Website Magazine further implied that some of the most recent numbers indicate that Pinterest currently drives more referral traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined, and that 9 percent of the top 300 online retailers are offering “Pin it” buttons on their own sites.

That’s compared to about 60 percent who have Facebook Like buttons and 20 percent who have Google+ buttons – and Pinterest  was a relatively unknown commodity until just recently.

The point is that an enormous opportunity awaits e-commerce merchants who understand how to leverage the popularity of Pinterest by utilizing the service itself as well as the rising number of ancillary tools.

Acess the artcile for tips on how to do exactly that:

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2012/02/27/pinterest-optimization-for-internet-retailers.aspx

For more on Website Magazine or to get an online digital subscription, go here:

https://www.websitemagazine.com/scripts/sub/subscribe_welcome.aspx

Best!

Denice MacDonald

Like most newbie's to Pinterest, I am waiting patiently for a response to my invite request. Pinterest is rolling out invites slowly - enticing more and more interest to their website. What is it? Well basically, Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard.

According to Pinterest, the access to their site lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people (allowing you to 'repin'). Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

What's unique about Pinterest is that they are taking all the learning from other sharing communities by insuring proper 'pin etiquette', diminished copyright infringement as well as a "Pin it" button (similar to the share feature).  

However, it seems like a good place to promote your small business - but be careful - this is a sharing community and you will need to be very creative to insure that you are not blacklisted!

Great resources to get you started!

Pinterest: A Beginner's Guide to the Hot New Social Network by Mashable

How to Use Pinterest for the Web by USA Today

I am hoping to get my invite approved shortly - if so, I'll give you some more info as my adventure to the site unfolds!

Best

Denice MacDonald

Let’s face it folks, social analytics is a new frontier – not anything like the analytics and metrics tracking we’ve used for advertising, direct mail or other one-way channel marketing.   

However, in a recent and compelling white paper Social Marketing Analytics – A New Framework for Measuring Results in Social Media, Web Analytics Demystified and the Altimeter Group defined social marketing analytics in a way that all of us can understand:  

Want to Go Deeper on Social Media Measurement? 

Web Analytics Demystified and Altimeter Group each approach social media from unique perspectives 

 If you would like more detail on social media strategy or identifying the business objectives of your social initiatives, please contact Altimeter Group by emailing jeremiah@altimetergroup.com.  

Alternatively, if you’d like to learn more about measuring social media or applying the measurement framework to your business, please contact Web Analytics Demystified by emailing john.lovett@webanalyticsdemystified.com.

Best

Love, love, love this new resource: Social Media: SmartBrief. SmartBrief is a media company on a mission to save you time and keep you smart (me included).

The premise behind SmartBrief is simple: there’s too much information out there and too little time in the day to read it all.  

Their editors hand-pick the most relevant and important news from all over, summarize it, link to the original sources and deliver it – for FREE! 

I chose the Social Media syndicated newsletter but there are others!  
   

SmartBrief for CFOs 

SmartBrief on Entrepreneurs 

SmartBrief on ExecTech 

SmartBrief on Leadership 

SmartBrief on Social Media 

SmartBrief on Sustainability 

SmartBrief on Workforce 

SmartBrief on Your Career



View samples and sign up for industry-specific and best practices e-newsletters.

They’re FREE and open to everyone

Enjoy!
Denice MacDonald

Thanks to my colleague, James Davidson at 7Summits, I have been introduced to an amazing resource called the Social Media Business Council – a community for social leaders at large companies.

There are various resources at their website including: events, blogs and links along with video and featured articles and best-practice toolkits. Although the membership is geared toward large corporations, you still can take advantage of various resources, events and sign up for their newsletter. 

Details here:

Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit.(This is a document that is constantly updated and morphing.)

Blog. (Great topics and commentary on the latest social
media issues and challenges.) 

Events. (Check out 7Summits attending this event in February in Austin, TX!)

Email Newsletter. (Four to chose from: SocialMedia.org's Big List, Damn, I Wish I'd Thought of That!, Word Of Mouth Marketing Supergenius! and SmartBrief on Social Media.) 

To get a sense of who participates from large corporations, take a look at the member directory here – along with quantifiable testimonials.  

This is a true social community worth a peek!                                                  Click image for details.

Enjoy!

Denice MacDonald

I have several hundred true blog followers to my website and they have been thirsty for knowledge on social media, search engine optimization and anything metrics – 30,000 page views to be exact.  

Therefore, I feel it necessary to provide the following links that represent the most clicked, viewed and downloaded blogs from my website for 2010 – just in case anyone needs these resources again. 

Top 2010 Blogs (ranked in order by page views) 

Staying Nimble: Social Media 2010 - According to several leading experts, social media has been the number one priority in 2010. Social media will be used by organizations to lift their brand, stay connected to customers while using networks to grow their lead-gen pipelines. To learn how your organization can capitalize on what others are doing, check out these ‘top’ resources, articles and blogs from leading subject matter experts.  

Don’t Miss This One: Connecting Social Media and Email - I find it interesting that most organizations don’t realize that e-mail marketing is the original ‘backbone’ of social interaction and should always be part of the social mix.  Simply adding some ‘integrated’ content will aid in elevating your brand – not to mention ROI for your social campaigns. 

Get it here: Search Engine Optimization Blogs - Great post by Hubspot on a few dozen SEO blogs everyone should read or minimally have in your arsenal.

Social Media Resources You Can’t Live Without - Whether it’s starting a social media campaign, integrating social media into your advertising or simply setting up a Facebook fan page, it is always wise to seek out experts who have proven experience (and metrics) to help guide you in your social media initiatives. 

Social Analytics: The Next Frontier - Let’s face it folks, social analytics is a new frontier – not anything like the analytics and metrics tracking we’ve used for advertising, direct mail or other one-way channel marketing.

Get It Right The First Time: Web Metrics - Many organizations are obsessed with volume – measuring their web metrics strategy by how many web pages that were viewed or by how many people that have visited. In many cases, this type of information is meaningless as it is not directly linked to a web plan or strategy.  

Writing for Social Media - If you want consistent social media success, you have to understand what social media users crave. For social media content, that means understanding the type of content social media users want.

Your Entire Organization Benefits From Web Analytics - You finally launched a much-anticipated Web 2.0+ web site and you can’t wait to hunker down and review your analytics. How do you gauge if your analytics for your site are appropriate, measurable and definable? And most importantly, who in your organization would benefit?    

As we move forward in 2011, it will be fun to watch the exploding world of social media and how it will affect all channels in the marketing mix.  

Happy New Year to all my blog fans and a hearty welcome to all new visitors. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Thanks to my colleague James Davidson for an incredible link to social media resources underwritten and posted by Colin Welch titled Making the Most of Social Media Marketing – Links.

The link provides access to all types of tips and guides, tools and analytics, trending tools, social tools and applications as well as twitter tools. 

The listing is comprehensive and spot-on.

Learn more now>>

Enjoy

Best,

Denice MacDonald

TweetMic is a simple and intuitive Twitter client app for the iPhone that allows you to make high-quality audio recordings or "Tweetcasts" and publish them directly to Twitter.

There is no limit to how much you can record and you don't need to sign up for any additional service to start using TweetMic.

More information here!

For more expanded information on Twitter in general, consider Mashable - The Social Media Guide:

- 6 Twitter Search Services Compared
- 6 Unique Twitter Visualizations
- 20+ Great Twitter Tools for Firefox
- 20 Twitter Badges to Show Off Your Tweets

Happy 4th of July to all you!

Best

Denice MacDonald

You probably know that building links into your site is one of the most important things you can do in your efforts to improve your site's ranking.

A lot of people struggle with this process, especially at the beginning. Many questions also arise as to where the link should be placed on the site you are trying to get linked from, along with what kind of sites should you get links from, and what those links should look like.  Linking is no longer a passing fancy, it is a strategy that is relevant and necessary. Consder the following link building strategies:

Social Media: By submitting your site and content to social media aggregators such as Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon and other niche social news sharing and bookmarking sites, you introduce their audience to your site and build high authority links to your organization.

Advertising: Text Links which are sold or purchased with the intention of advertising a relevant site or service to the audience of the site which is serving the link ads. These links are valued and treated as authority inbound links by the major search engines.

Editorial: Editorial links are links which are earned via relationships with journalists, bloggers or site publishers. By informing writers about your site and services, you persuade them to write about you.

Directory: Web directories classify sites into organized subjects and listings while also sending search traffic to those sites. Directories are a way to increase search rankings and site traffic.

Blogger Reviews: Similar to editorial links, blogger reviews are when you pay bloggers to take the time and write an honest review about your product, business or site - and link to you. Not only will your link be seen by search engines, but also by the readers and subscribers of these high level bloggers.

Privately Solicited Links: Contact site owners and negotiate private linking deals with your business goals in mind.

Blog Comment Participation: By intelligently adding to blog comment conversations, you build your online reputation along with inbound links to your site.

Resources:

• 101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Web Site by Andy Hagans and Aaron Wall
• Link Building - Web Site Resource

Software/Tools:

• Axandra
• Zeus
• Link Assistant

Best,

Denice MacDonald

I received a timely e-mail from founder Todd Hogan from Surchur regarding a recent press release announcing a major update to their web site.

Surchur.com gives you a dashboard to the latest social media, blogs, pictures, and videos for a given topic. The new surchur.com adds several additional features:

1 -- The Surchmeter - see just how popular your keyword is on Surchur, in the blogosphere and on twitter - more sources coming soon!

2 -- A more intuitive cleaner design - we think you'll really like it.

3 -- Significantly faster load speed.

4 -- The front page and "catching fire" feature track the hottest topics on the internet via Yahoo Buzz, Google Trends, Twitter Search and more.

5 -- A history for surched topics, so for popular keywords you can see what was being posted on something yesterday, last week or, as our history builds, further into the past.

If you want to learn more about Surchur, visit the homepage, the social media section or their blog.

Best of luck Todd, we love your web site!

Best,

Denice MacDonald