I’m watching Pinterest with interest. Pinterest is the ‘hot’ new social media site that’s generating a lot of current buzz. It’s billed as a ‘pinboard’ where users can share, i.e. ‘pin’, images of items that interest them. Visually, it’s a crazy quilt. According to a February 11th article on TechCrunch, Pinterest currently has 10.4 million users – 97% of them women. (Does that give you a clue, marketers?)
Currently – and similar to early Google+ -- participation is by invitation. While I’m waiting for my invitation to arrive, I’ve been poking around and learning about Pinterest.
You can organize, categorize and share pictures of items you find online, ‘pinning’ them onto virtual ‘boards’. The images retain a link to the original source (unless you merely ‘Like’ a pin) once you post it. As a highly visual medium, Pinterest is perfect if you like scrolling endlessly through images -- many of them very engaging -- to find ones of specific interest to you. 
If you don’t want to peruse ‘Everything’ at once, you can narrow things down by searching in one of 31 lifestyle-related topics – plus ‘Other’ for those items that don’t seem to fit into one of the pre-assigned categories. Or, using the search field (which I understand disappeared for awhile and is now back by popular demand) you can search for specific pins, boards or people.
The formula and the etiquette are much like on Twitter:
- You ‘follow’ other users, or specific ones of their boards, and they can follow you back – or not.
- You may decide to ‘unfollow’ someone or something, and they’ll never be the wiser.
- You may comment on people’s pins.
- You may also Re-Pin (think Re-Tweet) someone’s pin, in which case the image and its link to the original source of the material remain intact.
- If you simply ‘Like’ a pin, you’re giving a ‘thumbs up’ without giving the goods. The link doesn’t come with the ‘like’.
- To reply to a particular user, you add an @ symbol in front of their user name. Hmmm. Sound familiar? Oh, well. No sense completely re-inventing the wheel when people are already familiar with @replies.
- A request to ‘Be Nice’ is designed to promote a positive approach to community building.
- You can add Pinterest ‘follow’ buttons on your website.
How are people using Pinterest?
- For organizing projects, like home decorating.
- For organizing items they’d like to add to their wardrobes.
- For planning weddings and other special events and sharing possible choices with family and friends.
- For saving and sharing cute images, books, music and other interests
- For organizing, saving and sharing recipes.
- For cataloguing inspiring/useful ideas and information.
- Etc.
What can businesses do on Pinterest? Although Pinterest admonishes against being ‘overly commercial’ or ‘self promotional’, you can use the site to connect with your customers and prospects in a number of ways.
Companies are flocking to Pinterest, mostly to connect with its population of women/mom users. There are a few male-oriented categories like Cars & Motorcycles, Men’s Apparel and Sports. There’s no category for ‘business’ or ‘advertising/marketing’. There is a ‘Products’ category and you can put a price in your Pin caption.
Companies can:
- Display products (with prices and links to an ecommerce site) in specific categories, Weddings & Events or Women’s Apparel, for example.
- Post your presentations and other visual content. For example, HubSpot just put up a page with images and links to its infographics, ebooks, white papers and other content.
- Recruit. Not sure yet how they’re using Pinterest specifically, but a recruiting firm is one of the early power users.
- Explore other creative ways to make it pay off. (Although it’s not yet paying off for Pinterest, as they haven’t yet evolved their business model. Right now they’re building with about $25 million in venture funding.)
As a young and evolving social media site, Pinterest has a few glitches and bugs popping up that management is still working to resolve. As all sites have in the past, it will also likely incorporate cultural and tactical features that are user-created or driven. (Like the hashtag on Twitter.)
Anyone who has read my blog over time knows that, as an inbound marketing consultant, I’m not the earliest adopter of new social media tools and techniques. I take a bit of a wait and see approach, then learn and experiment on my own business before I recommend new tools to clients. Everyone has too little time to invest in unproven tools and there’s still plenty of time to benefit once they’ve taken hold and yielded measurable results.
I’ll update you once I begin posting on Pinterest and seeing how – or if -- it can help you grow your business.
In the face of new social media sites, many companies are still trying to put the old ones to work for them. If your company falls into this category, then download our Social Media White Paper to learn about using Facebook and Twitter effectively.
Each day I read through a couple of dozen blogs and marketing newsletters to keep up on what’s happening in online/inbound marketing. Most of those articles are ‘How To’s’ about any number of digital tools and techniques. They’re important because when we decide to use a tool for solving a problem it’s good to know what to do.
Where my eyes, ears and brain cells perk up more, though, is when I read something that explains ‘Why’ I or my clients should consider doing something in Inbound marketing.
The roadblocks that emerge when I speak to clients and potential clients about Inbound Marketing is that they get stuck on the ‘How To’. I will venture to speculate that the preoccupation with ‘How To’ is a way to avoid focusing on ‘Why’ doing it is or is not a good idea.
It’s the battle between Tactics (How To) and Strategy (Why To).
If there’s a great reason, ‘Why’, we can figure out, ‘How’.
It doesn’t work so well the other way around. You can eat, sleep and breathe the ‘How To’. But if there’s no reason ‘Why To’, the efforts are a complete waste of time and dollars.
Hire a strategist first. They’re a lot harder to find. Once you know what you want to do and ‘Why’ you should do it, there’s no end of tacticians who can show you ‘How To.’
Learn much more about Inbound Marketing Strategy and Tactics. Download your Free eBook.
Graphic is from the Flickr photostream of docbaty under Creative Commons license.
In a highly crowded and competitive online world, marketing differentiation is critical. We must take the time to understand and communicate what we bring to the marketplace that is unique and important to our customers. This is especially important if we’re in industries where we may be perceived as ‘cookie cutter’ to begin with. Here’s a good example of how not to differentiate yourself!
Yesterday morning at 11:32 an email came across my desktop with the intriguing subject line: Happy Groundhog Day – which it wasn't. At 12:19 a second email with the same subject line arrived. I thought to myself, why did this person send me the same email twice within a short time frame?
When I had time to actually read my emails later in the day, I realized that I had received the same identical email from two different financial advisors with two different companies. Both emails included a link to a cute flash card with another link to the identical message, personalized with my first name. Each of their cards was signed with their name with yet another link to a contact form if I wished to leave them a message.
It was obvious that these guys had bought a canned content and ‘lead generation’ program. At the bottom of their emails I found a tell-tale link to a website: ebriefme.com. The url took me to a site called eRelationship, obviously intended for people who need to generate sales.
The headline promised to ‘Increase Your Commissions’. The site offers automated emails, what they call ‘Validity Generators’ (enewsletters, articles, and other content), ‘Likeability Generators’ (Cards like the Happy Groundhog Day one, 4th of July, birthday, etc.), Lead Generators (‘For those appointments you couldn’t close’).
Nowhere do they warn that a prospect might get exactly the same content from your competitor. The only good news in that possibility is that he or she will look like as big an idiot as you do.
Look everyone, I understand that this Inbound Marketing stuff takes time and it’s easy to be tempted by services that will provide you with ‘content’. But for marketing differentiation, your content really has to be different!
Did these guys validate themselves as knowledgeable? Did getting their twin emails make them more likeable to me? Did their effort generate a lead? The answer to all three is a great, big NO!! In fact, what it got them was a click on the ‘unsubscribe’ link.
And here’s the main point of all of this. The goal of content marketing is not to get your prospects to like you. It’s to get them to trust you. There’s no way I can trust someone who doesn’t respect my intelligence or who won’t take the time to understand who I am and what I need so that they can provide information that’s useful.
So differentiate your marketing for marketing differentiation!!
Learn more about how Inbound Marketing can help differentiate your business, build trusting relationships with your prospects and lead to more sales.
The image is from the Flickr photostream of Timparkinson under Creative Commons license.
Jazz musicians are some of the most brilliant people on the planet and I always learn something from them that can apply to business and online marketing. Over the years I’ve posted numerous times about lessons from jazz – including this one from August of 2010 when Jeff and I heard a fabulous trio led by the legendary Hammond B-3 organist Dr. Lonnie Smith (now almost 70 years old) with young sidemen Jonathan Kreisberg on guitar and Jamire Williams on drum.
We heard this stellar group again last Saturday night and they were even more inspiring. In addition to an idea for a book, which I’m beginning to explore, the experience and curiosity led me the next day to a video interview with Jamire Williams at the North Sea Jazz Festival. It yielded the title of this post. Read on and I’ll explain.
Right after Saturday night’s sets, I had said to Jeff (who, if you don’t read here regularly, is the love of my life and a nascent drummer, himself) that when it comes to drummers, the great ones always have fabulous, recognizable cymbal technique. In the interview, when asked about the drumming influences for his unusual open style, Jamire named several renowned jazz drummers – all of whom are known for their unique cymbal work.
And then, in responding to a question about his aspirations, he refined the thought I had shared with Jeff, saying, “The great drummers write their signature on the ride – and that’s what I am trying to do.”
What’s the ride? The following is grabbed from Wikipedia:
“The ride is a standard cymbal in most drum kits. It maintains a steady rhythmic pattern, rather than an accent beat (which is the job of the aptly named crash cymbal - my note).
The term ride means to ride with the music. In jazz, the ride cymbal is most often struck regularly in a rhythmic pattern as part of the accompaniment to the song.”
Sounds kind of boring, doesn’t it? Drumming along with the beat of the song. Keeping time. Yet within this regular steady realm, the greatest drummers find a way to differentiate themselves -- to develop a sound so unique that they can be identified by their steady work on the ride.
Usually we get excited by drum solos and their attendant fireworks. There are great drum solos that stand out in history - think Joe Morello on Dave Brubeck's Time Out. But I’m intrigued by the idea of writing your signature within the more mundane aspects of what we do -- within the workmanlike competency of keeping time on the ride.
Do what your competitors do, but do it in a way that’s unmistakably yours. Be in the mainstream, best practices-wise, but in a way that’s not like anyone else.
To illustrate the point, I’m uploading a link to of one of Jamire Williams’ inspirations for writing his signature on the ride – Jack DeJohnette. DeJohnette is one-third of the historic jazz trio rounded out by Keith Jarrett on piano and Gary Peacock on bass. To jazz fans, Jack’s playing is unmistakable.
Even if you aren’t a music or jazz fan, please take a close look and listen. When you watch the video, focus on Jack’s right hand beating a steady and incredibly creative beat on the big ride cymbal.
After awhile, you’ll hear its influence even when you’re not watching it. It leads the entire ensemble, even though it seems as though it’s in the background. If you can hear that, it’s the first step to doing the same in your own environment.
End note: If you'd like to write your own signature in online marketing click below to access 20 Reasons Why You Should Improve Your Marketing With HubSpot.
Today, I’d like to share several favorite Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes on the subject of communication.
As it relates to hate:
“Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.”
As it relates to love:
"Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart."
As it relates to character:
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
As an inbound marketing consultant, I wonder, were he still with us now, how Dr. King would use the Internet in his efforts to bring men together in peace.
The beautiful nighttime image of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, DC is from ChellieL’s Flickr photostream under Creative Commons license.
Online marketing takes a lot of time. It takes commitment and consistency. You can use tools to make it more efficient – for example, HootSuite to plan and schedule your Tweets and Facebook posts for the week.
But if you want to assure that you stay the course, here’s my advice: Fall in love.
To me, this means falling in love with the possibilities that the web represents -- six degrees of separation on steroids. Imagine what this can mean for your business or your personal delight.
It’s the excitement of attracting a million dollar deal. It’s the moment you log on to Twitter and see a tweet from a friend with a link to his jazz gig at 10 p.m. in NY City that will stream online and that you can now catch from suburban Connecticut.
I’m constantly aware that my Twitter stream, my LinkedIn Groups, my Google+ Circles have real people in them, doing real things, having real needs, posting useful information and timely opportunities.
I just love that. And it is a timeline. Facebook just confirmed that with its new Timeline format. You can pop into the timeline whenever you want to and see what opportunities are in front of you in the moment.
It’s really thrilling. And it’s how to motivate ourselves to hang in there – to keep creating and sharing content, to keep connecting.
It’s like searching for treasure. Dig around in any social media stream for even a little while and you are guaranteed to come up with something valuable – a connection to a long lost colleague, something that will make you laugh uproariously, a lesson that will help you deal with your life, an idea for a blog post, possibilities you haven’t yet imagined.
If you fall in love with the sheer possibility of online marketing, you’ll stop thinking of it as a burden and embrace it as a source of opportunity that loves you back.
Get some Inbound Marketing love here:
Image is from the Flickr photostream of Mark Surman under Creative Commons License.
Can you find the hidden story in last month’s Google search volume statistics for the following terms?
Marketing – 24,900,000 searches
Internet Marketing – 1,000,000 searches
Online Marketing – 673,000 searches
Email Marketing – 550,000 searches
Social Media Marketing – 246,000 searches
Inbound Marketing – 18,000 searches
As an Inbound Marketer, these stats tell me loud and clear why I still get glassy stares when I mention Inbound Marketing. Even though it’s been around for several years, comparatively speaking, it’s still not on a lot of radar screens. Sure, HubSpot, developer of the all-in-one Inbound Marketing software, has more than 6000 client companies onboard – a significant achievement for a young software company. But there are millions of businesses in the US that are still doing whatever in their marketing.
Email and Social Media Marketing are currently much better known and far more frequently adopted as marketing tactics. But they’re only a small part of what it takes to transfer online activities to bottom line results.
For this reason, I was heartened to read a guest post on Mark W. Schaefer’s {Grow} Marketing Blog today by “Social Steve” Goldner titled, It’s Time to Evolve the Social Media Mindset.
In my opinion, this is a very important post and one that I hope is amplified far and wide. It makes a great case for not creating digital marketing ‘silos’ and for working toward strategic and holistic integration of online marketing tools into business processes.
In a big way, Steve’s post is a call for a return to good and proven marketing principles that translate just fine into the digital framework. As a social media ‘guru’ he has particular credibility in making this call to action.
For years I’ve been a proponent of marketing integration, which stubbornly remains elusive regardless of the platform. Somehow, we humans love to carve out turf and defend it in the competitive environment.
Social Steve’s post suggests that we get beyond compartmentalizing the elements of Inbound Marketing and get to some real results and leverage. I couldn’t agree more. Huzzah!!
How is your company breaking down the Social Media silo?
While you're thinking about this subject, you may want to learn "20 Reasons Why You Should Take Control of Your Marketing Using HubSpot." It only takes a click to access your free copy.
Image of Google Free Coupon is from the Flickr photostream of Bramus! under Creative Commons license.
Have you spent the past year feverishly tweeting, posting on Facebook, and Linking In -- but not really knowing what it’s all getting you? Do you wonder what else you could or should be doing on the Internet to grow your business? Are you still not sure what this Inbound Marketing stuff is all about?
If you want to start the New Year with a better idea of how well you’re doing online and how to do better, try Marketing Grader. This new, free tool is from HubSpot, the company that – literally – wrote the book on Inbound Marketing.
Marketing Grader replaces Website Grader, which has measured the effectiveness and improvement of millions of sites since 2006. But online marketing is about much more than your website, today, so HubSpot has greatly expanded the tool.
Type your company’s url into Marketing Grader, enter your email address and in a few minutes you’ll see how your overall online marketing scores on a 100-point scale. (Higher is better.) It also provides separate scores for each of the three distinct activity areas of Inbound Marketing -- Top of the Funnel, Middle of the Funnel and Analytics. These correlate to lead generation, lead nurturing/sales conversion and marketing improvement/ROI proofs. For an even bigger picture, you can compare your marketing with a few competitors’.
More than that, you’ll have an educational report of about 11 pages that steps you through the Inbound Marketing process and explains best practices to shoot for. If you haven’t yet taken the leap into social media, blogging or content marketing – not really understanding how it’ll help you – this may well give you the needed push!
The report shows you how you’re doing driving traffic to the top of the sales funnel, then converting traffic to leads and nurturing them through the middle of the funnel to closed sales. And you'll learn how well you’re analyzing your activities to help you improve your marketing and, ultimately, your business results.
At last you’ll see how everything fits together - social media, SEO, blogging, mobile, landing pages, calls-to-action, conversion forms, and analytics. Of great value are the statistics, best practices and tips that accompany each item in the report -- along with links to specific information to help you improve your scores.
As Inbound Marketers, we at E.R. Becker Company are thrilled about Marketing Grader. We’re already using it ourselves to analyze our overall marketing and to plan our 2012 growth strategy. We’ll be focusing on Middle of the Funnel activities to convert more of the substantial traffic we built in 2011 to leads and sales.
We’re sure that Marketing Grader can help you, too! Give it a try! Then come back and tell us what you think in the comments!
By the way...To help you get the most from Marketing Grader, access a Free Fact Sheet to learn how Inbound Marketing can help your business take off!
Green check mark image is from PNASH's Flickr photostream.
New Year’s is the point in the year where we become hyper-focused on time. We take looks back and we try to forecast ahead. There’s something positive to be said for these moments when we celebrate accomplishments, analyze failures and do some planning.
But for this post I’d like to look at time in a slightly different way. As we evaluate life, what do we keep, what do we cast off, what do we synthesize into something new?
I’ve been thinking that the ability to synthesize is how we keep ourselves timeless.
This implies that we keep moving forward and learning. And it also implies that we keep applying what we know to what we’re trying to learn – paying our knowledge forward in a sense.
Not just an eye to the past and an eye to the future, but a continuous creative roll, fueled by experience and curiosity. It’s certainly one way to deal with life’s endless changes that’ve accelerated considerably in the past decade.
When I started blogging in 2008, my blog was called New PR Words – And Music! It was intended to comment on my evolution from a traditional PR professional to an online marketer. It was also a way for me to share my passion for music – especially jazz. Almost every post included a tune from my music collection that somehow related to the topic at hand.
In the years since then, I’ve concentrated my business on Inbound Marketing. Today I work with only a few clients on media relations and traditional PR. All new business is related to Inbound Marketing – Websites, Blogging, Content Development, Social Media, SEO, Lead Generation, Landing Pages, Lead Nurturing and Analytics.
I still use almost all of what I used in developing PR programs for my clients – Communications Strategy and Positioning, Messaging, Storytelling, Writing, Reputation and Crisis Management. These all apply to developing effective Inbound Marketing programs. I’ve synthesized that timeless knowledge with the new tools, tactics and techniques I’ve learned and created an entire new set of services that are timely for today.
So, a couple of months ago, I started this – the inbound-i blog -- dedicated to my current focus on Inbound Marketing. It was not easy to turn New PR Words – And Music! into an archive because it had become beloved online turf to me.
For that reason, I’ve decided that from time to time, I’ll share some music with you here on the inbound-i blog. For this post I chose a fabulous musical example of synthesis. Back in the late 1960’s I loved pianist Sergio Mendes & Brazil ’66. Mendes was one of the first to introduce Samba and Brazilian composers to the US music scene.
01 - Mas Que Nada.mp3
In 2006, he released a CD called Timeless, a collaboration with young artists in other genres in which The Black Eyed Peas and their leader Will I. Am figured prominently. Enjoy their brilliant synthesis of Samba and Hip-Hop in a re-mix of the Brazil '66 classic Mais Que Nada. Hope it gets you in the mood to put on your dancin’ shoes for New Year’s Eve. ;-D
Wishing you all a synthesized and timeless 2012!
This morning I had breakfast with my friend and marketing colleague Stan Phelps, Chief Solutions Officer at Synergy Events. Stan and I were talking about The Purple Goldfish Project, an almost two-year book venture of his that he’s trying to wrap up for an early January publishing date.
For the book, he’s compiling 1,001 examples of marketing lagniappe, which he terms Purple Goldfish. A Purple Goldfish is when a company “gives little unexpected extras” (G.L.U.E.) as added value. It’s Purple Goldfish that become the stuff of positive word of mouth.
Stan is in the high 900’s toward his goal of 1,001 - but time's growing short. I decided I’d do my best to help get him there. If you think it’s easy to come up with examples of Purple Goldfish, it’s not! I wracked my brain all last evening and it took me til half way through breakfast to come up with one that made Stan’s eyes light up. Here it is:
Some years ago I went to get into my car in my parking garage to find it had been hit. A Good Samaritan had left a note on a scrap of paper on the windshield saying they’d witnessed the hit and run. They gave me the make, model, color and license plate number of the car.
I duly made a police report and informed my insurance company of many years, State Farm. The representative I spoke with obtained the police report and ok’d my claim less my $500 deductible, which I paid.
Several months later I received a call from State Farm’s investigations department asking if I had any documentation about the incident other than the police report. I had kept the original windshield note in my accident file and faxed a copy.
Six months after that, I received a check for $500 from State Farm. There was no explanation, so I called before depositing it to be sure there was no mistake. Here’s what I was told:
“When you gave the investigations department a copy of the witness’ note, they saw that the police officer had gotten one number of the license plate incorrect on his report. We were then able to track down the person who hit your car and go after his insurance company for reimbursement of your claim and deductible, which we refunded to you.”
WOW!! If that’s not a Purple Goldfish, I don’t know what is! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told this story over the years.
The positive word of mouth has, I’m sure, gotten State Farm far more than the $500 that I never would have known about, were it not for their proactive, honest customer relationship building – not to mention their persistence.
If you have any Purple Goldfish tales, please share them in the comments and I’ll pass them along to Stan. You can follow his progress and acquire the book when it’s published at www.purplegoldfish.com.