Does it have marketing value? For whom?

As with most things in marketing and PR, the answer is – yes and no. It depends on what businesses you’re talking about, and how marketers and PR pros utilize it.

Pinterest’s appeal and value is in the visual. The most popular “pins” are visual items that people have been sharing for ages, such as wedding dresses, interior design inspiration, fashion and travel destination photos – think dog-earing a glossy magazine or snapping a cell phone photo of a dress and sending it to your friends. Early adopters of Pinterest are companies in retail or who deal in visual commodities, such as craft sales site Etsy, shoe manufacturer Toms and celebrity photos from People magazine.

Some marketers believe Pinterest has potential for B2B marketing, but this seems to only provide real value for companies with an already-robust media presence. Since Pinterest is an aggregator of visuals, it helps if companies have an active blog with visual elements such as infographics, or if the company deals in creative visuals that can be used on boards. And of course, B2B marketing is only as useful as there are companies you want to notice you and interact with on Pinterest. For other companies, using Pinterest as a sort of evolving gallery and an extension of existing web presence could be useful if they have the content to keep the Pinterest page interesting.

It’s hard to “pin down” the value of Pinterest as a spreader of content. Some retail sites indicate Pinterest has driven significant traffic, but “pins” are spread very thin across the platform – the sites that are sources of the most pins, like Etsy, only claim about 3 percent of total pins. Things that “go viral” on Pinterest likely have less staying power and overall views than viral memes on Facebook or Youtube, for instance, due to the decentralized nature of Pinterest with pins spread across many boards.

The fine-print writing on the wall – Pinterest as content appropriator

Pinterest might be a great way to show off content and spread it to a targeted audience, but the legal niceties might not be so nice for individual users and companies.

The user agreement gives hints that Pinterest might not be just a warm and fuzzy content aggregator. The agreement gives permission for Pinterest to distribute any uploaded content, which is a huge no-no for creatives dealing with original work. Members give permission for Pinterest to “use, copy, adapt…and otherwise exploit” any member-uploaded content, while at the same time affirming that the member has sole worldwide rights to the content. The latter is a large burden for casual users who likely find most of their content in the tricky ownership world of the Internet, and obtaining permissions for every upload could hamper the spontaneous nature of pins in the first place.

Pinterest also recently introduced a “no-pin” HTML tag, allowing sites to protect content against pinning, which also seems against the spirit of Pinterest. The move, which protects Pinterest against copyright concerns, is reminiscent of Youtube’s agreeing to take down copyrighted videos and work with the owners of the content on their terms. It might seem like a small thing, but it shows that Pinterest is not immune to legal growing pains, which might not ultimately benefit the end-user.

So what’s next for Pinterest? Should we encouraging clients to use it?

Pinterest recently announced that it will soon be releasing an API, meaning that tech companies could start getting VC funding to create useful apps. This could help the business and retail side of Pinterest, aiding companies in capturing Pinterest traffic in useful ways to increase sales.

The site continues to grow at an astounding rate, but for now it remains a platform mostly for individual, casual users. As Pinterest’s wave continues to rise, however, early-adopter companies and their PR and marketing teams will continue to think of ways to use and harness the growing platform’s energy. It remains to be seen if Pinterest is simply another arrow in a company’s social media quiver or if it has real bottom-line value.

For a company trying to take the long view of social media platforms, Pinterest might be too new and narrow in marketing potential for clients to adopt it now. At the rate its growing, and with signs that it wants to add value for businesses through apps, there might soon be a way to determine that pesky ROI. For now, adoption of Pinterest will likely stay within retail, creative and visual-based companies, or companies with a lot of resources to devote to social media marketing. Because let’s face it – as useful as Pinterest might prove to be, social media fatigue is setting in for individuals and companies alike.

If you’ve been paying even cursory attention to tech news lately, you’ve heard of it. The platform called Pinterest exploded onto the social media scene last year, and has gained a following of 12 million+ users. It was the fastest site to reach 10 million users in the history of social media statistics, beating out giants Facebook and Twitter to that No. 1 spot in the social media annals.

So what is it? What is the deal with Pinterest?

At its most basic, Pinterest is an aggregator of visual Internet content. The platform allows users to “pin” interesting content and organize it in “boards.” Most users choose to categorize their boards by topic – “Dream House inspiration,” “Cars I’d love to own” or “Tech gear I want to buy” – and pin content to those boards, sharing it with friends who follow them on Pinterest or Facebook. The inclusion of a Pinterest bookmarklet lets users pin something instantly as they browse the Internet, even if they are not on Pinterest’s site. “Repins” act like retweets on Twitter – users pinning someone else’s content to a wider audience.

Great. Another social media site.

As with any new social media element, it’s important to scrutinize Pinterest – is it useful?  Does it add anything to an already crowded social media landscape? What makes it different than the last “latest thing”?

The rise of Tumblr comes to mind as a semi-cautionary tale about the next great thing in social media. Tumblr burst on the scene in a similar fashion in 2009, leaving similar platforms in its wake and causing frenzy and genuflection from tech and media pundits. While Tumblr still enjoys millions of users and is a staple of the social media landscape, it has not proven as agile as Facebook or Twitter in becoming an everyday tool for social media users.

Pinterest’s ease of use echoes the praise of Tumblr’s ease of use, but Pinterest has a few things that might give it more staying power than other platforms. Pinterest is not a blog or even a microblog – it is an aggregator. Anyone can be a prolific pinner. Pinning does not require creation of content, just finding and repurposing (or repinning) it. Discovery of content doesn’t require research or crafting a blog post – it merely requires being on the Internet and browsing for things that you’re already interested in. Pinterest also streamlined its signup process by letting users sign up through Facebook. This provides a ready-made potential follower list and doesn’t make the user feel like they’re signing up for yet another service.

In my next post I’ll talk about Pinterest for business use.

Besides being named the best place to work in the U.S. and seeing its stocks dip this week after releasing disappointing fourth-quarter earnings, Google has cropped up in tech news recently with a few new features. Here are three that marketing and design professionals should note:

Google algorithm tweak

Google tweaks its algorithm relatively often, so its announcement of yet another tweak in the way Googlebot crawls web pages might have gone unremarked. This tweak, however, affects web design and page layout in relation to page rank, so design professionals and others who rely on page rank should pay close attention.

To sum up the change, Google’s search algorithm will now punish pages that push advertising at users beyond a normal degree, especially “above the fold.” The idea is to improve user experience by downgrading pages that irritate users by putting too much unrelated content in premiere web page real estate.

Google mentions that it only one in 100 searches will show a user a different page order than before the change. The user feedback-prompted change does show Google’s commitment to using its algorithm to provide the best search experience, not just on the results page, but also on the pages that float to the top of those results. Design and web marketing professionals should take this as a continued step in that direction.

Google+ integration with search

The search giant’s recent foray into social media with Google+ has earned mixed results, but Google’s recent actions show its determination to make the new social media platform an integral part of its search experience. Google recently started showing “personal” results above regular search results – meaning that if a user searches for a TV show, their Google+ acquaintances’ posts about that show will appear above the Wikipedia entry.

The change has upset some media commentators, and it remains to be seen whether this is a permanent change for Google, or if it will be short-lived like its Buzz platform. While the change is in place, however, personal results have the highest placement in the results page, meaning that social engagement on Google+ could, at least temporarily, be just as important as the No. 1 page rank.

It might not push Google+, with its 90 million users, past Facebook, but at least in the short-term, it raises the platform’s viability as a marketing tool.

Google Web Fonts

If you’re a fan of the popular blog I Love Typography, no one needs to tell you what role typeface plays in design and everyday life. Fonts can often be an expensive investment, but Google has turned that on its head, as it did for books and scholarly articles years ago. With Google Web Fonts, users can download a huge library of font files for free. The repository of open-source fonts will open up typography to people beyond designers and typeface enthusiasts, and should be a wonderful resource for print and web designers.

We know that the toolkit at a full-service agency is already extensive, but we never underestimate the ability of the tech world to create something that makes our lives easier, faster, more efficient and more fun. The best part of “the Internets” overflowing with so many ideas is finding the ones that work for you and passing along their value to your clients.

We’ve experienced a few great upgrades and new finds in the last few weeks – all of which help us do work better and faster, and provide a better product for our clients.

WordPress 3.3

The gang at WordPress just released WordPress 3.3, or “Sonny,” the latest version of the content management system we recommend to our clients. The 3.3 release is chock-full of new features for developers, of course, but we also appreciate the improvements to the user interface, such as mouse-over menus and drag-and-drop media uploads. These upgrades make the back-end of WordPress even easier for us and our clients to use.

Jing

We’ve all had one or both of these problems before. Maybe you’ve shown someone how to do something on the computer a thousand times, even written it down in painstaking detail, but every time they come back to you with questions. Or maybe you want to show someone a procedure but don’t have time or don’t want to schedule a GoToMeeting. Screen-capture software has been around for a while, but Jing rises above the rest because of its ease of use and the free hosting of your screen-capture videos on Screencast. We’ve had some great success in the past week creating Jing videos to demonstrate specific procedures for our clients – and with the Screencast hosting, we can quickly email the link or permanently place it into a list of FAQs.

Shortstack

Facebook is an essential item in the toolbox, so we’re all for anything that makes it more customizable and easier to use as a promotional tool. The folks over at Shortstack have created an easy way to create sweepstakes, voting forms, custom tabs and more – all with full design control in a drag-and-drop interface. No programming experience needed. We see endless possibilities to help our clients run contests and increase “Likes” by creating exclusive content behind a “Like” wall.

EPOCH Senior Living broke ground on its newest Bridges by EPOCH project in Hingham, Mass., in October. Bridges by EPOCH provides memory care assisted living for individuals with Alzheimer’s. The design and programming at Hingham will incorporate the latest research, and the staff will be focused on compassionate care. Bridges by EPOCH at Hingham will open in spring 2012. To learn more, visit www.BridgesByEPOCH.com.
 
 
 

Pivot Communication completed a website for local memory care community AltaVita. Located in Longmont, Colo., AltaVita provides high quality housing for individuals with memory-related illnesses such as Alzheimer’s. AltaVita is committed to kind, comprehensive care, and will eventually expand its MemoryCare Centre into a complete senior living community. Visit www.AltaVitaLiving.com to learn more.

We discussed in a previous post why it’s important to manage your online image, but let’s talk about why Yelp stands out. Companies sometimes balk at getting involved with Yelp, wondering if it’s really worth their time or if they can just ignore the one-star diatribe from Henry M. and maybe it will go away.

The answer is that Yelp isn’t going away. For companies in service industries in particular, the site is too ubiquitous to ignore. Earlier this year, Yelp passed 41 million monthly visitors who have written more than 15 million reviews. That’s a lot of people basing their opinions of your business on the number of stars in your rating.

It’s important to remember that there are two sides to Yelp – the customer who takes the time to write a review and the customer who is checking out star ratings to decide where to eat or get their hair cut. Engaging on Yelp isn’t about giving power to the angry customer – it’s about showing your other customers what your business is all about so they can draw their own conclusions.

So how can you leverage all those visits and reviews to help your business?

1. Claim

The first step is to claim your business page. Go to Yelp.com, find your business page and look for the small text link that says “Work here? Unlock the Business Page.” It can usually be found beneath the business information.

Follow the steps to claim the page, making sure to use a stable email address. You will need to have access to the business telephone, as Yelp will robo-call the phone to verify ownership.

2. Prepare

Put together a plan. Who will be the point person responsible for monitoring the account? How often will they log in to engage customers? Which types of reviews warrant private or public responses? Will your business pay to upgrade to a slideshow, run Deals or use Ads? How should you publicize your page to your customers? Your PR professional or marketing team can help you come up with the best engagement strategy for your business.

3. Engage

Execute your plan and make sure you stick with it. If you say you’re going to log in three times a week, don’t engage five times a week for the first month and then forget a month. Stay consistent. It’s natural to become personally invested in the reviews, even defensive, but remind yourself to stay with your strategy, especially regarding which reviews merit responses. It doesn’t help your image to respond in kind to a critical reviewer, even if they did “get it wrong.”

4. Keep at it

Consistency and a long-term view are crucial. You won’t raise your star rating or flood your page with reviews overnight. Getting the word out about your page and encouraging customers to visit and review will help boost your numbers. Remember to stay positive – thoughtful reviews from diligent Yelpers count for more in the Yelp community than a review from one irascible customer who signed up just to post a rant. The more you are engaged with the Yelp community and your customers, the more success you’ll start to see.

Channel 12 television in Providence, R.I., featured residents of EPOCH Senior Living who worked for months with Brown University Prof. Rick Benjamin to produce and publish a book of original poetry. Titled, “Life, Loss, Love,” the book’s proceeds benefit a literary scholarship for high-schoolers. To see the Channel 12 video and read more about the EPOCH poets, visit EPOCH Senior Living’s blog.

Denver-based recruitment and staffing company The Experience Factor celebrated its first year in September 2011. The Experience Factor strives to connect remarkable people and remarkable companies, particularly in management, administrative and executive positions. To sign up for one of their newsletters or to view job postings, visit www.ExperienceFactor.com.

Pivot Communication designed a marketing starter kit for Mercy Medical of Alabama. Mercy Medical operates the LIFE Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), a Medicare- and Medicaid-funded program that allows frail seniors to stay in their homes and still receive comprehensive care. The marketing kit included a poster, a trifold brochure and an end-user brochure.