customers; loyalty, return, growth

Start-up is monetizing?  No? Say it’s not so!  They’ll ruin it for the others!   Well according to Josh Davis LLSocial that’s exactly what this “en fuego” social net is up to.   Here’s a summary FAQ and read on for where’s the $ and the benefit for business (fasten your seatbelt).  Pinterestis a “virtual pinboard to organize and share the things you love.”  It’s about images/video – sharing organizing and liking.   There are categories – many – so if you collect and/or are an enthusiast (recipes, baking, cars, wedding, shoes, etc. etc.) you simply “pin” organize and share the “things” you love.   For more about it go to pinterest.comand /or see Josh’s explanation. How are they monetizing?   Affiliates payment.   Tagging the links, the click-thrus are paying big according to Josh.

Pinterest board

Pinterest Board

Pinterest  makes the connection – the “silver bullet” that Broadcast advertising has been trying to obtain – connecting broadcast with interactive since the web was born.  Product Placement > Buy it instantly.   Check out these numbers from Josh:

Pinterest is now driving more traffic to the Real Simple web site than Facebook . (Link)

Warbly Parker, the hip but inexpensive eye glass retailer, reports that 11% of their social traffic is coming from Pinterest. 18% from Twitter. (Link)

What’s more – it will be a goldmine in terms of marketing trove:    Qualitative, quantitative bonanza.  Audience segmentation and corresponding research.   Conversions not just “clicks.”    Beyond the affiliate cash flow  that Josh speaks of:  it will be a meteoric rise with “legs” for ad business.   Request an invitation from Pinterest.

Target in social media, in email marketing – these are among the greatest influencers and the greatest opportunity to engage customers.   Both social and email close the loop for a transaction.  So a super New Year’s resolution for your customer and your digital marketing is to target.  Consider this:

Social Media leaders Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In and Google+ all offer audience segmentation to a finite degree.

Landing pages are not just for websites!   Create a social media landing page in Tiwtter and Facebook:

http://developers.facebook.com and http://business.twitter.com

Then use vendors such as Exact Target for email and social that offer an integrated “HUB” that can allow highly targeted deployments in Social and Email Marketing.

  .  To further audience segmentation, you may find it useful for multiple social accounts for different brands and targets to keep the relevancy.  The email drives traffic, however you need a robust tool to schedule and manage the multiple social accounts with multiple administrators.  Try CoTweet.

This is a New Year’s resolution that will be easy to keep – when you see your ROI sky rocket, customer retention improve and brand loyalty increase.  Cheers and all the best to you in 2012!

So the holidays were good to you, right?  Company is doing better?  To finish up the year or start off 2012 strong – take a visit to Charity Navigator – what Kiplinger’s claims to be numero uno on their list of charity review websites:

So if your company provides employees the “perk” of a volunteer outing, or looking for a partner in cause marketing in 2012  – or you just want to “give back” on a personal level – Charity Navigator is described by Kiplinger as “ rates more than 5,000 charities, making it the first and best stop for would-be donors”.  Visit Charity Navigator.

Twitter Let's Fly Update

First, it’s all about adding video, photos and integrating this.  It’s about navigation, aggregation and really “on the fly“.   The is a reason why Twitter is fastest moving Social Media  Network (see my previous post).   Twitter is happening now.  The search capabilities on subjects, conversation and what’s happening is lightening fast current.  

You can look at how Marketing Vox describes the Twitter Let’s Fly or this is how Twitter describes it:

Home:  this icon is where all the “tweets” reside – those who the user follows reside in this area.

Connect: to start a conversation.It’s the place to see who has followed or mentioned you, retweeted or favorited one of your Tweets.

Discover (aka hashtag): Discover lets you tap into a stream of useful and entertaining information, customized just for you.  Basically to find out what’s happening use that hashtag!

Me Tab (aka profile):  The new profile section puts you and your interests front and center. Others can Tweet directly to you and view your lists, favorites, followers, photos and more. The Me tab is also where you can stay current on your direct message conversations.

Speak Up Button (yup that’s where you tweet): Click on the new Tweet button and instantly send your message out to the world.

So what’s really cool is for Android and i-Phone these changes are continued into the Twitter app.   It’s all about integrating photos, video and other content that makes the world go ’round.     

In my opinion, this is the killer app for 2012.

Marketing Vox: Twitter with highest overall growth among social media networks

First, let’s review Twitter for biz (different than a social media “expert” for your company that’s tweeting personal style) Goals: Drive traffic to: e-commerce, email sign-up, website, events etc. (special landing pages always “rock” as opposed to the home page so boring).    What is your business tweeting about? What’s the balance? General Industry “relevant” info, company info and Sale/Marketing info.    Company info: case studies, product tips, awards, tech support, answers to common questions, pr releases etc. – all with a link to the content.  

When to be personal? Sprinkle it with a few personal messages such as a request for help, call to action for a survey etc. Maybe weekly etc.

What’s the value of a retweet? Viral marketing!

Who to follow?  Think about your company following colleagues, vendors, customers/clients, vendors, journalists, influencers and competitors?

Next up:   Changes in Twitter that will help your business!

and Hola! to HTML5.  Push came to shove?  Flash is not compatible with any Apple mobile device:

Adobe Flash does not work on any Apple mobile devices. In a video demonstration of the iPad, Apple left a large hole in place of the Flash Player. Via Apple and NYTimes

 As noted by many media outlets, known to insiders, and confirmed in Adobe blog today, “Danny Winokur, Adobe’s vice president and general manager of interactive development, said, “We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations.”

So there we have it!   HTML5 is a spectacular language, innovation and a result of collaboration of the industry, w3.org.   Winkor was also quoted in the NYTimes blog: “HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively.  This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.”  Learn more at w3.org and read more on the announcement at NYTimes  Ole!