They already have a competitor, which is making headway toward that profitable market by enabling users to purchase content directly from the site. It’s called the Fancy, and it’s pretty exciting. Join me and earn some money to spend!

That said, The Fancy doesn’t have the street cred Pinterest has, so we’ll see who comes out the winner. Or, even better, we’ll see how they both win in their different ways.

Take a look at the following list of social networks for a quick glance at what to expect in 2013.

facebook

Pay close attention to what happens in 2013 for Facebook, as I have a feeling ads are going to become more aggressive in light of the shareholders. While I respect Zuckerberg’s ability to fight off motions designed purely to make more money, I’m not sure how it’s all set up so he might have sacrificed some voting rights in the IPO.

Regardless, watch the old FB for new installations and additions, redesigns, and announcements. It’s still the most popular place on the web, so you can’t really afford not to be involved if you’re planning on getting social with your brand.

twitter

One of the best places to connect with likeminded strangers around the world, Twitter will strive on offering more branding tools for business owners interested in increasing their exposure on the network. Perhaps Twitter will follow in Facebook’s footsteps and make it even easier to promote a post to your friends.

linkedin

I’ve never been a big fan of this social network, as it always seemed like it was designed for professionals trying to be cool, but weren’t. That’s all changed. The redesign is really impressive and I’m personally planning on using it a bit more throughout 2013.

There’s a lot going on in terms of their advertising network, but again, I’m not too familiar with it as it’s not my fav.

myspace … yep

It’s going to back a pretty big comeback if all goes well. Think about the re-branding Microsoft is trying with their latest software release for Surface … but for social networking — that’s what Myspace is about to pull. It looks pretty rad and most likely offers a unique experience compared to everywhere else, which will help it gain users back.

Now let’s just hope Justin can hold out on all the ads.

google+

This social network is vastly under appreciated, but then again, maybe that’s a biased opinion. Google+ offers exceptional tools and beneifts for publishers, including the implementation of the rel=author tag, which creates beautiful results in the search engine index including the author’s image next to their post, but they seem to struggle with the non-publisher crowd.

The non-tech crowd really doesn’t seem to care about Google+.

It will be interesting to see how Google cross-pollinates its devices and products online in =effort to boost acceptance of google+. I’m not sure it will work, but it provides exceptional SEO benefits so there’s absolutely no excuse for not getting involved.

Overall, 2013 is going to be an exciting year for the web, as it’s bound to increasingly develop in a way that produces new products, services, and apps.

Image

It’s pretty insane how fast the social web and web 3.0 creations are grabbing the world, turning it in circles, and then surprising it with new advancements. If you’re starting a company right now, or plan to have something going in 2013, consider the following four apps your key to connecting with people interested in what you have to office in the space they want to interact in.

instagram

Instagram was purchased by Facebook for a billion dollars. WTF!?

Yeah, insane sauce. Anyway, it’s been incorporated into Facebook in a smooth way, and users are hoping on to use Instagram’s slick collection of filters faster than the line of diehard Starbucks fans grabbing their eggnog lattes this morning. Watch for ads to hit instagram in 2013 :(

pinterest

This is kind of the all star of the group because of it’s breakout nature in 2012. Watch for how the company moved into a profitable position in 2013, and get ready to get involved if you’re interested in the retail world.

Yelp

This isn’t exactly new, but the company is helping us express our experiencing with brands, stores, and restaurants around the world, which is pretty awesome. I became a pretty passionate user, writing reviews, connecting with people, sharing comments and tips, and claiming the dukedoms as I checked in, however, I found that it I took it much more seriously than I previously had with one of the original check-in apps …

Watch for Yelp to increase their efforts to remain the leading check in review site.

FourSquare

I reverted back to FourSquare when the news spread that they were going head to head with Yelp by offering local suggestions, because after all, they were one of the first companies focusing on the check-in gamification app world. It’s fun to earn badges, share images about local spots, add tips, and now get suggestions about other places in the area. I’m sure I’ll use Yelp to some degree still — probably to call bad guys out or help good guys beat the competition.

Every now and then I do consulting work for companies interested in content strategy, social marketing, or optimization.

I’d like to share what can happen when you share a bit of your day in a transparent way. Transparency is key in terms of social media marketing – especially when dealing with a previously secretive company. This cahrt is from a yellow pages company I helped a while back, and as you can see, there was a spike around July 15th.

This spike is directly reflective of the boost of activity they experienced when I began sharing vigorously.

There wasn’t much content to share per se, aside from a series I helped create for them … I mean, it’s a yellow pages company. They provide people information about local businesses, so when dealing with Facebook, it’s difficult to give everyone the right content (we never got around to devleloping the universal feature content that would solve this while I was there).

Here’s what I shared that lead to this increase:

Images … lot of images

I’m not talking about stock images or images with creative commons licensing. I’m talking about images I took with my phone. There’s two awesome things about this — it’s easy, everyone has a phone at all times, and you can upload images and stay active on behalf of your company while away form the office.

How to DIY content

This was a but of editorial content for users, however, it didn’t convert well. Most of the success seen on the chart is sue to the images.

Hints about a super-secret project

I’m not sure why this got such a great response, but it did. People love mystery. Create some with your company by informing them you’re working on a secret project late into the night, show them teaser images, drop clues here and there. Play with your following in a way that you might find interesting.

The team

The most important thing I shared was bits and pieces of the team. Images of people having fun, going to lunch, pictures of what the office looked like, what was on my desk, the office dog, and more. This shines light on the company culture — what happens while in the office during working hours.

This is byfar the best thing you can share for your own brand, so give it a whirl and remember to stay active often. Don’t worry about annoying people — they’ll unlike you if they need to — the advantages far outweigh the disengages

The advent of online social media has brought a whole new front to the world of marketing and self promotion. Businesses and other entities can now advertise and interact with potential customers all at the same time. Unfortunately, getting noticed and bringing in more attention isn’t as easy as simply setting up a social media page. On Twitter, for instance, an owner can post all of the Tweets that they want, but it will not guarantee that they’ll get read or even noticed. Here are a few important factors to consider to make sure your Tweets don’t come off sounding like crickets.

Common Mistakes:

1. Don’t Simply Market

While posting Tweets is usually about marketing a specific company, it is not necessary that the post be a blatant marketing technique. Far too often a business owner will use his posts to simply advertise their company without providing any real value. Posting links to articles or news related to the company’s particular niche is a good way to provide value without being obviously promotional. These methods can lead to a business being considered an industry leader, and this is one of the best promotional tools that exist.

2. Tweeting too Often or not Often enough

Another common mistake in Twitter postings occurs when either too many or too few Tweets are made. If too few are posted, then there is a good chance that followers may never see posts from a particular business. This means that people will never get the chance to know of industry news or store promotions. If an entity posts too many Tweets, it can quickly crowd up another person’s feed and become an annoyance. This is a quick way to get un-followed.

3. Only Posting during Business Hours

Many company owners only take the time to Tweet anything while they’re sitting in the office. This is a mistake. These owners don’t realize that many fans have the exact same office owners as they do. This usually means that they will not be at home or on the Internet when the posting occurs. This makes it pertinent to do at least one Tweet during the afternoon and one at night.

Bringing in more Fans:

1. Interact with Fans

A quick way to bring in more fans and get current fans engaged with a Twitter feed is to interact with them. Atlanta SEO and marketing firm, Everspark Interactive, suggests that this can sometimes be done by simply asking an open ended question. It also never hurts to re-tweet a fan’s post if it has something to do with the industry or is especially interesting. Actively engaging with fans is one of the best ways to keep them coming around, and it will likely influence them to share a company’s Tweets with their followers.

2. Contests and Giveaways

Hosting contests and giveaways is definitely one of the best ways to instigate fan interaction and bring in new fans. Simply posting a link to a coupon for a reduced priced or free service will get current fans to re-tweet the information. This in turn will alert their friends of the company and the coupon, and this will likely influence these mutual Twitter friends to follow the company as well.

Contests are another great option. One great contest idea could be entering everyone who re-tweets a certain post into a drawing for a great prize. The fact of the matter is people like free stuff and this contest idea could quickly have most of a page’s fans re-tweeting the post. This will also likely lead to their friends ‘following’ a page and re-tweeting the post as well. The number of people who could see these posts is nearly endless.

According to Everspark Interactive, it is important for anyone with a need to market themselves online to maintain social networking sites. These sites provide additional advertising and the ability to really communicate with fans. When a business owner knows how to properly handle their Twitter page, it can work as a free marketing campaign. Avoiding a few common mistakes and working to bring in additional fans can quickly turn Tweets into dollars.

Have you built a strong twitter following? Tell us how you did it. Please share your tips in the comment box below.

Image by MDGovPics

Television, magazines, buses, billboards … love you as we may, it’s time we face the facts: there’s just no need for you when online marketing is faster, cheaper, and less obnoxious. This is hardly news to any eager startup operating in or around the online space. But how can you make your business stand out online when there are so many voices competing for attention?

1. Publish Creative and Expert Content

In the age of social media, brands rise to the top by creating content that’s shareable, not by employing the best sales people or restricting information. As you can see in this funny, yet true, Oatmeal comic, it’s best to create content that’s “hilarious, sad, beautiful, interesting, inspiring, or simple awesome,” and I would add to that “helpful.” This can mean establishing your business as an industry leader by writing a blogpost that answers consumer questions in a way no one else can. Or it can mean creating a hilarious comic that has nothing to do with your brand, as long as it’s got your logo at the bottom and a link to your page, that exposure will get you recognition. Even better: lace your awesome content with keywords that will send customers your way, and guest post on other people’s site, too.

2. Creating Landing Page Videos

Humans are intensely visual creatures, and we’re particularly attuned to movement. So, whether it’s jazzing up your landing page with interesting photography, following in the steps of Volkswagen and doing something totally creative like turning subway stations into stairs, or producing a business video that describes your services in an interesting and compelling manner, the more novel the experience users have on your site, the more likely they’ll be to convert into customers. This isn’t a place to skimp, either. The higher the quality of your photos and videos, the more professional, authoritative and on the ball your business will appear.

3. Reaching Out to People in the Industry

The only thing better than establishing your business’ expertise online is to get other experts to do that for you. This is a phenomenon called social spoof. When users see that an expert they know, trust, and love endorses your product or just respects you enough to comment on or write an article for your blog, they’ll be much more likely to trust your business and be moved into action.

4. Make Your Content Findable

Whether you teach yourself the basics about using keywords, linkbaiting, and creating proper site hierarchy, or employ an expert to get you going, it’s important that both your website and your marketing efforts keep SEO mind. Your expert content, for example, will do far more for your business when you’ve picked a topic based on what your customers are searching for, not to mention when you integrate those very keywords seamlessly into your text. Remember: it’s not good enough to create good content; it’s got to be found.

5. Get Creative Offline

It may sound counterintuitive, but one of the best ways to get creative online is to get creative offline. Take this recent stunt by Tripl, an app that connects friend and family travel plans across social media accounts, which passed out “parking tickets” that invited recipients to avoid penalties by taking a trip with Tripl. The “ticket,” which also explained Tripl’s capabilities, captured the attention of drivers in no time, who then scanned a QR code to download the app. Sure, it was kind of a sneaky way to capture new users, but if it worked why not? At the very least, guerrilla marketing is a great way for those savvy startups to get those creative marketing juices flowing, and, hey, they’re a lot of fun.

Consumers these days reward creativity and interesting voices, not top-down ad campaigns. No matter how you look at it, online marketing techniques go hand in hand with the most cutting edge business practices and the savviest, most engaged customers. Creativity, it seems, is king.

Rob Toledo loves outside-the-box marketing, enjoys creative content brainstorming and hopes to one day be the accidental star of a viral video. He is currently working alongside Shutterstock stock photos and their stock footage catalogues creating unique content around the web. He can be reached on Twitter @stentontoledo

What to Wear

Before hitting record, take a look at what you’re wearing. Is that screen-print tee something you would be happy with if you viewed in 5-years? Does the clothing reflect you’re brand message you’re trying to portray? Put some thought into the outfit. People will make immediate judgements based on your overall appearance, good or bad.

Bonus Tip: If you’re recording with a green screen don’t wear glasses. These can be difficult to “key out” or remove from the video later. Also, they can often cause glare depending on the lighting.

Where to Record

Shoot in a quiet environment where you’re unlikely to encounter distractions. Someone’s home or office can make ideal locations. A remote corner of a park or college campus can also work well if you prefer an outdoor setting.

Places to stay away from: 1.) Rooms with an echo. Bathrooms and gymnasiums usually have this problem. 2.) Windy Areas. Don’t record a video out in a remote field on a windy day. Same goes for mountain tops. Excessive wind will make a video more difficult to edit for the producer and watch for the user.

How to Prepare

Know what you’re going to say before it’s time to record a video. People can immediately sense if you’re nervous on film and a lack of preparation will be evident within the final product. It’s okay if you’re not a natural presenter. You’ll just need to do some additional prep work. Here’s what to do.

Write a Script: Write out exactly what you want to say on video. Then practice reading it aloud to confirm the copy sounds natural when you speak. Keep practicing until you feel comfortable.

Keep it Short: Keep the script of each video as short as possible, ideally under 2 minutes in length each. You can always organize the video into multiple sections during the editing process.

Use Technology: Do some dry runs and practice recording yourself speaking on a FlipCam or iPhone before the big day. You’ll probably be able to find a few quirks in your speaking style that you can improve upon. Got an iPad? Check out this teleprompter app. This app is a slick way to stick to the script and can help you maintain a consistent pace for the duration of a video.

Image by Andy Roberts Photos

Branding is one of the most important aspects of starting and building a small business. Approached correctly, branding will help define a business as a credible entity in its target market and associate the business with its products or services. Here are ten tips for successfully branding your small business.

1. Keep Things Simple

A good slogan is a powerful tool, but it should be kept short in order to make the biggest impact. The best way to do this is to identify what puts you ahead of your competition and define it clearly to your target market. This way, you’ll avoid confusing potential customers and possibly putting them off.

2. Be Consistent

Stay consistent in all aspects of your marketing message and graphics. It’s tempting, especially when sales are low, to try testing your results against the latest market trends. Unfortunately, this can quickly result in losing any previous market leverage and confuse your business partners and customers.

3. Track Progress

Without keeping close records on how your revenue responds to your actions, it will be impossible to know what is working and what’s pointless or even harmful. When you can look back at your records and identify what needs changing, you’ll be better prepared to make any necessary changes, whether they are small or huge.

4. Utilize Social Media

Social networking sites have emerged as invaluable marketing resources for small business. Find out where your potential customers are on these sites and market to them using targeted ads and personal contacts.

5. Brand Everything

In every communication with clients or partners, be sure to maintain your brand by including your logo or slogan. This will reinforce your company’s position in the eyes of present and potential customers.

6. Invest in a Good Logo

While it may be tempting to create your own branding, it’s much better to hire a professional such as Logomojo design company to create a graphical representation of your business. According to Logomojo, “Your logo allows you to put a face on your business, and this face is one that you want to be easily recognizable, as well as easily remembered.”Your logo acts as a calling card, of sorts, in that it is typically one of the first things a customer sees when entering your business, and possibly the last thing they see as they exit. Even if you do not have a brick and mortar establishment, a logo on your web site serves the same purpose; gaining the visitor’s attention by putting a public face on your company, as well as maintaining their attention, even after their transaction is done.”

7. Identify Your Company’s Personality

When you know what kind of voice is portrayed by your company’s advertisements and dealings with the public, you will have an easier time getting in touch with the right clients. For example, a local fresh food grocer might find it most effective to use a simple, neighborly approach, while a law office might need a more serious approach to branding. Overall it is best to research what approach work best for your market.

8. Maintain a Quality Website

As the primary online representation of your business, your website should be totally professional. Keep your design and data updated consistently, because virtually all modern customers will look for your company online.

9. Establish Your Business as an Authority

Building trust and credibility is an essential part of growing any small business; customers and business partners are more likely to engage in transactions with you if they view your business as a leader in your field. A strategy to build trust and credibility in your field is by establishing your business as an expert and as an authority. Some ways to achieve this is by releasing valuable content through press releases, blogs and other written medium; and forming partnerships with local media to speak on issues relevant to your industry.

No matter how you approach branding, it will soon develop a life of its own. Be prepared for this by starting out right and managing it carefully to maintain buyer confidence. Good branding efforts will pay dividends in exposure and customer recognition. It’s a promising sign that your company will deliver, and clients will appreciate and remember that. As you maintain your branding campaigns over the long run, your customer base will begin to reinforce itself, resulting in greater profits and expansion for your business.

Photo by: Lyle’s Branding

It’s your client who determines the success of your product or service. To make sure you perfectly meet your customer’s expectations and needs, the winning strategy might be to involve them in your work. When you maintain a close interaction with your customer, this approach can help you get a step ahead of your competitors. We can find examples in various industries. For instance, in software development, a constant dialogue with users helps to better understand their habits and ensure your tool’s features match the need. In design, this prevents possible misunderstandings as you move the project forward. Today, Web apps make it easier to share work and discuss it as you progress. But along with new opportunities, new questions arise.

In this post, I’d like to outline the best practices from my own experience in a fast paced company providing online project management software and the examples shared by some of our customers.

When to start a dialog?

One of the main challenges for any dynamic online business is to make sure the delivered results meet your client’s expectations. To avoid misunderstandings regarding the goals between you and your customer, it would be helpful to organize a meeting or online conference discussing his or her needs in detail. Besides getting the practical information, this is a starting point for showing how much you value their opinion and want to meet their needs. For instance, one of our Japanese clients shares that in Japan it may take several face-to-face meetings simply to build trust between you and another party. Though American business etiquette seems to be much simpler, make sure your team pays enough attention to this stage of your relationship with a customer, as it’s the basis of further deeper involvement.

In the beginning collaboration stages, you may need to clarify which means of communication are convenient for the client to keep him or her in the loop. When there’s no possibility of face-to-face meetings, it’s important to choose the right tools to establish personal communication. As for email, it’s not the most efficient means for intensive collaboration: sending chains of emails back and forth slows things down, and some of them get lost in the depths of your inbox. Skype, instant messengers, and online meeting tools bring more speed and visual contact into the communication process, and it could take only 15-20 minutes every one or two weeks to share the latest news and receive feedback. In general, people don’t want to learn new tools, so it’s always better to build the communication around the tools the client already uses.

Take advantage of every opportunity

Even negative interaction can serve as a starting point for your dialog. Many times customers may contact you when they want to complain about something. This can be a good time to turn a frustrated customer into your consultant. Of course, the primary goal is to address their problem with an answer or help them fix it. But sometimes, there is no good answer, and this is an ideal time to turn things into a discussion about how to fix their problem with further product improvement.

Fine-tune the scope of involvement throughout the project

Once the contact has been successfully established, the next stage of the relationship is to keep a customer involved throughout different project stages. One of our customers, who runs an online marketing agency, suggests looking for the right combination of tools to achieve flexibility, since each client wants a different level of involvement.

Some customers love having full control over the project, and even want to assign particular tasks to particular team members and check the minor updates. In this case, an online project management tool is a handy solution to share your plans and even discussions for a particular task with them.

Other clients don’t want to go into project management at all and instead, they just need updates on the project schedule. In this case, you can integrate the tasks you keep online with Google Calendar, so that they could check it once in a while.

Also, it’s useful to keep in mind what kind of feedback you need to get from your customer on each project stage. For getting more precise results, it’s better not only collect all of the customer references about your product in general, but also to reach out to them with particular questions you’re interested in. If the client’s feedback doesn’t help, the reason might be that you’re asking the wrong question.

Integrating feedback with further development

Here comes the key part of the whole involvement process – how the feedback you received will affect your future roadmap? Directly implementing the ideas your customers suggested can be a trap. They aren’t necessarily specialists in your field, so they try to give their best guess about a possible solution. That’s why it’s more of a balancing act between customers’ responses and your expertise of the area and business environment – something a customer can’t do from their point of view. In my work, I always try to come directly to the point – what are they really saying? What need can be addressed if you read between the lines?

One of our customers, a software development company, shares that they log all ideas they get from customers as tasks with no due date into the system and then discuss on regular team meetings which of them need to be implemented in the current iteration of the project or product. Such an approach ensures they have full control over the direction, while important feedback doesn’t fall through the cracks.

Not every idea should be taken “as is”

Value your customer, but remember that not every comment you get from him can be helpful. Sometimes your “loudest” customers are not the ones that will be a good resource for constructive feedback. Some people tend to be dissatisfied with any service and product, and some may have very complex and unique needs uncommon for your other customers. Thus, working hard on finding a solution for them won’t help widespread use or adoption. It’s always better to aggregate the feedback from as many clients as you can to get an unbiased picture.

Looking at your business from a customers’ point of view will help you create more value for them and will give you a great advantage in the globally-competitive market of today. Remember it is a continuous process that requires you to constantly adapt your workflow and experiment with different tools and approaches to find the best ones for your business.

Nic Bryson is VP of Customer Success at Wrike, a leading provider of project management software. His 7-year experience of working on the customer experience side of the software industry includes expertise in the management of sales, support, community building and more. He also strives for continuous development of customer feedback channels through various public and private moderation methods and tools, and successful incorporation of customer needs with ongoing product improvement. Working at a high level, Nic collaborates with all levels of the organization to keep customers’ voices and interests as a driving force behind corporate and product advancement.

Image by rachaelvoorhees

Benefits

One of the biggest benefits is the degree of reliability you have with one of these data centers. For example, most potential problems can be caught before they become actual problems. Due to the fact that professionals operate these facilities, someone can make any necessary adjustments day or night before serious complications arise. Another benefit is the high level of security that you can expect. While security threats are often commonplace when handling data in-house, most colocation data centers have a wide array of security devices in place. For example, most use security cameras, security guards and record logs to prevent security breaches from occurring. For this reason, you can rest assured that your servers are safe.

In addition, it’s relatively cost effective to use one of these facilities. While building a data center in-house can quickly add up, data center facilities give you access to high quality equipment that would normally be incredibly expensive. Besides this, you will usually have a fixed cost so you won’t have to deal with any surprises when it comes to operation.

Tips for Choosing a Center

QTS, an IT infrastructure hosting company with data centers in Atlanta, states that while there are numerous factors that go into choosing the ideal place for your data storage, following these guidelines should help you find a suitable match. Perhaps the most important thing to look for is a facility that is completely secure. For example, it’s smart to choose a location that has 24/7 security guards on duty, closed circuit surveillance cameras, fire detection systems and card key locks. If security is extremely important, you may even want to choose a facility with fingerprint recognition in place to prevent unauthorized access to your servers. This way you should be protected no matter how severe a threat may be.

In most cases, you will also want to select a facility that has access to 24/7 support. If a potential problem should occur, it’s important that it gets addressed and taken care of in the quickest time possible. It’s also ideal to have knowledgeable technicians who are certified in areas like Network Application Management, Network Baseline Analysis, Network +, etc. This should keep you covered regardless of what the problem may be.

Some other credentials you should verify include is whether or not a facility is fully redundant. Being fully redundant means that it’s prepared to deal with things like power outage without jeopardizing the functioning of your servers. Generally, you can verify credentials by contacting a facility and speaking with a representative. Just make sure that their facility is capable of handling all your needs and has the highest percentage of reliability possible.

Using a colocation data center to house your servers is often a smart idea as it offers the benefits of increased security, affordability, reliability and support. Perhaps the biggest benefit is the fact that it frees up the time that you or your staff would normally spend setting up and managing your own servers to focus on the core activities of your business. In choosing a colocation data center, it is essential that you look at what type of security and support you will be receiving from the service.

Image by ivanpw

The business world can be pretty cruel sometimes.

When it is … you’ll usually hear someone say, “It’s just business,” as a reminder that you shouldn’t take personal offense.

But that can be hard when a competitor begins crippling the company you built from scratch. You have to be smarter than the competitors willing to go our of their way to cripple your company.

What is Social Branding Sabotage?

I sometimes help companies with their social marketing, content strategy, and optimization, so I’ve had the opportunity to see what competitors are capable of doing just to get a foot up on their competition.

One of the lowest strategies I’ve seen is something called Social Branding Sabotage.

This is when a company registers their competitor’s brand name in effort to control their main social branding handle, forcing them to default to an alternative. While this may seem petty, it can be very frustrating as the brand owner, because these accounts are usually static. The company creates a new Twitter account, for example, claiming their competitor’s brand name as their username, effectively rendering the brand owner helpless in terms of building their brand.

If you were the owner of a small surf lessons company in Santa Monica, called Yin Yang Surfing, and your local competitor were to go out and register the name “YinYangSurfing” on Twitter, Facebook, and a handful of other social platforms, you would be forced to select a different name and thus dilute your branding potential a bit.

The point is, there are competitors out there looking for the opportunity to crush your company. They’ll do this any chance they get, including sabotaging your branding potential on a social level.

How to Avoid Social Branding Sabotage

One of the best things you can do to prevent this type of sabotage from your competitors is register your social accounts early. Before you begin telling people about out brand, take the time to register usernames, grab vanity URLs, and lock down your brand across the web.

Check back for a list of accounts you need to register to avoid social branding sabotage.

Image by eelke dekker

The social web startup caught fire around May 2011, quickly attracting 17.8 million users by February 2012 and sparking new ideas within the tech industry. That’s an insane amount of growth for around a year.

Gary Vaynerchuk saw the potential for the interest graph, which is powerful because  just as the social graph on Facebook, the interest graph can become a super-powerful tool for those interested in advertising.

I was browsing the marketing section of my local bookshop when I found a book called Pinfluence (written by Beth Hayden for Wiley), the book sets out to help marketing folks, entrepreneurs, retailers, and publishers drive traffic to your site, connect, and convert visitors into customers.

The book is an extensive guide for beginners and includes a lot of tips to consider, like identity who you want to target, There’s also a great variety of techniques for you to try within your niche.

The tricky thing about Pinterest is making it work for you.

It works really well for the community following wearabl – an online t-shirt retailer, but not so much for my blog, CreativeBlogger. Want to know if Pinterest is worth your time? Read how to measure the value of Pinterest over at  Copyblogger. Take a look at the book when you get a chance and definitely give Pinterest a go … it could mean the difference between the traffic you have now and an insane increase tomorrow.

]]> http://www.fuelyourventure.com/pinfluence-by-beth-hayden-marketing-with-pinterest/feed/ 0 http://www.fuelyourventure.com/pinterest-and-the-power-of-visual-marketing/ http://www.fuelyourventure.com/pinterest-and-the-power-of-visual-marketing/#comments Thu, 28 Jun 2012 19:31:13 +0000 Christopher Rice http://www.fuelyourventure.com/?p=1050

As you probably know, Pinterest exploded onto the scene as one of the hottest new places to socialize. The Pinterest community might consist of mostly women, but the company proved the power of visual marketing.

Visual marketing isn’t anything new, but the way Pinterest concentrated it is.

If you look at the image, you’ll notice it looks similar to most shopping layouts you’ll find online. However, because Pinterest isn’t interested in ecommerce, there aren’t any “buy now” options. Instead, you’ll find a few social features that make up the core of Pinterest’s social activity.

Marketing with the Visual Web

The reason why this layout is so powerful is it enables people to browse incredibly fast, which is something we all want because we all have limited time and there’s just so much to do these days! This new window socialization will help businesses reach out and connect with communities of customers, not only exposing products, but also increasing traffic to your site.

Tristan and I have seen a boom in traffic to wearabl from Pinterest based on this, and even converted a few visitors into customers. This surprised me a lot because we’ve barely started using Pinterest as a serious marketing tool.

But we’re definitely increasing our activity there in light of the positive results, and recommend you get involved if you haven’t already.

The Future of the Visual Web

While Pinterest is the most popular to focus on this type of browsing social experience, it’s not the only … and there are only going to be more popping up as time unfolds. I predict we’ll start to see sites geared toward a niche interest and presented with this visual web style. We’ll start to see more companies launching with this experience specifically for architects, students, gardening, and more.

What do you think? Are you on Pinterest?

We see it happen on television, video games, the web, and especially in business. It involves the art of connecting with the audience on an emotional level and expressing something you want them to take away from the experience.

1. The Catalyst

This is the trigger that sets everything into motion. For most companies, this might be the reason why they’re doing what they do. It could be a central problem they hope to solve, a gap they want to fill, or a cause they want to support. You can discover your own catalyst by articulating what inspired you to start.

2. The Beginning

A countless amount of startups had humble beginnings.

Apple was started in the garage of an average suburban home. Facebook was started in a dorm room. And if you’re like most creative people, you’ve started yours on your laptop from where ever you happen to be when you have a moment to work.

Articulating how you started will help you craft a clear beginning to your venture, which can be one of the most important parts of your overall story. After all, if you skip the beginning of a story, people won’t know where you’re coming from.

3. The Middle

This is where companies hit their stride.

The middle is a place where the audience experiences all the twists, turns, and challenges involved in the story. For companies, this portion can be interpreted as the time in which they hit their stride and do what they do best. If you’re like Facebook, you introduce new features, expand, and innovate. Know what the middle of your company is so you can tell people what you do best.

4. The End

While the end is usually when the curtains close for good, consider thinking of the end as how the audience member will view your company after they disengage from your company. What do you want them to think of your company? What do you hope to achieve? How has your company impacted the universe?

This portion may be a bit far in the distance, but it’s good to think about it because it helps you articulate the goals you’d like to achieve.

5. Character

Another super-crucial aspects of storytelling is the character … it’s what helps the audience connect with the story.

Likewise, you are the character to your company. Telling your story for your audience will require that you build your own character so people know more about the company. Even if you’re private, like Steve, it’s important to create a persona the audience can connect with. We watched Steve do this for years during his keynote presentations. Everything from his uniform black shirt and jeans, the water, and the occasional meditative pose created an image people married with Apple.

6. Thematic Value

Every story has an underlying message the storyteller wants to get across to the audience. This is where you might consider focusing in on what matters to you and what your company values.

Thinking about the catalyst should help you define what thematic value you’d like to send to your audience.

Build Your Own Story

Using these basic storytelling techniques won’t work overnight. You need to spend time letting everything grow organically … just be sure you’re actively thinking about it and paying attention to the growth.

Knowing the story behind your company will help you achieve your goals, connect with others, spread a positive word about your brand, and more.

Image Credit

For many entrepreneurs, venture capital is like oxygen. They need it to kick start and sustain their business during those early days. Many are keen to seek tips on how to pitch, attract more dollars and be noticed by the right investor.

Yet entrepreneurs invest little effort in sourcing the one venture capital they own – the name of their business. They often pick the first name that catches their fancy. Or names that sound cool, are different or meaningful only to them.

The brand can be the most valuable asset any business can possess. What’s more, it appreciates in value as your business grows. Remember, it is the only asset that stays with you from day one until you decide to sell off or cease the business.

Having said that, I must admit naming is a tricky business. The possibilities are many. You can use any number of approaches – proper names, descriptive names (what your product or service does), coined names, metaphorical names, trendy names, playful names, and so on. Each approach can generate scores of options. However, the choices are usually limited: the business name may have already been taken, a related domain name may not be available, and the name itself could be disliked by those who matter and don’t matter (after all, everyone has an opinion about a brand) or it may have an undesirable meaning in another language or culture.

It is important to distinguish between a brand and a name. In my view, a brand is not a function of marketing but the very foundation of a business. I believe brand strategy is business strategy. Brand perception is all based on how the business behaves. And, brand value is what accrues to the consumer and the business. A brand is thus more than a name, logo, tagline, or color scheme. Even so, a brand name must be able to leverage the full potential of a business.

Many consider branding (i.e. naming) as a creative task, not a strategic exercise. Strategy is seen as a clinical, almost boring discipline involving research and analysis while creativity is something that is exciting and glamorous. Yet strategy that is not creative cannot differentiate and will fail to create a competitive advantage. Similarly, creativity that is not strategic cannot deliver lasting business results.

How do you find a name that is both creative and strategic and why is that important?

Increasingly, I notice that brand names are becoming more and more bizarre – trying to be different but not necessarily differentiated. This is because it is no longer possible to find a name that is readily available. If you are a large corporation with significant resources, you have the dollars to establish a new brand name even if that doesn’t mean anything.

But if you are an entrepreneur, it is important that your brand name stands for something, or else you end up working harder and longer without ever building much equity. There is another reason why a brand name should convey meaning. Every time a customer, an employee, a supplier, a business partner or the community connects with your brand, it presents an opportunity to rediscover what you stand for, your core brand property or your value proposition.

Let’s take nudie for example. It is a clever brand name not just because it has some shock value, or was something unique in its category when it was first launched. All this, but more importantly, nudie represented a ‘natural state’ with no artificial trappings. It communicated the core property of the brand – 100% juice, no preservatives, no colourings, no added sugar, not from concentrate, a simple thirst quencher. Nudie thus became a metaphor for natural. Apple is also a metaphorical name but I forbid myself to indulge in any brand overkill.

iSelect on the other hand is a descriptive brand name which does the job of conveying several things all at once. It says that brand offers choice, it reinforces the power of the consumer (I select not you) and it suggests insurance in a subtle way. Thankfully, it is not another of those “i-hyped” new products. By being strategic and creative, a brand can imbue meaning and be different at the same time.

On the other hand, choosi uses the same principles although not as well — and importantly is unable to differentiate operating in a similar space.

I once did some qual research on the use of cycleways in Western Sydney. An important insight was the fact that cyclists and walkers are strange bedfellows. Neither likes the other to share their territory while recognising the inevitability of it. It was important to signal the fact that the pathway belonged to both pedestrians and cyclists and was intended to be a shared space. However, the cycleway brand didn’t help much. I suggested that they rebrand the paths as pedways as short for pedestrian way and pedal way tied to an emotive message about sharing the facility. I am yet to see that happen but I hope you can see how a little bit of extra thought can make any brand meaningful.

I could cite scores of other (more high profile) examples from my strategy consulting work or my creative naming business that use opposites, compound words, metaphors, playful words ….but all I want to leave you with is the thought that your brand name is your hidden venture capital. Invest some serious time in it before you launch your next business, product, service or feature.

Fingerprint reveals currency photo from Shutterstock.