Insta-response – Uh, yes.

Short answer – It’s a free country and if you don’t want your site to be pinned or pushed in a way you didn’t approve, that is absolutely to be respected. Conversely, you DON’T have a right to just use someone’s content against their permission or wishes. That’s all there is to it.

Long answer – You have a right to protect your content or determine the terms under which is it shared. But is there a reason why you’re being so protective that you’re refusing what is, in effect, free advertising? That too on a social media platform that’s on everyone’s radar at the moment? That part, I do not get – and would love for you to tell me about more in the comments section.

Yes, there are ways to keep people from ripping off your images. A very good thing if you do need it!

I do get that people don’t always credit images. Sometimes it’s outright theft. Sometimes, it’s laziness. About which, I will say, even if there is nothing explicitly stopping you from doing so, it’s just good manners to let people know (either by embedded URL or straight up email) that you liked their stuff enough to want to refer to it in your own material.

This is not hard. I’ve long relied on Morguefile  because I have no budget to buy images. And there are several sites out there, Flickr, for instance, where images range from “go ahead, use me!” to “Don’t you dare, this is mine.” For the most part though, people want their stuff to go viral and will tell you exactly how little or how much you can use their work, and if and how they want to be thanked. As I said, not hard.

Besides which, if someone’s site explicitly tells you to use only with permission or attribution, why on earth would you do otherwise? There is no hiding on the Internet. Off on a tangent…

But sometimes with Pinterest, I think it’s sheer excitement. As in, “It was really late, I was completely enthralled with the posters out there and I was a pinning fool who didn’t think to give credit where it’s due on the spot and either didn’t realize or now can’t find out the original image and credit. Oh crap!”

You know what? That last bit happens. I may have been guilty of this early in the game when I didn’t realize that Pinterest – which is still evolving – doesn’t automatically build in the URL into your image for all to see on your boards.

Hard as it is, might you be better off taking it as a compliment that someone so loved your stuff that they got carried away with it? I think that’s the question to ask. Because nine times out of ten, I bet if you wrote and said, “Um, you know that was my image, so please give credit where it’s due,” I bet you’ll get credit ASAP. Call me naive, but in my experience, most people usually want to do the right thing and be good citizens, digital or otherwise. What is it that Maya Angelou once said? “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

When people give to charity, they’ll give far more money to a single suffering person than to a population of suffering people

…tell donors about even two hungry children, or give them statistics about hungry children generally, and donations will fall by half.

I find this entirely unsurprising.

I remember a boss wondering/fulminating years ago after a mediocre fundraising cycle finally sputtered to an end: “Thousands are in need. But we care more about one Jessica-down-the-well or one hurt bird in an NYC building. Why the hell is that?!” She was frustrated, and rightly so. But the thing is, we give precisely because it’s ONE Jessica or bird or two hungry kids.

Why? Because we think we can make a difference with that one soul. Heiffer International understands this really well. I can singlehandedly put my mocha (or ______fill in the blank with vice/regular treat of your choice) money towards one action and make a tangible, sometimes very immediate, and long-lasting difference. I can buy one cow, a hive of bees, a flock of chicks, and not just save a child or a family not just from starvation, but also help fund a better, self-sufficient future for them.

A genocide in Darfur? An entire society brutally repressed in Burma? Millions not just starving but possibly brain-washed in North Korea? Resettlement for refugees at Dabaab, the world’s largest refugee camp?

Arial view of the refugee camp in Dabaab*. As of 10/2011, the camp supported more than 450,000 people with up to 1,500 more coming in every day.

I could pool in all my mocha money and mobilize my entire network, but unless I’m Nancy Brinker, Angelina Jolie, or Hillary Clinton, it’s not likely to make a damn dent in the lives of the people who live in that picture above. Oh, it’ll also wear me out financially and emotionally.

So it makes perfect sense to isolate the one story that resonates and gives your fundraising issue a face that I can identify with, that will haunt me, and will make me think, “Dammit, that could be me/my kid. I have to do something and I can!” Giving up isn’t an option. But in the absence of major pockets, connections, or star power, therein lies the fundamental challenge for every non-profit I’ve ever crossed paths with.

By the way, you’ll notice that this is old story. Raz filed it back in November 2011 – in other words, traditional holiday giving season. So why did it pop up this morning in my facebook feed? Because it just got re-posted by Razoo, the DC-based startup whose fundraising platform many non-profits use. And the re-post is with good reason, I should think.

The holidays may be over. But if you’re a non-profit, or perhaps just someone with great passion for a cause and trying to make a difference, now’s the time of year when you’re either doing or should be doing the following:

1. Looking at taxes and taking stock of all donations that came in from November on through the beginning of the year with checks that cleared over the new year.
2. Heading into the next giving season – Lent and Holy Week.
3. Laying the ground work for the next major giving cycle. Because this November may be months away yet, but it’s going to be a doozy – the general election.

That last bit about the election is going to be the serious challenge. How do you frame your story, present your facts, and make a really compelling case for your donor’s dollars if s/he is being heavily courted by the DNC and the RNC? Particularly because everyone can now donate as little as $10, online, easily, and therefore have their dollars earmarked or claimed that much faster?

Dear non-profits and fundraising professionals, there’s your mission. Should you choose to accept it.

* Per Oxfam: Dadaab is currently supporting more than 450,000 people (October 2011), with up to 1,500 more coming in every day. Actor and Oxfam Ambassador Scarlett Johansson visited Dadaab in September 2011, to shine light on the drought and food crisis that continues to unfold across East Africa.

“Even when you’re there, taking it in with your own eyes, it’s impossible to really take in those figures. Between the tents, people are walking to and from the water stations or simply wandering from tent to tent, hoping to find family, or people from their local communities.”

Despite the dangers, thousands of refugees every week are making the journey, walking for weeks across the desert and braving attacks by armed robbers and wild animals.

An homage to Frederick Leighton's "Flaming June" on Pinterest

I guess it was just a matter of time. As long as there is data and user preferences to be mined, there is money to be made, and marketing to roll out. That’s the American way. Particularly for companies where the visual matters and makes a huge difference in the marketing – food, decor, apparel, travel, design …. Plus there are the fabulous folks who work at Pinterest. Everyone has to make a living. I get that.

That said, dear marketers, if you’re going to pin your product, it might help to keep a few things in mind:

Have a strategy for the shiny new object. It’s the first question I ask clients during social media bootcamp. Do you really need the shiny new object? Do you have time for it? Do you know what to do with it? What do you want out of it? And why this medium over the others? Get in on Pinterest if you have a real plan, if it makes sense for your product, and if you and your consumers are really going to interact. And that last part is key – don’t lose sight of the fact that under all the images, it’s still a social medium. It’s about people having a conversation.

San Juan, Puerto Rico on Pinterest

Does “visual” work for you? Beauty may lie in the eye of the beholder, but look hard in the mirror and ask yourself – does your product actually lend itself to the medium? Is a picture really going to be worth a thousand words for your marketing strategy? Is it a cupcake that I’m going to eat first with my eyes, a place I ache to go to upon first sight, or a beautifully designed product I may want to look at even if I’m really not going to use it? No? Then maybe Pinterest is not for you.

Can you make it look good? Many a boring thing in the world has been made to look lovely and appealing. It’s called lighting, focus, and a good photographic eye. Much like blogging, tweeting, or any other social media -ing, your talent needs to fit the medium. I know a great product shot when I see it. But I don’t necessarily know how to make a great product shot. However I’m good with words. It’s why people pay me to write their blogs.

If you’re going to market through Pinterest, it’s time to get a good design editor. Indeed, Pinterest is already changing web design, and I suspect many a non-verbal but highly visual thinker will have a better entree or a great complement to their existing marketing and content world through pins and boards.

Know the rules. Pinterest, like any other social media platform, already has its own rules and etiquette. Know what they are. It’s still a new medium, which means that although things are evolving, but there’s not yet a lot to memorize.

Curate. You should curate your content no matter what the medium. Because that’s how you keep it relevant for your followers. But Pete Cashmore was right, this is still a largely female hang out (at least in my experience). So understand that for many of us, this is where we come to have our fantasy homes where everything is in its place, where the lighting is perfect on the days we want to break out the heavy-duty-not-white kitchen gizmo, and above all, where budget is no object. This is where we come – particularly if we’re parents – to get away from the reality of our homes, where things don’t match and the junk drawer seems to defeat all attempts at organization, where we haven’t been able to sneak that big bag of unused toys past the kids (who haven’t played with them in years but will throw a big dramatic fit you don’t have time for if they do see it all going out into the trash), where nothing is ever in it’s place because well, that’s real life. Be wise to that.

You may have a great product, I may love it, but if your page (like any brick and mortar store) is a higgledy piggledy mess, I’m going to walk out. If I want to dive through junk for a pay off that may make Apartment Therapy, I’ll hit the local yard sale. Your poorly coordinated boards where you just put stuff up because it’s the new marketing channel and you feel the need to mark your part of the new territory? Not so much.

Last but not least, I hear quite a bit of snidery and disrepect about Pinterest at the moment. It comes up in conversations, online chats, the Facebook feed. Sometimes it’s quite inadvertent, from people who don’t quite get it yet. And then there are those who look at it, and immediately reduce it to, “oh, it’s for women” and head straight to “shrink it and pink it” – the title of Jessica Ivins’ great presentation on how marketing towards women online is dumbed down.

Total aside – as someone who can go from defense strategy white papers to romance novels without missing a beat … I can’t but help wonder if the put-downs or boxing-up comes from the same mindset that can’t wait for the next episode of Downton Abbey, but giggles at Nora Roberts and has never heard of Julia Quinn or Lisa Kleypas’ Bow Street series. They must not realize that it’s the same stuff – only, Downton’s written by a man.

"What is a ... weekend?"

Seriously, those of us who consume both genres aren’t one bit surprised at any of the delicious but utterly predictable plot developments at DA. Maggie Smith = Violet = Lady Danbury. Discuss.

Komen’s handling – or rather lack thereof at the outset then compounded by very poor handling when their communications finally woke up – drives home three things I always tell clients about a basic communications strategy:

Tell Your Story First Or Someone Else Will, And You May Not Like It: Which is why I’m waiting for the next penny to drop on all the companies out there whose marketing has ever included pink or a pink ribbon. It’s on everything from guns to kitchen equipment to, God help me, a bible. As it turns out, the pink ribbon is NOT property of the Komen fund (although they did try), it’s in the public domain. But the “breast cancer = Race For The Cure = pink ribbon” association is so strong, and people on both sides of the abortion divide so mad, I suspect many a pinked product may languish or be a potential problem. Much to the heartburn of marketing managers at major companies of all stripes. That’s assuming they get off the phone from annoyed customers – “How dare you associate with SGK!” whether they’re pro-choice, or pro-life what with Komen’s reversal – long enough to look at their numbers for a while. Think I’m kidding? Consider the (ironically) imminent release of the documentary Pink Ribbons, Inc., Phil Mickleson wearing pink on the links, or pink at the NFL. Right.

Phil Mickelson at Augusta National, 2010

Pink Ribbon At The NFL

Social Media Is Not An Afterthought: Unless you’re, oh I don’t know, special forces or running a CIA black ops and forbidden to be social online about the job, you company needs to have a social media presence. And it can’t be your communications department’s forgotten stepchild. In the time it took for Komen to look alive on their Facebook page, advocates and supporters had not only pushed several concurrent viral threads supporting Planned Parenthood, the outcry led to an uptick of donations – nearly 2/3rds of what Planned Parenthood is supposed to get from Komen. For many people this week, the Facebook and Twitter feeds were where the story broke (Tuesday afternoon), where it morphed into a serious problem for Komen (on their own Facebook page – one long “How could you!” screed for hours on Tuesday evening through Wednesday morning), and where people took action in favor of Planned Parenthood if they so chose (several concurrent calls to action and Facebook profile photo changes and badges in support of PP ongoing ever since). Honestly, at this point, if you seek me out for a better marketing strategy but say that you “don’t see the point of a Twitter feed,” “just don’t have the time for a Facebook page,” or aren’t going to integrate social media fully and from the outset into your communications plan, chances are we are probably a poor fit for one another. No matter how much I love your mission or product.

Internet + 24/7 = Get Ahead Of The Story: When the story broke I kept going back to the Komen Facebook page to see if there would be a statement, because their own site took forever and a day to load. The page was one long tirade of “How could you?!” And not a word from whoever runs it until perhaps Wednesday, if memory serves correctly. And in the middle of all that, there would be the odd and random tagged story from some unsuspecting group that hadn’t quite cottoned on and whose own cause looked oddly out of place or flat out inappropriate. Nothing like inadvertently  making your own supporters, or affiliates for that matter – who were caught completely off guard – look utterly clueless! In fact, it was fully two days before Komen’s CEO Nancy Brinker talked to the media. I understand that people have to get their act together, especially in a fast-moving crisis where all hell is breaking lose. But seriously? Two days? What on earth took so long? Why did Komen not think or plan ahead?

Plan ahead: Always have a plan. If nothing else, play “what if” and have a plan of how you will respond to all the scenarios. Why else do you think a presidential campaign has opposition research, not to mention communications staff writing up two speeches on election night? There’s the one speech because you know your candidate’s going to win. And then there’s the one you write in case s/he loses. Because. It. Could. Happen. It’s what grown ups do. And by far, the most striking thing about this entire story has been Komen’s sheer disorganization and fumble footed response to events precipitated by its own deliberate policy and actions. They planned to pull funding from a controversial organization with a strong core of supporters, and a broad association in the public’s mind with that third rail of American politics – abortion. Did they not think of how that was going to play out? Particularly since Komen has more than passing ties with the Republican party and a recent high profile openly pro-life hire? Did they not get that they needed to be proactive considering how controversial Planned Parenthood has been for oh, ever? And when a statement finally emerged why wasn’t it watertight? Did no one think to address why only one prominent grantee was singled out for being under investigation? Did no one think to anticipate answers to why Komen finally took action on an issue that had apparently been a concern for years? And why did they wait? And on and on ….

The Susan G Komen Foundation started the week out as a highly respected, very successful, non-partisan, and apolitical group that has been invaluable in de-stigmatizing breast cancer and the envy of many a marketer. It ended the week much tarnished in no small part because it became the story instead of leading and shaping it. See rule #1.

P.S. Okay, so that was way more than just a couple of thoughts! But I can’t tell you how many clients should learn solid lessons from Komen’s very bad week. 

P.P.S. You notice this post is not about my stance on abortion, or whether Komen should or should not fund Planned Parenthood. That’s not what this is about. I welcome your thoughts on how Komen handled their very bad week. But please keep it polite, and on topic about communications strategy. I reserve the right to delete your comment if you stray into the morality of abortion. That’s not what this post or this blog is about. Thank you! 

Of all the posts out there, this one, by Anirban, I found the most important. It points out many things that are being glossed over, or being drowned out in the coverage – that Apple wasn’t first at many things, and that it’s still a limited market. But here’s the bit that I find most important:

Today, with the Kindle, Amazon is replicating the iTunes model with the publishing industry. Steve Jobs taught us that content may be king, but distribution is the entire battlefield.

Indeed.

I’ve used Macs for everything creative – video, audio, you name it – since 1997. The only holdout was writing – which I could do on anything, and therefore did on company provided PCs. When I went freelance, there was no question that I’d buy  a mac.

I’m not a MacHead. I’ve never stood in line at the Apple store for anything. And I still haven’t gotten the iPhone – figured I could wait another couple of weeks and get the newest iteration. It doesn’t matter if it’s not what people were hoping for, it’ll be a new era compared to my, um, “feature” phone. And I’m not a loyalist – as I once posted on a facebook status update:

Oh spinning beach ball of death, I hate you as much as I hated the hourglass, be not you fooled. Yours truly, the tech agnostic.

But you know what? I posted that in February of this year. At which point my macbook was nearly 4 years old, and I use it roughly 16 hours a day, 365 days a year. I cycled through PCs a lot faster in the last decade. They got wheezy in a year.

I bought a Mac for the reasons most people buy them in my professional acquaintance – it’s easier and more efficient in the Macworld for anyone who is even remotely creative. They cost more, but they come with everything I need or may need, and I have to work really hard to break them. And I don’t care that Apple wasn’t the first to come up with mp3 players or smart phones or tablets. I care that when there was a problem, I head for the Genius Bar, drop it off for them to “Make it So!” typically without a fee, go shopping, and come back to pick up a fixed well-designed machine. End of story.

I am incredibly fortunate in that I can earn by reading, writing, and producing. This is a direct result of the Macs that made it possible for me, the rookie, to be useful in an editing bay 15 years ago. Were it not for those years at a Mac, I have no idea where I’d be. I would have figured something out. But it would not have been this, which I enjoy and excel at.

Thank you, Steve. RIP.

Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011