Pinterest, a rapidly-growing social networking site, allows users to “pin” photos they find online on their own virtual boards. Each time an image is pinned on a board, it appears in a real time feed located on the site’s homepage. Users can follow each others’ boards and “re-pin” or “like” pins that show up on their feed.

If you want to maximize the potential to create a bigger buzz about your brand and drive traffic to your site, before you start creating boards and pins, take these steps to optimize your website for Pinterest.

1. Use high-quality, eye-catching photos. Users are more likely to “pin” and “re-pin” photos that are interesting or useful, so make sure that the images you feature on your site stand out. Include these photos each time you post new content on your website. Users create pins using images that link back to the original page an image is hosted on, so if you don’t include a photo in your latest blog post, it has no pinning potential.
2. Add a “Pin It” button. If you don’t have one already, add a “Pin It” button to your website so that users can easily share content they find interesting.
3. Make sure users can pin your images. Talk to your web developer and make sure that your website doesn’t render images in Flash; these images can’t be detected using the “pin it” bookmarklet, according to the Pinterest support team. The bookmarklet also can’t detect any images you feature on your Facebook page.
4. Use relevant keywords. While users are the ones who write descriptions for each pin they create, help them out by using significant, brand-related keywords on the page that your image is featured, in the image file name, and in the image description text. This way, pinners writing their own unique, catchy descriptions may also include keywords or #hashtags that relate to content they find on your site. If you’re not sure which words to use, check your analytics or use a keyword research tool to find out which ones already drive traffic to your website.
5. Are users already talking about you? Pinterest users may already be pinning images from your website. Pinterest is a huge resource for discovering popular content. To see how users are representing your brand on Pinterest, visit http://pinterest.com/source/”yourdomain.com” (replace “yourdomain.com” with your company’s website).

Once you’ve optimized your website for Pinterest, grow your audience by identifying and following users and boards that are discussing your brand.

While most discussions on social design encompass the practice of creating optimized user experiences within applications and websites, Fisher’s presentation (and ultimate strategic suggestion to marketers) centered upon the most foundational elements to Facebook’s success.

As many of us desire to stay sharp on social media strategy, I’m hopeful the interpretive summary of his presentation that follows will provide a helpful reference (if not, reminder) of what we as marketers should keep top of mind when helping businesses meaningfully engage with their customers.

Facebook’s Social Design Components Defined

First, we acknowledge that relationships and trust are foundational to any social network. The level of trust depends on the types of relationships we have, which can be categorized on the spectrum between strong ties (family and close friends) and weak ties (short-lived/formal relationships).

In this context, we can consider the following three components, beginning with the inner circle in the diagram below:

• Identity: Facebook started by enabling us to define our identities within their network. Inherently, our identities are reinforced through strong ties, or relationships with those we most closely trust who are also in the network.
• Conversation: We insert our identity into the community through conversation. By listening and responding (sharing), we personally benefit from self-expression — yet also benefit others who learn or are inspired from our contribution to the conversation. Conversation is what Fisher refers to as “the glue between identity and community.”
• Community: As conversation continues, community is developed around various common values and participating identities. The strength of community grows from weak ties that give back via the conversation. The community response may reinforce or even influence our identity. And as the community influences us, even to the extent of our mere participation in the conversation, so may we influence our strong ties.

Fisher’s Key Insight

While Facebook has been about growing community from the inside out (starting with identity) — we as marketers realize our greatest opportunities by approaching it from the outside in, starting with community.

The widespread adoption of Facebook translates to an enormous volume of communities already established — and fortunately, we have visibility into any number of them. Practically speaking, the exercise from here becomes one of social business intelligence, learning what we can about existing conversations and communities so we can properly define a conversation and add to the identities participating in them.

At a more granular level, we can get into the kind of strategic modeling that specifically addresses the content, context, and campaigns which inspire people to act and share.

Additional Notes on Social Design

As implied at the start, this post could be considered a very different angle on social design. Although the importance of “traditional” social design merits a separate post, the following are some quick insights and references I hope you will also find useful.

First, if we had to boil down the common goal of social design, it would be to maximize the accessibility, ease and usefulness of social interactions between people and content. Since most agree that social media is about conversations, it’s easy to recognize there is great value to designing interfaces that best enable them.

Fortunately, we don’t need to become user experience (UX) design experts to take advantage of what’s been learned. The following are a few great references, many of which provide highly practical examples and tips:

• Guiding Principals for UX Designers
• 10 Principals of UX
• Creating Engaged and Passionate Users
• So You Wanna Be a User Experience Designer
• Putting People First

As a social media evangelist, the Conversation Prism became a disruptive tool that inspired both fear and opportunity. I leveraged it as the star slide of every presentation I gave over the next year – and also came to recognize a new thought leader in Solis, one who was articulating the future as well as the client experiences unfolding right in front of me.

I caught up with Solis recently to talk about his book, “The End of Business as Usual: Rewire The Way You Work to Succeed in the Customer Revolution.” The following are highlights from our conversation.

Jason Cormier: Was there any feedback or key learning’s you established from your last book, “Engage”, as a foundation for this new book?

Brian Solis: Yes. “Engage” was aimed at the social strategist, marketing and communications team, and progressive management teams that were ready to… just as the title instructs, engage.

Between the release of version 1 in March of 2010 and version 2 in March of 2011, I learned quite a bit about how organizations were or were not changing to adapt to market opportunities.

”The End of Business as Usual” is written for change agents and those fighting to compete for attention and relevance. This time, I’m also pursuing the executives who are responsible for leading their business to what’s next. And, this book makes the case for leadership teams to look beyond social media to see the impact of the connected customer on their business.

This isn’t a book about case studies on how to use Facebook or Twitter. Executives don’t use these networks so making the argument, while necessary, really was the role of “Engage”. This time, I make the case from a business level to demonstrate how running a rigid business, business as usual, will open the doors to digital Darwinism where companies that fail to adapt will become victims of natural selection.

JC: I saw Peter Guber called your new book “the map” to win the hearts and minds of customers with “new media experiences.” Do you dig into any of the practical and tactical here or would you say it’s more of a map as opposed to a set of directions?

BS: Interesting question. The book is broken into two halves. First, I make the case for the future of decision-making and how connected consumers are influencing and influenced by interest graphs (those individuals connected by keywords, shared relationships, and expressed interests).

The second half of the book focuses on how to build an adaptive organization that’s optimized to learn, engage, adapt, and lead. It’s part map and part step-by-step directions.

JC: I caught your interview with Radian6 CEO, Marcel Lebrun. In the context of “what’s next,” I like how he talked about the shift of how we must line up for our customers instead of the traditional mindset of how they line up for us.

He was using the idea of waiting on the phone in a support queue as an example, but was obviously referring to much more of an encompassing business concept – one he believes we’ll spend “the next 10 years” trying to figure out. What’s your take on his statements, and how might your book address them?

BS: The entire book is based upon the premise that businesses are stuck either reacting to customers or developing products or services in a vacuum that may or may not deliver against needs or aspirations. That’s business as usual and perhaps it will suffice for traditional consumers.

But for connected consumers, businesses have to focus beyond “figuring it out” to getting in front of customer experiences in order to shape and steer them. “The End of Business as Usual” looks at the “why” and also the “how” to help businesses rethink the infrastructure of the organization, the culture, processes, systems, methodologies, and decision trees to improve the internal collaboration needed to promote external collaboration.

You can’t engage externally if you can’t engage within. Employees, like customers, are stakeholders – and their support, input, and passion are critical ingredients in the recipe of tomorrow’s relevance.

JC: Over the years, you’ve referred to the “uh-oh” moment or “a-ha” moment as one that will ultimately lead companies into social media. What are the most common uh-oh moments you are seeing at this point in time?

BS: It’s amazing. Still today, businesses are thrust into social networks because of the “uh oh” moment. What’s even more amazing is that many businesses that are currently engaged in social media are also vulnerable to unsuspecting moments that blindside them into the new reality.

Businesses are not in control of customer experiences because they’re wrestling with the idea of what control really is. Broadcast marketing, screaming louder than consumers, buying media that tells people what to think, again, that’s business as usual.

Facebook currently houses 800 million active residents – that’s the size of the entire Internet in 2004. There’s no going back. Yet businesses today believe that they don’t need a social presence because that “might” invite negative interaction or operate social media in a silo while they wonder why they’re getting service related questions or complaints on a Facebook page dedicated to CSR activity.

JC: Shiv Singh said, “When it comes to digital marketing I believe marketers need to be more strategists & research minded than idea evaluators and implementers.” What’s the first thing that comes to mind regarding how your new book might help marketers (inside of brands or within agencies) best address the ever growing demand for strategy in social media?

BS: Shiv is right. If we examine many successful social media initiatives today, we’ll learn that great ideas connected with consumers to spark word of mouth, interaction, and desirable outcomes.

But in reality, this is yet another example of implementation. And, when you really think about it, there’s very little that’s truly social in everyday corporate social media campaigns. Sometimes I jokingly refer to social media as a great oxymoron.

One of the greatest advantages of social media is to listen to conversations to learn about mentions, context, sentiment, and reach. But when we really hear what people are saying and why, we start to peel back the layers of significance to research, learn, and adapt to new opportunities.

The insights that we extract simply by listening, hearing, and feeling what’s transpiring in social networks helps us translate empathy into action. The result is campaigns, service strategies, products, and so much more. By default, relevance is earned simply by reflecting customer behavior, wants, and opportunities. #AdaptorDie!

After discussing social media with senior marketers from several large brands, the implementer reference in the above tweet by Shiv Singh really resonates with me.

More brands are taking (social) community management activities back in house while seeking outside expertise to continue guiding decisions around social strategies and applications.

When it comes to the day-to-day of social marketing, corporate competence is rising — and the “yeah, I get that, but what’s next?” mentality is placing a higher demand on strategy with expectations of research (or at least experience) to back it up.

Game Mechanics for Custom Facebook Applications

For those of you sick of hearing about it, I’ll start by saying game mechanics are not a magic silver bullet — and I took great delight in hearing Gowalla CEO Josh Williams proclaim “we don’t need no stinkin’ badges” at Snowcial.

However, like Williams, those who have an established understanding of game mechanics are better positioned to get ahead. Why? Because it’s a matter of better knowing how human behavior works.

If you’re aware of certain ingredients that foster a higher propensity for sharing a social experience on Facebook, then you may realize higher fan growth and engagement as a result of implementation.

I touched on the Sanrio/Hello Kitty gifts application as an example of this when discussing social intelligence for Facebook marketing.

Another recent and impressive implementation of game mechanics (and overall digital strategy) is Vail Resort’s EpixMix, which is also promoted on the Snow.com Facebook page.

Although the application doesn’t reside on Facebook, the Connect functionality takes full advantage of Facebook sharing via passive, automated check-ins at six separate ski resorts, all enabled by an RFID chip embedded in your ski pass.

“Passive” means you don’t need to pull out a mobile device for checking in. Updates to your Facebook feed are automatically posted based on your location with the pass, and one-time Facebook authorization.

A leading game mechanic in play for EpicMix is the use of more than 200 ski pins (digital “stinkin’ badges”) you can earn based on locations you ski at each resort, total feet of elevation skied and more. Although Vail Resort’s CEO, Rob Katz, wasn’t specific about adoption rate when asked, he was very clear about the fact that users signing on to share in Facebook exceeded expectations.

Game on.

Strategic Modeling for Social Strategies

While game mechanics address specific strategies from a human behavior perspective, the bigger and equally important picture pertains to how all elements of social marketing work together for the good of a business.

A valuable, but often overlooked practice is to adopt a model that facilitates a framework for strategy. There are a range of options with strategic models, but the one I follow is a layered (“Four Cs”) approach:

• Content: This is the foundational element, focusing not only on the type of content (video, infographic, written, etc.) but also how to apply supporting research to guide its development and/or justification.
• Context: Think of this second layer as platforms enabling the display and distribution of your content. Facebook, for example, would be an element of context in this model.
• Campaigns: This layer puts the context in action, addressing key variables around planning, implementation, supporting applications, visibility efforts, communication, and measurement.
• Community: As the top layer, the strategic focus centers on loyalty achieved through specific campaigns, advocacy, or customer experiences. Community should be viewed as long-term, with the expectation of learning that can be applied to future iterations of strategy and research.

Practically speaking, we as marketers should be both implementers and “idea evaluators.” But as strategists, we’re called to a higher accountability — one that distinguishes originality from repurposing, and activity from productivity.

While there are many social networks that would fit into this conversation (Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr), there is one in particular who’s growth and engagement is already attracting brands.

Instagram is now the world’s largest mobile social network. When you look at it’s astounding growth numbers it’s hard to deny that brands should think about a presence in the community.

Already, we’ve seen great examples of brands using Instagram including Starbucks, Red Bull, Threadless and Burberry. Take a look at Room 214′s POV document which outlines some great thoughts and tips on how Instagram can be used from a brand perspective.

Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not enough. Having social media accounts is certainly a great (and quite necessary) start, but if you don’t use them to interact with your current and potential customers, there’s really no point.

Luckily, I’ve picked 3 simple and free social media tools to get you pointed in the right direction:

• OnlyWire: Have a few social media accounts, lots to say and little time? Check out OnlyWire. This tool enables you to post content across multiple social networks at the same time, with the push of a button. The service includes all of the top social and professional networks, and the free version allows for 300 submissions per month. Say goodbye to multiple log-ins and hello to your customers.

• Roost: Use Facebook and Twitter, but not always sure what to post or when? Give your content a boost with Roost. Their free Campaign Creator connects to your profiles, lets you schedule single posts or entire campaigns, and analyzes their reach to suggest areas for improvement. This tool can also apply a fancy algorithm to your Facebook data, spitting out a score that determines whether or not your audience will drive business to your location. It’ll even tell you the geographic spread of your fans.

• Timely: Under the impression that the more times you hop on Twitter and drop your knowledge the better? Timely begs to differ…according to this tool, it’s not about the number of times you tweet, it’s about which times you tweet (however, please don’t forget that first and foremost it’s about the content). Timely will analyze your last 199 tweets, figure out the best time slots, and auto-schedule your posts based on the data. Now you can start dropping that knowledge when it’s most likely to be picked up.

With new social media monitoring tools (many of them free) popping up almost by the day, there should be no excuse for neglecting your networks. Start engaging with your current and potential customers and you might be surprised by the increase in online conversations surrounding your brand.

• YouTube videos are 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of Google results than a text page
• YouTube is the second largest search engine in the U.S.
• As of February 2011, visitors were spending around 2.9 billion hours on YouTube per month

When you look at the facts, YouTube optimization makes a whole lot of sense. To get you started, here is a great video series that covers everything you need to know about YouTube SEO.

Content Optimization:

• Start Building Content: You should be creating a portfolio of content on YouTube. Plan to build in video with your normal campaigns. But video production is so costly, right? Wrong. All you need is iMovie and an iPhone to start creating content. If that’s too much to handle you can try one of the many screen share tools, an online slideshow creator, or a text-to-video service like xtranormal.

• Keep It Relevant: As you begin creating content, ask yourself this question: “Will this be useful in three months?” If the answer is no, it’s unlikely that your video has real replay value. Try to create content that will be relevant in the future… think long shelf life.

• Do Your Research: Before you begin making videos, do some keyword research using YouTube’s keyword tool. This will give you an idea of which videos will be successful. As an example, if you search “NBA” in Google, you’ll get results on players, news, and game scores, etc. If you search “NBA” in YouTube, many of the top videos will be about dunks, brawls, and highlights. This is a clue that a dunk compilation will likely do much better than a player profile video.

• Competitive Research: Do a normal YouTube search for some videos that are similar to the content you want to create. What is already working? What do people seem to like? What is most popular?

Metadata Optimization:

• Optimize Metadata for Video Search: Your metadata can help you appear in searches and gain traffic, but your content has to be good to experience true success (surprise). However, a well optimized video can help your visibility. Optimize your video title, tags, description, and category to appear in searches. Remember, YouTube search works differently than normal search engine results. If you need some clues, go back to your competitive and keyword research and see which video titles are performing the best. There is a great explanation of metadata here.

• Thumbnails: YouTube thumbnails are automatically chosen near the 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 marks. As you create content, plan to have something visually interesting happening at one of these points. Most people will only have a choice between these three thumbnails, so pick the most visually interesting one. In the case that you are a YouTube partner, you can upload whatever thumbnail image you would like.

Video Promotion:

• Leverage Existing Networks: The obvious thing to do is promote your videos on your website, email newsletter, and social networks. Take advantage of any platform where you have the ability to post a video.

• YouTube Promoted Videos: YouTube promoted video ads allow you to target your videos to specific keywords and pay for views. As a bonus, when you run promoted video ads, YouTube allows you to create a call-to-action link on your video, which can be used to drive traffic to another site. There is a great tutorial on how to do this here.

• Annotations: Use annotations on your other popular videos to drive traffic to newer videos. This can easily be done through the YouTube Annotations tool.

• Link building: In many cases, over 40% of views on your videos will come from sites outside of YouTube. Create a plan to reach out to bloggers and other sites, and build embeds of your YouTube videos.

YouTube Community:

• Channel Design: Spend some time on your YouTube channel. A blank YouTube channel is much like a blank Facebook page. Create a color scheme, upload a background, and organize your playlists, subscriptions and other modules.

• Moderation and Response: Keep a close watch on the comments that happen on your videos and your channel. Be sure to answer questions and respond to comments quickly. Treat these folks like you would treat visitors to your other social pages.

• Engage Fans: Videos with more ratings and comments will appear higher in YouTube search results. Within your content, you should encourage fans to rate, comment, and subscribe to your channel.

What we’d like to focus on is a point made by Tech Crunch. In their haste to split these two entities, the folks at Netflix neglected to acquire the social network properties before their big launch. TechCrunch highlights the user who owns the @Qwikster handle on Twitter, who is currently trying to sell this handle to Netflix.

After a look into the top social networking sites, it seems that they have not created an official page on Facebook or YouTube. There are however 7 unofficial fan-created Qwikster pages, all aggregating negative comments about this change.

So why is this oversight so bad? Why is it important to lock these online real estates down before you launch a new brand, company etc?

Control

Because Netflix did not secure these, they are not in control of what their critics and customers say about them. Had they obtained official accounts prior to the announcement, they could give customers and their company an official forum to comment and respond. The messages are out there, and it seems they are doing very little to respond or explain, which is not going to endear them to their customers.

Random Squatters

They now have to deal with people who are holding onto these properties, and will potentially have to pay them in order to acquire (some speculate in the six figure arena). People can get mighty greedy when they have the whip-hand over a corporation. This cost could have been avoided had they handled this in advance, or gotten a similar handle i.e. @QwiksterOfficial. In addition to the cost, they could have avoided a very public discussion about what kind of deal this yoo-hoo was after.

Confusion for Customers

Not having official outlets for your customers to comment, complain or ask legitimate questions can be very confusing. If they comment on an unofficial forum and never get a response, they may feel negatively about your brand.

Embarrassment

Netflix is a revolutionary company; nothing that they have done can change their impact on the digital-media landscape. However, it’s kind of embarrassing that an Internet-oriented company did not think of this in advance. It seems they don’t really even have a cohesive branded presence on YouTube as Netflix.

Four Easy Steps to Avoid This

1. Determine which social networking sites are the best fits for your company. It is usually smart to incorporate more incase you need them, or at least protect them.
2. Research what is already out there, if there is someone who already owns your brand name, what variation could you use across all of the social networks (i.e. if @MyersCorporation is taken, consider @MyersCorporationOfficial), consistency is key.
3. Grab them! (it will probably take less than an hour)
4. Figure out how you are going to consistently leverage these accounts, so that they become synonymous with your official brand.

What Attribute is Your Brand Looking for?

One of the first steps is to understand the method of influence people can have. After reviewing these, you can better identify which segment you’d like to pursue, culling down the numbers significantly. For instance, Ed Keller and Jon Berry, authors of the ‘The Influentials’ identify five key attributes:

Activists (Specialized): these are the active members of a topic/brand/community who entice people to take a certain action or get involved. If you need this person to incite action in others, activists will help drive response.

Connected (Broad Stroke): influencers who have sizable numbers of connections across the social networks. If you are looking for sheer volume of brand impressions this can be a powerful attribute.

Impact (Trust and Aspiration): these people influence others by being reputable by many and are trusted. If you are looking to build brand goodwill or trust with your customers, this validation from a trusted source can help.

Active Minds (Professional Dilettantes): these people are jack-of-all trades because they have influence across many different topics. These influencers can be helpful if you have many products and the audiences are segmented differently.

Trend Setters (Early Adoption): these people are ahead-of-the game and can influence others before an idea/product is popular. This can help build early excitement and credibility for your brand or product.

After reviewing these, which do you believe will have the greatest impact on your customers?  Looking at the attributes should help you start to understand who you need to pursue and the impact that they will have.

Where Does Your Target Audience Hangout?

Selecting one or multiple channels is another big factor in the social influence equation.  This is where your demographics and existing research comes in. Using this information will help you determine the best method to reach your customer.

For instance say you own a company that makes products geared toward boys aged 13-17.  Based on those demographics, what channel is best to reach them? Where do they hang out online? Where is it likely that an influencer could reach them? You can probably have a gut feeling about this, but make sure to double check the statistics of the channel to confirm your assumption.

Selecting the best channel to reach your target audience will help you identify the major players in that space.

Which Numbers Matter for Social Influence?

This depends on each social channel you have selected, so let’s give you a breakdown of the numbers to look for on the top three most popular social networking sites (in terms of size):

Facebook & Twitter: Fortunately, there is a handy-dandy tool called Klout that will calculate several variables of influence for you, on a rating of 1-100. Best practice dictates that a score above 50 is usually a good influencer. When you are searching for particular topics within Facebook and Twitter, note certain people and double-check their Klout.

YouTube: While many people don’t think about this as a Social Network, it actually is ranked #2 in terms of size and activity. Look for activity in a influencer’s channel:  comments on a video, responses to comments, subscribers vs. subscribe ratio.  This will show you how this person’s content is received, whether they are popular and if they engage with their community.

Other Social Networking Sites: Look for engagement factors, not just sheer size of community: discussions, comments, sharing. Look at how an influencer responds to commentary; are they helpful and problem-solution oriented? Do they suggest further action? What kind of information do they share? (Links, suggestions, products).

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This process can feel like an extremely overwhelming funnel: taking hundreds of millions of people and figuring out who is a best fit for you. Using these guidelines should help you understand how to take the top of this funnel and scale it down in order to find the best influential fits for your company.

With over 3,152,000 Likes on the Audi USA Facebook page, it’s not surprising that Audi’s fan engagement is above average. What is surprising, however, is that Audi has had an average of 7,487 Likes and 292 Comments on their posts so far in April.

According to Mashable, Saif Ajani, CEO and co-founder of Visibli, is not sure why Audi ranked so high in this study. “We’re trying to figure it out ourselves,” Ajani says. Even though Visibli’s CEO can’t pinpoint why Audi ranked so high in this study, I can offer a few points as to how this happened:

1. Unique Opportunities: Audi isn’t just pushing out facts about their latest models, posting videos from auto shows, and giving away free cars on their Facebook page; Audi is creating an engaging experience for their fans.
   On March 11th, Audi asked fans, “What’s the best thing that anyone has ever said about your Audi at the pump?” This question encouraged conversation amongst car enthusiasts and provided a unique opportunity for Audi owners to share their stories. From our experience, status updates that end with a question have a higher interaction rate than those that do not.

   

2. Photos: From managing my own clients’ communities, it is obvious that photos generate a higher Facebook interaction rate than other posts that include videos, links, etc. Photos not only generate higher interactions on the Wall, but they also have priority when Facebook’s Edgerank determines what to include in the Top News feed. More time in the news feed means more consumer engagement.
   I decided to test this theory on the Audi Facebook page (since they post multiple pictures and albums a week) and found that Audi’s photo uploads have generated an average of 11% more Likes and 75% more Comments than other posts so far in April.

   

3. Passion: Let’s be honest, it helps that Audi is a recognizable, sexy brand, but that’s not all they have going for them. Just looking at Audi’s Facebook page, it’s obvious that there is a real passion there, both from the brand and the consumers.It’s important for any brand to play on the consumer’s emotion to increase engagement on Facebook.
   In this instance, Audi USA provides a platform for Audi lovers to bond over their favorite car and emotionally connect with the brand.

Why do you think Visibli concluded that Audi is the most engaged page on Facebook? Leave a comment below.