Social Media Marketing

Pinterest: Can You Handle It?

I want to tell you about a great Social Network, Pinterest, that is starting to get a lot of traction. In fact, Time Magazine named Pinterest one of the five best social media sites of 2011, along with Klout and Google-Plus. I can see why. It is downright addicting.

Pinterest is kind of a cross between the words Pin and Interest because what you do is “pin” images of your favorite foods, clothes, places, designs, and everything else, to online boards that you create. When you find something of interest in a blog post, you can “pin” it to one of your boards. If you see something you like on Pinterest, that someone else has pinned, you can “repin” it.

Pinterest came into it’s own in the midwest by women planning weddings and doing crafts. They would use it to make wish lists of beautiful things. It spread from there. This past summer more men jumped in giving it a dose of Testosterone!

When you pin something, it is strongly encouraged that you find and credit the original source. I just heard from one of my peeps who writes a food blog that her peanut butter and jelly french toast photo was pinned on Pinterest and it resulted in her traffic zooming to over 6,000 hits in just one day.

Because it is newish, and does not have as big a community as a Facebook or You Tube, you have a much better chance of something going viral and bringing traffic to your site. It is also a great way for you to communicate your ideas to a designer. Whether organizing a wedding, renovation, or a website brand and design, share your Pinterest boards with your professional to easily communicate your look, feel, and ideas without the messy miscommunication words can have when translating design ideas.

You have to be careful when you go on Pinterest. Last Sunday, when I should have been writing the Just a Digital Minute, I got on Pinterest and two hours flew by. I had the feeling that someone needed to stop me. “Step away from the computer, Judi.”

The images that are presented to you when you go to Pinterest are somewhat determined by the people you follow.You can start by following me and other people you may know but don’t stop there. Check out the boards of people who pins you like and you will most likely find you love everything they do. But do it at your own risk, and don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Process Your Business Cards!

The tip today solves a terribly annoying problem, how to input the information from all those business cards into your contact on your phone/computer. Business cards are still the most practical way of exchanging contact information in real life and yet we want that information to be available at our finger tips from our phones and computers. After a networking event, most of us have a hard time making ourselves enter in all the data from the cards we collected, much less, follow up with people we have met.

There is now a fantastic and fun solution. CardMunch is a free iPhone app (Blackberry and Android versions to be coming soon) that will process your business cards in a matter of minutes. Just hold your phone over a card. When you see the card information come into focus, tap the screen and it will take a photo of the card and send it to be transcribed, right into your contact list. You will see the the image of the card photo as well as all of the relevant contact information in the appropriate fields in your contact list.

How does it get it right? Instead of using an optical scanning service, CardMunch uses a real humans to transcribe each business card and verify the accuracy of the transcription before returning them to your mobile phone as a contact. You can imagine that process sounds a bit spendy and in fact, Card Munch use to cost 2.99 for the app and 25 cents for each entered card, but a year ago, in a genius move, LinkedIn bought CardMunch and now offers it at no charge. This brilliant acquisition also allows us to have instant easy access to our contacts’ full LinkedIn profile information. And do you want some icing on that cake? With a tap of a button you can send the contact an e-mail or an invitation to connect via LinkedIn. How great is that?

How to Configure Your Facebook Privacy Settings

The other night I was at a party and some friends were complaining about some Facebook apps that post things on yours and your friend’s Facebook sites without your exact permission. It is enough to drive a person crazy. But not to worry. You can take care of it through your privacy settings so that you don’t annoy everyone.

Log-in to your Facebook account and go to your profile. There is a blue bar at the top of the page. Your profile photo and name is on the right hand side of the bar and to the left of that you will see the word home. Click “Home” to get a drop-down menu and select “Privacy Settings”.

One of the selections on the page is called “Apps and Websites” If you select the option to “Edit Settings” you can control what gets shared by your games and apps.

Find the option, “Apps You Use” and select “Edit Settings”. This will show all of the apps you have installed over your years of being on Facebook. [click to continue…]

Quickly Enhance Your Online Presence with About.Me

Most of you know, I am a big proponent for getting yourself a WordPress website. If you have a business, it is essential to have a place of your own, where people can find out exactly what you do and why they should work with you. If you don’t have a job, but are looking, then it can be a great way to set yourself apart from your competition and showcase who you are and what you do in a way a resume can never do. But if you haven’t got a web presence yet or, if you do, but want to have another place online to put your profile out there so that you or your business comes up in a Google search, check out About dot me.

About.me lets you quickly build simple and visually elegant splash pages that point visitors to your content from around the web. It is an easy and free way to have a web presence, where people can find you or your business and where to connect with you on various social media sites. If you already have a website, it is still a nice thing to have because it can come up in a Google search and connect with a link back to your website. Take a look at my About.me profile and then give it a try yourself.

About.me provides an easy interface with several templates and examples to help you with ideas. Upload a background and a photo, write your bio, add your social media sites and you are good to go. I’d love to see what you come up with!

Adding a Cover Photo To Your Facebook Timeline

The new Timeline feature in facebook is now available. I had heard that come mid-December, facebook was just going to make the change whether we wanted it or not. But, this morning my profile was sporting the same old look. I decided that it was time to take matters into my own hands and go ahead and change to the new Timeline before the change was thrust upon me. I have to say It is pretty cool! I love being able to scroll to a different year and see what I was up to then. It is like a scrapbook of my life. But this tip is on how to add a cover photo. Oh and by the way, you will have seven days to work on your new Timeline before it goes public so that you can set the privacy or take things off. I liked mine ok as it was so I went ahead and hit make public now.

The first thing you will be asked to do when you enable your Timeline is to choose a cover photo. This is the large photo that will appear at the top of your Timeline page. According to facebook,

“We’ve found that people have a better experience viewing your timeline when they see a cover that is as unique and individualized as you are…. An easy way to ensure your cover image is unique, is to choose an image from your life, like a photo from a wedding, day at the beach, or birthday party. If you want to use a photo to show solidarity or express support for a cause or organization, you can still post a status or a photo and feature it on your timeline.”

[click to continue…]

Leverage LinkedIn for Building Your Network

I have to admit that I am not the most diligent LinkedIn user I know. That title would have to go to my friend, Dorothéa Bozicolona-Volpe, and yes she is as exotic as her name implies. Dorothéa has been giving some great advice on the importance of LinkedIn to young people who are in the job market. Her advice is also applicable to all of us.

If you aren’t on LinkedIn please get yourself an account today. Fill out your profile completely to include adding your current and past positions with the care you would take developing your resume. Be sure to add a head shot that is attractive and professional. It needs to make you look attractive. By that I do not mean a glamor shot, I mean a head shot that looks like someone that you would want to have a chat with. Smile.

You should then go through your contacts and start adding connections. I currently have 462 LinkedIn connections which according the LinkedIn, links me to over 4,312,936 professionals. That is astounding.

What I have not been so great about is leveraging these connections by asking people to write recommendations for me. I have only eight. According to Dorothéa getting recommendations while they are hot is one of the most important parts of using LinkedIn. People trust that these recommendations are are real so they hold more weight than a testimonial you put on your website.

Dorothéa’s brilliant advice is to make a habit of asking for a LinkedIn recommendation immediately after you have done work for someone or are leaving a job. She suggests that you go so far as to write up a couple of paragraphs for the person about what you did for them and what they said to you about what you did.

Ask for the recommendation in person if possible, and then followup with an email which includes the link to LinkedIn and your sample write up. Tell the person that you have provided a little write up, as a time saver for them and they are welcomed to use all or none of it. Doing this will increase the likelihood of them completing the task.

Getting in a habit of doing this at the beginning of your career will help you to develop a most valuable network. And if you are so inclined, I’d love a LinkedIn recommendation from you!