Here at Outspoken Media we love seeing the data behind those epic tweets, but we recognize that this kind of genius happens because of people–teams built on trust with open collaboration. We wanted to find out how these brands were able to cut through the red tape and let their personalities shine, so we went straight to the source at Audi. Big thanks to Amanda Orson for pointing us to Andy White, the Senior Social Media Manager for Audi who has been trailblazing social media success for the brand for years now.

You can learn more about Andy’s incredible social media accomplishments here, but let’s dive into the questions, which are truly inspiring for both in-house and agency marketers alike! Seriously, I had a grin plastered on my face for hours after reading his responses and I haven’t stopped strategizing since.

Q: From prior interviews you’ve given, it’s clear that Audi understands that marketing during an event like the Super Bowl isn’t about directing viewers to a URL or trying to sell them on a car, it’s about (in your own words) “engaging in naturally forming dialogues that arise from a thought starter.” This seems like a huge evolution from traditional marketing schools of thought, even many digital marketer’s! What had to happen internally to drive this understanding and acceptance within Audi? Who needed to be involved in the early stages of strategy development? Did you have any standout hurdles and/or advocates early on?

A: It helped immensely that a car purchase is so long-tail that there wasn’t that immediate need to get dollars and cents raining down from a bit of linkbait. Once you establish that you’re looking to establish relationships, build awareness, and cultivate ideas among fans and aspirationals, that automatically frees the social marketer to be much more etherial with his goals. Our first ever Super Bowl hashtag, #ProgressIs, set the tone early on for where we were going with this. The next generation of this way of thinking is to react in real-time to unforeseen events, such as we did yesterday during the SB blackout. Twitter is a constantly evolving cultural touchstone and zeitgeist unlike any other social network, and it demands full and total freedom from its SM teams to be used effectively.

Q: You’ve been managing social media for Audi for years with great success. Many probably assume you’re in-house at Audi (I know I did at first), but you’re actually with M80 a social media agency that cultivates social campaigns for brands like Audi, IKEA and AT&T, is that right? To manage the social media efforts of a brand as large as Audi, this has to take a lot of coordination and man power. What does the management and communication side typically look like between you, the M80 team, and Audi?

A: Yes I am with M80, but I have been 100% Audi social media for the past two and something years. I personally started out working embedded in Audi’s HQ in Washington, DC before moving to LA. This practice continues today with other members of my team, and we found it invaluable to build relationships with the client, which has in turn enabled our team to have an amazing amount of autonomy and creative freedom with both our grassroots social and our campaigns.

This is the secret sauce to everything that comes before and after, and it’s so simple: Most social touchpoints your audience will have with your product or brand or whatever is not the bells and whistles campaigns you put together at great expense, but rather the day-to-day social management of all your channels. That’s how they meet you, and that’s where they come to thank you, and it’s where they are going to voice their discontent. So be there for them, take care of them, and give them what they came to you for in the first place.

Q: During Super Bowl XLVII Audi aired the #braverywins commercial, which had a very positive reception, but what captured as much attention was the blackout response:

The trust that has to be in place for an agency to represent a brand online and respond in real-time must be immense. Many brands try to mitigate potential reputation problems by setting up a strict approval process or brand guidelines, but that means they can’t adapt like you’ve been able to. What do you attribute the success of the relationship between M80 and Audi to? Was there much prep work leading up to the Super Bowl? Were there set goals and if so, how were those tracked?

A: I think I just scratched the surface of that trust we had between agency and client. A lot of the kudos here has to go to a man at Audi called Doug Clark, for he had the guts to put this way of thinking in place with the huge entity that is Audi of America, and it was from that directive nearly three years ago we were able to succeed at the Super Bowl 2013.

Meet Doug Clark:

Agencies love to bandy around self-aggrandizing terms such as ‘mission control center’, and it sounds grandiose because it is, but it implies a lot of monitors and suits and high-powered executives rushing around to get approval on messaging. Now I assume that does happen, but our approach during these live events is unique in that it’s pure touch and feel (to prove it, refer to my timeline for photos of our ‘command center’).

Another look at that Audi ‘mission control center’. Look close, far left, center sofa. twitter.com/white/status/2…

— Andy White (@white) February 4, 2013

Sitting there, on Super Bowl Sunday, that trust had evolved into complete creative freedom, the only boundaries being my own innate knowledge of Audi brand voice and what would and would not work with the audience I have breathed in and out for 700 days.

Nobody knows what’s going to work until the time comes, and don’t let them tell you otherwise, so a lot of pre-planning for these live events outside of laying the groundwork is going to get in the way of what needs to happen on the day itself. Get the right people in the right places and roll with it. This is an art, right? So time to start treating it like one. I had a budget for Twitter ads to create campaigns on the fly as and when I saw a need to pump a flagging term, or roll on a BMW conquesting bit for a fan-created parody video riffing on our own that just happened to pop, and this all supplemented our own engagement in real-time. Two minutes after the lights went dark at the Superdome, Audi tweeted about it in a way that resonated with our fanbase and beyond like never before. It happened that fast, and the rest is history.

Q: You’ve talked a lot about simplicity as a critical part of the brand’s social media success, especially when discussing the 18-month long #WantAnR8 campaign. What does your creative process look like for developing a social media campaign? What’s the criteria for choosing what works?

A: The best campaigns we have produced have evolved either organically – #WantAnR8 – or have come together through a 1,000-mile high remit from the client – ‘Make connection between skiing and Audi for recreational skiers’ – which in turn evolved into our foursquare campaign with the US Ski Team. We’re at the point where there needs to be pushback against those cynical asks to add a social media component to something undeserving at the last minute. We spend months and years cultivating and curating our audience to trust us, to love us, and it’s a respect that needs to go both ways. How many times will agencies push out the ‘Like this if/Share this if’ garbage before we get turned off – permanently?

Q: You’ve mentioned in the past that Tweetdeck is your tool of choice. Is this still the case? What are your other must-have tools for social media management, tracking, or social listening?

A: For real-time response and monitoring, I still use Classic Tweetdeck (not the program Twitter issued post buy-out), and that’s what I used exclusively throughout the Super Bowl. However, I am now a big proponent of Social Flow for management of evergreen content, for content that doesn’t immediately need to go out. We’ve seen engagement increase through its ability to post at optimal times (after examining your account history), and its usage at this point has become something of a no-brainer for me. It’s something I definitely will look to take with me to my next account.

Thank you Andy for taking the time to share your insight and love for the Audi brand. It’s infectious and we hope we can all find ways to keep our campaigns simple, connect honestly, and listen to our communities.

Very few of us use social media to the point that we are so mentally and physically exhausted that we can’t go on. I get fatigued from pregnancy, because I’m growing a human being! I get fatigued from growing a business, because I have to provide for my team and my client’s teams. I get fatigued from exercise, because my frail ginger body only has so much strength.

We all have life events that leave us truly fatigued–social media isn’t one of them. Social media doesn’t cause fatigue, it causes an emotional block about how we prioritize our time and the success we are or aren’t having with it. At least that’s my non-expert, anecdotal opinion. After hours of calls, coffees, and emails exchanged with folks recounting their trouble with social media, that has to count for something.

Last week I spoke during an early morning roundtable with our local AMA chapter on “How to Avoid Social Media Fatigue.” When I arrived, Mary Darcy, of All Over Albany and Cathy Herman, who was coordinating the roundtable, greeted me and we spoke about how we were going to present. Here’s the thing–I didn’t know what the heck I was going to talk about! Mary didn’t either, so we went back and forth for a minute about who should speak first. When it came time for our introductions, we finally decided that I would go first and set the stage.

I started with an apology for being a couple minutes late, but noted that because of social media, the organizers knew I was not still in bed. I also apologized for being short of breath, I’ve found that being pregnant and speaking at length, with the speed I’m accustomed to, results in heavy panting. Then I said something that I realized later felt very profound and it’s the impetus for this post. What I said was just that:

social media fatigue is really about fear and disappointment.

I know, that doesn’t sound terribly profound, we’ve all probably felt this before, but let’s go deeper. We’re all given the same amount of time in our day and how we choose to spend our time is shaped by our experiences and drive. Unfortunately, there always seems to be someone who has more time, more focus, and more success. The attendees wanted validation (and you may as well) that we aren’t alone in feeling defeated by social media at times–defeated by someone with a bigger set of followers, a more compelling blog post, or a punchier tone that makes every regulated industry marketer jealous. This is why we attend breakfast roundtables, listen to webinars, take a class, or read blogs to learn how to be better at some aspect of this strange new channel.

Last Thursday, the roundtable attendees specifically wanted to learn how to avoid social media fatigue, because there are days when the last thing any of us wants to look at is Facebook. Maybe we even dream of deleting our account (good luck with that). For the enlightened marketer though, we recognize that if we slack off in our social media usage, the short attention spans of our followers might wain or be stolen by a new shiny object.

Having been an early adopter of Twitter and champion for social media, my use of the each social network has evolved and sometimes devolved. What I wanted the attendees (and now you) to get is that social media fatigue happens when we feel like we aren’t getting the results we want from our usage or perhaps we are, but we recognize how it’s sucking the life out of us. Remember, we only have so many hours, and I doubt any of us imagined ourselves glued to Instagram on the weekends or maniacally checking LinkedIn throughout the work day in fear that we might miss something vital to our future success in life.

Social Media Fear

Social media fatigue due to fear comes from the unknown. We fear what we think may or may not happen, so instead of doing, we lay dormant and hope no one notices us. If we do get noticed we can pretend like we were too busy being busy to care about something as silly as this new, innovative form of communication that others are taking advantage of in incredibly profitable ways. It’s easy to say, “yeah, I could do that, but I choose not to right now.”

Social Media Disappointment

Disappointment with social media comes from failure. We tried and we failed, which means we now have evidence to support our insecurities and we’re put back into the social media fear bucket. Rather than test a new method, recognize where we failed, or grow from the experience, we let an ugly, negative seed of self-doubt sit in our chests.

This is heavy stuff!

We’re just talking about social media, but it feels like we need to bring in a psychologist to discuss our family issues and feelings of self-worth. That’s what this is though. Social media is about putting yourself out “there” into the great unknown where anyone and everyone can see you. I should rephrase that as “see the version of you that you choose to share.”

It’s easy to pretend like we don’t care what others think of us and justify our fear and disappointment. The truth is, we do care. Maybe not about everyone, but we all have an audience who is important to us. They’re probably the motivation behind everything we do. I care most about what my family, my employees, my clients, and my mentors think of me. I don’t want to disappoint them or say anything stupid on social media that will make them question something about my character, work, or values. That’s why it’s so much easier to not even try. You can’t have negative consequences if you don’t act, so we let fear and disappointment produce “social media fatigue.”

Now, I don’t want to leave you feeling down, that’s not the point of this post. I want to give you mini cures to help prevent and overcome the silly emotional hangups about social media that each of us has at some point. These are taken from the advice both Mary and I shared during the AMA event, let me know what works or doesn’t work for you!

How to Combat Social Media Fear:

1. Be clear about roles and expectations – Learning anxiety strikes when we feel unprepared for a new responsibility. Develop a clear, attainable plan for yourself or your team. What are the responsibilities of each team member? Be clear–ambiguity leads to uncertainty, doubt, and fear.
2. Set reasonable goals. – Now that you have clear roles and responsibilities, set yourself or your team up for success through reasonable goal setting. There’s nothing more demoralizing than not hitting an arbitrary goal, so develop achievable goals that set the organization and your team up for success. Don’t borrow your competitor’s goals, they’re very rarely in the same position as you and their business model is likely very different as well.
3. Have an editorial calendar. – Just like your blog, social media has different seasons, timezones, usage trends, etc. Observe, test, and develop a calendar that makes sense for you.
4. Develop a pattern. – Your pattern may be very clear or more sporadic like mine. I like to say I’m “burst-y,” because I’m at the whim of end of month calls, clients, and the needs of my team. I’ll go days without much heavy social media usage and then have a burst of activity. You know what? People don’t disappear on me, you’re still here! With that said, look at your audience’s patterns and make sure you’re promoting your content or message when they’re available.
5. Listen more than you broadcast. – Start by listening and then don’t stop. We feel like there’s nothing to say, because we’re so caught up in our own world that we haven’t taken a minute to see what’s going on in the real world. As soon as you step outside of your bubble, you’ll discover all sorts of inspiration. Over the weekend, I got inspired by watching Ira Glass talk about the elements of storytelling.
6. Understand the value you bring. – More often than not, “fatigue” sets in because you don’t recognize you’re own value. You have value! Don’t make me get all psychologist again. Feel like you aren’t a “thought leader?” Listen and share more. Connect others. Answer questions. There are a lot of new SEOs popping up on my radar, because they do exactly that and as a boss, I’m paying attention, because I want to hire folks who aren’t scared to promote themselves (this means they can handle link building).
7. Don’t spread yourself too thin. – Trying to manage too many channels at once will quickly lead to true social media fatigue. You don’t have to spend equal time on Quora, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+, email, calls, and real life (whew!). If you do, you’re probably neglecting your family, friends, and health, or have a whole team helping you. Pick a couple networks and start there.

How to Combat Social Media Disappointment:

1. Mix it up. – If you tried and failed in the past, change your approach! Try a new medium (photos or videos versus just status updates), try a new social media network, alter your messaging (length and tone), etc. In other words–test! We should always be testing to see what works best.
2. Establish tracking. – Having accurate data will make it easier to demonstrate a return for your efforts, which motivates us to keep going. Check out Google Analytics social reports, event tracking, Bit.ly, and other tools to track performance metrics.
3. Make sure you have something to say. – This speaks to several of the social media fear tips. Once you’ve got an editorial calendar, understand the value you bring, and spend time listening and reading as much as you promote, you’ll find it easy to meet your social media quota.
4. Give yourself permission to have lulls. – Recently, Outspoken Media was off-the-radar while we took care of several major projects. We had no time to say anything, so we had to go silent, but we gave ourselves permission to do so and our community didn’t leave. You’re reading this now! Everyone has moments when we have to focus on other priorities, that’s ok, in fact it’s human. Involve your community in what you have happening and be clear about when you’ll be back.
5. Reinforce realistic expectations. – I already brought this up in social media fear, but it’s vital that we reinforce realistic expectations. Some content doesn’t elicit a strong response, especially if all anyone might say is, “great post!” This doesn’t mean the content doesn’t add value, especially if it’s instructional. Base your performance metrics in goals that really matter–new business, not the number of shares or likes you get.
6. Promote yourself. – This is by far my most uncomfortable area–self-promotion. It comes easy to some, but for the vast majority of us, we cringe at the thought of asking our next door neighbor if they’ll buy delicious Girl Scout cookies, much less share our recent blog post. No one is going to discover or share your content unless you make it happen though. We’re marketers–we can do this!
7. Don’t do it all alone. – Do you feel like you’re the only person carrying the torch? As an independent consultant, there may be nothing to do about that, but for organizations with a large team, you shouldn’t be the only one. Spread the love and educate internal team members about the importance of active involvement. For me, it’s important that the Outspoken Media team use social media to help strengthen our knowledge, quality, and values. Without fail the team will often find amazing new tools, techniques, or messages that help everyone. Understand WHY you use social media and it’ll be easy to get buy-in from executives and your team.

That’s it! This post was originally much larger, but I wanted to not fatigue you too badly. Am I totally off-base with the tips and psychology of social media fatigue? Tell me what you think and I’ll add a revision and credit for any new tips you share.

Revisions
Rick of eBizROI mentions below a few other tips:

• Make sure your social interactions reflect your business’ core competencies.
• Give more than you get.
• Avoid engaging in posts on politics and religion.
• Have fun and celebrate victories, those of your staff, clients and personal victories.

Social media is an enormous component to getting the full experience of any company’s brand. That’s why it’s so imperative that it is effectively integrated so that customers can be captivated and engaged no matter where they are or where they come from.

First things first: a shift in perspective

Social media needs to be a fully integrated part of internet marketing, not its own separate entity. There are a ton of moving pieces involved in building a brand, raising visibility (and rankings), providing value, fostering a community, building relationships, getting the word out, and making the sale. Social media just happens to be one cog in the machine.

This holistic view requires a fundamental shift in perspective not only for online marketers, but for their customers too. Achieving success in web marketing is not just about SEO, and it’s not just about social media either. It’s about the whole picture: providing an ideal and rewarding experience for all visitors to the site while simultaneously using the right tools to help the company realize its specific vision and goals.

Working together

As a consumer yourself, and especially for SEOs who are most likely familiar with the challenges of attribution, you probably realize that there could be a number of channels explored before someone interacting with your brand becomes a customer (in an act widely known as conversion). It’s fairly difficult to simply attribute a “sale” to just your website, blog, or one specific social media channel. They probably all worked together to get the job done.

Because of the variety of entry points, the experience (and the conversion) could take place anywhere, so the experience has to be everywhere.

To that end, let’s start with a few basics on user experience. Keep in mind that there is WAY more to UX than I have mentioned here:

Figure out who your customer is and what they want
This seems like a no brainer, but it’s easy to think you know your customer and just get to work on a content or social media marketing strategy without any real data about who are they and what they need. It takes some work, but you’ve got to define personas and get to know the needs of your audience if you want to provide them with the best possible experience.

And then, once they actually become a customer, make a continuous effort to get their feedback so that you can maintain those relationships and continually offer an adventure worth coming back for (and telling their friends about).

Eliminate and enhance with value
What are the most significant tasks that your customer will need to accomplish when they come to your site? Understanding this will help determine funnels, user behaviors, and what your site needs to do in order to get your customers what they need.

Keep in mind, though, that every page on your website needs to have a purpose. Otherwise, what’s the point, right? If you analyze each page on your website, can you confidently say that it is chock full of value that your customers would want to engage with or share? If not, it’s probably time to eliminate or enhance some pages. Put all of your energy into a few more powerful pages rather than maintaining a bunch of thin pages that don’t provide any real value or experience for your customers (this will also allow you to better define goals and track them through hard data).

Same goes for the rest of the experience on other channels. Before putting anything on your website, blog, or social media outlets, ask yourself this question:

Why in samhill would anyone read, share, or like this?

We have found with our clients that providing an awesome user experience can be difficult, particularly when it comes to the necessary “services” type pages or other vital, necessary, but inherently dry content. Think about enhancing that content with some personality. Integrate a short (and authentic) video about the service or product (maybe even an interview with a customer or employee), a testimonial, or links to other good, related content that is relevant and valuable (even if it wasn’t you who wrote it). Say what you need to say, but if at all possible, do it in a way that doesn’t make your customer want to stick a fork in their leg while they’re reading it.

Let the sharing commence
We all know that making it convenient to share content from your website, blog, or social media outlets is imperative if you want your content and brand to spread from your first tier customers to second, third, and beyond. That does not mean, however, that you need social sharing buttons on every page of your website.

If you can control it, place the share buttons where they belong…on pages with content that is worthy of sharing. Then work to get those pages shared (a.k.a build links). That way, you won’t have a bunch of “share” boxes with zeros. Those lead to the impression that no one comes to your site, or worse yet, your content isn’t worth sharing. This is not the reputation you want to build for yourself. Believe it or not, convincing your visitors that there is value to be had is all part of the user experience, too.

Ok, enough of the schooling. On to the good stuff.

How to do it (well, almost) right

So, I’m a huge fan of the Chipotle brand. They do an amazing job of providing an enjoyable experience both on their website and in their social community. They definitely live and breathe #RCS. So much so that they’ve even created an annual festival that embodies everything they stand for as a company and a brand. Chipotle makes it hard not to love them (plus their naked steak burrito bowls are super tasty).

But here’s what I found most interesting: there’s an almost complete disconnect and inaccessibility between their thriving community/customers/fanbase and their central website. Maybe they’ve got something behind their strategy that I’m not seeing, but they certainly have not seamlessly integrated their social experience with their website. Instead, they’ve made it a bit of a hurdle.

Case in point:

This is their awesome website. Complete with access to great videos about their story and what they’re doing to change the world through food with integrity. I especially love how they’ve integrated FOOD WITH INTEGRITY as a main nav item. Instead of being buried somewhere in the ABOUT section, this is a bold way of showing that Food with Integrity is so much a part of who they are that it deserves a top spot in their site’s architecture.

But I digress.

This is their thriving Facebook page. They have more than 1 million people in their community. It’s easy to make brand recognition here as the header image on Facebook is the same one from their website.

Same goes for Twitter. Chipotle’s got the brand consistency going on in their background (although it would be nice for them to switch to the new header and capitalize on that space as well).

Can you guess what’s missing?

Overall, Chipotle does a great job in their social media. They are responsive and really work to foster their community. Plus (and this is my favorite part) they’re not always about self-promotion. They’re really focused on giving back and making a difference in the local communities they serve.

The bummer is, that from their website, there is no way to easily access the greatness that they have cultivated on social media. You can’t even get to it from their home page (for the love of Pete). What if I wanted to engage with them and ask them a question about their Halloween promotion, or join their community? I’m going to have to dig to find those buttons or do the extra work of searching for them on Facebook or Twitter.

For a big brand like Chipotle who already has a ginormous following, that may not matter, but regardless, for user experience, it’s kind of a huge fail.

On the other hand…

The Chipotle Cultivate Festival does an amazing job integrating social on the festival website. And not just that. The overall experience is pretty rad (if I do say so myself).

Here’s eight reasons why:

1. Good design
   The design is beautiful (there’s even a rooster on there).

2. It’s easy to figure out what they do
   In about 2 seconds you can tell what the festival is all about. It’s free, and there’s gonna be ideas (cool), food (yum), and music (yeah!).

3. Social and sharing is easily accessible
   Access to social is front and center (well a little to the left) which makes it easy to jump into the community. The icons get the real estate they deserve. There’s also the convenient “share” option to spread the word.

4. Simple nav and responsive design
   The website is really just one page which makes the nav simple and easy to utilize. It also makes the mobile experience pretty convenient.

5. Direct funneling to necessary info
   There are two festival locations and you can access any information you need to know about the festivals by clicking on a link (that takes you directly to the info you wanted, not just the home page for that festival where you would then have to dig to find what you came for).
   
   
6. Dedicated social outlets/handles
   They have a Facebook page and Twitter handle dedicated to the festival itself (separate from the Chipotle main website and social) so you can engage and interact with the community that has been built around the event.

7. Easy to engage and follow the conversation
   The Festival page has their social feeds completely integrated into the page so that you can see activity on Facebook and Twitter (without leaving the site of course).

8. Call to action
   When they are gearing up for the event, Chipotle’s main website is getting the word out with a call to action as well.

See, pretty fully integrated and awesome.

Job well done…except for just one tiny thing

In my humble opinion, the Chipotle Cultivate Festival website really allows the customer to experience their brand and feel as though there are no barricades between the website and their social.

They could, however, integrate the website URL into their Food/Beverages description so that there is easy access to the website from the header on their Facebook page (bringing the customer from social to the website).

Like they do on Twitter:

It doesn’t take much to get it right

There are a lot of pieces that need to be put into place to get user experience right on a website (way more than I’ve explained here), but even more so when you’re working to embrace social as well. But all in all, it’s simple stuff to ensure your customers are getting a really great experience, and above all, an ideal taste of your brand (no pun intended).

What other great examples of social integration are you seeing? I’d love to add them to my list.

Autocomplete is nothing new in the world of search. Since Google’s post-beta launch of ‘Google Suggest’/Autocomplete in 2008, enhanced features such as personalization and predictive search have become an expected part of the user experience. But in terms of online reputation management, suggested search on social networks can present several unique opportunities and challenges for businesses. Here are a few things you can do today to prepare, protect, and promote your brand through Twitter in light of the autocomplete update:

1. Claim your Twitter account – Basic, but necessary. Don’t worry about jumping into the deep end with a social media marketing strategy. But make sure your company-controlled account is available in suggested results when users search for your brand name. Start small. Start today.

   

2. Monitor suggested search results for your brand – While the feature seems to only be useful for big brands at the moment, we suspect related search will be a more useful feature as the algorithm becomes more sophisticated. Monitoring suggested search results may help you gauge sentiment and understand the neighborhood of topics where your brand is mentioned. Simply search for your brand, and related search terms will display above search results.

   

3. Follow the experts – Twitter has always been a great tool for monitoring conversations happening within your industry. However, it’s easy to get caught up in the follow-as-many-people-as-possible frenzy with the goal of accumulating more followers. While building up a follower base is important, make sure the accounts you follow tweet quality information on a regular basis.

   Following high-quality accounts will allow you to get the most out of the The ‘People You Follow’ search filter so you can easily search conversations in your industry for relevant keywords and get the best results. Once you know what the experts are talking about, you can adjust your messaging on Twitter to be more relevant to what’s happening in your industry.

   

Personalization in social media can create more engagement, click-throughs, and interactions with brands. However, without taking the proper steps to follow quality accounts and position yourself as an authority in your space, you may not enjoy the benefits of personalized social search. It may be worth taking a look at your follower list today. I hope we make the cut. ;)

Sadly, I can’t touch the lives of every business in the capitalist world. So that means there is a surfeit of businesses–even as you’re reading this!– demonstrating their reluctant acceptance of social media by trolling Craigslist for part-time and unpaid social media interns.

That works well. If you still live in 2006.

But now, in 2012, that kind of foolishness is inexcusable. Overheard from a meeting I had with a prospect recently: “How do we increase Likes?”. This was in lieu of “Hello, how are you?”  This is like somebody asking me, “Hey, how much do you make?” on a first date before I’ve had a chance to order my coffee: You just don’t do it. It’s gauche. It’s ridiculous. Most importantly, it’s irrelevant. At the end of the day, that may not be the most accurate measure of your brand’s success online. Just like how my salary isn’t the most accurate measure of our compatibility on a date.

This mindset is indicative of a larger problem: Businesses aren’t doing their homework. They’re cavalierly pursuing social media, expecting it to be an automatic money-maker out of the gate, and delegating the task of brand building to social media neophytes (otherwise referred to as “interns”) still trying to figure out what “SMH” means. You have skeptical business owners thinking Facebook is the be-all/end-all of social and thus trying to attach dollar values to Likes–and so they’re offloading this project to people who can afford to get paid nothing or next-to-nothing.

Facepalm.

By doing this, they’re creating two serious problems.

A Devaluation Of Soft Currency

Once upon a time in America, before the recession scorched our economy and we all became a race of cheapskates, people understood the value of positions that didn’t have a hard ROI, but soft currency.

Soft currency is the bane of every sales director: It’s all the stuff that you’re getting that helps bring in the revenue. Examples of soft currency might be Likes, retweets, follows, earned media mentions, and anything else that bolsters your brand without directly bolstering your bottom-line.

Appointing interns to rustle up soft currency means you’re asking people with negligible amounts of B2B experience to liaise with publicists, editors, clients, and industry leaders. You have to look at the source of soft currency: Relationships. The online world is frequently just a microcosm of what’s happening offline. Being best pals with someone outside of social media will go a long way towards drumming up soft currency.

It’s not that being bullish on ROI is misguided, it’s that you have to curb your expectations. At its heart, social media management more closely resembles interactive market research than an inside sales job. You’re engaging with every avenue of your industry to get the closest reading about what’s happening in the world; it honestly is somebody else’s job to monetize that information.

Soft currency is what’s going to encourage your leads to crowd around your funnel above all others. At that point, persuading them to jump right on in becomes the responsibility of your sales team.

A Devaluation of Corporate Brand

Your customers have changed. They’ve grown to become very intuitive and sophisticated. No longer do they want generic advertisements imposed upon them during ad breaks of their favorite TV show; they’d prefer you integrate that branding into the show itself (Anyone else catch Subway’s amazing product placement on a recent episode of Community?)

Appealing to this consumer instinct requires an editorial lens. It requires being able to package content across blogs and social media platforms and creating a demand for something your company offers. More than that, it requires being able to serve as the public face of your company to any potentially interested prospect.

It involves drafting form email templates, split-testing email blasts, optimizing Twitter and Facebook assignments, setting up analytics software, and managing an editorial calendar.

It involves cultivating relationships with editors and bloggers so your sell shines apart from the zillions of other pitches filling up their inboxes; it involves brushing up on the latest technologies, because what passes for viral on Tumblr won’t work on Reddit necessarily.

It involves turning brand presences on third party websites into remote brand outposts; it involves staging offline events and wrangling a liquor sponsor so both customers and members of the press have a reason to interact with your brand.

Do you need to take a deep breath after reading all that? Imagine reciting it to a fresh-faced college kid who loses you at “split-testing.” Imagine the havoc that intern is going to unleash on your brand when they try to implement the above with zero experience. Auto giant Chrysler might have the resources to bounce back from a humiliating publicity gaffe, but do you?

Most businesses don’t and frankly, you can’t afford to be this stupid. Look, the argument that “That’s what everybody else is doing,” doesn’t fly either. This is the internet. No two entities should be mimicking one another on the internet, because then they cancel each other out.

Sure, right now there are thousands of job posters on Craigslist who are eagerly soliciting applications for unpaid social media positions. And as a business owner, you have a decision:

You can sit together in the dining car with all those other dunderheads on that train to Blundering.

or

You can allocate an actual budget for someone to manage these initiatives for you.

Simply put, If you want to fry up bigger fish, you need to buy the Crisco. Yes, it’s as simple as that. Stop trusting interns to build your brand presence. Instead, hire someone who knows what the hell they’re doing.

Managing a corporate brand is so multifaceted that you can’t farm it out to an intern or a part-time lackey who works off-site. This is someone who needs to be liaising with every department of the office so they know how to piece together a composite of the company’s brand. Because your social media manager is in charge of your brand’s public face, you need someone who’s talking with IT, sales, the directors, and anyone else whose contributions to the business could help set the company’s brand apart from its competitors. Relegate that kind of responsibility to an experience-lacking kid who’s looking for a chance to catch up on his homework and you’ll end up with a Belvedere-sized fiasco on your hands.

Your social media managers need to have some kind of B2B fluency too–otherwise how are they going to embark on cross-marketing initiatives or content swapping partnerships? Social media isn’t just about tweeting at Justin Bieber in between trips to Starbucks to get iced cappuccinos; you actually have to do things to get your company’s brand further out in the world.

You Only Get What You Give

Businesses who truly care about ROI will entrust the digital face of their business to someone who will be meticulous and exacting by giving them a monetary stake in that product. We’re not talking commissions or stipends. Make this the focal point of their time and you’ll end up with social media managers who care enough to check in and follow up on campaigns after-hours, during the weekend, and during holidays.

More importantly, you’ll end up with social media managers who have an incentive to research and leverage new technologies and go the extra mile. They have a financial stake in how well your company does.

You see, the internet never stops. Branding never stops. Branding is 24/7/365; branding will outlive you.

Branding > You.

The least you can do is assign a person to that beat who attempts to make sense of such an unwieldy, immortal beast. And if you actually want to learn about this, schedule orientations and meetings so your entire team can learn about what exactly this person is doing with their time.

As with many things in life, you get out into social media exactly what you are putting in.

I told her to appreciate her smaller community. And to use it. Right now. Because once it grows, she won’t be able to get that time or that freedom back.

So many of us think the key to social media success is to grow our audience as large as it can be. And that is one indicator of success for most people. But you want to be growing the right audience, and to do that, it means learning and finding yourself when you’re still small and taking advantage of the things that small size gives you.

Below are five advantages bloggers get just starting out that, if they’re not careful, they’ll lose when they bigger.

1. The Ability to Try Stuff & Fail

No one is going to lie to you: It’s a nice feeling to hit publish and immediately see 50 new comments sprout up. But most bloggers also miss the days when they could fail as freely as they once could. When they could try out different voices, media types, styles and ideas without having to worry how their audience was going to react and or what the commenters would say. Your community is the most supportive and accepting when it’s still young and small and growing. Take advantage of that and learn from it.

Embrace your smaller stature by using these days in your blog’s life to be fearless. Blog like no one and everyone is watching all at the same time. Take risks. Try things. Big things. Yeah, you’ll fail sometimes. But in doing that you’ll also find your voice, the one that will save your butt time and time again once you get bigger.

2. The Chance To Really Get To Know Your Audience

When there are only 15 people commenting on your blog with any sort of regularity, it gives you a great opportunity to get to know those 15 people. You not only learn their names, but you learn their issues, their trouble spots, the subjects that get them riled up, and maybe even their kids’ names. You can have email conversations or Google+ hangouts to learn more about them. All of this information helps you to target content toward them which, in the end, will make your blog stronger as it grows. When your RSS numbers begin to explode, it will be difficult to maintain this level of intimacy with the people who stop by your house every day. Have coffee with your community now to help serve them better in the future.

3. Talking to an Audience Who “Gets” You

One of the best “perks” of a smaller audience is the ability to talk to people who really understand you. They get your jokes, your sarcasm, and they’re interested in all your personal stories. These things don’t always convert so well as your audience grows. People become offended. Or they misunderstand. Or you end up spending half your time explaining what you meant to people who now think you’re a terrible person for making that “kick a puppy” joke. Enjoy this time. You’ll still be able to crack jokes when you’re bigger, but you’ll have a larger responsibility to watch your mouth. Hopefully by then you’ve crafted your blog persona so you understand what is funny to your type of people and what they’ll send you nasty tweets about.

4. Your World View Isn’t Skewed Yet

I’ll make tons of friends for saying this, but smaller bloggers are often more in tuned with reality. Or at least, they’re more in tuned with their reader’s reality. They’re worried about things like connecting with their audience, trying to do it all, and making sense out of all these social networks that keep popping up. Big-time bloggers are annoyed at their 500 pending Facebook requests, about the ToS of that new social network, and about all their apps not perfectly syncing together. The reason small business owners make really awesome bloggers? Because they share the same world view as the people they’re trying to serve. Do your best to hold on to that world view as long as you can.

5. Fewer Distractions

One of those #firstworldproblems mentioned above is all the distractions that come with being a popular blogger. The emails from people wanting to pick your brain. The phone calls. The pitches. The “discussions” that break out you spend your whole day moderating. When you’re not dealing with that, it allows you to put 100 percent of your time and your focus on your blog and what you’re trying to build there. The big bloggers wish they were you right now. Make them weep by taking advantage of it.

Growing your audience is great and it should be on your list of goals. But before you go chasing those larger waterfalls, realize the opportunity and the benefits that are in front of you right now. You don’t need to be big for your blog to be awesome. There’s an equal amount of value that comes with having a small audience, sometimes even more value. Instead of wishing you were larger, focus on nurturing that.

Because in order to take advantage of this…

source: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/pinterest.com/

And this…

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/pinterest-twitter-traffic_b19333

…you first need to figure out WTF you’re supposed to pin on Pinterest in the first place. What do your people care about?

In my initial love letter to Pinterest I wrote that the “thing” people care about on Pinterest is consuming content that demonstrates the lifestyle and core beliefs associated with your brand. That means it’s less about your product, and more about finding visual cues that represent who you are or who you want to be to your customers.

If you’re at a loss for WTF you’re supposed to pin on Pinterest, here are some ideas:

1. Photos of What People Could Do With Your Product

If you’re a brand like Eastern Mountain Sports, I don’t want to see that you’re pinning the product page for your Perception Sport Sound 9.5 kayak. I want to see where that kayak can take me. I want to see photos of your customers out for a quiet kayak with their family. I want to see people in choppy waters with big grins on their faces. I want to see a guy and his dog kayaking around a calm lake. The product is nice, but the story is what I’m looking for.

2. Your Data

Thanks to the infographic era currently smacking us in the face, many of us are doing more with data visualization. Whether you’re creating full-on infographics or you’re creating interesting lists compiling the most downloaded apps of 2011, this is very pinnable content because it’s easy for your audience to consume and chomp on. Basically, as long as they don’t have to read it, it’s perfect for Pinterest. If you’re business is high on data but low on the visualization, Danika shared some advice for creating kickass infographics on a budget that will help you get it done right.

3. Digital Assets You Already Have

Even if you’ve collected them by accident, I guarantee you there are digital assets on your Web site right now that you can use on Pinterest. Maybe it’s a strong graphic you created to go with a blog post or it’s a chart you created to break down a pain point for customers. Or maybe you have to dig a little deeper and find those dinosaur-esque print ads you ran in the yellow pages before you found the Internet. Or it’s the coupons you used to give to customers 20 years ago. Or it’s photos of the T-shirts you gave out at trade shows. Whatever it is, you have “stuff” that you can photograph and pin.

4. You About Page

Okay, so maybe not your actual about page, that would be pretty boring. But why not create a board that’s all about your company? What images can you find that communicate your values? How can you visualize your internal culture? How do you see yourself in the world? Get a team board going.

5. Book Covers

Have you written a book? Pin the cover. If you haven’t written a real book, pretend your eBook is the same thing. Or create a board of the books that got you where you are today. The ones that taught you how to learn SEO. Or how to skydive. Or how to do whatever people who use your product are passionate about.

6. Videos

Pin screenshots from videos you want your users to see. Maybe they’re videos of you speaking, your heroes speaking, or videos from your customers who love you. Either way, just because it’s a bunch of moving pictures doesn’t mean it’s not pin-friendly. It’s pin-awesome. Just screenshot an image and link off.

7. Blog Posts

Okay, so let’s be clear. Do not pin every blog that you’ve ever written. That’s an awesome way to make people hate you. But if you’ve created a killer resource that people should be aware of, make sure you pair it with an equally killer picture, and then share that. To help your karma a bit, make sure you’re sharing resources from other people, as well. Don’t be a share-douche.

8. Whatever your audience wants

Not sure? Easy. Go to: http://pinterest.com/source/yoursite to see what site content your audience is sharing the most. Once you stalk yourself, stalk your competition. Don’t worry, on the Internet it’s not considered stealing. It’s “research”.

9. Other People’s Content

Don’t forget that part of the appeal of Pinterest for normal people is sharing other people’s content that they find interesting. You want to get in on that action, too. Use the search tool to find pins related to what you’re all about and the culture you want to show off, and then repin them. If you’re Chobani, maybe that means repining recipes that include your Greek yogurt. If you’re a travel company, maybe it’s photos of people enjoying exotic locations. If you’re a local real estate agent, maybe it’s photos of people’s self-identified dream homes. Bring yourself into their world.

The idea may seem a little abstract at first, but if you take a look through your archives and get a little creative, you’ll find that you’re business has an endless supply of pinnable content. So go get some of that traffic.

The “flavor Tourettes” line is in reference to a quote found in the Fast Company article. When discussing how fanatical people are about engaging with the Chobani Facebook page, Chobani’s digital communications manager Emily Schildt is quoted as saying:

“We call it ‘flavor Turettes’ in-house,” she quips. “We get about a tweet per minute, and I would say 50% are about our newest flavor, apple cinnamon.”

No. Really. That was printed in Fast Company.

I wouldn’t call myself easily offended but I was surprised to see that when speaking on behalf of Chobani, Emily told the entire audience of Fast Company that internally the company refers to their Facebook page that way. That’s probably something you want to keep in-house. Or, you know, not do at all.

But it didn’t end there. @Chobani saw that Matt had sent me the link and decided to “engage” and “hop in the conversation”.
They did so with the following tweet:

That sound you just heard? That was Chobani falling in the 6-foot hole they had already dug for themselves.

This post isn’t meant to jump on Chobani. They made a mistake (and apologized for it) just like every company is prone to make mistakes when they enter new territories. But that’s the point, we’re all prone to these mistakes and some of us don’t all have the “forgiveableness” of an established brand like Chobani.

If you’re entering social media, you or someone on your team is going to do something stupid. I mean colossally stupid. What can you do to help avoid the mistakes instead of bulldozing right into them?

These three things.

1. Learn how to best leverage “human” for your business

We hear all the time how social media allows us to put a human face on our business, but I’d venture to say that most brands have absolutely no idea how to use that. It’s great advice for talking points or to sound really smart when you’re talking to your higher ups, but what does human business really mean for your brand? What is it going to get you?

I look at the idea of human business or social business as an opportunity to find an engaged audience by leveraging what is weird about you. To me, being human means accepting that we’re all weird and strategically letting our customers see what’s weird and authentic about us. It’s about picking what’s real, relevant, and appropriate for your audience and then serving it to them.

You probably want an example.

How about Buckley’s? If you’re not familiar with Buckley’s, it’s a Canadian cough syrup that I was first introduced to via another Fast Company article about authenticity vs perfection. In the article, Steve Jones writes about how Buckley’s has found an unlikely way to stand out in its market. Instead of trying to hide, sugarcoat or make excuses for what people have been saying about the product for years, Buckley decided to base its marketing around tackling it head-on and just admitting it.

Buckleys – It tastes awful, but it works.

That’s actually the product’s slogan. And it’s been effective. Buckley’s isn’t going after everyone who is sick, they’re going after adults who are sick and need some tough love. And, personally, I think it’s genius. They’ve found a relevant, real and appropriate way to market themselves in a crowded market. I’d venture that most cough syrups tastes pretty awful, but Buckley’s is the only one I know of that admits it, uses it, and doesn’t apologize for it. They’re not perfect and, you know what? You’re not either. Their honesty makes it easier for customers to trust the brand.

2. Create a company-wide social media policy. (And then stick to it.)

With a vision for how you’ll use social media in mind, you want to make it official and create some guidelines that employees (and even yourself) will be able to use to direct their involvement.

Matt already wrote about how companies shouldn’t make Tourette’s jokes on social media. And obviously he’s right, but these are exactly the kinds of things that happen when you attempt to “wing” social media or when you’re engaging with an unclear purpose or an undeveloped idea of what your company voice is. When you don’t take the time to iron down these details beforehand you open yourself up to employees going a little too far or making a quick that, in hindsight, maybe they should have saved for company IM instead of the company Twitter.

By writing a corporate social media policy you get the opportunity to ask and educate your staff on those important “where is the line” questions before you need to know them and put everything down on paper. In the post linked above, we went over some important questions that every business should ask when coming up with their own corporate social media plan.

For example:

• What is your purpose for being in social media?
• How does social media integrate into your employees’ existing roles?
• Who are they and what is their role?
• What sites should they be engaging on?
• What are the best practices for engagement?
• How should you handle common issues?

The best way to avoid someone driving off the road and creating a horrible, horrible accident is to teach them how to drive the car before they get in it. Not after they’ve already crashed.

Define what “being human” is NOT

Okay, so let’s be real. You never want to tell an employee they have full permission to “be weird” and “human” while speaking in the voice of your brand because they’re not going to know what that means. You also can’t tell them to “use common sense” because, well, not everyone was born with it. While you’re laying out the ground rules for what is expected of your team in social media, you may also want to explain what behing human does not mean.

For example, giving life to your brand does not mean:

• Being disrespectful.
• Being offensive.
• Being rude/difficult to deal with and calling it “authentic.”
• Being viciously snarky
• Talking to your audience like you’re both drunk at the bar.
• Sharing every thought that enters your head.

That sounds like stuff everyone on your team should already know, right? Yeah, they don’t. And you don’t want that one bit of stupidity to bring down your entire company.

Social media is helping all of us to pull back the curtain and let our customers see more of us and our brand. But that doesn’t mean letting everything hang out in the process. Have a vision, create a plan, and then put it into action. Because your customers are listening. Know what you’re telling them.

Here’s a score card of what’s gone down in case you were sleeping. Or…working.

• Google launched it’s, um, search enhancement Search Plus Your World and put “your personal content and the things you care about written by the people you care about” right into your search results. Even more adorable, they did it pretending like that didn’t already exist. You know on other sites. So cute!
• Twitter is upset because it feels like Google is using Search Plus to purposely favor its own content, making Twitter content harder to find in the search results and presenting a bad search experience for users. Boo.
• Google then took time away from snacking on our analytics data to respond that Twitter actually asked for Google to stop taking its content so, I guess, THERE, they did!
• Eric Schmidt went into evil overload mode chatting with Danny Sullivan about how they’d love to talk to Twitter and Facebook about using their data…only they haven’t. Maybe if they did, he says, they could come up with new permissions, but no one talked about it. And he won’t talk about why they won’t talk about it. Just that they won’t talk about it and Danny should stop asking. Okay.
• Singer and soon-to-be-divorcee Katy Perry hasn’t chimed in yet to tell us her opinion of things, but she might after she reads Danny Sullivan’s excellent piece detailing Real-Life Examples of How Google’s “Search Plus” Will Drive Facebook & Twitter Crazy and realizes her lack of a Google+ profile is making her Google-invisible.

So as it turns out, it’s not just Facebook and Twitter that this will drive crazy. It’s driving us all crazy and ruining search and social for everyone.

Oh, and it may all turn out to be anti-competitive and illegal and shit. DRAMAZ!

First, let’s admit it. Google’s in a hard place. They need social data. That’s where users and everything around them is moving. Social is also Google’s big plan to help bring accountability back to the Web, so we’ve been watching the search giant dance around Facebook and Twitter and everyone’s wondering what’s going to happen and whose going to get over their issues first and do what’s best for the children (us).

Remember that Google used to have access to Twitter data. But that deal ended. Reportedly, by Twitter. Google’s never had access to Facebook’s data and I always get the feeling Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg are as fond of each other as YOU would be with the person openly gunning for your job.

Because there are no deals or permissions in place, Google still needs full access to social data so that it can carry on with its master plan of cleaning up the Web and making lots of money. But they don’t have it. So they created their own data by building Google+ and drug-pushing it like their engine depended on it. Now that Search Plus has made its appearance, not only is Google collecting search data, they’re shoving it in your face so you have no choice but to offer up your wrist for the Google barcode we all believe is coming shortly. Probably in 2014.

It’s all-Google, all the time, like no other social portal exists.

And there are several major issues with this.

First, and perhaps most importantly, it could be seen as anti-competitive (because it is) and there are already claims that the Federal Trade Commission will be brought in over new anti-trust concerns. When you’re the one holding the monopoly, you don’t just have to play fair, you have to play nice. Favoring your own content and making it harder to find OTHER’S content isn’t nice. And it doesn’t fly.

What also doesn’t fly are Google’s claims that they can’t use Facebook and Twitter data because they “don’t have it”. As Danny shows in his Marketing Land piece, Google has collected more than 3 billion pages from Twitter.com and is certainly indexing public Facebook data. So it’s there. And even if it wasn’t there via the open Web, most of us readily hand over this information to Google via our Google Profiles where we’ve very dutifully linked all our social accounts together. So if Google wanted to show Britney Spears’ or Katy Perry’s Facebook pages to go along with their Google+ accounts, they could.

But they don’t. Because Google doesn’t want that.

Instead, Google does what it always does. Someone brings a claim that Google’s kind of being an exclusionary jerk and Google smirks, plays a game of misdirection, and continues presenting a poor search experience by not using the data they have to give users the information they want.

I’m not going to pretend I’m certain what Google’s intent is here or that this whole thing is all Google’s fault. However, it was April 2009 when I wrote Google was forcing our hand, stealing our thumbprint after Google Profiles launched and Google was putting on the hard sell for users to enter the system. Now it’s 2012 and Google’s no longer forcing our hand.

Google’s forcing the FTC’s hand by purposely ignoring access to data they have and showing the attitude of a spiteful teenager.

The FTC anti-trust drama will play out in the courts and we’ll get to watch, should it get that far. But in the meantime, there’s one thing I do know for sure:

Users lose.

The unwillingness of Google, Twitter and Facebook to work together and do what’s best for users and, ironically, ALSO FOR THEM, hurts us, the social nature of the Web and is stalling whatever is next to come. It also makes Google look like a bully, Twitter kind of whiny and Facebook…well, Facebook scares everyone anyway.

But it’s enough.

It’s time to stop with the tantrums and the power struggles and realize we all get farther and the WEB gets farther, when you do what’s best for users and help them find the content THEY’RE looking for. Not the content you’re agenda wants to show. Isn’t that what all three sites are supposed to be about anyway?

I thought it was. I’m exhausted.

Updated 1/13/2012 :  Well, there you go.  The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a complaint with the FTC alleging that the new Search Plus feature shows favoritism toward Google’s own network and violates Google+ users’ privacy.

Wait? Pinterest? Is that really anything more than an outlet for pictures of sleeping cats, fancy home décor and items deemed orange?

It is.

I’ll tell you why I love it and why, as a brand, you should love it too.

One of the great things social media has done is that it’s undeniably changed the way businesses and consumers are able to interact. It broke through an imaginary wall that had long divided the two and allowed businesses to share parts of themselves which, in turn, allowed consumers to seek out businesses that are weird in the same way or that believed in the same things. Last November I spoke at TEDx about how through the Web, weird became profitable. Weird became something businesses could leverage. To me, that’s where social media is most effective – when businesses use weird to be strategically authentic and show customers their essence. It’s when they let certain parts of themselves hang out so their customers can get to know whose behind the product or service that they love so much.

And that’s what Pinterest does really well. It epitomizes what is right and powerful in social media. Sure, Mashable may still use it to hoard marketing infographics for page views, but that’s not how it’s most effective.
Pinterest works best when brands show customers what’s going on below the surface. When they allow consumers to see the spirit of their brand by showing them not what they do, but why they do it – what inspires them, what moves them, what the company culture is based on. They do that all through topic-specific boards.

Some examples:

I’m a big fan of Chobani yogurt. You can find their products both in the Outspoken Media fridge and in my fridge at home. I’m also a fan of Chobani on Pinterest because instead of just trying to hawk yogurt, they give me a glimpse behind the company. Stuff that shows me not what they do, but what they’re about.

Their Nothing But Good board gives me a sense of company culture, the Chobani Fit board reinforces the brand’s focus on health and wellness, and the Let’s Travel board gives another look into what they value.

Sure, I know they sell yogurt, but now I get why. I see the passion behind the business.

Whole Foods also uses Pinterest to show what the company is about at its core. What I like about the Whole Foods Pinterest board is that, even if I’ve never had a single encounter with the brand, based on the boards I immediately know what it represents.

There are boards dedicated to the Whole Planet Foundation, the We’re Used To Reusing board shows Whole Food’s commitment to recycling, and the How Does Your Garden Grow board focuses on real gardens. Even if you’ve never been inside a Whole Foods, you get the essence.

Of course, it doesn’t just do that for brands. Pinterest can show you the essence behind any user. What if you were a brand targeting Joanna Lord? You heard her speak at Affiliate Summit, you’ve identified her as an influencer, and now you want to see what moves her. Just take a look at her collection of boards:

What more could you possibly ask for?

The power of Pinterest for brands is its ability to convey to customers the core of your brand, without hawking a product. Something else I really love is that it Pinterest forces brands (personal and otherwise) to think about this idea of being strategically authentic and to “pin”-point who they are, why they do what they do, and what they want people to know about them. For all the energy social media experts have spent trying to explain to people how to build their brand and how to decide what it is they want to be known for – Pinterest gave us all a visual example of how to do this simply by existing.

How could you not fall in love with that?

I love Pinterest as a tool to help brands cut the crap and connect with customers on a passion-level. Because that’s where business is done.

What’s your take on Pinterest? Are you using it? Ignoring it? Have you fallen in love like me?

[If you're a brand looking for some cool ways to leverage Pinterest, there's a great article on OpenForum that lists 5 cool ways.]