People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes. More importantly, I’m hearing from bloggers that Pinterest is driving more traffic to their blogs than Twitter and Facebook.

Here are three tips on getting started with Pinterest for your business:

1. Organization is key. After you create your Pinterest account, you can start creating your own board(s). Divide your boards into topics that are relevant to your brand, rather than just pinning your products onto a board. Curate pins that tell the story of your brand. Equally important is to categorize your board (e.g. Design, Women’s apparel etc) so users can discover it. Some of the brands that are doing great job on these two fronts are Kate Spade New York and West Elm. There are brands that are even leveraging Pinterest for contests, such as Lands’ End Canvas Holiday Pin It To Win It Contest.

2. Making the sale. When you are pinning your own products, you can specify the product URL so it takes the users straight to your site. Also, use the $ sign in description to list the product price. When you do that, Pinterest will automatically put that pin into the Gifts category, which will further promote your pin/product.

3. Connecting your site. You can add your site, Twitter and Facebook account to your Pinterest profile. Back at your own site, you can either add the Pinterest follow button so users can follow your Pinterest account, or add the “Pin it” Button(s) next to your product(s) to allow your cusomters to “Pin” your products onto Pinterest. To get the buttons for your site, head to Pinterest’s goodies section.

Have fun pinning!

A couple of highlights are:

Web and Social:
- 81% of Users of Top Global Internet Properties are Outside of USA
- Social networkers exceed internet users and 70% of them use Facebook
- eCommerce continues to gain share from offline, with mobile commerce also accelerating (leading the charge are eBay, Paypal, Amazon, Target, and Square)
- Local commerce rejuvenated by mobile
- Time spent on Social Networking Sites surpassed portals in June 2011 in USA (this is Significant!)

Mobile:
- Smartphones surpassed Featured Phone shipments in W. Europe and USA, rest of world to follow
- Mobile Usage and Mobile Search growing rapidly, leading to Mobile Advertising ramping quickly in all geographies
- Global Mobile Apps and Mobile Advertising spending is at $12B in 2011

Around the bend:
- The Next Big Thing will be online audio, sound is going to be bigger than video
- Mega-trend of 21st Century will be the empowerment of people via connected mobile devices

See the full presentation below for all the insightful forecasts on what’s ahead!

KPCB Internet Trends (2011)

I recommend checking out a new online tool called KnowEm.  KnowEm lets you check your brand/product name on 340 social media sites to see if anyone has claimed the name. This is helpful because:
1. it’s time-consuming (and painful!) to go to 340 sites
2. you can register your brand name straight from the site

Your customers know you by your brand name. That is why it’s important to have your business identity be consistent across the different social media sites you focus on. It’s also a bit like website domain name grabbing where early birds get the worm. If you think your brand name may be popular, please check this site out soon, you wouldn’t want someone else taking your brand identity and misbehaving on social media channels.

KnowEm also has a few other fee-based services that can further simplify things:

Individual Plan ($99)
Signup initiation only (not full profiles) on 150 social media websites.

Business Plan ($349)
Complete Signup of all profile info: photos, bio, URL and description on 150 social media websites.

Enterprise Plan ($649)
Complete Signup of all profile info: photos, bio, URL and description on 300 social media websites. Same as above, but for 300 sites!

Brand Protection Program ($49)
Continue to protect your brand or username on up to 30 new and emerging social media networks every month.

If you are just starting your social media journey for your business, KnowEm is definitely worth a visit.

The daily email deals are annoying after one week, then feels like spam after a few weeks, then it becomes unbearable – I went and unsubscribed from the brands. Now I won’t be notified of future deals, which is opportunities lost for these brands.

Just because email is free doesn’t mean you should contact your opt-in subscribers list every day (unless your business model IS about daily deals like Groupon). Bombarding your list constantly with emails will come off as spammy, downgrade your brand experience for your customers and could cost you your businesses.

Let’s start with the “hit the jackpot” campaign. Tourism Queensland came up with the concept of “The best job in the world” contest. Interested candidates can submit a video job application for a chance at living and working amongst the islands of the Great Barrier Reef for six months.

From the initial Youtube video to the dedicated website, Tourism Queensland cleverly tied “The best job in the world” contest to visiting the most beautiful islands and beaches Queensland has to offer. The visuals on the video and site were stunning, and it effortlessly inspired people to give the job contest a shot. Within two months after the campaign launch (Dec 2008), there were four million hits on the site and 2000 60-second video applications were received for the job. On May 2009, the winner of the contest got the jealousy of the whole world on his shoulder and was given the job offer, picked from a pool of 34,000 candidates.

The campaign was well thought-out, extremely viral (who didn’t fantasize for at least for a brief moment of taking that job?) and relevant to the goal – grow awareness and attract more visitors.

Let’s move to the “They did *What*?” example. First, there was the video. In this Youtube video, there is a Danish woman holding a baby boy, emotionally talking about her search for the baby daddy, because, well, she got drunk, had a one-night-stand and now voilà – a baby and no daddy. She wants to find the baby daddy and she needs your help. Naturally, people were concerned and wanted to help, the woman’s contact info was posted along the Youtube video.

After the video has gone viral and attracted several million views, the viewers find out, horror of all horrors, this was a video made by Denmark’s Tourism board whose goal “was solely to bring about a positive awareness of Denmark“. Not only were people angry that they’ve been tricked, the video essentially portrayed Danish women as promiscuous and that Denmark has little respect towards single-mothers. FAIL!

Two campaigns, two viral videos, same goals and yet, night and day in results.

1. The “I know your name, but I’m blocked” dodge:
“I keep wanting to call you “David,” but I know that’s not right.”

2. The “Of course I know you — in fact, I want all your information” dodge:
“Hey, I’d love to get your card.”

3. The “The tip of my tongue” dodge:
“I know I know your name, but I’m blanking right now.”

4. The “You’re brilliant!” dodge:
“Wow, you have a terrific memory. I can’t believe you remember my name from that meeting six months ago. I can’t remember the names of people I met yesterday! So of course I have to ask you your name.”

5. The “Sure, I remember you” dodge:
“Remind me – what’s your last name?” If you ask a person for his last name, he’s likely to repeat both names. “Doe, John Doe.”

6. The “One-sided introduction” dodge:
“Hey,” you say to the person whose name you can’t remember, “let me introduce you to Pat Smith.” You introduce the two and say the name of the person whose name you remember. Almost always, the nameless person will volunteer his or her name.

Very useful tips, any other suggestions?

As of today, here are some of the food truck brands (in LA and NY) and the numbers of twitter followers they have -

LA
kogibbq 44,364
Sprinklesmobile 6,885
CoolHaus 5,667
nomnomtruck 3,492
Marked5 2,589

NYC
waffletruck 3,462
RickshawTruck 3,280
Green_Truck 3,219
schnitzeltruck 2,467
TheTreatsTruck 2,407

There are many other food trucks business in LA and NY. The ones that seem to stand out more are the ones with a unique style/offering. And the ones listed above are the ones that seem to have the most followers. The leader with the most following is LA’s Kogi bbq tacos with 44K+ followers. However, looking at how it compares to other food trucks, it makes you wonder if the Kogibbq number is super inflated even though there are frequently 300+ people visiting them at the announced location.  Most of these businesses would say that Twitter made their growth possible.

For any businesses that travel to different locations of a city, has a group of customers that are frequent users of social media sites, and where frequent location updates would bring more businesses, twitter may just be the right solution to consider.

Bonobos is a web-only clothing company with no stores, no fitting rooms, and until recently, no physical interaction with the customer. While it is a relatively young company (nearly two year-old), Bonobos got it mostly right when it comes to using social media. I heard about Bonobos from an article on clickz and got intrigued. Here is Bonobos’s social media approach:

Twitter
- launched a Tweet4Trunks promotion. For the promo, Bonobos had a daily giveaway (a pair of swimming trunks to one person) as prize, and people can enter the giveaway by replying to questions Bonobos ask on Twitter regarding its products and relevant topics.

Results:
- 300% Increase of Twitter followers
- Increased traffic to Bonobos’ blog which listed additional daily promotions (which cleverly were offers of free goodies for new customer referrals)

Facebook
- created Facebook ads and targeted them to relevant regions, age groups, college backgrounds etc. Specifically, launched a pair of pants with Chicago Cubs theme/color and targeted it to Cubs fans. As a result, sold 100 pairs and sold out within a month
- announced new products on Facebook page that leads back to Bonobos site product page
- highlighted different customers and tell stories on how Bonobos pants make them look good
- shared fashion tips
- lots of engagement and call to actions (most drive traffic back to Bonobos site)

Results:
- Increased product sales through Facebook ads
- Increased overall traffic to Bonobos site
- Engagement with customers on Facebook

Blog
- contents on relevant topics ranging from fashion interviews, product highlights to business strategy philosophizing
- videos by Bonobos team for the personal touch
- communicate with customers on the usability of its website and new customer service (field ninjas)
- request participation on survey
- announce their referral program to help spread the word on the Bonobos products (via referral page on Bonobos site or individual’s blog/facebook/twitter account with custom public code)

Overall results:
- Revenue of $1.6 million in its first year
- Loyal and repeat customers (repeat purchase rate at 46%)

Bonobos focused its social media efforts on listening more than selling; which is really key for brands investing efforts in social media. And as a true sign of a transparent company, CEO Andy Dunn video-blogged about a campaign gone wrong and what Bonobos learned from that experience. If the Bonobos team keep up these excellent efforts, no doubt they’ll reach their goal of changing the way men purchase pants.

It’s a promotion that is timely as people are likely to check Facebook on Friday afternoon for friends to hang out with and places to go Friday night.

How about for your business? Would your customers appreciate timely incentives or promotions from your Facebook fan page or other social media platforms?

Do you want people to notice your business? talk about your product? spread the word on your service?

Make your product/service remarkable, and you will succeed. It’s really that simple. Hard to do, but worth all the effort.

For example, I am not the biggest fan on cupcakes (crazy, I know!), but one look at Hello Naomi’s Super Mario cupcakes and I couldn’t help myself but went straight to her site to see what other amazing-looking cupcakes she also makes. It was almost instinctual. No sales pitch, no one ask me to click on a link, no advertisement brought me there. I was sold on the product because it was remarkable. And I’ll think of Naomi’s cupcakes if I ever need to buy some.

All the marketing campaigns, PR, SEO, online tools can’t help you if your product/service sucks. You can even have a visually-boring website if your product is amazing, people will still use it and keep coming back, look at Craigslist.

Make it remarkable, and you’ve done the hardest part.