Have you recently found yourself asking “What is all this buzz about Pinterest?” We’ve been pondering over that very question here at Thought Labs! After some hefty research and critical thinking, we have a few thoughts of our own concerning just what Pinterest is, who’s making use of it, what they’re doing with it, and most importantly: how your brand can be successful with the Pinterest platform!

Just the facts.
Pinterest empowers its users; providing the ability to easily curate content from anywhere on the web with just one click! The website has humble origins, but has seen some very impressive growth in the last year, rising to become a top traffic referrer for fashion brands. Some have described Pinterest as digital scrapbooking, though rather than sharing their own lives, “pinners” are instead sharing their interests. While on most social networks the very idea is constant social interaction, Pinterest is described as a rather passive experience. Very little interaction occurs between pinners. Though the feeling of “missing out” for fear of falling behind in ongoing discussions or neglecting online profiles is for the most part absent among pinners, these very active individuals still feel compelled to return to the site often, with some users spending upwards of 2 hours per day curating content from outside sources, or “repinning” content already posted on another pinner’s board. (Sources: ArikHanson.com, Mashable)

(Image Credit: Lauren Indvik)

Who uses Pinterest?
Pinterest’s largest demographic is women, age 25-34, while only about 20% of Pinterest’s users are male. Most pinners earn an annual income of 25k-75k per year. Many pinners (60%) have completed some college courses, however a comparatively smaller 25% of pinners have completed a bachelor’s degree or higher. (Source: Pinterest Demographic Data)

(Image credit: Erin Ledbetter)

What interests pinners?
Pinterest’s users seem to prefer content that is creative and largely visual. Kary Delaria, described by ArikHanson.com as a Pinterest “super user”, says she finds ”ideas and inspiration for food to make (lots of that), styles to try, gifts to give, activities to do with the kids, projects to improve my home, and, a visual insight into the more personal/creative side of individuals in my network.” Seeking ideas and inspiration is a common theme among pinners, and many of the super users interviewed likened pinning to tearing interesting articles out of a magazine. In this capacity, Pinterest drives a lot of interest in fashion and creativity, DIY projects, cooking, unique vacations, and much more! (Sources: ArikHanson.com, Likeable.com)

An example of a Pinterest profile. This particular one belongs to one of our founders!

So, how can my brand benefit from Pinterest?

• Be Creative. Brands which are not typically considered creative could still find success in sharing interesting content which ties into their brand, or finding unique methods for creating their own content (think The Old Spice Guy).

Whole Foods has a multitude of boards, and while many of them focus on their primary product (groceries), consider their highly successful board Super Hot Kitchens, which features renovations and design ideas for your kitchen!

• Be Visual. Visual content reigns supreme on Pinterest. Attractive and informative infographics and visual guides can be a great way to gain the attention of pinners while educating your customers as well!

Graphic Side has done a great job of this with their “Inforgraphics” board, which has already netted 93 followers for their 39 pins!

• Drive Purchases. Among pinners, it is generally agreed that pins which link to an opportunity to purchase products they consider favorable are highly preferred and difficult to pass up.

Nordstrom excels with product links included in every pin, which take you directly to the pinned product’s page in their online storefront!

• Incentivize Your Followers. Considering one of the primary demographics on Pinterest (Boomers and Boomerangs) is reported to be price-sensitive, discounts and similar incentives can also be a great opportunity to turn pins into revenue!

DIY GarageShelf, a small and unassuming website marketing do it yourself garage storage kits, has built a respectable following by offering special discounts on Pinterest.

• Don’t be self-involved. Share a variety of content that will appeal to your target audiences. Pinterest makes this easy! With Pinterest, you can create multiple boards, and pinners can elect to follow the boards which interest them, rather than just your brand as a whole.Williams-Sonoma manages to keep the focus on their delicious offerings while also keeping their followers interested by offering great ideas on ways their customers can use their products. Pinners are also encouraged to pin their own ideas to Williams-Sonoma’s Your Entertaining Ideas board!

• Host Contests. Everyone loves to get free stuff! While other social networks do provide great opportunities for contests, Pinterest is an appetizing choice for contests, because it comes without restrictions on how, when, and where you can run your contests, or how you can notify your winners. It also allows for visual based contests, such as having community members contribute photos, or develop interesting captions for photos shared by your brand. These are usually very fun and engaging, and should get the interest of your followers.

(Image Credit: Gillian Luce)

Homes.com’s Pin it if you Love it contest was just launched on the first of February, but is already gaining a lot of momentum! Pinterest is still a very young platform, but it is an ideal spot to host your contests!

• Above All Else, Provide Value. Pinners are not following you to be advertised to; they are looking for content that interests them. For pinners, value comes in the form of information that speaks to their individual interests and is curated in a stylish, visual, and easily digestible format. Remember: inspirational ideas, visually appealing retail merchandise, visual guides to DIY projects (potentially involving your products!), recipes, and hosting boards that your followers contribute to are all great ways to provide value to your pinners!

Pinterest provides a great opportunity to diversify content without losing the interests of your core demographic or those which are interested in very specific content from your brand. Thus, if approached correctly, what is currently considered to be one of the most impersonal social networks available could become one of your most meaningful and personal channels for speaking directly to your customer’s many varied interests!

Look to any of these brands for more inspiration and ideas on what makes a brand successful on Pinterest! Do you have your own ideas for how brands should be leveraging Pinterest or what value they may find in the platform? Please, let us know in the comments below; we would love to hear from you!

In late January Facebook finally added support for HTTPS, allowing users to browse the site securely. HTTPS provides a combination of the HTTP and SSL protocols, enabling encrypted communication between a user's computer and a web server. Using HTTPS to access the site - though undoubtedly slower - protects users from sniffing attacks on public networks. Sniffing attacks have become a real problem in the last year with the introduction of free, open-source tools like Firesheep. PC World has even published a how-to guide to using the tool to hijack Facebook. So the feature is long overdue.

Thus the topic of this post.

Uncheck This!

One of our clients, MediaFriends, is hosting a party at SXSW on Saturday night, right across the street from the Mashable party. It should be a great way to start off the night! Here are the details:

Go HeyWire @ The HeyWire House Party!

>> FREE Party Featuring DJ DNS! - 3-Time DMC Champion of Holland in his first U.S. appearance!

>> Hey, Ever Light Up Austin With A TXT!? - SMS-to-Laser Light Show with texting powered by HeyWire! Get Wow'd!

HeyWire House Opens @ 8:00 - Go HeyWire with Drinks flowing till Midnight!

Open to all SXSW Interactive Badge Holders

Get yourself to the HeyWire House + Go HeyWire with a HeyMaker!

> Download the Free HeyWire App
> Show the bartender
> Get a HeyMaker... Very tasty! A couple of these and you will be going HeyWire!

Going to Mashable SXSWi House 'Bash' @ Buffalo Billiards?

Go Early - Come across the street for a drink and watch the greatness of DJ DNS on the turntables! Meet the HeyWire team, download the app and start texting worldwide, chat through Facebook and Tweet through Twitter all for Free and all within one app!

Sign up now at http://heywire.eventbrite.com

Check out this teaser video here:

One of our clients, AVG Technologies, has partnered with Zynga to offer FarmVille players an exclusive AVG Biplane with purchase of AVG PC TuneUp for 66% off. So far, AVG is one of very few companies to offer these sponsored in-game purchases.

The campaign works by prompting FarmVille users when they load the game to purchase AVG PC TuneUp in return for the AVG Biplane, which offers 3 Instant Grow applications. Once the purchase is complete, a message will appear in FarmVille congratulating the user on the new AVG Biplane and lets them place it on their farm. Farmers can then click on the AVG Biplane and choose Apply Instant Grow to have it fly over their farm like a cropduster and enable all crops to be harvested.

To promote this offer on the AVG Facebook Page, we are doing the following:

1. Adding a section on the Community tab, which is set as the default landing tab for non-Fans. This means that all first time visitors to the page will learn about the offer. Existing Fans always go to the Wall.
2. Updating the Profile picture with a call to action. This is very important, because this picture is visible on all tabs, including the Wall. Notice also that the offer is place in the middle of the picture so that it is above the fold.
3. Creating a series of Status Updates that help teach users about the benefits of AVG PC TuneUp. As a newly launched product, many of the millions of AVG customers and Fans may not know about its features, and it is a great chance to answer questions.
4. Encouraging users to post pictures of their farms. Some people do some amazing decorating and go way beyond harvesting! AVG Fans are generally pretty active on the Page, so we expect to get many very interesting farms.
5. Running a set of Facebook Ads targeting users who value PC Performance and FarmVille players. Using some narrow demographic targets, we can get pretty good results and quickly validate messaging.

The Facebook campaign is also supplemented by AVG's other social media efforts such as blogs, YouTube videos and Twitter outreach.

This is a very interesting campaign to be part of from end to end, and AVG is already seeing the results. You can find out more about the offer in this blog post.

Update: Inside Facebook is featuring the deal on their website today as a Featured Facebook Campaign.

Cappy Popp will be presenting "Implementing and Managing your Facebook Strategy" at Online Marketing Summit 2011 on February 7, 2011 as part of the Social Media Planning & Integration Workshop. Join Cappy to learn about how to create a successful Facebook strategy for your business, including creating effective Facebook Pages driven by real metrics.

Hear is more about the workshop:

Social Media is becoming a critical component of an organizations marketing strategy. Enterprises are no longer asking the question "Should we be involved in social media?" Instead they are asking, "How can we generate greater impact and success using social media as part of the marketing mix?" That said, the social media landscape has evolved rapidly in the last 18 months leaving organizations struggling to understand how to catch-up. Having a complete understanding of the social media landscape, tools and best practices is critical to your marketing success.
Success in social marketing is within reach. The challenge lies in the understanding that there are fundamental differences in the approach marketers take to industrial marketing (TV, Print, Radio, Direct Mail, etc) and social media marketing. It is the change from a monologue to a dialogue, and the most successful social media marketers have recognized this shift in thinking and have achieved repeatable and predictable success in social media.

What you will learn:
This one-day workshop will teach you how to drive your marketing objectives through social media by developing an all encompassing strategy that outlines listening, content planning, engagement, management and measurement of your social media activities.

We'll start by understanding the basics and quickly outlining advanced strategies and tactics employed by some of the most respected brands in some of the most successful social media programs. We will also discuss the tools you need to be effective, the policies to employ and the how to develop a comprehensive plan.

We will also provide a benchmark of where your company currently stands and steps you need to take to help get your brand to the next level.

See more details here - Workshop 2: Social Media Planning & Integration

Today Facebook presented a 6-month developer roadmap. Finally - it's been frustrating as hell writing a book about Facebook and not knowing what was coming from them and when, not to mention staying abreast of all the changes for our clients. In their presentation Facebook said that there were not many or big changes being announced, but I beg to differ. Some of them are quite significant. I'll be covering those changes over the coming weeks and how they will affect your business, personal, and application presences on Facebook. What's great is that Facebook is actually giving developers a heads-up for the next six months, and making that information public to all. That's fantastic. If only I had this before I started writing the book.

Let's get to the meat of it.

What's chopped? What's not? The first  big change, for both developers and users, center around the Facebook Stream and communication channels. Facebook is offering a new one, which is big news, and taking away some old ones, which is, perhaps, bigger news...

The Stream

Notifications are dead. Both application-to-user and user-to-user. At least the way they work today. Ouch.

For those applications or companies that depend on these for growth this is a blow. What are notifications? They are the little lightweight messages that pop up in the Facebook user interface to let you know of some event happening in an application. They can be sent currently by applications on behalf of their users to their friends or other application users (in the case of user-to-user notifications) or from an application to its users directly (for application-to-user ones.) Facebook collects the recent ones in the bottom right of the Facebook window, as shown in the image on the left (usually filled with messages from Facebook, Living Social, or Mafia Wars.) All user-to-user notifications will be routed to the Inbox; however, there will be no way for applications to send anything on behalf of their users anymore without their consent.  Invitations/requests will also be routed 'somewhere' into the Inbox. Which is fine since I cannot remember the last time time I have even looked at my requests. When they hit the 300-or-so mark I simply delete them all.  Those are all being routed to the Inbox in the near future.

Why kill notifications, one of the only ways left for apps to communicate with users without their consent? Simply put, they don't work, except in very specific circumstances. Most of the time they are noise. A LOT of noise. Additionally, most people have no clue they even exist or where they live. Currently users have to keep track of five different communication channels in Facebook: invites/requests, messages (Facebook Inbox today), notifications, Feed stories (the stuff on your Wall and News Feed), and IM/Chat. They say it's too much and no one is clear where to look for them. They're right.

So basically one-to-one communications of all types Facebook wants to route to the Inbox: one spot for users to check messages targeted directly at them. Makes sense. Unclear how/if Chat will be affected if at all.

One-to-many communications will be handled solely by the Stream in the form of Feed stories published via the Open Stream API. And the automatically-published one-line stores that applications can publish to your Recent Activity section on your Wall? Also gone.

Honestly I think this is a great thing for users and for applications. Why? Because now more than ever developers and content providers are going to have to think about engagement first, before features, before copying the other guy, before writing a line of code. The only way for apps to really spread through the Stream is for users to interact with the stories that applications post there - meaning stories that application users *allow* them to post to begin with - either via the Like or Comment features.

The other big news on the communcation front is that Facebook will provide a means for developers to prompt their users for, and grant the right to store users' real e-mail addresses. Also the right to store their first and last names most likely, though at the time of this post the details have not been hashed out. You heard that right. Facebook will allow applications to contact users directly without having to use Facebook as the intermediary. This is HUGE. And a huge boon for Facebook Connect developers for sure.

What do you think?

UI Changes : Dashboards, Counters, and the Death of the Profile Box

Facebook is changing the look and feel of the Home Page, at least. A long, narrow bar will contain entries very similar to the way the Facebook Application menu looks today. The screen shot to the right, though blurry, gives you the idea. It will contain the friend lists like it  does today but will also incorporate Bookmarks. And they're finally giving developers an FBML <fb:bookmark/> tag so they don't have to jump through hoops to get users to do so. Finally. They are also introducing UI menus they call 'Dashboards' that originally will be of two types: Applications and Games. Recommendations might make the cut as well. These are all in early mock-up stages but will potentially be easier ways for users to find new apps and games. There are no distinctions at this time between them.

To allow users to see when applications have notified them of something they need to act on - the way notifications do today - Facebook is introducing Counters to the right of bookmarked (only?) applications in this new UI bar. You can see them in the image to the right. Counters show the number of things 'you need to deal with' in the item their associated with. Presumably this would be user-to-user or application-to-user messages in the Inbox, for example.

The Facebook chrome is going to change (again) as well - new top nav, cleaner layout.

And oh the poor Boxes tab is finally meeting its maker. As developers we called it 'Siberia'. If an app had a presence there its engagement was dismal, so this should be of no big surprise to anyone. One other interesting change is the change to profile or application tabs - they are going to be given much less real estate width-wise. I assume this is to compensate for the new left nav idiom? Anwyay they are going from 760->560 pixels in width.

Ethan hinted at some other (seemingly very significant) changes to the Profile page as well. They want to allow more sharing of content that makes your Profile more unique. That's great - right now everyone's looks identical except for the profile pic and potentially the one application profile box below the friends widget. They could not elaborate on these changes but suggested that they would involve some work for developers.

Platform Policies and Programs

Highlights here included an entirely new Facebook Developer site with completely rewritten Platform documentation, more social features focused on community. That's great: the existing wiki is weak at best, pathetic at worst. Many of the most important pages became woefully outdated yet were locked from public editing (<cough>FBJS</cough>). They will be providing comprehensive how-to guides and walkthroughs and will also provide all the content they covered in the demo today. One other interesting thing is that they will be providing a 'Health of the Platform' section that will show how all (?!) the APIs are currently working in the wild and the current top bugs they are working on fixing, and those they expect you to work around. This will undoubtedly lessen the massive forum threads that alternate between 'it works' and 'it doesn't' posts.

The gargantuan 14-page opus that comprises the Facebook Platform policies have been shrunk to 3. With screenshots showing best practices and examples of flagrant violations of policy. Fantastic!

Application and Page Insights will be updated and accessible through APIs. Darn, just about finished the app to scrape them dynamically.

Open Graph API

This is the next evolution of Facebook Connect it sounds like. Basically it was pitched as a way for 'any web page' to become a Facebook Fan Page/Public Profile through the use of what I assume are custom widgets or code in the Facebook Connect or Facebook JavaScript Client Libraries.

For example, let's say as a brand I don't want a Facebook Page. I've spent a lot of time cultivating an audience on an external site that I control and don't want to fragment them by investing in a Facebook presence as well. The Open Graph API will allow me to add Facebook widgets and access their entire API allowing my users to become Fans of my EXTERNAL page - and have that show up on their Profiles WITHIN Facebook. These external pages will also show up in Facebook Search from within Facebook, just like they were Pages within the site. Developers will be able to publish Streams targeted directly at these Fans on the external site(s) that use the API. This will undoubtedly be an interesting area of development in the coming months. Along with direct email communication this will probably jolt Facebook Connect implementations into the stratosphere.

Questions Asked By the Audience

Some of these were very good so I've included them to the best of my knowledge:

Q: As part of it's new interactive developer site is Facebook going to give developers a 'vote' on features for Facebook to add?

A: Um, no.

Q: What's up with Facebook's currency system? Any news?

A: Facebook credits (used in past to purchase Facebook Gifts) are still in use, but they have no 'real' announcements. They are testing whether or not to allow developers to use or accept them as currency in their apps but that's about it for now.

Q: How are apps going to prompt for user email addresses? Extended permissions are painful today.

A: They know, they are going to collapse them into a fewer number of them that allow users and developers a more clear view of how they work and what they grant.

Q: Will counters only show up for bookmarked applications?

A: Yes

Q: Will 'Publish to a Friend's Wall' still work?

A: Not been addressed; only changes they've made to the Stream have been the Open Stream API and that's just been a week ago - no changes planned.

Q: Is Facebook killing the verified applications program altogether?

A: Yes! They are going to spend a lot of time and expense making sure ALL applications are up to the same level of quality as verified ones were.

Q: Any idea in the new Stream of which messages will get more visibility or prioritization (popularity?)

A: Likes and Comments are key - make sure that people want to Comment and Like them. This will ensure their spread. He was unsure of how this affects search rankings within Facebook search.

That's about it, in a nutshell.

Thoughts? Questions?

Twitter is very popular now - getting mentions on daytime talk shows,  spurring celebrity competitions, and even receiving governmental uptime requests. People and companies are jumping on to the service because everyone else is. But should they be?

The answer for most companies is probably no.

Using social media isn't about checking a box or matching the competition. It is about finding new ways to enhance a company's relationship with its customers, whether is it just listening to them, giving them more information, or truly engaging them in conversation or even brand development. Twitter is a medium that can enable this in a low cost way, but it may not be the right place for your company.

Here are some reasons why not:

• You don't know if your customers are actually on Twitter. This is pretty simple to find out - go to search.twitter.com, and run some searches with your company name, your brands, and other keywords and it should be pretty obvious whether your customers are talking about you. You might also search for your competitors - are they getting mentioned? If your customers aren't there, then try to spend your resources somewhere they actually are.
• You haven't committed time and resources. Social media takes time, and Twitter is no exception. A good Twitter strategy would involve daily searching and interacting, production of useful content, effective resolution of issues, and a plan for incorporation of useful feedback. If your company isn't prepared to allocate these resources and commit to following through day after day, then your Twitter outreach is likely to fail.
• You are just checking a box. People can sense a lack of authenticity. Oprah's total of 5 tweets in June have turned the positive feelings of many supporters into disillusionment. The negatives of a ghost town far outweigh the benefits of just having an account.
• It doesn't fit into your marketing plan. You need to have a plan to make your social media efforts succeed and it needs to be part of your overall marketing plan. If everyone isn't moving in the same direction, it is likely that your social media efforts might contradict or change the effects that the general marketing plan is trying to achieve. It is much better to get everyone lined up under the same set of goals, and use each medium to its full potential to reach those goals.

If you don't have the issues above, and are ready to start, but don't know how - don't let that stop you. It is better to start and have an open mind to learning and adjusting than to wait on the sidelines.

The Other Side Group recently wrote a blog post about Keeping Social Media Social. She said that people can get to a state with social media where they subscribe to a large number of people, but filter out everyone but a select few to compensate for the information overload. Participation with the masses goes down, and results in one-way conversations that are no different from traditional marketing.

I think there are two benefits to social media that are different than traditional media. The first is listening - companies now have the ability to hear what people are saying in ways they never could before. Blogs, forums, Twitter search, and Facebook status updates all create a stream of searchable content that companies can use to get feedback and keep abreast of perception shifts. They can do this without creating accounts or participating.

The second benefit is engagement with customers. This can affect product cycles, help with PR and marketing, increase sales, help identify trends, decrease support costs and empower fans to help spread the word. Engagement also provides an answer to the question "Is anybody listening?"

A common perception of many of these social media outlets is that they will be a gigantic time drain on already strained resources. This can actually be true - truly listening and interacting with customers can and should take time. That is why it is really important to understand up front what a company's goals are and what resources they have to commit to the process. Everybody hates finding out that companies aren't truly involved; that they aren't really interested in putting in the effort, but are merely checking a box. Lack of authenticity leads to outrage and abandonment. Sites become ghost towns.

Just listening to customers is a great first step. It helps companies to understand how and where they might engage in the future. However, it is important to let people know that you are gathering feedback and it also very important to have a plan to address that feedback, even if that doesn't happen via social media channels. Customers will appreciate this and will be happy to know that someone is hearing them.

Yesterday, Cappy Popp spoke on a panel hosted by the panel hosted by the MetroWest Chamber of Commerce on "LinkedIn - How to Increase Sales.” The panel also included: Mike Langford, Jeff Cutler and Eric Guerin.
The audience was already reasonably informed and engaged in some type of social media, having the most familiarity with Facebook and LinkedIn, but some with Twitter as well. Their questions focused on the whole of social media as well as specifics about LinkedIn.
Here were some key points from the panel:

Cappy Popp will be speaking at a MITX event Wednesday, June 24, 2009 on a panel titled,  'Web Marketing on a Shoestring - Being Scrappy in a Down Economy'.

The second installment of the MITX Marketing Technology Series, an educational series designed to explore the platforms, systems and infrastructures that allow marketers to execute efficiently, will be held  at K&L Gates at the State Street Financial Center in Boston from 8-10AM.

The following industry experts will be joining Cappy:

• Jeff Cram, CSO / Co-Founder,  ISITE Design
• Mike Volpe, VP Marketing, HubSpot
• Greg Slama, Manager of Contextual Marketing, One to One Interactive

Click here for detailed information about the event, or here to register.

Click here for directions. (or via Google)

MITX - the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange - today is the leading industry association in the country, bringing together digital technology, marketing and media professionals, to engage in what is next for the web and how it impacts the marketing and business worlds. With 250 plus member companies representing over 7,000 digital professionals, it is a dynamic and growing community of thought leaders, collaborators, and individuals in search of insight, education and opportunity. Check them out - or even better - join!