I noticed that most of my friends aren’t using Pinterest for video? I scanned all my friends and the major businesses and brands I could find (Today Show, HGTV, Whole Foods) and none of them had pinned a video.

Why is that?

Perhaps it’s because the “Add a Pin” prompt says this:

…which the way it’s worded is confusing (“Find Images” probably throws people off).

Or perhaps- it’s because people don’t know that you can pin videos?

It’s simple to do. You can add video from YouTube to Pinterest like this:

I even created my own board for my video blogs:

So- back to my question: why aren’t most of my friends and brands/businesses not using Pinterest for video? There’s an entire section in the main navigation dedicated to ‘Videos‘. You can even view videos on the iPhone App:

What’s your take? What do you think?

Are you pinning videos? Why- or why not?

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Recently, I added some Gmail shortcut stickers to my keyboard at work- and then tweeted about it

A few days later I got an email from Google asking to feature it on a few of their Gmail blogs/SoMe. Check it out! (btw, if you want to buy these gmail stickers you can here)

Every once and a while I come across a tool or tip that I think it’s so cool- I just have to share it…

Read any digital marketing or social media blog or publication in the past year- chances are you’ll come across articles featuring or highlighting the social influence scoring system Klout. They’re positioned as a influence measurement platform that makes it easy to identify whom is influential online (this is measured by analyzing: RT, mentions, Facebook comments/likes, Google +1′s etc.).

Typically, to see Klout scores for any given person- you have to go to Klout.com/[INSERT-NAME-HERE] (or tools like CoTweet have plugins built in to see scores). However, I came across this nifty plugin that was developed at Klout’s own internal hackathon. This allows you to see the scores on Twitter.com right next to each Tweet like this:

Yeah- pretty slick isn’t it?! I think so.

You can download and grab the plugins here:

• Chrome Klout Extension
• Firefox Klout Add-on Extension

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This is a helpful tip and trick I discovered- this is how to embed a Tweet into a blog post. The advantage of doing this (other than not having to take a screenshot) is this allows you pull in the Tweet with native Twitter buttons that allow people to 1-click: retweet, reply, favorite, and follow the account of the embedded Tweet.

Copy and paste this 1-line of code:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> ^TS</p>&mdash; Twitter API (@twitterapi) <a href="PUT-THE-TWEET-URL-HERE"></a></blockquote>

*Please note, you need to copy this on the HTML editor not the Visual tab

The result should look like this:

^TS

— Twitter API (@twitterapi)

Pretty slick huh? Tell your blogger friends- or better yet, click the RT button above

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Just thought I should share if you didn’t know… “group messaging” is a default setting on the iPhone for iOS 5. You should know this before you send out a group text message- because everyone gets the reply <-- :) something think about before you send out a mass text message

note: you can disable group messaging (<--scroll down on that link)

Have you heard of Title Boxing? Some would say it’s a fairly new trend in fitness (they even claim if you workout there for one hour just three times a week and you will lose at least one pound a week without dieting).

We just launched a new Facebook giveaway app for Title Boxing (a client). Here are 3 learnings I wanted to share given the many clients we work with for these types of promotions. 3 tips to keep in mind when developing a giveway or contest:

1.) The “5-second rule” applies.
When deciding on a contest or giveaway, it should take less than 5-seconds to understand what it is and how to enter. “Clever” isn’t always the most effective. And far too often in the boardrooms and those posh marketing conference rooms people get caught up in complicated promotions. The attention span of a user on Facebook is much lower than the average user. Facebook is inherently designed for media snacking, so a contest that takes time and work is typically less successful. Rule of thumb: make it simple and tell them in words how “easy it is to enter”.

2.) Ask for their email address.
Giveaways and contests are highly effective email acquisition tactics. We believe you have to “give to get”. And customers are ok with this. So make the [email address] field required. Also, the information you require on the form should be dependent upon the minimum amount of data you need to segment and take action on from an email and CRM perspective. Don’t get greedy and ask for more. Remember my advice from Rule #1.

Also, in compliance with Facebook Promotions Guidelines, you cannot use Facebook to notify winners, such as by sending them a message, chat, or wall post alerting them to their win. So having their email address is vital.

3.) When you build it, they won’t enter.
Just because you build an amazing contest or giveaway app, it doesn’t mean hundreds or thousands of people will flock to enter. Cascade and flex your digital channels (email, website, twitter, facebook) with a drip roll-out to drive traffic, stimulate buzz, and attention about contest. Bonus Tip: one of the best promotional strategies for a giveaway or contest is to work with influential bloggers or existing communities to push and support the promotion <– coorindate this prior to the launch

KCTV5 asked me to come on to their morning show with Carol Long to talk about what parents can do to let their kids use social networking tools like Facebook and still keep tabs. During the interview, I shared 5 tips …but I ran out of time and didn’t get to share a new service I think parents should consider. A new service called Zone Alarm SocialGuard allows you to monitor Facebook for your kids. It’s only $2 per month/$20 per year (pretty cheap if you ask me). What I really like about this service is it’s “invisible” (your kids won’t know you’re monitoring them). And the service sends email alerts right away to parents (this way you don’t have to login to see if there are things that need your attention). WSJ has a great review on SocialGuard on it, if you’re interested.

You can watch my interview on KCTV5 here. If you want instructions on my last tip I share in the interview, here are step-by-step instructions on how to follow your kid(s) every time they update their status on Facebook.

Do you use Gmail? There are some hidden features in Gmail that you can turn-on that will save you hours of your life (if not days). I put together this instructional video blog to share with you my 5 favorite Gmail hacks and tips (click here if you can’t see the video below).

BTW, if you ever want to see all the keyboard shortcuts in Gmail, press: SHIFT + ?

When I’m training clients and friends on the differences between Twitter and Facebook, there is 1 important difference between the two tools that I underscore: the feeds: real-time (twitter) vs. delayed + filtered (facebook).

Understand how the feed works.

Facebook and Twitter’s feeds may look similar- but they’re very different. If you want to best leverage the “how” and “when” to use the channel(s), you must first understand how each are presented and read/consumed by its users (the context). When you look “under the hood”, you’ll see the data is organized very differently between Facebook vs. Twitter.

Delayed + Filtered (Facebook)

You may not realize it, but there’s logic behind your Facebook News Feed. What you see on your Facebook homepage is based on an algorithm (referred to as “Edge Rank“) that determines what you see from your friends and pages. This is a smart filter- so you only see relevent, valuable content from your friends based interactions (# views, likes, comments, shared). Furthermore, your News Feed has a “freshness” delay to what content to show you. Meaning, you are not seeing every up-to-the-minute updates from friends and pages. Instead, you’re viewing the results of a highly complex equation- that’s delayed and filtered just for you. It’s a custom experience. And you can bet Zucky designed (and continues to refine it) Facebook’s algorithms to best help users weed through the mess of seeing every action users are taking.

Real-Time (Twitter)

Your Twitter feed is like a never stopping, flowing river, with snippets of 140 characters of text and links. It’s unfiltered and raw. Meaning, the moment any of whom you’re following updates on Twitter, you see it in your Timeline. It’s as simple as that.

So what should you do?

Twitter is a channel in which content moves fast. Minutes, not hours (and it moves fast in everyone’s feed, no matter the device they’re using). The speed and velocity is so quick- a study found the average lifespan of a Tweet is only 1 hour. The content and updates you post in this channel are very disposable. And I’m a firm believer that no one reads all your tweets. (so get over yourself).   But it also means Twitter is a great communication channels for live events and commentary about things happening right now. For example, you could ask your friends and followers what was the song just sung on American Idol? Or complain about the bad foul in the NBA Finals on the basketball game you’re watching. Tools like Facebook and Google aren’t best designed to help you with answers to these types of real-time questions.

Facebook is different. There is a much longer expiration date for content on Facebook. It’s more likely to “stick” to friends’ News Feeds longer (hours). Look at your own News Feed. When you scan it top to bottom, what do you see? If you look closely, there are time stamps ranging from “15 minutes ago” all the way to “18 hours ago”. This means, when you create and share content- understand the Facebook channel has a longer shelf-life.

It’s important to understand that users consume and view Twitter in real-time vs. Facebook, which is delayed and filtered. This context provides important considerations for [what] you should share and [how] you do it. Knowing this information, informs how you craft relevant, valuable content, and message it appropriately in each channel.
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This is a simple Facebook hack that you can use for your friends or even for work (great for Community Managers, marketers CMOs and executives).

Many people often complain they don’t have time for Facebook. But yet, they also know they should be aware of certain activity and things that are happening on Facebook with their friends and family. Sometimes there are business/work/research reasons that you might have in regards to following activity from competition or certain businesses who have Facebook pages.

Did you know Facebook provides a free text message service for status updates? It allows you to get a push text message, when specific friends you choose or a page you like updates their status (in real-time). You can have up to 50 alert subscriptions (friends/pages).

While it might seem extreme at first to sign-up for this service, I really like getting updates from people like my sister, best friends, and my favorite brands. This is just one of the many ways you can integrate social media in your life to augment relationships (it’s what I refer to as ambient intimacy). Knowing these details creates intimacy. (It also saves a lot of time when you finally do get to catchup with these people in real life!) It’s not so much about meaning, it’s just about being in touch.

Just follow these instructions:

1.) First, you need to activate Facebook Mobile Texts for your phone (if you haven’t already). To activate Mobile Texts, go to the Mobile tab on the Account Settings page, click “Register for Facebook Text Messages,” and complete the steps that follow.

2.) Click “Account” -then- “Account Settings“.

3.) On your Account page, click the “Mobile” tab.

4.) On this screen, under the heading “Whose status updates should go to my phone?” <– type the names of your friends and FB pages that you’d like text messages alerts.

That’s it! It’s a bit tricky getting to the screen on Facebook that lets your do this, but it’s really simple once you know where it is. Social media enables ambient intimacy to occur. It allows us to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. And these social technologies have the power to greatly augment (not destroy or lessen) existing relationships. But like anything, you must understand how to integrate it appropriately- but once you do, it’s powerful stuff.
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Have you ever visited a new city and wished there was an easy way to find out which of your friends live there? Well, there’s a “Facebook Hack” I came up with for that About once a month I find myself traveling for work. Each time I drop into a new city, I use Facebook to tell me which of my friends live in different cities. It’s really simple and just takes a few clicks to get to the right screen.

Just follow these instructions:

1.) Click “Friends” on the left side-bar.

2.) Then click the “Edit Friends” button in the middle of the page.

3.) Click the drop-down option “Recently Interacted” and change it to “Search by Current City”.

4.) Type the name of the city you want to filter your friend list by, to see which of them are in specific cities. Here’s an example of what it looks like:

That’s it! It’s a bit tricky getting to the screen on Facebook that lets your do this, but it’s really simple once you know where it is. This is just another example of how social tools and technologies can truly make life better and easier.
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Mobile is exploding. People who access the internet from a mobile device daily has increased dramatically (anytime, anywhere). According to Jan. 2011 research, 20% of US mobile phone users- use the mobile internet once a day or more often.

Smartphones killed the phonebook.

When is the last time you opened a phonebook to lookup a phone number? Be honest (perhaps the better question is, do you even own a phonebook?). We now search on Google for local business phone #’s using our mobile devices. And often, we aren’t looking for a website to read, but just a phone number to call.

Create “click-to-call” phone numbers on Google.

Did you know, as business owner, you can advertise at the top of Google’s search results page with a “clickable” phone number? You can customize the AD with phone number shown based on person’s location, and even track analytics on # of calls received. All you need to do, is sign-up for GoogleAdWords, setup location extensions, and check mark “show ads on iPhones and other mobile devices” on your profile. That’s it. Customers will then be able to click-to-call you from any ADs you run. And the costs are the exact same as the cost of a click to visit your website.

Here’s an example of a search I did for “chinese food” in Kansas City. There’s an opportunity here for someone to bid on this phrase and put their business in this result listing. Also, I should also probably charge my battery. 31% is scary close to being low battery!

Given the proliferation of smartphones and the behavioral shift that Google has become the new phonebook, have you adjusted your digital marketing accordingly? Setting up ADs like this are simple. Don’t over think it. It just makes sense. Have you done this already? Is it working well for you?
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Some people ask me, “What’s your Twitter strategy?” My answer: I follow my 4:1 rule. And I speak my mind, share stuff I find interesting, helpful, or promote others. That said, I’ve decided I’m going to re-post some Tweets here. I realize you do not read all my Tweets (I’ll get over it). But if you’re subscribed at my blog, hopefully you’ll find this series helpful.

You might be wondering why I titled this blog post #23? It seems silly to start at #1. Let’s just pretend together I’ve been doing this for a while. Cause I should have been doing this yesterday.

1.) You can edit comments on Facebook without deleting them:

2.) Backup your files! It’s not a matter of “if” it will happen, it’s “when” it does happen:

Here’s a link to Senuti, the program I use on my Mac. It lets you take off music on your iPod. Easy to use, just a few clicks and the backup process starts.

3.) If you create original text content online, Copyscape is a really helpful tool:

4.) Here are awesome Gmail hacks and tips, to make it easier to use:

If you’re looking to turn-on “Auto-Advance”, go to the your SETTINGS in Gmail and click the LABS link. Then click “enable” for the Auto-Advance application.

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Many brands and companies set the goal of reaching critical mass on Facebook for “Likes”. This blog post is a simple, tactical, suggestion if Facebook “Like” acquisition is one of your goals in using social at your organization.

First, let’s talk about Facebook “Likes”

There are 2 types of brand categories when talking about this topic. Those brands that have the natural Facebook equity in their brand. Their customers are on Facebook and they are actively, organically, compelled to declare and seek out to “Like” the brand. They’ve reached critical mass with little to no effort, and it’s working for them on their behalf already. However, let’s be honest- most brands and companies don’t have that kind of equity that compels customers to “Like” them organically. When this is the case, you must work harder. And be smart with your efforts.

I should note: your brand or company’s acquisition strategy should only be developed *after* considering the retention strategy + the value of a “Like” to the brand <– and what it takes to sustain this effort (resources and time)

When it comes to “Like” acquisition…

1 tactic or marketing campaign will not get your brand or company to critical mass on Facebook. More importantly, efforts that are episodic and disjointed, short-changes the customer. You must tie together online and offline efforts.

There can be many efforts you’re already doing that just need to be reworked in order to support your “Like” acquisition goals. The best way to grow “Likes” and achieve critical mass is to plan on-going strategies and tactics in which you utilize existing digital efforts and leverage or create in-store opportunities. The efforts collectively, must work together and complement each other, rather than relying on 1 tactic or campaign. For example, you may remembered my previous stupid-simple tip of leveraging your existing ecommerce confirmation page with the FB “Like” plugin.

Here is a simple and smart acquisition tactic:

One of our clients we do digital work for is Helzberg Diamonds, a Berkshire Hathaway company. Lisa (who works at Helzberg) was out at an email marketing conference today, so she setup her “Out of Office” notifications. But instead of writing the same, boring, canned message- she decided to make smart use of the real-estate you’re given in a blank “Out of Office” message:

Imagine if every employee did this? If you work at a large corporation, who sends thousands of emails a day, this could add up very quickly in terms of impressions and click-throughs.

This 1 idea won’t change the world. But I think this is a stupid-simple idea. Don’t over think it. It is easy to implement, great use of the space, and it just makes sense. It’s tactics like this, if combined with in-store efforts like traditional media references, email template design integrations, or e-commerce add-ons (just to name a few categories) …it’s these collective efforts working together that move the needle. Relying on 1 tactic or marketing campaign will not get you to critical mass.
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Facebook is always testing and trying new things with sorting and filtering your Newsfeed. Zucky and the FB team want to make it easy for people with large lists of friends to see updates in different ways. That said, you should be aware of a setting that might be set on your Newsfeed by default that is keeping you from seeing all of the updates from all your friends.

1.) Click and use “Most Recent”, you’ll get an “Edit Options” link you can select.

2.) Make sure you select your preferred option in this menu. Personally, I like to see “All of your friends and pages”. But check to see if it’s selecting: ”…you interact with most” <– you might not prefer this setting

Just wanted to be helpful and share this quick Facebook tip. Bonus: If you’re concerned about privacy, read my “Hide This” walkthrough tip for Facebook.