With people liking more pages, connecting with more friends and with an ever-growing Open Graph network, Facebook’s News Feed has become a rather crowded place. In fact, many users have great difficulty navigating through their News Feed and are made to trawl through an irrelevant sea of irrelevancy to get to the information they want.

With the launch of ‘Interest Lists’, however, Facebook is hoping to reduce News Feed clutter by presenting users with the information they are most interested in.

Users on Facebook will have the opportunity to subscribe to broader interest feeds such as ‘cooking’, or more specific lists, such as ‘vegetarian recipes’ . Users can also create lists comprised of celebrities, public figures and brand pages and more – the list is endless

As soon as a list is created, an ‘Interests’ tab will appear in the left hand column of the user’s Facebook landing page. The idea in all of this is that by displaying top stories from each Interest group in that users’ News Feed, the whole site will feel customised and, more importantly, much less cluttered.

If by now you’re thinking this all sounds a little similar to how Google+ and Twitter are running their show, you’re not alone. According to TechCrunch, ”The release continues Facebook’s battle to usurp Twitter’s control of the interest graph. The feature combined with Subscribe could be good enough to jeopardize Twitter’s long term growth.”

As for my thoughts, I’m not too sure. But I can say with some confidence that I don’t think we’ll be seeing the demise of the little blue bird any time soon. Well, not while Justin Bieber is still tweeting his little teenage heart (throb) out. To be honest, I’d say the player to watch for the real social media uprising is Google+. But that’s for another blog post.

So what is it?

Hubspot describes Pinterest as a social network that allows users to visually share, curate and discover new interests by posting images or videos to their own or others’ pinboards (i.e. a collection of ‘pins’ with a common theme). Pinterest visually emphasises each user’s lifestyle, allowing you to share your tastes and interests with others. The social network’s goal is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting”. Users can either upload images from their computer or pin things they find when browsing online via the Pinterest bookmarklet.

Before you dive in…

Before you even begin contemplating using Pinterest as a business, you need to consider Pinterest etiquette. The site heavily discourages self promotion so as a company you shouldn’t upload images of your products or services, instead try uploading images that display the lifestyle that your products or services create.

One company leading the charge with Pinterest is Etsy – the online shopping website with 51,000+ followers.

The thing I love about Etsy’s Pinterest account is how they take their interesting and heartwarming products and show you how they can be used in everyday life. This appeals to the large female user base on Pinterest (approximately 70% of users are female) and encapsulates everything Etsy stands for through imagery. This gives Etsy’s customers new ideas for how to use their products and more incentive to buy.

Mashable is another brand that is killing it on Pinterest. Mashable is the largest independent news source for digital culture, social media and technology, so it is no surprise that they are seriously pinning.

Mashable is preparing to be ahead of the curve for when the male population finally gets on board with Pinterest. As a tech-head myself, I love the way that Mashable is delivering data through imagery around boards dedicated to web humour, infographics, social media and even super bowl ads. Mashable truly shows that even as a data driven company, there are still ways that you can visually appeal to your market and create interest.

As you can tell from the above examples, the trick to Pinterest isn’t about showing off your products or services directly. It’s about appealing to your target market’s lifestyle through showing the lifestyle benefits of your products or services via creative imagery.

How do I get started?

To get your business up and ‘pinning’, here are a couple of ways to use Pinterest as part of your social media marketing strategy.

1. Visually appeal to your market. Pinterest is a visual social network, so if your business is largely design based or pumps out infographics, create a board that highlights this content. For example, an architecture firm could pin images of great architecture onto a board called ‘architecture inspiration’. Ensure that you are strategic about pinning content and you mix in a range of images to amplify the visual appeal of your pinboard.
2. Create engagement. A great way to get your target market engaging with your pins is to create a user-generated pinboard. This gives your fans the opportunity to become involved in your Pinterest page and display images that reflect what your product or service allows them to achieve. You can ask your customers to pin images that showcase the lifestyle that your product or service allows them to enjoy. Think of this strategy as a way to showcase customer testimonials through images.
3. Make it easy for users to pin your content. Make it super dooper easy so your 80 year old grandma can pin your visual content by adding a pin-it button to your website. This is no different to other social media sharing buttons such as ‘tweet’ or ‘like’.
4. Re-pin. Ensure that you re-pin what your followers are pinning. This will create a non-promotional yet engaging way to show your followers that you are genuinely interested in their visual lifestyles.
5. Run a promotion. First, consult Pinterest’s terms of use to ensure that your promotion doesn’t infringe upon its guidelines. Pinterest can allow you to host promotions that ask users to create a pinboard on their own account to demonstrate what they love about your brand, products or services. You can then view their pinboard to evaluate entrants. Even better – you can re-pin these boards to your own Pinterest page and ask followers to vote on the boards to select the winner.
6. Gather data. You can very quickly begin to understand the visual and emotional appeal that your brand, products and services have on your customers. This is invaluable data as this can fuel future marketing and advertising creative ideas.
7. Show your business’ personality. Don’t be boring! Pinterest has a heavy lifestyle focus, so what better opportunity is there to give people a peek into the personality of your brand. You could create a pinboard to display your organisation’s corporate culture around the office by uploading images of parties and award ceremonies etc. This will humanise your brand and allow your Pinterest followers to relate to you.
8. Social Media Optimisation. Sure, Pinterest sounds fun and could be a great opportunity for many businesses, but you need to make sure it’s generating results. Whenever possible, include links back to your website and landing pages and track the amount of referral traffic and leads generated through Google Analytics. Obviously social media marketing should be focused towards building an engaged community first, and then shifting the focus to getting this community to purchase. Subsequently, sales from social media marketing can often come months or years after social media marketing, however it is imperative that you are measuring social networks and their performance on your business’ bottom line.

Are you using Pinterest? Let us know your creative ways of showcasing lifestyle in the below comments.

P.s. Feel free to follow Rhys on Pinterest here. He has a pinboard of highly entertaining moustaches.

Thanks to the internet and eCommerce, we now have access to a larger amount of products than ever before. Consumers have become increasingly comfortable in buying online, especially with more and more eCommerce retailers jumping on board with free shipping and ‘one-click ordering’.

It is predicted by eMarketer that the number of U.S. consumers buying online will increase 14.9% to 170.3 million in 2015. Accompanying that, between 8-10% of all queries on Google are shopping related.

One of the issues with online shopping is the paradox of choice. Sometimes too much selection can be downright overwhelming. It’s a problem of which the internet is both a cause and a cure.

So what will the new generation of eCommerce online retailers be offering to make it easier for consumers? The answer is….. ‘Push Shopping’! Push Shopping consists of leveraging eCommerce, online data and expert curation to help consumers make up their minds.

Thanks to digital technology, we can ‘set it and forget it’ – whether it’s using Siri to remind you to get bread and milk on the way home, or paying your phone bill via direct debit. We have grown accustomed to letting our digital products automate our life. So why don’t we utilise this offline? Enter online subscription services. For the man with no time (and presumably no washing machine), ManPacks delivers socks and underwear each month. Guyhaus will cover your shaving cream, toothpaste and deodorant. And for the ladies, Hoseanna will auto-ship lip balm, razors and other essentials.

Personalisation is now expected amongst online shoppers. Based on algorithms, online retailers can suggest products based off your previous shopping habits, interests and likes. In fact, customers who click on a suggestion are 30% more likely to purchase. Subscription sites like Kim Kardashian’s Shoedazzle are great examples of this. When you land on the website, you are asked to complete a quiz that determines your style preferences. They then send you fashion and beauty products each month based on your statistically-determined ‘personal style’.

Overall, Push Shopping could significantly change the way we live our lives. Utilising automation based services, coupled with personalisation, Push Shopping could be the ‘architecture of serendipity’. As human beings living in an ever changing and automated world, Push Shopping could give us the suprise and delight we all crave in getting a gift, and most importantly, a gift that is tailored to what we like.

There are more and more subscription based Push Shopping websites popping up. These subscription sites inject new life into old business models and leverage the best of the web to create new real-world products and experiences.

My guess is that one day we will be able to use online software that tracks our family and friends and suggests Christmas/birthday/valentines gifts based on their recent ‘likes’. We mightn’t even have to worry about sending these gifts to them – postage may also be automated through our favourite sites.

Will you be using Push Shopping soon? Maybe even by next Christmas? It’s anyone’s guess!

This is a question that has, until now, presented potential advertisers with a degree of uncertainty when outlining advertising budgets, invariably stemming from their inability to categorically forecast returns. In essence, I liken advertising expenditure with putting money into a poker machine – sometimes you win, and win big (and yet don’t know how or why) and sometimes, you come out worse for wear.

The Next Big Thing?

While many agree that internet and digital advertising are increasingly forming pivotal channels within any modern marketing mix, TV and other traditional media platforms are by no means completely out-dated.

Increasingly, advertisers are opting to utilise integrated marketing strategies to convey a single message across numerous platforms. In doing so, advertisers attempt to ensure greater message retention, greater exposure and higher frequency with these tactics with an ultimate goal of achieving increased brand/message recall.

We know more and more people are consuming more than one form of media while watching television. Be it their smart phones, tablets or laptops, Australian audiences are moving towards the simultaneous consumption of both passive and interactive media.

So how will advertisers be able to capitalise on this evolving consumer trend?

Enter ‘Social-TV’

Already being pioneered in various countries around the world, the Seven Network, in conjunction with their internet and digital media interest Yahoo!7, are the first to bring such a product to Australia, with a free ‘Social-TV’ app called Fango (follow the link for a video demonstration).

In an official media release, Yahoo!7 have given a sneak peak of what advertisers can expect from this new medium moving forward. Although still in its infancy, Fango promises a renewed sense of audience engagement, placing particular emphasis on garnering and maintaining the attention of users who have become accustomed to the immediacy and interactivity of the internet.

“Fango is the social way to watch TV. It will provide a real-time social forum for fans to connect with each other around their favourite programmes and live media events. They won’t just be watching, they will have the opportunity to participate in real time…”

This means that, during the second set of the aforementioned Australian open quarter final, multitasking audiences can be voting on who is going to win the next point in real time, discussing the commentator’s remarks or even earning points and badges for responding to engaging brand communications!

The Fango platform will potentially open a whole new set of possibilities for media measurement by allowing networks and advertisers to better understand and monitor their consumer base. This will ultimately enable advertisers to drive more engaging, integrated and interactive ‘content moments’ to users within their desired demographic.

And here’s the big news, a huge barrier to entry for has been removed with Yahoo!7 confirming that the Fango will not be locked to the 7 Network. Yahoo!7 plan expand to the other Australian television networks in 2012.

Targeted Brand Building on TV?

Many will have doubted television’s ability to conduct truly interactive, direct response marketing communications; though the advent of Social-TV will definitely go some way to aiding this.

“Fango will have a range of advertising opportunities available connecting advertisers with a highly engaged audience…

“Fango provides a companion experience to connect brands with passionate fans within a social environment in a way not available before. We are working with advertisers to develop new advertising experiences that engage the consumer across multiple devices in a truly integrated way,”

–Yahoo!7 Official press release

TV has been a medium slow to adapt to and effectively co-exist with the ongoing digital marketing boom, and it’s heartening that TV is realising the opportunities and is starting to evolve.

Watch this space!

Now we are starting to see a new generation of start-ups focusing on moving transactions back to local neighborhoods through location-based mobile advertising.

Imagine this….

The Broncos are kicking off at Suncorp Stadium against your favorite team in 1 hour’s time.  Instead of going to eBay and bidding on tickets that won’t arrive until next week, now you can utilise location based apps on your mobile.  These apps allow you to see what is available within your local area, meaning that you may only have to make a short trip down the road to purchase those hallowed footy tickets.

But these apps don’t stop at tickets! You can see garage sales, jobs, real estate properties, restaurants, surfboards and more, all based on where you are located.

Some app development companies have been very specific in what they are targeting. Real Estate start-ups Zillow and Trulia have focused purely on Real Estate listings. Both apps allow users to instantly browse properties nearby and Trulia has noted that the percentage of its online visitors who also used its mobile app was as high as 46% in some US cities.

Another market that is inherently local is the job market. In the US, startup Zaarly is gaining some traction by creating a peer-to-peer job market. Zaarly allows users to state what they want done – bring me a drink, mow my lawn, teach me algebra – and the price they are willing to pay. Users can apply for jobs that appeal to them in their local area.

As advertising shifts local, here are some tips to ensure that your business is ready:

• Crawl before you can walk. If you’re a startup, or you are making your first investment into online marketing, get your backyard right first. Too many companies try to target everything under the sun and forget where their real customers come from.
• Be Specific. If you’re a restaurant, make sure that you’re listed on relevant apps like Urban Spoon etc. Keep an eye on what people are saying about your food. After all, if you’re only down the road from someone and they like your food, you’re likely to get them in your restaurant regularly.
• Target Local Keywords. When it comes to promoting your website, ensure that you are targeting a mixture of generic and local keywords. People are getting savvier and more specific in the way they search. Searchers are less willing to travel far distances.
• Remain Competitively Priced. With everything being at people’s fingertips through online and app-based devices, it’s imperative that your products/services are competitively priced.
• Get Social! Social Media strategies are incredibly effective in breaking down demographics amongst target markets. If your business hasn’t taken advantage of Facebook or Twitter, get in touch with Reload today!

Let us know how your business is ‘going local’.

After that article went live, I was contacted by the Me.dium search team who were keen to hear my thoughts on their new search engine.

The idea behind the me.dium search engine is that it they claim to be the first crowd-powered search engine. According to the team, search results are adjusted to reflect what users are currently browsing.

The idea seems sound. Having search results mediated by recent search trends should in theory create better results. The problem that I can see from my test searches is that unless you are searching for a high-popularity search term, there isn’t enough data to adjust the results based on trends, which mean you get standard search results.

Having said that, if you are looking for the latest “hot spots” on the net for a topical search term, then the me.dium search engine does seem to deliver some reasonably good results.

But to be fair to Google, let’s compare it using the search term I’ve used as a example before, “neon lighting Brisbane.”

In Google:

Of the top ten results 6 of the 10 were actually sites selling neon lights in Brisbane, one was a wikipedia article on Brisbane Tourism, two were informational sites on neon lights and one was my old article where I used ‘neon lighting brisbane’ as an example just like now.

In me.dium:

Top result was my old article, but five out of the ten were for sites actually selling neon lights, one was a wikipedia article, and three were sites that had some relevance to neon lights.

The Verdict:

The natural un-mediated results are not bad in me.dium, and they’re certainly better than Cuil. And when you search using popular terms the crowd-control does step in quite nicely, but realistically I would see no benefit in moving away from Google, especially when most SEO’s believe that Google takes clicking-patterns into consideration as part of their algorithm anyway.

Me.dium currently has over 2 million users who have installed the me.dium toolbar, and those users obviously find it useful but I won’t be switching anytime soon. A very good niche player.

The search engine, called cuil (pronounced “cool”) is an old Irish word for knowledge and is the brainchild of a former Google employee, Anna Patterson.

There are some in the industry who claim that cuil could threaten Google but others are very sceptical.

The engine works on the premise that it returns results based on content relevancy to the search criteria. They claim that this results in better search results for the user. They also claim to have indexed more pages than any other search engine on the net, over 120 billion.

Here’s the problems for Cuil as I see them. For one, the fact that they have gone down the content relevancy path is dangerous because it means that for certain three or four word search phrases, such as “neon lighting brisbane”, sites could theoretically keyword spam and get high listings.

Despite Cuil’s line that they weight content relevancy more heavily, in many cases I found that the sites that were ranking well on a search phrase only mentioned that phrase once on their page and weren’t even on that topic.

For a quick comparison, lets use a Google vs Cuil search for ‘neon lighting brisbane.’

In Google:

Of the top ten results (and let’s face it, that’s all that matters), 6 of the 10 were actually sites selling neon lights in Brisbane, one was a wikipedia article on Brisbane Tourism, two were informational sites on neon lights and one was my old article where I used ‘neon lighting brisbane’ as an example just like now.

In Cuil:

Unfortunately, the results were hopeless. There was one result for a blue light disco (not in Brisbane), a broadway musical in Brisbane, a chrysler site, a blog (who mentioned lighting in passing), a mini jukebox, a site selling computer hardware, a film studio, an electrical transformer store, and two news sites.

The Verdict:

Obviously this is just one example, but try your own searches and you’ll see that quite consistently Cuil generates fairly obscure results with little reference to the search topic.

Now I’m not trying to be too harsh on them, it would be very difficult to spring up overnight and upstage Google but they have a long way to go before they’re even playing in the same league.

Location targeting is a must, as is fixing the logo-like images that appear beside results that are either poorly cropped, pixelated or simply of no relevance to the site they are beside.

But users would probably put up with some of these drawbacks (at least for a while) if Cuil generated more relevant results than Google. However, they don’t really get close.

Don’t write them off just yet, the layout and design is quite nice, but underneath it all you just feel like there isn’t the guts that Google has.