Confession: I have fallen in love with Pinterest. Serious love.
Pinterest is a virtual pinboard where you can tag and share almost any image you come across on the web. It’s driving crazy traffic to retail sites and some are calling it the next social commerce game changer. Marketers and business owners are quickly developing ideas on how to use Pinterest to drive traffic to their own sites.
Some big brands like Whole Foods, Lowe’s and Southwest are have already set the bar high. These brands get it. They get that it’s a space to connect with their most engaged consumers and not just another platform to push every pretty picture of their products in front of anyone who’s looking.
Smaller organizations, even those that aren’t retail-based, have the opportunity to find their own success with Pinterest. One way is by giving fans a look inside their culture by creating group boards, shared by people within the company. Showing your brand’s personality on your boards lets fans connect with your brand creatively and share that experience with others.
There’s also opportunity for people to collaborate on Pinterest group boards outside of business. Planning a bachelorette party with the girls? Have a big family trip in the works? Get a board started and get to pinning.
Whether it’s for business or just for fun, here’s how to create a group board on Pinterest:
1. When viewing your boards, click “Edit”
2. Select the “Me + Contributors” option. Start typing the name of the person you’d like to add to your group. (Note: You have to be following the person you want to add as a collaborator.)
3. Congrats! You’ve just added a team member. Now when your team member wants to add a pin to your new group pinboard, your board will show up in the list along with the boards they’ve already created.
A little group icon appears next to the group name to let you know that’s the group board and not yours. The icon looks like this:
How would you use a group board to collaborate with a team? Are you already using one? Have you found value in the group option?
Today I received an automated response from Senator Marco Rubio thanking me for contacting him about the recent SOPA legislation. It’s not every day you get an email from a senator, so of course I read through it to find out what he had to say. Too bad the marketer in me wanted to grab a red pen and send this one back to the drawing board.
We’re not going to get into politics here, but I’ve got nothing against Rubio, he’s ok in my book (remember that time he swooped in and saved Nancy Reagan?). I was happy to see an email from him telling me thanks and letting me know about his plans for future regulations like SOPA, but I couldn’t get past a few opportunities for improvement (to put it nicely).
Automated emails are a necessary evil. They’re plain text and visually boring, but there are still ways to go beyond basic. If I were on Rubio’s web team, I’d love to suggest some simple automated email improvements:
1. Titles. If you can’t be 100% sure that I’m a male or female, it would be best to remove the title completely. Tonight I found out a female friend of mine received the same email with the same problem, so chances are it happened to even more. You want to make sure your email is personalized and it grabs the recipient’s attention, but you may run into problems when more than a handful of women are addressed as “Mr.” in the greeting. If in doubt, leave it out.
2. Connect. The reply-to email address (Do_Not_Reply@rubio.senate.gov) made it clear that a response may either bounce back or land in a bottomless email pit – and that’s ok. I’ve been the “Contact Us” responder before and I know how much work is involved, but give me somewhere to go. Give me a link to your Facebook Page, Twitter account, the contact form on your website – somewhere I can go to say “thanks for the email Marco!”
3. Keep it moving. Marco finishes his email with “If I can be of any further help to you, please do not hesitate to contact me.” Fantastic, but again, try to make it a little easier for me to get in touch with you. At the very least, give me a list of where you are in the social media world with links and I may click one or two. I might just even leave a comment and become your friend while I’m at it. You never know.
Plain text emails may be ugly and cold, but with a little bit of TLC, they can help you keep the conversation going.
What do you think? Am I being too critical? Could they have done a little better on the email?
So, I may have a phone in my pocket everywhere I go and check in at (almost) every stop I make, but wearing a bracelet that keeps track of my day is just a little too much right now.
Jawbone Up is a bracelet and mobile app that tracks your activity during the day – from how long you sleep to when you eat and how long you exercise. It takes the old idea of making better choices by keeping a journal, adds some awesome technology and an iPhone app to automate all of it.
Do I think it’s cool? Of course, I think it’s awesome. But, do I need something tied to my wrist that tells me to get my butt moving when I’ve been sitting on it too long? Not so much.
Maybe I’m being too old fashioned in thinking that I can remember how long I went to the gym for and what exercised I did, or what I ate for dinner and how it made me feel. Maybe I’m the kind of person who would rather write it down in a $2.99 notebook instead of spending my cash on a fancy $99 bracelet, but that’s just me.
Insiders say more wearable tech is on its way to the masses and I can’t wait to see what they have in store. I’d love to be able to answer my phone on my wrist like 007, but personally, I get hassled enough by friends and family about my social media activity, mainly checking-in and posting photos on Instagram too often. And, I guess in some ways, I still like to leave a little to the imagination.
I’m not convinced yet that I need all of it to be automated. Do you have a Jawbone Up? Would you wear a bracelet like this to help you track your daily activity?
Oh, and by the way, if you want to buy me one for my birthday and convince me I’ve got it all wrong, be my guest. But don’t you dare buy me the scale that tweets my weight.
I’m a web geek by nature and devour dozens of articles online every day, but I still love a real book. Go figure that my husband was the first a NOOK, but I still haven’t made the switch over to an e-reader.
If you love books and believe in the power of reading as much as I do, I’m sure you’ll love this video, too:
Imagine this, you just scored an awesome online deal to a new, hot restaurant in town. You’re not wowed by the service, but you got it at half price and the food was decent. You don’t leave a tip (I know you’re better than that, but just play along with me here) and write about your not-so-stellar dining experience on Yelp. Once at home you find that your photo has been posted to the restaurant’s Facebook page with this message:
Image via UnMarketing
And did you catch that stellar follow-up comment by the restaurant?
Here’s a quick tip for businesses on Facebook: Don’t do this.
After more than 100 comments were posted in response to the update, the restaurant deleted the post and added another: “Trying to stir up the pot, we lost our lid and spilled the beans…”
Then five hours later, a public apology: “Dear, Stephanie S. – We are truly sorry, it was a bonehead move on our part. But more importantly – it was rude to you and an inappropriate use of social media, which has been a driving force for our business because we can’t afford traditional advertising. We rely on word-of-mouth. Your experience was yours to share and not mine to abuse. Boners BBQ is my passion and my life. Please give me the opportunity to serve you again at our expense- if not please allow me to fully refund your money on me, Sincerely, Andrew Capron.”
After another 107 comments, the owner has taken it upon himself to publicly respond to outraged commenters – one by one.
Sounds like slowly, but surely, he may just learn his lesson.
What do you think about the restaurant’s post? Fatal blunder or something to be forgiven?
*Thanks to UnMarketing for posting the original bonehead update on Facebook last night, where I first stumbled upon the fiasco.
From Siri helping Santa make all of his 3.7 billion appointments to Best Buy “Game On” jabs, the big dude in boots and red jacket is making appearances all over this year’s holiday tech ads. So far, my favorite isn’t actually an ad at all, but a fun song and animated video created by Baltimore-based agency, . . . → Read More: Santa goes social this Christmas
This is one statistic I’m working toward being a part of:
Women in the 21st century are a powerful growth engine for small business America with growth in women-owned businesses actually outpacing national business growth over the past 14 years. An overwhelming 99 percent of businesses run by women are small businesses. With the U.S. Bureau of . . . → Read More: Women-owned businesses kicking butt and taking names in national business growth [infographic]
Last week I had the awesome opportunity to help a group of South Florida nonprofit professionals at PRSA Miami’s yearly nonprofit workshop. Agustina Prigoshin and I teamed up on the workshop to give our group of Miami nonprofit pros a better understanding of the social media tools out there, how to manage content and start thinking . . . → Read More: Social media for nonprofits workshop with PRSA Miami
