Pinterest | Down to Social Business

When Facebook shocked the industry with its $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, the reaction immediately focused on the reasons why a 15 month-old mobile social network could garner such a valuation. Many cited the 40 million users Instagram quickly amassed, but it’s arguably the hundreds of millions of photos snapped and shared on the network that is its greatest asset.

What the popularity and now the Facebook acquisition has done is increased the importance of Instagram as a channel that brands should embrace. General Electric is perhaps my favorite example. It shares snapshots of its myriad products with over 75,000 followers in the artistic way that Instagram users love, and generates a lot of comments as a result. It’s also a great platform to use for a photo contest whereby customers can snap photos of your products with rewards going to those photos that followers “favorite” the most.

Between content that brands can create and share and images generated by a brand’s fans, Instagram content is becoming increasing valuable assets to share across more than just the mobile-based network. But how can you make this content portable? This tutorial explains how and is the third part of my content portability series. [Read more...]

While most industry folk spent several days last week (jealously) pondering Instagram’s $1 billion purchase (more of less) by Facebook, I immediately viewed it as a pretty strong statement that the future of social media is visual. We’ve always loved sharing pictures and this is why Instagram became the largest mobile-only social network in only 15 months. It didn’t have any revenue, but it had 40 million Instagrammers and this was what Facebook paid for.

It’s the same reason that Pinterest has had its stratospheric growth. If social media is going visual, you want to make sure all of your visual content — graphics, diagrams, charts and others — is portable. I’ve seen many sites add “Pin It” buttons to the set of sharing options on blogs and Web pages, alongside the Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn buttons. Much is this has been enabled by WordPress plug-ins like Digg Digg that add Pinterest to its options.

But I haven’t seen too many people take advantage of one of Pinterest’s other “goodies”, the free-standing Pin It button for web sites. This tutorial shows you how to use it to make graphical content assets travel like this, and is the second part of my content portability series.
[Read more...]

Ted Weismann

PR & Social Media Pragmatist

I've been in tech PR for 19 years and have been doing social media since 2004. I sleep well only when I know I've given my clients strategic value and have learned something new each and every day. I just recently joined the team at fama PR. My dual focus is running award-winning programs and helping clients lead organizational integration of social media for business impact.

I am a devoted husband and father of two boys. I also am an avid runner.