Pinterest Code to Help Find Your Most Pinned Web Content

Here's a a very simple trick for Pinterest I thought I'd share.

Go to your browser and type this:

http://pinterest.com/source/TheNameOfYourWebsite.com/
(no www)

This'll show you every image posted to Pinterest by others from your website or blog, all laid out in normal Pinterest format.

Go on. Pin it. You know you want to.

I love this. Taking a look at what works is so important in social (and in marketing in general) and it gives a great visual insight into your audience. This is a way to see what's working, what's being shared, and what imagery your audience respond to. Testing regularly rocks, and I'm a big fan of an agile approach to marketing which tricks like this are perfect for. It's also great for seeing what's being shared from the competitions websites when doing research. When a client comes to us with a curiosity about Pinterest it's my first port of call.

If you want to take this further you can try PinAlytics for search and check and out more analytics data, and give PinReach a punt to help identify influencers. Alas Pinterest hasn't release a Hootsuite compatible API so isn't part of the dashboard and there's no plugin, so I use Reachli if needs be for scheduling (which is 'ok').

Well worth taking a look.

Making Your Facebook Page Work for Mobile

There's plenty of mobile social platforms out there that lend themselves naturally to mobile marketing. Those with downloadable apps. and easy access like Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter (obviously) etc. There's also some that are less obvious and just as important - i.e. the grand daddy of them all, Facebook. Nearly 40% of Facebook users use the platform by mobile. That's nearly half of your audience. So how do we optimize our messaging to be visible to our friends, fans, and followers through Facebook mobile? It's actually quite elementary.

"It's that bloody Lestrade, still pestering me for a recommendation on LinkedIn..."

If we want to make our followers lives that little bit easier and make sure we get our words across there's a few simple things to think about and some experimentation to be done to optimize your Page (or personal) posts for Facebook.

One issue is Truncation, where your character limit is cut by the option to 'read more' instead of the whole message being displayed. Sometimes truncation is unavoidable, but with a bit of experimentation you can slip in a line return or the end of a sentence and prioritise your important message in the first part of your post. You're going to have say the crux of what you want to say in around 100 characters, which works perfect on the iPhone. A bit of testing with Android etc. can pay off and help you get this right. If you can finish a sentence prior to truncation (or on a leading cliff-hanger if that's your thing) it's a neat little trick.

Variety, as they say, is the spice of life. On mobile devices, links (which we want to get 'liked' for those valuable social signals) are much smaller that other posts and can sometimes open erratically within the application. We need to think about using images (which are large and eye-catching in the mobile stream) and video (which plays direct in the official Facebook apps.) as well. Mobile users can also see and answer Facebook Questions, an often unused and poorly explored tactic. Instead of links or just status updates, how about testing a few images with shortened (and measurable) customised links in the text to see what click-through rates you get? - "Find out more here >> bit.ly/squidgybum" etc. Mix and match - though really you should be doing this anyway to promote organic EdgeRank growth and give your audience some variety.

Mobile Social Ads are a great way into the mobile app. Mobile ads account for 23% of Facebook's ad revenue, that's around £200,000,000 a year. Rumours of push targeted deals and a new app for March abound, with Bloomberg talking abut Facebook location based software hitting the market any day. Current display options, all part of the News Feed, are the usual Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts. There's also Offers (putting discounts and promotions in the News Feed) and Mobile App-Install ads (the links to the likes to of games that are in my face and bugging me right now) but these require some dev skills and an app to support. You can do all the usual trageting by interest and demographics. There's a nice intro to Facebook mobile ads over at InsideFacebook.

Be a Place, but before you do considering the pitfalls as well as the benefits. The benefits of allowing mobile users to 'check in' and speard the good word are obvious, and it means you can also take advantage of (the much underused) Deals (which, incedentally, rank high in the new Graph Search) - Loyalty deals for repeat visitors, Friend deals to get (up to 8) folks to check in at the same time, Charity deals, etc. Places, however, are not that simple. You need to be aware that Places also disables some functionality that you get with a standard Page, but you can claim a Place if it already exists and merge it with you Page if needs be and that gives you more control (this is probably a longer post at another time, it's all bit of a mess to be honest). To add a new Place just head to touch.facebook.com, click 'check-in', give it a description, then click 'add'. Disco.

Cover images lay out differently on an iPad, an iPhone, on Android, in the browser, etc. Think about how it's going to look when people visit your Page. A bit of testing is essential, but many people will never see you any other way and this has to be taken into consideration. A scruffy experience reflects directly on your brand.

Anyway, as marketeers and community managers it's time for us to think about mobile. For some it's the elephant in the room, but we need to begin to think about how our audience are accessing our messaging and to react accordingly. It's only going to get MORE important, especially with Facebook.

If anyone else has any tips for making your Page work for Facebook Mobile, I'd love to hear them! Please let me know in the comments below :)

Oh, and quick thanks to my good mate Jamie Grind, for knocking up the Holmes image above for me ;)

How to Stop Facebook Making that Bloody Annoying Noise

It started a few weeks ago and it's been driving me mental. It took me ages to track down what it was. Facebook has started testing a new feature called "Being Really Annoying". Normally reserved for platform or algorithm updates, Facebook now offers an extra level of irritation with an intermittent auditory assault every time someone engages with one of our posts.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

To me, and anyone else who works in community management, this sounds like machine gun fire.

This isn't rolling out for everyone just yet. Gee, I guess I'm just lucky. When it comes your way, trust me, you'll be wanting to disable it ASAP. Thankfully that's not difficult to do:

Go to 'Account Settings > Notifications'.

Click 'View' on the tab that says 'On Facebook'...

...then unclick the box that says 'Play sound when each new notification is received', press 'Save Changes', and relax.

NB: It might not go off at first, if (like me) you have multiple tabs or accounts open. You will need to do this for any alts. if you have any (I know I do, for old legacy billing with certain clients).

Social Media Doesn’t Work (on its own)

The old adage of "if you build it they will come" does NOT apply to social media. Anyone who says any different is sellin' snake oil.

Let me explain, and let's use Facebook as an example:

You build a business page. Nice custom cover image. A few well chosen apps to help spread the news, like 'Tell a Friend', WooBox's 'Twitter', and Involvers 'RSS' (with your blog feed attached). You put an embedded widget on your website (above the fold please, so people can actually see it) to get people 'liking'. You start posting a few pics of new products or staff bowling nights, scraps of daily evergreen stuff you think customers might like, and links to your new blog posts, just to get the page rolling. Nothing. Jack. Bubkiss. All you get is a few members of staff signing up, and then it just sit's there. Why?

No. They won't.

Put simply, people have no REASON to sign up? Why SHOULD they follow you? What's in it for them? People sign up to business pages for the following reasons:

• To get discounts and hear about promotions.
• To demonstrate their support for the company (notably charities).
• To get something for free.
• To keep up-to-date on company activities.
• To get a 'look behind the curtain' at the 'real' company in action.
• For updates on your future products and/or sales.
• For fun (so BE FUN).
• For access to exclusive content.
• If someone recommended them.
• To learn more about the business or service.
• To get company relate knowledge and to learn more about specialist topics.
• To speak to the company directly.

With all this in mind it's good to have a statement of intent so people know what they are signing up for (then stick to it). "Join us on Facebook to get the latest deals first", "Follow us on Twitter for the latest indi. fashion tips","Follow our Page for our weekly print out coupon codes!", "Ask the experts. We're here to help." etc.

But how do you get them there in the first place?

Get those icons and links to social channels everywhere. In email footers, on bill boards, on vinyl signs at locations, on letter heads, business cards, compliment slips, on OTHER social channels, put FourSquare stickers and QR codes on the back of toilet doors (we did this - track ably - for a leisure venue client and it worked a treat). Make sure they're in an easy to follow and obvious format (like @nikhewitt for Twitter etc.). Be sure to be seen, or you may as well not bother.

The easiest way is to spend some money and to target your audience directly, but this shouldn't be done in isolation. Social media channels are often a walled garden. Here's an example of how you can structure a simple tactical campaign to grow followers quick. This is a snippit from an email I wrote for a Facebook client last year (with the costs and names removed to protect the innocent):

Hi XXXXXX,

With reference to our earlier call I wanted to put the following in writing. The Page needs to generate followers and interactions. To do this, and grow numbers, we suggest a targeted push towards your target demographic with a campaign/sweepstake to win some thing you can offer (product, vouchers, etc. - this MUST be something the audience would want, and MUST be on brand) that remains cost effective. Participants would gain extra entries to the sweepstake for inviting friends. We would insist on FB page membership in order to enter. Each sweepstake would run for 1 month. Naturally this would require coding, approved app hire, and art work, so initial implementation for this (inc. 1 months hosting) would be £XXX. Doing this monthly, if affordable, would be an excellent future incentive, and be around £XXX cheaper pcm. This would be ideally placed in the run-up to XXXXXX season. This would also require a custom blog post with all details, and a full Digital Press Release (as per our press release service) at a cost of £XXX. These also offers excellent SEO value and would offer the maximum exposure possible for the money. Additionally I would suggest posting a banner or 'flyer' to the front page of the website for the period of any sweepstake, plus sending out a newsletter to all members with the press release content (which you could no doubt do yourselves via MailChimp, as we discussed). We would suggest using this time to test up-take on traditional (not sponsored stories, which rely on a base of active followers already) Facebook social ads, and believe a daily spend of £XXX would active an extra XX targeted followers (totalling XXX), for the first 10 days of the sweepstake, with a total spend of £XXXX. Naturally this would also afford an excellent branding opportunity. This would be tailored by us on a daily basis, with custom messaging created, to get maximum results, at a charge of 15% (included above). The primary target for these would be likely be male or female, single/engaged/married, 20-40, UK based, of diverse education, with an interest in XXXXXX, XXXXXX, XXXXXX etc. and competing brands - as per the target demographic you suggested when we created your SMMP. Therefore, all expenditure suggested would total £XXXX and generate a lot of coverage and a minimum (we'd suggest) of XXXX active community members. The SEO, viral, and links value of this would, additionally, be exceptional, and likely generate far more fans in the future.

See how it uses digital PR and email as well as targeted ads, plus a good reason to sign-up? See how it acknowledges the bigger picture?

Organic methods are obvious, but slower. It's important to have content that's fun and easy to share. I ran a large Online Poker client for a while, and knowing what the user liked was important. Posting free chips was great, and always 'liked' (though rarely shared) but the audience wanted that sense of fun and community. One picture of 4 taxidermy animals playing pokers got over 1,600 shares, 3,600 likes, and over 900 comments. It also raised that days new follower count by over 1000, and game sign up by nearly the same. Sharing aspirational content like fast cars, nice houses, etc. was commented on and shared a lot more - especially inviting commentary with messaging like "what would you buy if you won big". The same can be done with promotions, but watch those Facebook (and other) T's&C's when it comes to competitions - most have to be done via an approved app. Look at your analytics and previous posts, and figure out what your audience responds to.

Another organic method I use a lot is object tagging other Pages. This gives a nod to others Pages if they're mentioned. We have a football tipster client, Beat the Bookie, and their bets of the day contain object tags to teams and individuals so that those Pages fans see my clients Page - so noting the support and the service my clients are offering - and so promotes cross-traffic. This is really just 'crediting people', and it works particularly well when mentioning others when you are distributing their links to on-topic content via Twitter.

Anyway, I've gone on enough. In summing up you need to think about the bigger picture and tie your marketing in in other places. Try it. Shirt buttons to granny bonds it'll make a surprising difference to the growth of your channels - without thinking further afield, you've just got a static page.

If you need any help putting this kind of campaign into action, give us a ring at the agency I work for. We'll sort you out :)

Targeting Companies With LinkedIn and Facebook Social Data

Social data is used for advertising on some of big social platforms. Who we are, what we do, what we like, what we eat, where we shop, our favourite music, where we work, what charities we support, where we went on holiday, whether we have pets, etc. is all up for grabs when people want to hawk their wares to us online.

Put the coffee down and buy my shit.

For me, I say bring it on, advertising is a damn sight less annoying when it's properly targeted. I love the idea of the data I need finding me, and this is a step on the road to the semantic web. This is contextual advertising at it's finest. All marketing and advertising should be strategic, and I've worked with clients who've come to me with very specific ideas on who they want to target, for branding purposes and for click-through generation. When B2B companies come to us and want to target a specific company social is not an immediately obvious choice, but actually both LinkedIn and Facebook make it surprisingly easy (if the budget is up to it).

Why a specific company? If you make brass widgets there's only so many companies who need to be supplied with brass widgets.  If your product is part of a larger process or product, or you have a finite market you need to reach, a list of the companies who need your product is a great place to start (the rest's down to good copy, being cheaper, or having some whizzy USP the potential customer can't live without). Even if your a small business like a sandwich shop, imagine being able to target all the local businesses around you and put your lunch time special under their hungry noses.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a damn site more than just a job site, and claims a hefty 187,000,000 (1.87 x 10^2) users, many of them decision makers and people with purchase power, in 200+ countries. When you're creating your ad, at stage 2, just scroll down to 'Company' and start to typing the company name. It's all pretty obvious. In this case I picked the BBC, which has 11,905 LinkedIn members.

Facebook
Facebook is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is... When you're creating an ad (under 'See Advanced Options', 'Get More Likes', or 'Promoted Page Posts') go to 'Choose Your Audience' then scroll down and open the 'See Advanced Targeting Options' link, then go down again to the bit that says 'Workplaces'. Start typing a business name and (if it's in Facebook's database) it'll give you option to select it in the dropdown. As you can see there's 14,520 people, who live in the United Kingdom, that work at BBC. Obviously you can keep adding other companies if needed.

With both channels there's even more needle-sharp targeting you can add to this like groups they belong to, their job title (in LinkedIn), marital status (Facebook), their interests, whatever.

Imagine then using these ads to actually give the targeted company employees something industry specific like a well researched white paper or branded online tool? Get creative. Give them something that might make their job easier, and just watch those click-through rates go up. Perhaps you could try targeting companies with these ads for a couple of weeks before getting your sales reps to give them a call? An ad's an ad, it's the creative (and strategic) thinking around it that'll get you somewhere.

Get creative. Know your audience.

Remember, the ability to target a company like this is great - indeed so are any of the many other targeting options - but you need to think why your going to be doing this and make sure it's not working in isolation from the rest of your campaign. If you don't stand out or you're not offering them a reason to care then they won't give a damn. Make sure your text will grab their attention and that it relates directly to the target audience. Have a relevant and compelling call-to-action. Optimise those small images to fill the space and make sure they're easy to read. Create different ad versions, combo's of image, title, description, and test what's best for click-through. All the usual methods and standards apply, if not more so - as you're directly under the nose of your target market.

If you find a cool use for this, let me know :)

Why Your Content Has to be Awesome

As many of you will know, I work for an international digital marketing agency as Head of Social and Content Marketing. I've been working in digital marketing, in search, in online community development, with content creators etc. since the mid 90's. Things change all the time.

Panda. Here to mess with your shit.

Penguin and Panda (Googles sobering little gifts to the SEO community) have suddenly changed the playing field, and now content is valued a lot higher than it's ever been before. Content creation is now a big part of SEO. This is a good thing, and a bad thing.

It's a good thing because content producers are becoming far more highly prized and valued. It's a bad thing because most SEO companies are flooding the Internet with low quality, spammy bollocks.

To understand why this is like it is I need to quickly highlight a few high-level core concepts of modern internet marketing.

• Links:
  Only good links, from good sources, are of any interest to Google. Links mean a lot less than they used to. Anything else, like link farms and unrelated directories, are just spam.
• Frequency:
  Google loves fresh content. If you add 3 or more posts a week to a blog on a website, the search spiders'll adore you for it.
• Social Signals:
  What your friend recommend and what they like, are going to play a part in what's rated at the top of your search list. Having a social presence, as an individual or company, is now all part of the equation.
• AuthorRank:
  We have to foster specialists. If their content is liked, shared, etc. within the community that's going to be a plus. Individuals who are specialists in certain topics and have a genuine interest in the subject are going to get that little boost c/o Google. Google+ demands profile authentication, so this isn't something you can game (which does make having a nom de plume somewhat tricky, but that's for a later post).
• Organic Distribution:
  Good quality, entertaining, contentious amusing, informative, and valuable (to the audience) content is king. Not just blog posts - but white papers, videos, Infographics, curation, digital press releases, podcasts, advertorials, whatever. If you provide a genuine service, in an accessible format for the audience, and answer and research real consumer questions it's going to give you a clear advantage when it comes to other people distributing your stuff.

Put all this together and what have you got? Good content (and the way it's shared) is the new links. No one is going to distribute rubbish, though that's probably not going to stop a lot of SEO companies from just mass producing shit of Golgothan proportions without looking at the bigger picture. Heaven help us. This said, with social signals and AuthorRank we have to hope the the good stuff is going to be what 'naturally' floats to the surface.

The SEO Content Marketing Monster. You know who you are.

This theory's admittedly based on a few obvious things:

• We're reliant on crowd sourcing quality, and a discerning audience.
• Right now, setting up the likes of AuthorRank relies on us opting in to do so by inclusion of code on pages etc., and we're going to have to start opting in to share our data more.
• SEO companies not (somehow) gaming signals in the future.

I'm lucky. Where I work I get to set content and social policy. No grey hat spam. We create proper content strategy (see here for an example) and we've had a content team of up to 10 pro-brand journalists for over 8 years (one of the big draws that made me take the job was the strength of the team). These folks have a track record, a history of contents and a natural interest in specialist fields from mechanical engineering to professional travel journalism. I'd put the work of any one of them up against that of any of the reporters I worked with at The Daily Mail. I know this'll see us through.

My big tip? For gods sake don't buy (or produce) mediocre, bulk, untargeted, and unstrategic content - you'll be throwing your time and money away in the long term.

In the future, if your stuff's not original and not good, how's it going to get seen? It could well be that Google has found the ultimate filter by using people as quality control through social and accreditation. It could well make the Internet a better place.