Holtz Communications + Technology | Blog

Is your site optimized for pinning?

2012-02-22T20:12:29+00:00

The proliferation of Pinterest-like sites tells me that Pinterest has tapped into something basic, a desire to share images more easily and with more focused purpose than the traditional photo-sharing sites. Since Pinterest has become the social service du jour, a number of other sites that duplicate the fundamental idea—collections of large easy-to-share images—have sprung up.

I’m regularly directed to Gentlemint, described as “Pinterest for men,” despite the fact that a growing number of men now have a Pinterest presence. Chill is a video bookmarking site that lets you create pinboard-like views of the videos you want to share; a collection of a user’s videos looks just like a Pinterest board. (Nearly 7,000 people are following Chad Ochocinco’s Chill collection.) We Heart It lets you set up “inspiration galleries.” Vi.sualize.us lets you bookmark pictures that are displayed Pinterest style. Jux expands images to fill the page edge-to-edge.

We can expect more of these sites to appear. Yes, in part, it’s jumping on the bandwagon. But Pinterest’s success at surfacing our desire to collect and share has kickstarted a new category of social site. While Pinterest may be the first to really capture the public’s imagination, new spins on the concept are inevitable.

Pinterest got ahead of its first real challenge—cries of copyright violation—by releasing code site owners can use that prevents people from pinning images from their pages. (It works much the same way robots.txt does in keeping search engine spiders from crawling your site.) For most of us, though, having our stuff pinned is gratifying and, for many, profitable. Given the high traffic retailers and others are getting from Pinterest and the low cost of entry, most organizations would be thrilled to have their content appear on pinboards with names like “Stuff I Want.”

Some of those organizations may be disappointed to find those images aren’t appearing. And it could be their own fault.

To generate some buzz around a conference I’m speaking at in April, I wrote a blog post about it, then pinned the post; the conference badge—which I had included in the post—became the image on a board I created called “Conferences Where I’m Speaking.” Next, I went to the site of another conference on my schedule, added the URL, but got this message:

I didn’t think that could be right; there were plenty of images on the page. I tried the sites of some other conferences and got the same result. One gave me a few images, but not the prominent conference logo. So I started searching for a solution. I didn’t find much until I found the question asked on Quora, with an answer from Justin Edmund, a Pinterest product designer. Edmund went above-and-beyond, providing a detailed workaround for getting images onto the site. But it was the reasons the images weren’t found that captured my attention:

You could also be looking at a page whose images have been loaded in via Flash, and if so, unfortunately there is no image file (JPG, GIF, PNG) for us to add to Pinterest. You can always screenshot your image and upload it manually if you really want to pin it.

The most common explanation is that the website is using Javascript to load the images into the page. Those images aren’t necessarily present in the DOM, so when the bookmarklet goes to look for images, it doesn’t find anything. Due to the nature of Javascript, there’s not much that we can do about this from a technical standpoint at this time.

What this means, ultimately, is that organizations that want their content pinned will need to revisit the means by which images are added to their content. Call it Image Pinning Optimization (IPO). (Or don’t. That’s dumb.) But assuming your images can be pinned could be a costly mistake.

Have you discovered that your images aren’t pinnable? What changes are you planning to address the problem?

Work in PR? In Europe? This is THE 2012 social media conference for you

2012-02-22T16:48:11+00:00

European conferences that focus on the role of social media in public relations aren’t terribly common and those that are scheduled tend to be pricey. The Social Media World Forum is coming up next month in London, but its focus is broader than public relations and a ticket for the entire event will set you back US $920. There’s a marketing-focused conference, M2C, in Hamburg next month; admission is over US $2,500.

If you’re based in Europe and work in PR or organizational communications, your best bet is likely to be the 2012 International Social Media & PR Summit, scheduled for April 11-12 at ING House—a pretty amazing looking building—in Amsterdam:

It’s one of the several conferences presented each year by Lawrence Ragan Communications, with whom I have a very close relationship: I produce some content for Ragan, they are the lead sponsor of the podcast I co-host (For Immediate Release), and I speak at many of their conferences, including this one. So yes, I’m biased, without question. But the facts speak for themselves.

First, there’s the speaker lineup, which includes Norbert Cappetti, the communications manager for Heineken in the Netherlands; Nick Jue, ING’s CEO; Edelman‘s EMEA Managing Director Marshall Manson; Jeramie McPeek, VP of Digital for NBA basketball’s Phoenix Suns; Allan Schoenberg, corporate communications director for CME Group; Imger Paus, area PR lead for Microsoft in Western Europe; Dell‘s PR and corporate communications director in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Simone Versteeg; NASA‘s social media director, Stephanie Schierholz; and Carla Buzasi, editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post UK.

I’ve heard Stephanie and Marshall speak at previous conferences; they are not to be missed.

And there’s my podcast co-host, Neville Hobson, with whom I’ll be presenting a joint session on (what else?) podcasting.

Neville has also written about the conference.

Then there are the topics, which target issues important to PR practitioners: new opportunities for social media and PR to improve your reputation, using social media to drive business functions, social media and crisis communications, and case study after case study from communicators who have been in the trenches doing the work day-to-day.

The price? US $995, with one-day passes available for $545 each.

Despite my conflict of interest in promoting this conference, I genuinely believe it’s the most PR-focused social media conference in Europe this year, with the most relevant lineup of speakers, at the most affordable price for what you’ll get.

More speakers are due to be added, and you can learn about them by following the conference hashtag, #SMPR2012.

I’m looking forward to seeing you there!

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #639: February 20, 2012

2012-02-20T19:52:24+00:00

Content summary: Next FIR Book Club with Katie Paine is this Friday Feb 24; Shel and Neville speaking at the Ragan PR Summit in Amsterdam in April; GaggleAmp update; News That Fits: is PR really getting it wrong as Forbes says?; Dan York reports on ebooks and more; Ragan promo; reflections on Social Media Week; listener comments; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; CEO authenticity counts, and five “red flag” CEO phrases; Michael Netzley reports from Singapore on Social Media Week, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology launches a dedicated social media research center, and media news from China and India; TemboSocial promo; a verdict in the long-running Meltwater vs NLA licensing kerfuffle in the UK but the AP ups the ante in the US; music from Charo Sofia; and more.

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Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir; and TemboSocial (formerly Pollstream): helping you transform your communications goals into exciting strategies that will enable you to engage, educate and inform your customers and employees online, pollstream.com/fir/.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for February 20, 2012: A 72-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

FIR #639 bookmarks on Delicious

Names of blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Notes pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute time stamps – see the show notes home page for info.

FIR #639 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday February 27…

Does every tactic need to be baked into a strategic marketing plan?

2012-02-14T17:52:57+00:00

You can’t open your browser these days without being bombarded with posts about Pinterest, the social-visual-bookmarking-scrapbooking site. Still in invitation-only beta, Pinterest is attracting women in droves and driving more traffic to retail sites than Facebook. All this is driving bloggers to write posts with headlines like 8 ways to use Pinterest for nonprofits and Six steps to driving traffic from Pinterest.

(Think I’m overstating the case? Scroll through the 50 million-plus Google Blogsearch results for Pinterest.)

Inevitably, the naysayers have been close on the heels of the enthusiasts. Forrester analyst Darika Ahrens was among the most prominent, writing on her Forrester blog:

There’s no denying that Pinterest is fun, looks great, and a lot of people love playing with it. That is also true of kittens but no one’s rushing to include them in their 2012 marketing plans.

I won’t spend any time on the fact that, unless you run a pet-related business, kittens wouldn’t be part of any marketing strategy. Instead, I’d like to pose a question:

Does everything need to be part of a strategy? Is it never appropriate to just try out a tactic?

Ahrens argues that Pinterest is too new, and she may be right; the bloom may, indeed, fade from the rose. On top of that, there’s nothing proprietary about the Pinterest platform. As Groupon experienced, anybody can duplicate the Pinterest (and some already have).

On the flip side, though, consider this:

The number of people (women in particular) who are already thoroughly addicted to Pinterest (my 22-year-old daughter among them; in fact, as I write this sitting in the audience at a conference where Chris Brogan is speaking, Maggie Fox is sitting beside me surfing around Pinterest)
The fact that it is, beyond doubt, a traffic driver for retail sites
The drop-dead easy process of setting up pinboards

That last point is critial. A company like Land’s End doesn’t need to figure out how Pinterest fits into its marketing strategy. At the most basic level, all they need to do is get somebody to start pinning product photos to boards (briefcases, outdoor clothing, etc.) and including a link to the item’s page on the Land’s End site. That’s it. Done. You don’t need a social media specialist to create boards on Pinterest. An intern can do it.

What if Pinterest fades into obscurity in a year, you may ask. My answer: So what? If you drove a ton of traffic and generated sales in the preceding 12 months, you got your value out of the site without a massive investment in time.

Of course, a community manager can spend more time answering questions from pinners and engaging with fans. Some companies have had a lot of success with contests. Like any social site, you can always do more with it.

But to ignore its current potential is foolish given the minimum time investment required just to get items up there that people can repin and share. Wouldn’t you want your products on hundreds of “Wish List” pinboards?

Yes, you could integrate Pinterest into a strategic social marketing plan, investing precious time and resources in a service that may wind up a flash in the pan.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no value in approaching it as a pure tactic. Get what you can out of it now and if it thrives, you can figure out where it fits in a larger strategy later. By then, you should have learned enough about it to make the right strategic decisions.

FIR Book Review: 101 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits, by Melanie Mathos and Chad Norman

2012-02-14T15:18:10+00:00

101 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits: A Field Guide, by Melanie Mathos and Chad Norman, is reviewed by FIR Book Review Editor Bob LeDrew. From the book description:

“101 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits features 101 actionable tactics that nonprofits can start using today, and most of the featured resources are free. Broken down into five key areas, this unique guide explains the steps and tools needed to implement each tactic, and provides many real-life examples of how nonprofits are using the tactics. With this book as your guide, you’ll learn how leading nonprofit professionals around the world are leveraging social media to engage constituents, communicate their cause, and deliver on their mission.”

Get this podcast:

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101 Social Media Tactics for Nonprofits: A Field Guide by Melanie Mathos and Chad Norman

Publisher: Wiley
Hardcover, 224 pages
Published January 2012
ISBN-10: 1118106245
ISBN-13: 978-1118106242

Purchase at US Kindle edition), Amazon Canada, or Amazon UK (UK Kindle edition).

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future reviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

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This FIR Book Review is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Katie Paine is the guest at the next FIR Book Club

2012-02-13T20:41:48+00:00

The next meeting of the FIR Book Club is on the calendar:

Friday, February 24
2 p.m. EST, 7 p.m. UK, 11 a.m. PDT

A half hour just wasn’t enough, so we’re switching from BlogTalk Radio to TalkShoe in order give FIR Book Review Editor Bob LeDrew adequate time to interview guest author Katie Paine and take all your questions and comments.

Order Katie’s book, Measure What Matters, so you can read it before the call! And give a listen to Bob’s FIR review of the book from last August.

Katie Delahaye Paine is the founder of KDPaine & Partners LLC and author of the recently released Measure What Matters, Online Tools for Understanding Customers, Social Media, Engagement, and Key Relationships (Wiley, March 2011). She is also the publisher of the first blog and the first newsletter for marketing and communications professionals dedicated entirely to measurement and accountability.

Join Katie for a lively chat with FIR Book Review Editor Bob LeDrew and participate in the conversation! Details are on the TalkShoe Book Club site.

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #638: February 13, 2012

2012-02-13T20:10:38+00:00

Content summary: The next FIR Book Club with Bob LeDrew has Katie Paine as guest author; Ogilvy launches Social@Ogilvy; special price for FIR listeners for “The Social Customer 2012”; News That Fits: first SOPA and PIPA, now ACTA: opponents say ‘undemocracy in action’ behind anti-counterfeiting proposals; Michael Netzley reports on a 2012 survey of internet users in Singapore; OneForty.com is now socdir.com; Ragan promo; new research from Hewlett-Packard on tweets; listener comments; Ike Pigott reviews ifttt.com; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; ten things you still need to know about social media; Dan York reports from a train on the way to O’Reilly TOCCon in New York; SocialTembo promo; how social media led a coordinated protest against JC Penney to backfire; music from Darius Lux; and more.

Get FIR:

Download the MP3 file 29.7Mb, 74:11)
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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for February 13, 2012: A 74-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

FIR #638 bookmarks on Delicious

FIR #638 show notes at The New PR Wiki

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday February 20…

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #637: February 6, 2012

2012-02-06T20:56:03+00:00

Content summary: Donna Papacosta promos Tweeps in Profile featuring Shel as ‘Mr February’; new FIR Book Review by Kris Gallagher of Intern Nation; FIR Book Club #1 recording posted; News That Fits: the Komen Kerfuffle; Ragan promo; Dan York adds his perspectives on the Komen Kerfuffle; with gov.uk, the British government redefines the online government platform; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; listener comments from the FIR Room on Friendfeed; Reuters launches Social Pulse; TemboSocial promo; no report from Michael Netzley in Singapore this week; Costa Concordia and the public relations disaster for cruise; music by Bulldogs; and more.

Get FIR:

Download the MP3 file 2.91Mb, 72:41)
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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for February 6, 2012: A 73-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

FIR #637 bookmarks on Delicious

FIR #637 show notes at The New PR Wiki

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday February 13…

Leadership involvement is vital to social intranet success

2012-02-03T16:38:05+00:00

Evidence continues to mount that social intranets have the potential to produce big results for organizations. The ongoing McKinsey & Company study points to outcomes ranging from increased market share to reduced time to market, along with a host of other positive results. Studies from MIT and Aberdeen Group show productivity gains among employees using social intranets.

Yet a recent study from IABC and Prescient Digital Media suggests that 39% of companies don’t have any social components on their intranets (the number is as high as 49% in other research), and a substantial number of those that do have only one (like a wiki or a blog). Worse, only 28% of employees—including executives—rate their overall satisfaction with the social dimensions of their intranets as good or very good. Worse, as I noted back in November, a Forrester study reveals that only 28 percent of information workers use these tools at least once a month. Those who do tend to be early adopters, well-paid, highly educated and pressed for time. In other words, they’re the same people who likely adopt new technologies on the Web.

It’s easy to reach a conclusion for all this research: companies are letting considerable amounts of money swirl the drain because (a) they haven’t implemented social media behind the firewall or (b) they have installed some social tools but haven’t taken the steps to ensure they deliver the kinds of results of which they’re capable.

A new study from APCO Worldwide and Gagen MacDonald points to even more benefits that arise from social intranets, but it also points to at least one core deficiency in most organizations: a failure of leadership to lead when it comes to what the report labels Internal Social Media (ISM).

The Payoff

Most leaders understand the connection between the size of the organization’s population of highly engaged employees and market share growth. It’s why they fund engagement studies and task various departments with growing the number of employees ready to give discretionary effort to help the company meet its goals. According to the APCO study, companies using ISM enjoy higher levels of engagement across the board. The advantages of ISM don’t stop there:

Employees at companies that do a “good job” with ISM are less likely to leave their job than those working a companies doing a “fair/poor job,” and more likely to recommend the company to others. Fifty-eight percent said they would rather work at a company that uses social media. (The report also notes that two out of three college students ask about social media policies during an interview and 56% said they would either not take a job at a company that blocks social media access or circumvent those blocks.)
Sixty percent of respondents view the use of social media as tangible evidence that they work for an innovative company. Consequently, they’re more likely to be ambassadors for the organization’s brand and reputation.
Employees at companies doing a good job with ISM are also more likely to recommend their company’s products or services (89% to 64%), give their employer the benefit of the doubt in the face of lawsuits or crises (88% to 55%), buy company stock (75% to 45%) and support the government policies their companies support (64% to 36%).
Sixty-one percent of employees said their company’s social media tools improved collaboration with their fellow workers across great distances.

The Problem

While ISM offers huge benefits, the APCO study also points out that that employees see executive leadership as more important. In fact, when employees make decisions about whether to recommend the company or support it during a crisis or lawsuit, leadership communication matters vastly more than any other single factor. (This, by the way, flies squarely in the face of a popular school of thought that asserts only communication from immediate supervisors is effective.)

The report concludes that the ISM strategy needs to be “built from within—informed by (the company’s) culture, driven by distinct business needs and embraced by early adopters,” and that “executives and leaders should not only align around strategy but embody the change they envision.”

With 75% of employees indicating that executive leadership is a key tool compared to only 22% making the same claim of ISM, the marriage of the two would create an unbeatable combination. Conversely, in organizations where executives fund ISM but don’t aactively use it in pursuit of business goals, you can expect the kind of bland results so many companies are experiencing, with few employees using it regularly, minimizing the kinds of results these tools could deliver.

Gagen MacDonald produced this video summarizing its results and conclusions:

Leading Internal Social Media for your organization from Gagen MacDonald on Vimeo.

FIR Book Club #1: “Social Media Strategist” Author Christopher Barger

2012-02-02T23:55:31+00:00

Christopher Barger was the guest author for the inaugural installment of the FIR Book Club, hosted by FIR Book Review Editor Bob LeDrew.

Christopher is senior vice president, Global Programs for Voce Communications, a Porter Novelli company. Before arriving at Voce, Christopher was director of global social media at General Motors, building the company’s social media program and leading its presence across multiple social networks. His work to repair GM’s reputation in the social web earned him PR News’ “Social Media Leader of the Year” award in 2010. Christopher also previously managed social media initiatives and corporate communications for IBM, where he was designated “Blogger-in-Chief.”

Christopher’s book, “The Social Media Strategist,” was reviewed on FIR.

This podcast was recorded live on BlogTalk Radio.

Get this podcast:

Download the MP3 file (13.9Mb, 34:40)
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To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Book Review is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.