So now, every Friday, I intend to publish a Friday LinkFest. This will include links to five or six curated articles I highly recommend, just in time for the weekend.

We’ll still publish regular posts on the blog; consider this “bonus content.”

If you like the idea of receiving article links from me, you can get a whole lot more by following me on Twitter (my handle is @mickeylonchar, or you can click my name in the Twitter stream to the right).

The articles:

What exactly is “The Social Media Funnel’? And how can it be used to work your customers and prospects through your traditional sales funnel? (From Search Engine Land)

What are the favorite Social Media Management tools for small business? This links through to a super-useful review of some of the most popular. (Jess Ostroff – Convince & Convert)

There are people and processes within any organization that tend to smother innovation. Harvard Business Review refers to them as ‘Corporate Antibodies.’ What are strategies to actually get them on your side?

With Facebook going public this week with an estimated worth of over $100 billion, what’s the true value of Facebook advertising for marketers? This insightful article touches on all the considerations. ‘Truth, Lies & Facebook Advertising.’ (from Forbes)

Brian Clark at Copyblogger is one of my favorite writers that covers content in social media. This article explores the creative benefits of exploring the “uncomfortable.”

The “sexiest” new social platform? It could just be your email inbox. Making your email program social. (from American Express OPENForum).

That’ll do it for this week. See you next week with a new post AND some new links next Friday.

posted by Mickey

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I’ve asked Shannon Hill, a copywriter here at Quisenberry, and one of the earliest-adopters of Pinterest, to share her thoughts here on the Quisenblog.

Pinterest has been described as the most “visual” social network there is. Its simple, clean layout and page design, and its use of “pin boards” for different subjects make it easy to express your personal interests and style via photos, web images and even web video.

Turns out you have to be invited to join Pinterest. Really? An invitation? To join a social networking site?!

This small barrier into what seemed like an exclusive club piqued my interest. I waited 2 weeks. I checked my spam folder every day. Finally, it came. I was allowed to enter.

I logged in and took a look around. It was more confusing than the first time I tried Facebook. I actually read all the “help” sections, Still confused, I decided to just jump in with both feet.

Fast forward about four hours.

By then, I already had 50+ pins and was following all of my Facebook friends. So many pretty pictures. So many delicious recipes. Fashion. Art. And oh, the shoes.

Suddenly there was a catalogue of things I found beautiful and I started to see trends and tendencies I didn’t expect. I became the Pinterest stereotype of the girl that was “decorating the house she didn’t have with furniture she couldn’t afford, while planning the wedding she wasn’t going to have.”

Currently, women like me make up 87% of Pinterest users. And the women who use it, use it a lot. My experiences are similar to those of so many others, who go onto Pinterest intending to spend five minutes, and end up spending 45.

But beyond the pretty pictures and style statements, are there worthwhile Pinterest applications for marketers?

A couple of things should pique the curiosity of marketers. For starters, consider the number of users. Pinterest has grown from a community of 418,000 a year ago to 11.76 million in January 2012. That’s a 2703% increase in an 8-month period.

Then there’s the referral traffic. Pinterest is social by nature. When something is “pinned” from your website and someone clicks it, they are sent careening through the cyber universe to your site. According to Shareaholic, Pinterest drives more traffic than well established sites like Linkedin, Youtube, and Google+ combined.

But is Pinterest for you? If you have a brand or products that are considered “lifestyle” products (fashion, design, food, architecture, etc.) or are visual in nature, you might consider experimenting with your own Pinterest page.

Now, I’ve seen my fair share of “how to be successful on Pinterest” infographics. They are full of good suggestions. Pinterest is not advertising. Pin things other people would want to repin. The best time to pin is in the evening. All good advice, but what I have learned is how personal Pinterest is to each user.

Each board is a reflection of things someone loves. Things they care about. Things they find beautiful. So my biggest suggestion is not to over-think it. If your boards feel contrived or overly planned, it probably is, and you’ll be left behind. If your business is on Pinterest, be active and be passionate. What does your business do that other people will love or find beautiful?

Pinterest isn’t Facebook or Twitter. You are not sharing news. You are not calling people to action. You are allowing your business to be something they can put in their personal collection.

My advice? Do what I did. Just visit the site, poke around a bit, check to see if any of your friends or competitors or brands you admire are on there, and see what they’re doing. See how many “repins” and “likes” their pins have gotten. And if the spirit moves you, jump in.

Click here for another worthwhile article on Pinterest.

And Happy Pinning!

Posted by Shannon

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Now let’s talk about the barriers to entry. For consumers, it is the fact that the annual fees for your card far exceed those of the MasterCard and Visa cards they can get at their banks, and the fact that fewer merchants accept the card. And for merchants, the barriers are that the merchant fees are significantly higher than with MasterCard or Visa, and that fewer customers carry the card.

So how do you grow your business? With cards dealt the way they are, clearly it’s going to take more than a clever ad campaign to overcome those significant barriers.

In this case, American Express didn’t create a campaign; they created a movement.

The movement was to champion the small Main Street businesses of America by creating “Small Business Saturday”–the Saturday immediately following Thanksgiving and the notorious “Black Friday.”

A huge part of this movement was to rally small business owners to “own” this event and to not only participate, but to also become the medium that promoted it. To harness that, American Express created an entire Small Business Tool Kit free for small business owners which included a host of Small Business Saturday tools they could use to promote their businesses, from store badges and signage to social media templates to expert advice on how to increase sales, whether they were American Express merchants or not.

And to the consumer, rather than run a campaign that said “sign up for our card,” American Express created a quasi-patriotic campaign extolling the economic impact of small businesses and rallying folks to support their local economies for that one day. No mentions of how-our-card-is-better-than-their-card or any of that business. Simply a request that we all join together to support small local businesses. Here is one of the commercials:

The results of the Small Business Saturday campaign? In just two years, 100 million Americans participated. Reported small business sales were up between 20 – 30%. Congress passed a unanimous resolution fin support of Small Business Saturday.

Since 2010, Small Business Saturday has gone from something that didn’t exist to a fixture on the shopping calendar.

Oh, and American Express’s credit card division enjoyed its largest market share ever in 2011. Here’s an engaging video case study on the overall campaign:

Great campaigns come and great campaigns go. But a movement that actually incites people can live forever. And isn’t that a smarter use of your marketing bucks?

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These are a few of the questions Forrester Research attempt to quantify in their recently released “Facebook Factor” study.

For the purposes of this study, Forrester created a logistic regression model (stay with me now) that tracked four variables: being a Facebook fan of the brand, likelihood to purchase, amount of money spent in the past 12 months, and probability to recommend. While I’m a little rusty at statistical analyses, Forrester explains that a logistic model predicts the probability of the occurrence of an event, and shows the influence one variable has on another. In other words, in this case, it predicts the probability of a Facebook fan considering, recommending or purchasing.

In the study Forrester analyzed four brands: Best Buy, BlackBerry, Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola. For all four brands, Facebook “Fandom” appears to have the greatest impact on purchases. For example, the odds of a Best Buy Facebook Fan purchasing something from the brand are 5.3 times higher than a non-fan, while the odds of a Fan recommending and considering the brand for future purchase are 4.7 and 4.0 times higher, respectively.

What’s missing in the Forrester study, as far as I can see, is any evidence of “causality.” In other words, is it the joining of the Facebook community that makes you more likely to purchase? Or were you predisposed to purchase before you joined?

Regardless of where you fall in this “chicken-and-the-egg” discussion, what Forrester goes on to conclude is that the consumer purchase decision is not where marketers can experience the greatest long-term impact. The value in a brand’s Fan base, according to Forrester, relates to recommendations. The study found that Facebook Fans of every brand studied were more likely to recommend them than non-fans. BlackBerry fans, for example, have an 87% probability of recommending BlackBerry to a friend or relative (compared to just 44% for non-Facebook Fans).

From a content strategy perspective, this could mean that publishing posts that make customers feel good about their purchases, help them feel like part of an “insider community” and provide them with share-worthy facts and tidbits will help you harness this word-of-mouth power.

For more information on this Forrester study, check out this article.

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There are two notable changes page administrators will need to be aware of: the elimination of custom tabs in favor of a brand-created “Timeline,” and a new layout that allows you to place a page-wide “Cover” photo or image at the top of your page.

This post will give you a quick-and-dirty primer on the whole Cover concept. For insights into how to best take advantage of the Timeline itself, we’ll address that in a soon-to-come post.

While these changes may seem a bit off-putting to those of us who’ve grown accustomed to all pages looking and navigating pretty much the same, in many ways the new look offers a huge improvement to the user’s experience. First off, because pages can be more customized, there’s a huge opportunity to create a visually stunning page that will make a positive statement about the brand. And second, the Timeline format allows a brand to do some meaningful “storytelling” rather than rely on boilerplate “Info,” “Photos” and “Friend Activity.”

In short, Facebook is giving your brand the opportunity to give your page the same appeal you’ve given to your web site.

If you’ve procrastinated redressing your page for the new Timeline format, where should you start? A great place would be to select a terrific photo for your Cover. A great reference guide to the process can be found at Facebook Pages Terms. Basically, the role of your cover photo is intended to add visual impact, as opposed to trying to incite action from visitors (no longer will you be able to post messages like “Like us” or “Share this,” include price or discount offers, or include contact information, such as your web or email addresses).

While Facebook allows page admins to choose a photo from an existing photo album, such photos are probably not best suited to give you the visual impact your brand page deserves. The best-looking cover photos will be images specifically created to take advantage of the cover photo’s unusually large size and unique shape.

Your Page’s cover photo should embody the essence of your brand. A few image content ideas that might be suitable for your brand might be: candid photos of customers using your products (be sure to get permission to use their likenesses), a beauty shot of some of your most popular product, or icons that represent your brand, such as a delivery truck, distinct signage or a group shot of employees. Or, you can get creative and create a cover that makes visitors think and might compel them to share, such as these (courtesy of Buzzfeed.com):

So rather than look at Facebook’s new page look as another barrier to overcome, try to look at it as a way to uniquely engage your customers.

As always, if you have any specific questions about how to take best advantage of the new Facebook format, don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

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Yet inevitably, when someone thinks of the Louvre, she is most likely to think of one particular piece: The Mona Lisa.

What is it that has made Leonardo da Vinci’s 16th century portrait of the wife of his good friend Francesco del Giocondo overshadow tens of thousands of breath-taking works of art? Because at some point, someone in authority at the Louvre decided to make the Mona Lisa the center of the Louvre experience.

While museum curators might argue there are 34,999 other reasons to visit the Louvre, it is the Mona Lisa that gets visitors through the turnstiles. The Mona Lisa makes the Louvre accessible.

One could spend literally days exploring the different galleries, grounds and exhibitions at the museum. Not many of the museum’s 15,000 daily visitors would have the patience or interest to do that. But the fact that they can see the Mona Lisa gives them reason to go, even if they spend only a few hours at the museum. The Mona Lisa represents a touchstone for the whole Louvre experience.

So what is the touchstone of your customers’ experience with you? Like the Louvre, you may be able to list several reasons for customers to engage with you. But what is the one that is your touchstone? The one thing that sticks with them after the experience has ended? The one that comes up in conversations they may have after the fact? The one that piques the interest of people who may know nothing about you?

Is your touchstone something within the product or service itself? Or is it in the way it is delivered or supported? Of all the features you have to offer customers, which one is the most meaningful, and offers the most value, to them?

Here’s the important part: once you figure out what your touchstone is, emphasize this above all else. Don’t succumb to the “there are a lot of other great things about us” trap. Sure, some of them may seem very appealing, just as the Venus de Milo or The Thinker would be appealing to museum goers.

But never forget, it’s the Mona Lisa that gets people to pull the trigger.

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The truth is, innovation rarely works like that. Jonah Lehrer, in his book Imagine describes how very often great inventors don’t really “invent” from scratch at all; often what the most successful inventors do is find surprising new applications for what’s already available to them. The “innovative” part is not to invent new technologies, but rather to find new uses for existing technologies.

That’s what Gutenberg did when he brought his wine press skills into book printing. What the Wright Brothers did when they applied their knowledge of bicycle mechanics to make airplanes. And what the Apple team did when they brought their extensive experience in operating systems, digital files and data management to develop the iPod.

In essence, Apple’s engineers didn’t start our saying “We’re looking to develop a product that will render the Discman obsolete.” It was more likely they said “With all we know about computers and the digital world, what other product possibilities or consumer markets can we get into?”

Interestingly enough, the approach the inventor takes to create something new and exciting works in business as well. An organization with a strong Brand Vision (which represents the ONE meaningful, unique and true thing the organization aspires to be remembered for) is adept at keeping the consumer’s “greater purpose” in mind.

The Brand Vision reflects the ultimate solution for the consumer. It’s understanding, for example, that a customer isn’t purchasing furniture, she’s purchasing a beautiful room that reflects her good taste. So the organization can use its knowledge, expertise and connections to further this ultimate goal for the customer, perhaps through free interior design classes, in-home design consultations, a take-it-home-and-try-it policy, or simply by helping access the latest insider news.

In short, you don’t have to be an “Edison-type” to be innovate. You just need to be in line with understanding what the consumer is hoping to accomplish or feel when she purchases your product or service.

Happy innovating!

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Not to unduly pick on Komen. The past couple of years, we’ve been witness to more than a few examples of companies who had their “oops” moment and muffed their chance to be totally forthcoming. The Toyota Prius and its acceleration issues, BP’s response to the Gulf oil spill and Netflix’s tough-to-swallow price increase also immediately come to mind.

What these marketers all failed to do was to honor the age –old and much-proven way to deal with a public relations crisis. Lay it all out there. Take your lumps. Move on.

In the event of a media firestorm, you should want to be the go-to place the press, your partners, your customers and others look to get their information. But in order to do that, you have to be 100% transparent. You can’t cherry pick what gets shared, no matter how pure your intentions. No corporate spin, and no hiding behind lawyer-approved press releases.

Don’t hold anything back (even things you might consider irrelevant to the situation at hand), or continue to perpetuate spin with the ill-conceived idea that in the end you’ll look good. You won’t. You’ll look like you’re covering something up. And the public starts thinking, “If they’re not telling me the whole story on this, what else are they holding back on me?” Trust starts evaporating.

And “trust,” my friends, is what customer relations is all about.

A company that wrote the book on how to handle a brand crisis is Johnson & Johnson. When the company’s flagship pain reliever, Tylenol, was suspected of causing seven deaths in the Chicago area in 1982, many thought the brand was finished. When it was confirmed that a limited number of Tylenol bottles had been tampered with and laced with cyanide in the Chicago area, Johnson & Johnson didn’t try to minimize the problem by attempting to “localize” it. Understanding that the very trust of its customers was at stake, Johnson & Johnson CEO James Burke ordered recall of more than 31 million bottles nationwide. The company then halted production of capsules (which are easier to tamper with) in favor of pills and caplets. Then the company invested millions in tamper-proof packaging, that has since become the standard for the industry.

Burke’s openness and his proactive steps to re-build customer trust resulted in the Tylenol brand not just surviving, but also growing over the next few years.

The lesson here is that any corporate misstep isn’t as big as YOU think it is, it’s as big as YOUR CUSTOMERS and the media think it is. That’s especially important to remember in these days of social media where information flies freely and attitudes can change at a head-snapping pace.

And the question that needs to be asked is, what’s it going to take to restore trust?

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Wikipedia's home page on the day of the protest.

An almost spontaneous movement that culminated in one historic day of protest effectively killed two bills being debated before Congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). I’m definitely not the most well-versed person in regard to either of these bills, but suffice to say enough respected heavy-hitters in the online industry rallied against it and served as a Pied Piper of sorts to hoards of followers. Wikipedia went black for the day. Other sites (Google, as an example) obscured their logos in protest, or became forums or points of distribution for protesters (Twitter). In less than a day, two bills which were seen as slam dunks for quick passage were suddenly withdrawn, with politician after politician going before the media cameras and saying how they needed to take a “fresh look” at the proposed legislation.

In other words, they went from “done” to “dead.”

On a personal note, I first suspected something big was afoot when my 13-year-old texted me and asked me to sign Google’s online petition. In case we doubted the Internet’s ability to take “sticky” information and make it “slippery” (easy to pass on), here we had it in spades.

In a world where “power” usually translates to money and connections, the SOPA/PIPA protest showed that if you have an idea that is simple enough and compelling enough and can get enough “social proof” behind it, nothing is impossible. Regardless of where you come down in terms of whether this legislation is a good idea or not, you can’t help but be awed by what transpired.

A word of caution, here. At some point, this process could lend itself to some serious forms of digital malpractice, especially because many movements can grow at a velocity where potential members may not have an opportunity to vet the authenticity of what’s going on. So before we sign online petitions or forward manifestos to everyone in our contact lists, we need to do some due diligence. Being the transparent self-policing place it is, the Internet will (in time) weed out the scammers and the low-lifes, but it doesn’t happen instantaneously.

The Internet, then, is at a point where we can view it much as we do electricity. It is so ubiquitous, we almost take it for granted. The power can be harnessed, but must be respected.

Posted by Mickey

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