Part 2 of 3 in a series!

Earlier I blogged about our newest fascination on the web, Pinterest. Today, I want to answer the question I left you with: Why should this social networking website, addictive and beautiful as it may be, really matter to businesses?

Social Media’s Next Big Star

I think I made it clear in my last post how fun Pinterest can be. I’m not alone in feeling that way. The site is shaping up to be a big player in the digital game. Mashable recently wrote that Pinterest drives more traffic to websites than Google+, Youtube and LinkedIn combined. Those are not piddly platforms, ya’ll. Twitter is actually just barely beating Pinterest out… and Pinterest is a social networking site that’s only been around about a year.

Why has it taken off so much? It’s still too soon to answer that question in a scientific manner, but there are some tried-and-true principles of marketing and social media that Pinterest appears to be capitalizing on. For one, it’s been proven that women are more social creatures, and therefore more prone to share online and be more active on social networks. While the site is not too frilly, it lends itself to a feminine audience. There are similar sites like Tumblr that are more unisex in nature, but the reason Pinterest is such a dynamo is because it’s so popular with women. Don’t forget, women hold the purchasing power in most households. And while women are clearly the site’s target audience, the variety and volume of content shared by its users means that regardless of your budget, background or interests, there will be something for you there.

The thing that really impresses us about this site is that it allows businesses to do what they have been trying to do for years – get people to remember you. Whether you’re a blogger with a recipe you want folks to try, or a brand with a spankin’ new product you want everyone to know about, Pinterest allows you to not just get in front of your audience’s eyes, but it allows them to decide to save you, and share you. In fact, that’s the whole purpose. It’s like ripping an ad out of a magazine and mailing it to all of your friends. How many of us do that 20 times a day? Multiply that by Pinterest’s 13 million (and rapidly growing) users, and you get an idea of just how powerful this platform is.

How To Make It Work For You

So we know that Pinterest holds great potential for reaching new audiences and driving lots more traffic through its ultra-visual, user-friendly format. But how do you harness that potential? Plenty of folks, from bloggers to big brands, have been testing the waters with different techniques and having exciting results. Whether it’s a big time Pinterest contest integrated with a campaign, or simply taking a temperature check of what your target audience is pinning from your website, there’s a bunch of ways to utilize the platform as a marketer. I’ll get into the nitty gritty of just how to do that in my next blog post!

Part 1 of 3 in a series!

A seemingly innocent, but dangerous, addiction has been spreading like wildfire at The Cyphers Agency. Many of our lady employees, and a couple brave men, began dabbling in a tempting activity, just for occasional fun. Soon, we realized we were in too deep. Rather than try to escape the clutches of this dependency, we encouraged others in the office to join us on the dark side and also become hopelessly addicted… to Pinterest.

Pinning 101: Intro to Pinterest

Maybe you’re familiar with this irresistible website and know all too well about it’s devices, stealing every moment of your free time and convincing you that, Yes! You can bake those cupcakes, knit that scarf, build that super easy end table, design that enormous mansion that you totally will have one day!

If you’re not so up on Pinterest, however, this isn’t an empowerment workshop. Pinterest is a virtual bulletin board that “lets you organize and share things you find on the web.” Basically, Pinterest works like bookmarks, saving anything and everything you find on the Internet, but it’s a visual system. The thrill of Pinterest is that, by collecting all of your favorite ideas and images on your “boards,” you kind of feel like you have already bought those shoes, or sewn that dress, or taken that vacation. For those of us who can’t afford a shopping addiction, pinning is the next best thing.

The site says that it’s mission is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting,” and it’s doing exactly that. The website is still invitation only, but here’s a rundown of how it works:

Much like other social networks, you can follow others (and find on Pinterest through your existing Facebook and Twitter profiles), which means their pins will show up on your homepage in Pinterest, sort of like your Facebook news feed. You can choose to just follow select boards of folks, if you want. You can also browse the latest pins from all over Pinterest, not just those you follow. And if you like what you see, all you have to do is click “Repin” and you’ve now pinned their pin, saving it forever on your own board, and send it forward to be viewed by everyone that follows you.

That’s just a basic explanation, of course. The best way to learn is to play around! If you’ve gotten an invite and you’re interested in more nuts and bolts, here’s a great beginner’s guide from blogger Sorta Crunchy.

And of course, I know you’re thinking, Pinterest is clearly a fun online toy and all, but why all the fuss? I’ll get into just why this is such a big deal in my next blog post!

The best things in life are often free. This includes search results. Organic search results are kind of like organic food, harder to find and potentially better for you. Now, no chemicals are used to grow organic search results but there are farmers, (I mean Search Engine Optimization pros) who specialize in getting their search terms to the top of the organic results. As always, it’s caveat emptor. As a searcher, you should realize that people are paying to get their search terms to the top in the paid results and the organic results so click wisely. Pick the search engine that suits you best.

Lately, it’s getting harder to tell paid results from organic results as most search engines are trying harder to make more money from pay per click advertising. Here are some examples that show you where to find organic, non-paid results. Click to enlarge the images.

Google

Informal motto – Don’t be evil.

Bing

And Decide…

GoodSearch

Using this search engine can raise money for causes you choose. If you can put up with all the ads, it sounds like a good idea.

Blekko

Check out Blekko, a beta search engine that doesn’t seem to have ads at this point. You can test the results by playing their search engine Monte game. See if you pick their results. I did when I tried it: http://blekko.com/ws/+/monte

SwagBucks

How about a search engine that pays you for a change? This one offers points for searches which can be used to buy gift cards to Amazon and more. Also, features lots of ads

Please contact us if you have any questions about search engines. Thanks for reading!

You scream, I scream, we all scream… for Facebook.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best intro to this blog post. For that, I apologize. But obviously, today I am going to talk to you about Facebook content ideas and how to make your Facebook statuses (statii?) way more awesome. Since a majority of our clients are active on the ‘Book, we’re pretty familiar with what people love, hate, and share with their friends. We’re also pretty familiar with what doesn’t work. So without further ado (and even more bad jokes), here are 5 Quick(ish) Tips for Better Facebook Content.

1. Videos

Videos are more interactive than words. That seems obvious, but your audience may appreciate the break from reading every now and then, especially if it is something that interests them. Say you’re Starbucks and you’re releasing a new ad campaign. Maybe you can give a preview to your Facebook fans to see before anyone else. It’ll help solidify brand-consumer relationships and make each fan feel like they are getting something from liking the page.

2. Photos

Again, photos are more interactive than words. It also breaks up the blocks of text you might have on your page. Whether you are a food product, a luxury brand, or a service oriented organization, you can show a lot about your brand by tossing some pics up every now and again. Show your new line of shoes coming out in the fall and ask people to comment on their favorite designs. Display pictures from a recent factory tour that you sent your fan of the month on. Put up a funny comic or two to make your fans laugh. It’s all about getting people to engage with your page in new and interesting ways, and photos help you do that.

3. Direct Your Audience’s Answers

It’s sad to say, but sometimes you need to connect the dots for your audience. They might not know what you want them to do. Just because you provide a link doesn’t mean they are more likely to click. Just because you show them a picture doesn’t necessarily entice them to comment. Guide their actions by giving instructions, like this: “Click this link if you love great chicken recipes. This Thai Chicken Extravaganza is the perfect meal to end a long day.”

4. Questions / Fill in the Blank

Posting can sometimes get monotonous on pages. It’s learning X about a product on Tuesday and seeing Y about it on Thursday. Quit just giving people facts and information. Boring Facebook pages say things like, “The Ultimate Vortex Hairdryer dries your hair in under 2 nanoseconds flat.” In truth, try something like, “The Ultimate Vortex Hairdryer dries your hair in under 2 nanoseconds flat! What are you going to do with all that extra time you’ll have in the morning?” or “Fill in the blank. I love my Ultimate Vortex Hairdryer because it gives me more time to _____________.”

5. Promotions / Free Sh*!

Seriously, people love free stuff. Like, LOVE it. Even OBSESS over it. Better yet, they love it so much, they’d hunt you down and find you if they don’t get their free stuff in a timely manner. This free stuff can be anything from coupon codes to samples to discounts, and more. But keep in mind that incentives don’t work in every scenario. After all, people aren’t going to go insane for a $2 coupon off a book-on-cassette-tape about Mary Todd Lincoln.

A friend suggested Tubalr to me yesterday and I’ve been telling everyone about it since. It’s an app that plays high quality videos back to back based on a search term or phrase. For example, “The Rolling Stones” entry brings up an endless stream of tunes and videos of Mick Jagger, his lips, and Stones’ concerts (see below). You can choose to listen to only the Stones, or similar artists as well. You can register to star your favorites if you are one who loves a customized listening experience.

Sure, it’s kind of like Pandora. Sure, it’s kind of like Spotify. Sure, it’s kind of like YouTube playlists. But regardless, it’s a simple, effortless way to get the tunes and videos you are looking for without any work on your part. Needless to say, we love simple ideas that solve a unique (and very lazy American) problem. Two thumbs up. You can bet you’ll find me over there all day, listening to showtunes The Black Keys.

I learned a lot in 2011, both about my life and my profession. Mostly, I’ve come to appreciate how work is more than just being satisfied with what you complete at the end of the day. It’s also about relationships, creative expression, stability, intellectual freedom, and yes, being satisfied with all you get done by 5 PM (or sometimes 6 PM).

I’ve also come to appreciate the sense of stability that has come back to our industry. It’s given our word of mouth team a chance to take all we’ve learned since social media transformed the scene a few years ago and change it into a formula, a practice, and a system that works for us. We’ve learned some great lessons throughout the year, some the hard way.

So we thought we’d share them all with you. After all, there’s no better way to kick off a new year than to look back on all you’ve learned in the previous year. Here’s 10 Social Media Lessons from 2011.

1. There’s no such thing as over-preparing. There IS such a thing as under-preparing and it’ll bite you in the butt.
2. Updating or tweeting every 5 seconds will not solidify your expertise. It will just annoy people.
3. There’s nothing worse than a huge block of text. Break it up! Bullet points, headers, and pics are good things.
4. Sometimes campaigns don’t go as well as planned. Do your best to fix the problem and then MOVE ON.
5. Don’t stress out over things you cannot control.
6. Think outside the Internet. Learn all there is to know about marketing.
7. Surround yourself with a team you trust. You can’t do it all by yourself.
8. Let your team be accountable for their own work. Mistakes made are lessons learned, and autonomy equals trust.
9. Sometimes you have to buck up and do that one thing you simply don’t want to do.
10. Sometimes the only thing people want to hear from a company is, “I’m Sorry.”

I walked into my friends house this week and noticed that she had gotten a new refrigerator. Cool story, right? The thing that attracted me me to this refrigerator was an 8in LCD screen located directly over the ice dispenser. The screen showed a display of the current weather conditions and along the bottom was a row of apps. Yes, refrigerators have apps now. Many were familiar, Epicurious, Pandora, Associated Press and Twitter. I punched the Twitter button, plugged my credentials and boom I was checking my Twitter stream. From a refrigerator.

If you’d told me 10 years ago that options for accessing the internet would include my phone, my refrigerator and my car dashboard, I would have laughed at you. And now ten years later it’s all true (and I’m wondering how the hell you knew it was going to happen). You have to ask do we need our fridge to check Twitter for us? Or our car? I’m a millennial, so I’m used to be plugged-in and reachable for a good portion of the day. However even I think that the fridge might be too much. How long before we are literally always plugged-in? I like Twitter as much as the next guy, but when my toilet starts automatically reading my Twitter stream to me when I sit down, I’m out.

Some of you may have noticed that all of Twitter’s apps are getting a facelift less than a year after the last big redesign. Twitter is calling this redesign Fly, but the nerds are referring to it as New New Twitter. They have a whole webpage dedicated to the new update. Check it out for more details. I’m going to quickly summate what they changed and then talk about why this matters. A lot.

Twitter consolidated everything into four tabs: Home, Connect, Discover, Me. Home is your timeline, promoted tweets, pictures, videos. Connect is everything that happens to you on Twitter such as @replies, favorites or people following you. Discover is a totally new feature to Twitter. It looks at who you follow, what you post, where you live and then delivers content they think you will find interesting. The last tab is called Me and it essentially a catch all for everything else: lists, profile, direct messages. This new layout is being rolled out to all of their apps on all platforms.

Twitter writes on the Fly website, “The new tab menu is the same across all devices. So you get the same experience on mobile and desktop—anywhere, anytime.” Twitter wants to make their service easier for new users. I’m sure most of you have tried explaining Twitter to a newbie and had trouble telling them were to start. Twitter wants to streamline the whole user experience (UX). They have also added brand pages, à la Facebook and are starting to place promoted tweets into users’ timelines. The service is now set up perfectly to insert tweets, trends, stories and brands seamlessly into the UX. It’s cleverly done.

I’ve talked before about how Twitter was struggling between its growing relevance and its quirky, simple roots. Fly is Twitter growing up. Brand pages, native photo sharing, streamlined UI/UX, an integrated revenue network… Twitter is now poised to become a full fledged platform. Facebook has taken some shots at Twitter’s market recently (the ticker anyone?), but now Twitter is stepping up to announce that it’s more than just a place for people to talk about what they ate for lunch. This could get very interesting.

The social media realm has required us to have a different set of rules. Everything from strategy to implementation has changed. That even extends to who does what in which department. A blessing of a small agency is that everyone on our social media team works closely together. And while we are all pretty well versed in the ins and outs of each client, we’ve each individually got our niche.

But while we are all well versed in each client, we’ve got to have a back up plan to ensure that all necessary work gets completed (and done the right way) if the point person on the account is out sick or on vacation. Because in social media, there are no sick days.  So here’s how we do it.

1. Check the Driver’s Manual

First things first, you need the proper documents. We work in pretty close quarters here at Cyphers, but we can’t all know every minute detail of every client. That’s where our internal social media documents come in handy. We prepare them before launching a new client and it gives our team the tools each person might need if someone is MIA. They’ve got everything from social media tone and voice to answers to common questions.

2. Have a Snow Day Phone Tree

When someone is out sick, running late, or on vacation, a communication plan is vital to ensuring that work gets done (and that the person that is out can breathe easy). Okay, so maybe it isn’t your traditional phone tree, but there is enough communication so that someone can step up and into the missing person’s shoes. All necessary team members or account executives are included in this communication plan so everyone is on the same page. All in all, discuss a plan so that each person knows how their role is altered when someone else is out.

3. Rinse and Repeat

Your back up plans aren’t always going to go off without a hitch, but once you’ve been through it once or twice, you’ll be good to go. Make changes as necessary. Also, always think of the worst situation and plan accordingly. That way, should the worst happen, you’re more than prepared to deal with it.

Having a social media contingency plan in place helps ensure that all work gets done, all social networks are managed or maintained, and that nothing slips through the cracks. It can give a proactive peace of mind to a sometimes stressful agency setting.

A few members of our Push-n-Pull team went to Social Fresh Baltimore – a social media conference – this week. Between networking and hearing some experts speak, the conference was a success. It also helped reinforce what we do here at The Cyphers Agency (and that we’re doing it right).

Specifically, Chris Barger spoke in depth about how to work with influencers (and more importantly, how to not piss them off), and since blogger outreach is something we implement on a regular basis, it was good to see we were following all of his rules. It also reminded us of how important it is to really build and sustain relationships with bloggers or influencers. It’s amazingly easy to be lazy (and bad) at communicating with this group of people, but really taking the time to invest in a long term relationship can be returned many times over. So while we’ve written about blogger outreach before, we thought we’d give you a little more insight into how we continue to do it successfully.

1. Do the “leg work” yourself. 

We rely only on ourselves to find the perfect bloggers. Sure, there are some tools that can help, but it didn’t take us very long to realize that we had to do the work ourselves to create a database of the types of bloggers we wanted. When we are ready to start communicating, we take our time to get to know them. After all, nothing turns a blogger off quicker than an impersonal pitch.

So how can you do this? Avoid form emails and take time to research the person you’re pitching. Read their blog beyond the first couple posts. Read their “about” section. Do they have kids? Are they married? Are they more formal or hang loose? Build a little profile of the person and use that to guide your communication. Pay attention to the details. Write the blog name how the blogger does, even if the spelling/capitalization/spacing is odd or technically incorrect. Make sure to pick little specific things out of a post to include in the email as a way of subtly demonstrating that you do, in fact, actually read their blog. This may sound like a lot of initial leg work, but in our experience it makes bloggers feel appreciated and catered to. It also helps us cut through all of the other clutter (or other pitch emails) they might be getting.

2. Don’t be overly promotional, for God’s sake!

Once you’ve gone through this initial step of communication, it’s important to establish and grow the relationship. One way to not do this is to ask for something right off the bat. Build the blogger up. Give them something that will benefit them. Provide information that will be important to their readers. Don’t just do this once, do this twice. Thrice even. Become a reliable acquaintance. They’ll be more willing to help you, when the time comes.

When you do ask for that help that you might need, or that article you want written, ask nicely. They’ll be much more willing to provide you with something of value if you’ve already been in communication a dozen times. Don’t just stop after you receive what you want, either. Be sure to say “thanks” – it goes a LONG way. Positively call them out on your social networks to give them a little more visibility. Follow up every few days or months, too. Shoot over more valuable information as you see fit. Really think of each communication as a step towards a long term relationship.

3. Don’t get too big for your britches (and know the consequences of your actions).

A lot of folks get stuck in the old-school mentality of public relations when approaching bloggers, and that’s a big mistake. While traditional media often relies on their established relationships with PR pros and marketers for both timely content and advertising dollars, bloggers don’t. As Chris Barger said, they built their audience without you. While we think our clients have plenty of value to offer bloggers and their audience, we keep a healthy sense of humility and realize that bloggers hold plenty of cards in this game. Like we said earlier, showing some respect for a blogger and their work can go a long way. And you don’t need to go far to find examples of just how wrong it can go when you don’t take a blogger and their power seriously – like this example [beware, there's some salty language!].

Blogger outreach can do so many things for a company or brand, but it’s bigger than just a pitch email. Know your bloggers, help them out, and realize their importance (they have the Internet as their soapbox, after all). Once you do realize these things, you can start to patch together a strong blogger outreach program.