How To Get Traffic From Pinterest 101

Robin Good: If you have been hearing about Pinterest being a great potential referral for your own site or blog, here is some specifici advice about what you can do to obtain such results.

“Pinterest drives more traffic to websites than YouTube, Reddit, Google Plus and LinkedIn combined according to new research.”

“Learn how to choose the best post to pin, which image to share, add a Pin It button and pin your blog post.”

In this guide you can find six easy steps for tapping the power of Pinterest to drive more traffic to your blog.

Good introductory step-by-step guide. 7/10 

Full guide: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/pinterest-blog-traffic/

5 Simple Metrics to Track Your Social Media Efforts

Social media metrics: Find out what you need to track to determine the success of your social media marketing.

From the article:

“Are you looking for simple, straightforward metrics to measure the impact of yoursocial media efforts?

Social networks and blogs continue to dominate Americans’ time online(accounting for nearly a quarter of total time spent on the Internet) according to a recentNielsen report on social media, .

While we all know how important it is to market through the various social networks, it is vital to track and measure your efforts for success.

Here are five simple metrics to find out whether your social media effort is paying dividends. [..]”

Usefull!

Read the full article here: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/metrics-to-track-your-social-media-efforts/

How to Use Facebook Apps to Improve Fan Engagement | Social Media Examiner

Excerpted from article:

“Timeline presents brand-new challenges (and opportunities!) for staying top-of-mind.

Since page admins can no longer designate a default landing tab (also referred to as the “default welcome tab”), businesses need to get more creative and use custom apps to direct Facebook page visitors to take action.

One way to make up for the loss of engagement with a default landing tab is to drive visitors to your custom apps instead. Custom apps are prime real estate when optimized.

To get the most out of this real estate, you need to create a custom app strategy for your page.

Here’s a simple 3-step action plan to help you get momentum quickly with your new Timeline layout:

#1: Define Your Custom App Strategy:

Do you want to create lead generation opportunities? Or create a welcome page? Or perhaps you want to turn your app into a mini-storefront? There are endless strategies for your custom apps.

- Video within custom apps is a smart strategy to connect with your fans on a more personal level.

- Another custom app strategy is to use them to display your best content.

- Another useful strategy for custom apps is to create an e-commerce opportunity.

#2: Use a Third-Party Tool to Create Your Custom App:

The good news is that you have many third-party tool options. Some options are free, others charge a fee.

For some of my custom apps, I’ve used Lujure.

#3: Promote and Drive Traffic to Your Custom App:

To grab your fans’ attention, make sure to use strong calls to action in both the custom app name and the app thumbnail image. The thumbnail image specs are 111 x 74 pixels.

Quick Tip! Here’s a free tool (http://www.timelineimagetool.com/) that will help you create your custom app thumbnails without ever having to hire a designer….”

Read full article: http://j.mp/KmKVPn

Why Startups Need a Strong Vision

Good article about vision & long term planning in startups.

From the article: “Meaningful companies are built upon a strong timeless vision. Let’s look at some examples…

“To organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” — Google
“To be the pulse of the planet” — Twitter
“To be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” — Amazon

These statements may sound abstract and grandiose, but as you begin to think about it, you realise why a plan like “To be the Best iPhone Photo App for Sharing Pictures with Facebook Friends” or “Let’s Build Stuff and See What Happens, Right?” just won’t cut it.

The vision for a company must be robust for years at a time. Technologies, social networks, trends, all come and go, and a company must stay relevant regardless. Notice how Google doesn’t mention search, Amazon doesn’t mention books, and Twitter says nothing about apps or tweets. This is long term thinking. You can’t base your company around current technologies, trends, or other companies. It’s about what you are doing for your customers. If you set out to build “The Number One MP3 Player for Bebo Pages”, well, sorry about it. [..]”

Recommended!

Read the entire article here: http://blog.intercom.io/why-startups-need-a-strong-vision/

Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 11 Notes Essay

blakemasters:

Here is an essay version of class notes from Class 11 of CS183: Startup. Errors and omissions are mine. Credit for good stuff is Peter’s.

Class 11 Notes Essay—Secrets

I.  Secrets

Back in class one, we identified a very key question that you should continually ask yourself: what important truth do very few people agree with you on? To a first approximation, the correct answer is going to be a secret. Secrets are unpopular or unconventional truths. So if you come up with a good answer, that’s your secret.

How many secrets are there in the world? Recall that, reframed in a business context, the key question is: what great company is no one starting? If there are many possible answers, it means that there are many great companies that could be created. If there are no good answers, it’s probably a very bad idea to start a company. From this perspective, the question of how many secrets exist in our world is roughly equivalent to how many startups people should start.

Read More

5 types of social data #socialmedia

“Data plays a significant role in opportunity identification, resource allocation and content programming. So we’ve broken ‘data’ in to 5 segments to help you understand what each type means and where it adds value to your overall strategic pathway.

HOW TO: Create a social media strategy

Creating a social media strategy before you “launch” is critical to the success of your social media presence. With the right tools in hand, a reliable process, and time, you will be able to define a great social media strategy for your business.

Here are the 10 steps illustrated by Steven Grech:

Step 1: Get buy in from the business

Step 2: Set your objectives and measurement plan

Step 3: Get to know your tribes

Step 4: What are people saying about your brand, products and services across the Social Web?

Step 5: Analyse our competitors’ social media strategy

Step 6: Create your story strategy

Step 7: Select your social channels

Step 8: Put together an engagement plan

Step 9: Set up a social media policy

Step 10: Bring your social media strategy to life!

Plus a list tools that can help you to create your social media strategy.

Read the entire article here: http://www.fourthsource.com/social-media/how-to-create-a-social-media-strategy-8027 

Very usefull!

Social Analytics Formulas to Use for ROI Reports

From the article: “Reporting on Social Media Marketing involves defining a unique set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that help to measure the level of activity and effectiveness of your brand within the social realm.

Social analytics can measure the impact of social media on your business.

This means collecting intelligence from aggregating and analyzing online conversations and social activity generated by your brand.

By using this data, your company will be able to improve and report on brand awareness and reputation, marketing and sales effectiveness, and customer satisfaction and advocacy.

The benchmarks to focus on will be those that combine specific engagement metrics that result in lead generation. This reporting will help define the effectiveness of social media as it relates to marketing, sales, and customer service performance. We have created the reference charts below with basic formulas for analyzing the metrics for the KPIs listed based on an Infographic created by Awareness Inc. [..]”

Read the full article:  http://socialmediatoday.com/dleitchmorevisibilitycom/503717/social-analytics-formulas-use-roi-reports

About to Publish A Post? STOP! Read This

It used to be that it was just us writer people that were responsible for publishing blog posts. But, my, how times have changed. As business owners, marketers, and social media mavens, we’re all responsible for publishing content on a regular basis. We publish posts to our own blogs to build our authority and search engine happiness, and we publish guest posts on other blogs to increase your readership and gain new eyes. With all the time we now devote to writing great content, we want to make sure we’re getting the most out of it that we can. And that means taking the time to optimize your content before you ever hit the publish button. Because search engine optimization always works better when it’s a priority, not an afterthought.

Before you hit publish on that post, make sure you’re hitting seven important points. They may just make all the difference.

Read more: http://bit.ly/KMIeVT

TechCrunch | With A Talent War In The Valley, Perhaps Romania Has The Answers?

This is a guest post by Maria Constantinescu, founder of Slickflickthe photo story app.

“Today, in 2012, there is a talent war like no other. The Valley is abuzz with a hiring frenzy. Startups can’t compete with Yammer, Zynga, Twitter, Facebook and the rest for developers. Perhaps the answer is to look elsewhere? To countries where the old Soviet education system produced maths and science graduates by the truckload? To Kiev, Belgrade, Slovenia and others? And perhaps to Romania.

For Romanians, perhaps for the first time in history, the world is now flat. Forty-five years of Stalin-esque communism meant sports and education were the only acceptable ways to compete in Romania. Soviet-era industrialisation ended up producing a country where almost half of the educated population were trained to become engineers. Today, in 2012, they are more likely to be coders. And now they can take their place with the rest of the world on the level playing field of technology.

The best Romanian coding talent was noticed by Microsoft in its hay day. It’s now gradually becoming democratised, spread out across more platforms, initially through outsourcing and now through the influx of Western start-ups in search of affordable skills. So what exactly should you expect to find in Romania? What are the pros and cons? Here’s the lowdown, with some generalizations. [..]”

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/05/with-a-talent-war-in-the-valley-perhaps-romania-has-the-answers/

4 Ways to Drive Engagement With Facebook Ads

Here are four ways to drive more engagement with the new Facebook ad units, along with tips for how to enhance performance.

From the article: 

“In the run up to Facebook’s fast-approaching IPO, the company is making extensive and ongoing improvements to its advertising platform. The most recent updates, which are not yet live, will allow marketers to optimize their ads for any Facebook action (not just likes). These new capabilities will also give advertisers a much greater understanding of their consumers, allowing them to segment marketing messages based on certain user groups. All of this goes to support the general belief that Facebook wants to turn their ad platform into the main driver of a brand’s reach.

To be successful in this space, brands will have to be very authentic. The first big move towards making ads into more organic-feeling messages came when Facebook introduced the updated Premium ad format, in which Premium ads could only be created from real content posted to a brand’s page. [..]”

Read more here: http://mashable.com/2012/05/02/drive-engagement-facebooks-new-ad-units/

How to Use Facebook Ads: An Introduction

From the article: “Are you considering Facebook Ads but are confused by all the options? You’ve undoubtedly heard that “social ads” are the future of advertising, but what does that mean in practical terms for you today? This article will help you make smart decisions about how to promote your brand and engage with fans through advertising on Facebook. As a Facebook Preferred Developer, I’ve had the opportunity to gather a lot of information from the proverbial “horse’s mouth.” This article will provide a useful lay of the land around the new ad solutions that were introduced at the Facebook Marketing Conference (fMC) in February. [..]”

Read more: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-use-facebook-ads-an-introduction/

Animate: The Pleasure of the Tweet

In this Animate video, created by Think Visually Studios, David J. Linden describes how our addiction to mobile phones and modern electronic messaging is rooted in the pleasure that we receive from uncertainty.

To find out more about Think Visually Studios visit http://www.thinkvisuallystudios.com

Canon Thermos Mug 18% off now featured on Fab.
Fab.com
Behold, the Canon lens you’ve always wanted…sort of. This lens, authentic though it may look, is in fact one of the coolest thermos mugs we’ve ever seen. After all, when was the last time your mug had a lens cap, rubber focus ring and auto-focus switch? Perfect for keeping hot drinks hot on the go, this lens doppelgänger from Photojojo is outfitted with an easy to clean, heat preserving, stainless steel lining.