going to be using ahead of time to accomplish your goals instead of jumping around from platform to platform every time a new one comes out.

Are you going to get on Facebook? On Twitter? And why? Is your audience there or are you just using these platforms because you read that you should somewhere?

This is not to say that once you decide on a tool or platform you have to stick to it. Remember: strategies give you the ability to make changes and take detours.

6. Strategy Means Never Failing

That’s not to say that every strategy is going to work or instantly get you the results you desire.

But having a strategy enables you to change your mindset. Failures aren’t failures, but rather strategies that didn’t garner the results you were hoping for.

And that just means you need to try a different tactic.

Getting no results, and not having a strategy is much more disappointing. Partially because you may not have defined “results” to begin with – so what do you do next?

Having a content marketing strategy is like having a veritable GPS guide telling where you are going, and warning you of any traffic jams or road blockages.

Eugene Farber is a writer, marketer, entrepreneur and founder of ContentStrategyHub.com.

Are you ready to create your road map? Are you ready to start using strategies that work? Pick up a copy of “Strategic Content Launch Pad” today to begin using proven content strategies to drive traffic, create leads and build authority!

Photo Credits: missrivs / ValetheKid / Sharon Drummond

Strategic Content Launch Pad

A 93-page strategy guide that will teach you the exact strategies I have learned over the years. The same strategies I used to build, launch and maintain the success of my online business. These proven strategies will help you build a successful online business presence using the power of content marketing. Consider this your secret weapon.

Limited Time Offer << Seriously.

This is a guest post by Garrett Ira, a digital marketing strategist who blogs at garrettira.com.

Over the last few years, just about everyone has given their two cents on how to “do social media” the right way. You know what I’m talking about: connect with your audience, add value, it’s about relationships, and all the other advice we hear over and over.

Something has happened that few are ready to admit: companies have gotten much better at social in 2011. Yes, there are still plenty of companies doing it terribly, but if you compare the present day to two years ago, there’s a huge difference.

Now that (some of us) have our heads on straight, the question transitions from “how do we do this the right way?” to “how do we do this differently than everyone else?”.

Here’s the problem: if you’re constantly asking the same questions, distributing content at the same times, refusing to take risks and fitting in with the crowd, you’re going to lose. Here are six simple ways to get the ball rolling in a fresh new direction.

1. Post in the evenings and on weekends

How many businesses post content around 11:00PM? Probably about zero, and that presents an opportunity for you. The vast majority of businesses post content during the work day, between 9:00AM and 5:00PM. Do you think your audience uses social media at 5:00AM, 7:30PM, or 10:54PM? Yes, they do – but no one posts at that time.

The benefit here is obvious: start posting when others don’t and your content is more likely to be seen – you have less competition. But there’s another opportunity here: posting at times that you haven’t ever before opens you up to new people. Maybe there’s a hidden portion of your audience that doesn’t use social media due to restrictions at work. Post at unusual times to reach them.

2. Mix up your post tactics

Even if diverse content is included, the average Facebook page is full of posts that look, feel, and smell the same. Each post has 4 lines of copy asking you to visit the link below. Each post has two paragraphs expressing their opinions on a certain subject. Each post uses lots of exclamation points begging you to donate!!

If you keep each post looking and feeling the same, you’re eventually going to put people to sleep. Now is the time to do something different, to say something differently, to get their attention.

Post pictures that REALLY stand out in the news feed. Use bright colors, close-ups of human faces, and images that stir up emotion. Start using ultra-short copy instead of the usual 4 lines. Ask people to fill in the blank or describe a photo in just 1 word. The idea here is to always bring something a little different that they can see quickly and interact without much thought. Remember, you aren’t just competing against other businesses – you’re competing against people and their favorite pets, games, teachers, friends, parents, and everything else in their lives.

3. Stop self-editing

People always say “be yourself” and “be transparent” in social media, but very few people walk the walk when it comes down to it. Are you a little snarky in person? Maybe a bit sarcastic? Don’t be afraid to let it show a little.

While crossing the line is definitely possible, many people and brands have experienced great success by being themselves – even if they might get an earful in the comments.

Gary Vaynerchuk and Donald Trump (love him or hate him) are great examples:

4. Go Where Your Competitors AREN’T

This is a bit of a follow-up to #1. Instead of going head-to-head, why not tap into a new area where your competitors aren’t?

The automatic assumption for most businesses is that they need to get involved in the big 4: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, & blogs. While this is probably true, there are often hidden opportunities and niche communities online that can be absolute gold mines, even compared to the big 4.

Do you own a jewelry store with a strong community of wealthy women? Have you thought about tapping into Pinterest, MySpace or forums? It’s a little outside the box and failure is certainly possible, but be willing to fail in the name of innovation. If none of your competitors are there, your customers are, and the platform fits your brand, why not give it a shot with a small investment?

Just kidding about MySpace by the way.

5. Narrow Your Content Focus

Social media can support a number of different business functions. Too often, we try to focus on all of them and end up with mediocre results in every area.

Snickers is a great example of doing it differently. You might expect their Facebook page to be full of contests, promotions, branded partnerships, and other initiatives to achieve every objective they possibly can.

Instead, their page is filled with clever one-liners and snarky statements that fit their brand and support other initiatives in a subtle way. In simple terms, their page is interesting and gets their community of nearly 3,000,000 fans talking.

6. Craft content specifically to be shared

Getting people to talk about you to their friends is what social media is all about. Content should be designed specifically for people to share, re-post, and re-tweet. Make your tweets fewer than 120 characters so they can easily be re-tweeted. Create a get-well graphic and ask your fans to share it with a friend who is ill. Include call-to-actions in your very best content to increase shares.

On Facebook, there’s even more reason to provide shareable content: Facebook’s Edgerank (the algorithm that determines what people see in the news feed) prioritizes shares higher than anything else, including comments, likes, or clicks. If a post is shared by lots of people, it has the potential to extend your reach exponentially.

Here’s the bottom line: don’t embrace the status quo. Take risks. Take note of what your competitors are doing – and run the opposite way.

What do YOU do in social media that most others don’t?

Photo Credit: Scott Ableman

Garrett Ira is all about the most effective strategies and tactics in the social media world. He is a Community Manager at Bonfire Social Media and frequently discusses all things social on his blog.

A lot is speculated every day about the future of Google+, one of the main topics is how the social network will affect search.

So far we are all just talking about the great potential and what we want it to become while Google doesn’t say much.

But Google decided to bring out the big guns today with the announcement of “Search, plus Your World”. This is basically the integration of Google+ into search results and it represents one more big step into the world of personalized search, or social search.

Let’s look at what this means in terms of features…

Who can see this?

In order for you to see the new changes you need to be logged into Google+.

3 Main features

There are basically 3 Google+ elements being integrated into search results:

Personal Results

Which includes content that has been shared with you or publicly by your Google+ connections into the search results. In other words, posts and photos shared in your Google+ community are now part of your own personal search results.

Profiles in Search

When you are looking for a person on Facebook you use the search box and Facebook returns the results for those people. Same thing happens on Google+ but now you will also get this in your search results on Google.

This is also part of autocomplete predictions as you see on regular searches.

Once you got your results back, you will be able to “circle” people right from the results page without having to visit the profile on Google+. You stay on your search.

People and Pages

As part of your search results, you will find people and Pages related to the topic you’re searching. For example, if you are searching for “Real Estate”, you will see people and Pages that are relevant on that topic. These results are going to appear on the right hand side of your results page and you will also have the option to circle them right from there.

How about Privacy? What if I don’t want it?

I knew you were gonna say that. Well, for most people the first thing to come to mind is how their content is going to be shared or what are they going to see in the results. These following bullet points are important for you:

• This works the same way Google+ works, you have options to share content. You can share something “Publicly” or to specific Circles, people outside of those circles will still not see that content.
• Everything is secured through SSL Encryption
• You have the option, with a toggle button, to turn it on and off if you don’t want to get “personal results”

Nowadays everything is optional on the web so relax, continue having your coffee…

Before I forget, here is the nice presentation video:

Marketing Takeaway

So that’s in regards to new features and the logistics, let’s look at the marketing side of things.

Content

If you think about it, every day that goes by the Internet leans more and more towards the people that creates relevant shit. In recent weeks we have read from several sources and random predictions that 2012 will be huge for Content Marketing.

Do you see how all this can have a powerful impact on your content marketing efforts? What if someone is searching for Fishing Equipment and your profile or page shows up on the results page?

Community

The possibility to circle people from the search results page on related topics is a great way to find relevant people you might want to connect with in your niche. Granted, you can do that inside Google+ but we’re talking about the use of Google Search here. You still use it, right?

This is huge for community building and relationship marketing and we will be talking about this in 2012.

Final Thought

I think this is a big step for Google+ because it’s leveraging its strong points. This is not one of those updates we all see as “trying to catch up” with the competition. Facebook is clearly very weak on search, I don’t like blowing things out of proportion as I’m sure you’ll see some individuals do today with this announcement but, I think Facebook should at least be thinking about it and looking at future plans for search.

This is very positive for Google+

What do you think?

Do you see this as a big step both in search and social networking? Do you like Google is moving more and more into social search? How will this impact your online marketing approach? Share your thoughts with me in the comments. Or if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

If you want to connect with me, here is my Google+ Profile and the SocialMouths Page.

Happy searching!

This is a guestpost by Srinivas Rao from The Skool of Life.

Shortly after this interview I did with Chris Brogan at Blogworld, I decided to start spending quite a bit more time on Google+. As I’ve spent more time there, I’ve found new and interesting ways to leverage the platform and have found that the overall quality of discussion there is significantly better than it is on facebook. It’s also not bound by the limitations of twitter’s 140 characters.

I recently decided to run a focus group using circles and it turned out to be incredibly insightful. Below I’ve outlined what I consider best practices for running a focus group using Google+

1. Know Your Objective

When I started the focus group, I had one clear objective which was the improve the user experience for my podcast listeners. Without a clear objective in mind you’ll just end up spinning wheels and the value of your focus group will diminish.

Having a clear objective will also help you determine what questions you want to ask your focus group.

2. Offer an Incentive

I offered each person who agreed to participate in my focus group a free 30 minute consultation for their blog or business. A solid incentive ensures that the people you recruit have motivation to participate in the discussion and contribute. If you have a product or service, offer it to the members for free or a hefty discount. The value of what you learn about about your audience/customers will far outweigh the costs.

3. Setup a Circle for the Focus Group

I recommend keeping your focus group small because the quality of the discussion is going to be far more valuable than the quantity. I only had 10 people in my focus group but each one provided nearly a 2 paragraph answer to every single question that I asked. I recommend choosing your biggest fans or most loyal customers because they tend to feel comfortable with you and will openly share their thoughts.

4. Ask Open Ended Questions

When you run a focus group, you really should try to get as much information as possible out of your audience. The best way to do this is to ask open ended questions. This will provide you with a far more in-depth view into your audience than gathering numbers and yes/no answers.

Below I’ve shared some of what I’ve learned about my audience as a byproduct of running this focus group.

The 4 Things I learned from my Focus Group

1. How my audience found me

One of the challenges with a podcast is that people rarely visit your web site because they listen via iTunes. So I wanted to learn how my audience found me so I could do my best to optimize my presence on iTunes. I learned what search terms they were using to find my show, and unexpectedly ended up with a handful of amazing testimonials from listeners.

2. How they Listen to My Show

I had always suspected that my audience listened to the show on the go, but, it was interesting to learn what devices they were using and what they were doing while they listened to the show. It ranged from the daily commute to listening while painting. It turns out not everybody loves the iPod as much as I do.

3. What I could to Improve the User Experience

This was really the goldmine of the focus group. Every member of the group provided actionable suggestions to improve the web site, and improve the show. When I was finished with the focus group I had a laundry list of new ideas and insights that didn’t come based on hunches, but based on what people actually wanted. The level of depth that came from this far outweighed any survey I’ve done.

4. The Goals of my Audience

Google+ is a great tool for creating psyographic profiles of your audience. By asking my audience about who they were and what their goals were I was able to paint an incredibly detailed portrait of the people who I was working with. As a result I could align content, service, and product offerings accordingly.
Interestingly enough what started out as a focus group evolved into a mastermind group that i’m using google+ for and the discussions have been incredibly valuable for everybody involved. Google+ can be a fantastic tool for gathering customer feedback.

Srinivas Rao is the author of The Skool of Life and the host of BlogcastFM, where you’ll find over 200 interviews with actionable tips to grow your blog. Connect with him on Google+.

2011 was an interesting year in the social media world, we witnessed both expected and unexpected events. We all consumed the news, points of view and even rants from different sources, and man do we have a wide selection of sources in this segment.

In the middle of this overdose of information, somehow we all kind of select our favorite sources and bloggers and we mostly stay loyal to them.

This list is not based on a voting system and it does not provide participants with a shiny badge to rock on their site, the goals are simply to acknowledge and thank them for their outstanding (and hard) work throughout the year and also share them with you, hopefully you discover some of them here and add them to your list of favorites.

Instead this list is based, as the headline reads, on the favorite social media blogs and bloggers here at SocialMouths. In other words, what we actually consume week after week. I hope you enjoy them and take the time to pay them a visit.

Two more things I need to mention before diving right into it:

• I should say that they are not in any particular order.
• And that I have crafted a separate list of favorite blogs on Online Marketing, which is a much broader segment and will be published in a few days. This one is only social media.

To all the bloggers I’m about to mention, thank you for all the learning!

So here we go, this is the list of SocialMouths’ 10 Favorite Social Media Blogs Of 2011:

{grow} by Mark Schaefer

Jeff Bullas

Simply Zesty

Danny Brown 

Smedio by Douglas Idugboe

Convince & Convert by Jay Baer

Pushing Social by Stan Smith

Social Caffeine by Lori Taylor

Social Commerce Today

Social Media Examiner

More than congratulating these blogs and bloggers since, like I said before, this is not a recognized award and does not pretend to be, let’s acknowledge their work and thank them for the hours put into developing awesome content.

What are YOUR favorite Social Media blogs this year?

Do you have a favorite social media blog that was not included in this list? Then mention it in the comments as a way of recognizing their work and to share with others.

You probably heard something about Path in the last month or so but the truth is, the social network has been getting love from early adopters and media since its launch over a year ago.

So how come you hear about it now? What do you need to know about Path? How does it play a role in your life? And very important, what not to do with it…

These are some of the things we’ll talk about today here, hopefully you’ll end up with a clear picture.

And, just so you don’t miss it, there is a poll at the end of the post, make sure you participate!

Why are you hearing so much about Path lately?

A couple of things have been going on for the social network, including:

A Shiny New Redesign

There’s no argument about this, Path was already one of the most beautiful mobile apps in the market but it just got better. Look at these screenshots:

New Features

Path launched its new version last month with a number of additions not just in the design but in its functionally giving the app a strong focus in what they call “smart journaling”.

Besides photos and videos, you can now share your thoughts, the music you’re listening to, where you are, who you’re with and when you start and finish your day. In other words, a digital journal on your mobile device.

Love from media

All this has resulted in some pretty wide media coverage including major venues such as USA Today. Publications like Business Insider have actually included it in the best apps of 2011 arena.

Where is Facebook’s Timeline standing in all this?

After Facebook announced its purchase of Gowalla to bring in the talent and kill the app, many started rumoring that the next in the list was Path. Think about it, it makes total sense looking at Facebook’s Timeline.

I even saw a couple of people commenting on this issue and saying that they will no longer use the app because it will soon be eaten by Facebook. Let’s see what happens.

What You Should Know About Path

Let’s now move on to the main things you need to know about the app, just to give you a kick start.

It’s a timeline

Path had the timeline concept already in place, it’s now been called “smart journal” and has had more features added but the important thing here is that you do get your content in a chronological order and the posts you create and share are called “Moments”.

Accessibility

The app is not accessible from your browser. The only way you can access Path is through an iPhone or Android devices. This brings up an important point for me since the network is supposed to be a connection with your loved ones, my mother, who makes it in the list of loved ones, does not own any of these devices.

Instagram-like photos

Path offers filters for taking pictures, just like Instagram does. Cool pictures + beautiful interface = Shiny.

Limited connections

Path allows you to have a max of 150 connections, the concept is based on Robin Dunbar’s theory that says human beings can maintain a total of 150 trusted relationships between friends and family. I know what you’re thinking now, we’ll come back to that.

People Tagging

It is very easy to tag people into moments. With location-based apps like Foursquare you can add pictures to your check-ins, with Path you can add pictures and also tag people. Now you have a “Moment” that includes a post with location, an image and the people you shared that moment with.

Number of users

Path was launched in November 2010 and it’s now passing the 1 million mark. Is it in the race to become your

Social Sharing

The network is private but you also have the option to share your moments with the rest of the world if you want to. Path let’s you connect with Facebook, Twitter and send your check-ins to Foursquare.

Emotions

Conversations are very light, you can express your mood in regards to a post with simple emoticons that works similar to the famous “Like” button, in this case adding the possibility to add a feeling/emotion. Other types of communications include comments.

Privacy

If you are one of those people that are concerned about privacy in your social profile you’ll like this. Path is private by default, you have to let in the people you want to connect with and you only have 150 spots available. Facebook for example is open by default and you need to adjust your settings to make it private.

How does Path play a role in your life

The concept of Facebook was to connect with your network, the people that you really know, that’s the reason the connection has to be mutual. I think we can agree that ship has sailed in most of our cases.

In the case of Google+ and Twitter the networking is open, you don’t need the other end to connect to you.

Path brings back the closed network concept, the fact that it limits you in the number of connections makes you want to make them special, true connections with the people you care about and have an interest in your personal life. This is not a network to grow your digital footprint or promote your blog content and it’s certainly not the network to establish new relationships.

Is it for everyone? not at all, starting with its limited accessibility. For example, If a good part of your close network moves more on a Blackberry environment, they’re automatically out of the equation.

What do you think?

There is one more thing you most be thinking, “why would I have another social network?”, even if Facebook is not very pretty you can still manage to keep a true small network of offline relationships or you can filter the information you share.

Here is a little Poll I created to see what your thoughts regarding this topic. Participate!

Also, if you want to share your thoughts about Path and how it plays a role for you, use the comment section.