Brands relying on their community for create content

The slow march of creativity in the social media realm into the corporate marketing realm continues!

Food & Wine's Unconventional Tumblr Strategy

I've written about this twice before, but I'm really happy to see well-thought out plans which don't simply place ads on a social media site or just use photos taken by fans for the purposes of advertising.

Food & Wine's strategy is a bit different than what we've seen before in that they're not just relying on fans. They've chosen three photographers for different reasons, but none of them are known for being foodie or food photographers. I think this is great since there's still a lot of expertise being applied to who would provide a good eye, but take photos which will likely be very different from what traditional food or event photographers take. That alone is a great approach, in my mind.

Plus, they're not just placing their photos on a single site, they have plans to place these user generated photos not just on Food & Wine's tumblr, but also the photographers' sites and as an ad on Radar. It's a great way to get visibility not just to a larger audience, but to a wider variety of people.

Kudos to these marketing teams who are leveraging social media, but blending this into broader plans around how they are marketing their events or their brands.

Here's F&W's tumblr in case you want to see their yummy photos :)

http://foodandwinephotos.tumblr.com/

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Pinterest making big moves to commercialize?

It has been quite a while since I've written about Pinterest, but they've recently made some big moves and I think they're significant changes affecting how people use it and get more from it.

Mashable recently wrote up a good summary of what happening in the land of pinning:
Pinterest Partners With Brands to Add Information to Pins

On the face of it, the changes are all about becoming more commercial and essentially letting brands advertise their wares to users. While this is certainly true, I think it's a great additional resource for Pinterest users themselves. There's essentially two types of things being added here:

1. Informational pins which provides direct info about the pinned item. As Mashable states, an example would be the recipe for the Blueberry Crumble that's been pinned. It could conceivably be other types of instructions for DIY projects that for Ikea Hacks, Paint colors for rooms, etc. These, I think take the site into being a really useful resource to catalog such things across various sites, rather than having to save off recipes or instructions from various blogs or sites like FoodNetwork.com.
2. Ability to go directly to the appropriate mobile app to buy the pinned item. Here's a direct way to turn a user into a buyer and it'll be interesting to see if people actually leverage this ability rather than just keeping the pin and potentially never actually buying the item. What's great here though is the ability to go from app-to-app rather than being sent from the Pinterest mobile app to a website for the site selling the item. On mobile, I think this provides a potentially far better experience since mobile apps tend to meet users' needs much better than mobile versions of websites. This is a very necessary thing as I wrote about a couple of months ago when Twitter implemented Twitter Cards. When social sites play well together and have clean hand-offs, it can only encourage more usage and less frustration.

There's a few things to mention about where this takes us. 

1. These moves take Pinterest much closer to what I wrote about more than a year ago:
   P'Oh My Gawd! - What you're obsessing about on Pinterest
2. Pinterest is moving into these informational pins through specific Brand Partners rather than enabling every user or pin to have this ability. I think it would be ideal to allow all pins and users to post informational pins, but I also see the benefit to limiting this (for now) and also having a visual notification that the pin was posted by a brand (to differentiate from the organic pinning which the user-base may be doing)
3. This whole thing positions Pinterest in an interesting way such that it's not just a social site, but potentially a marketplace as well. Right now, Pinterest may just be a pass-through to allow users to get to the final product sale page on another site, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're already working on the ability for users to purchase directly via Pinterest (and presumably for users to also sell directly)

I'd be interested to hear from you all about what you think of social sites partnering with brands and becoming more commercial. It's inevitable to me, but it's not just about "selling out". I think if it's done well, it can be a very useful thing to every social user.

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Ads, ads, everywhere

So you think my discussions about monetizing social media interactions are esoteric?

Well, the ad execs at Google, Facebook, and Twitter certainly don't :)

I've written in the past about how users of search sites and social sites react differently upon seeing ads. I've also written about how Facebook is working to connect online ad views & interactions with offline purchases.

Well, here's a very interesting panelist dialogue about how Google, Facebook, and Twitter want to measure the success of ads.

Facebook, Google Ad Execs Spar Over The Value Of A Click

It's not surprising to me that Facebook's Rajaram is focusing very heavily on offline interactions as a result of online ads. As I wrote before, users of Facebook may not click on ads and directly buy products they see in banner ads, but the visibility of these ads at the right time and place can help guide them to purchase. As I called it back then, these mid-funnel users are key to Facebook's monetization of  its userbase.

Twitter is focusing on engagement metrics such as tweet responses or retweets. Google, unsurprisingly needs to look at a wide swatch of metrics including engagement (for social aspects such as on Google+), but also views, clicks, and ad forms (for ads based on search or context)

I suppose I'm overly enamored with this, but to me, these companies are finding new ways of growing their businesses. From the perspective of ads, they're finding new ways of getting people to react to the ads they see and eventually buy. People say Google is not really a search company, but an advertising company. I'd say that the way social media is evolving, Facebook and Twitter are as much about ad & media engagement as they are about social engagement.

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Socially Engaged brands

I've written a number of times about brands who have unique ways of engaging their followers and customers through social media like twitter, instagram, and facebook.

So it was really interesting to me to see this analysis of the 25 most engaged brands on Twitter (Hat Tip to Ashley Tevatia for linking to this in her daily brief!)

What Are the 25 Most Engaged Brands on Twitter?

Some of the most interesting takeaways may seem pretty obvious from a user's standpoint, but it's remarkable how it plays out in terms of actual engagement.

The first point is that a high follower count does not equal high level of engagement with those followers. This is clear from a somewhat surprising metric which shows that 73% of tweets sent out by major brands never have responses. This, to me, shows that these tweets are basically a one-way marketing vehicle and really no different than a TV or magazine ad.

There are also some metrics about how the frequency and timing of tweets really affects engagement, but the actual needs for the frequency and timing depends on each brand. Basically, a brand should stay consistent with frequency and timing of tweets, but other brands may choose to tweet more or less frequently and it may still work well for them.

The final thing that struck me is that the top two "brands" in this list are things which I would barely consider brands: @notebook and @disneywords. They're basically social media accounts that have developed followings and they followers really "connect" with the social content they're delivering. Either through quotes from Disney movies or love notes.

How the heck did two such random twitter accounts achieve such success? Well, that's something the marketing guys are these other bigger brands should look more closely at! My guess is that a lot of the engagement that @Notebook and @DisneyWords generate is in the form of retweets, but a retweet still spreads the word and brand message of a twitter account so even something as simple as an interesting quote can spread branding. Similarly, seven of the top twenty on this list are news or sports brands. MY guess is that those brands have a lot of news in their tweets and their followers want to retweet and comment about the news item. For the non-news or sports sites, I'm very curious to see how they achieve engagement and whether they follow a similar model to @Notebook and @DisneyWords.

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Getting the right social content...it can be more involved than you imagine

Earlier this week, I wrote about how LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter still live and breathe content, even though we think of them as social companies.

LinkedIn's mechanism to show content to users is much more traditional in the sense that people (Influencers) write articles and they're in the feed that users see when they login (or when they read their emails)

Facebook has long had something called EdgeRank which determines what you see when you view your newsfeed. It's actually somewhat of a mystery how any particular piece of content (photo, status, link, etc) gets posted onto someone's timeline, but a recent infographic has been making the rounds since it helps explain the major factors really well.

Demystifying How Facebook's EdgeRank Algorithm Works

All of this interest in LinkedIn's Influencers and Facebook's EdgeRank just confirms for me that what's displayed on social media sites - the content - is still the most important thing which drives usage and really helps to connect people to what is important for them

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Is Content Still King?

What's more important about Social Media Sites? The "Social" or the "Media"?

I read an interesting article earlier this week about how LinkedIn has created a massive media empire. Of course the headline sounds a bit outlandish since most people typically think of LinkedIn as a social (albeit professional) site, but what the article gets at is something which is pretty core to any social media site: the content that matters in your social group.

Each of the major social sites has a different focus of content, but it's still the content which users are typically referring to on the sites themselves.

As the article above states, LinkedIn has created a unique niche with Influencers and the daily emails which are sent recapping a series fo interesting articles. In fact, I actually subscribe to those emails and find them pretty interesting. So I can personally vouch for the idea that this method of having a small number of content creators and very focused articles drives a lot of views and engagement.

Unlike LinkedIn, I'd say that most Facebook users aren't heading to facebook to read articles. They're typically looking to catch up on their friends' activities. The activities are listed in the newsfeed are content. But if you've visited your newsfeed lately, you obviously know that it's not just a listing of random status updates. People post articles they've read, photos they've taken, music they're listening to, etc, etc. So the newsfeed is actually full of a wide variety of content posted by a large number of users (ahem, the content creators). So while Facebook may seem like just a place to read about the lives of your friends & families, when you visit the site, it's about a lot more than that.

Similarly, Twitter has long tried to enhance the content of the timeline after recognizing the types of things people were tweeting about. So rather than just seeing 140 characters of stream of consciousness, you'll see content summaries of articles, you'll see twitter cards linking out to other sites, and if you go to the #Discover tab, you'll see summaries of that. In way, it's quite similar to what Facebook is doing.

On the face of it, it may seem like LinkedIn is taking a completely different path to engagement than what Facebook and Twitter are doing, but at the core of it, it's quite similar. LinkedIn has determined what can drive interest, engagement, and page views. Facebook has done the same. Twitter has done the same. Yes, it's social, but it's still about content. It may not be long investigative articles, but it's still content.

The methods of displaying that content may differ between sites, but it's clear to me that content is still king.

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Being more social

There's been a lot going on with features recently introduced by some of the major social media sites. And I want to take a few moments to talk about how these features are built to encourage us to be more social.

Some of the most recent rundown of features, as you may know, are:

• Facebook Home for Android phones and a revised Facebook iOS app featuring chatheads and some other goodies
• Twitter with it's #music foray
• LinkedIn with its completely revised mobile apps

Facebook's Chatheads

What would be the purpose of these new featuresets other than to entice users to stay on the site longer? Of course, that's the purpose of any website (or storefront) improvements...get the user to stay on the site longer and come back more often (or get the shopper to browse more in the aisles). But the major features we've been seeing lately aren't just about spending more time on the websites or apps, but about using the services in new and different ways.

LinkedIn's new mobile app

Chatheads is meant to pull people into using messaging more like a IM app and not just the pseudo-email it has been typically been used as.

Twitter's new music suggestion

LinkedIn's new apps re-focus them and shift a lot of the intended use to researching people you might be meeting with (the website continues to stay more focused on news & article posts)

#Music is meant as a new resource connecting your twitter-verse with other services that you'd probably not connect otherwise.

So this isn't just about showing more updates from your contacts, it's about connecting with them in different ways...whether it's real-time updates & messages, quick lookups for their professional background, or about what type of music their listening to, these companies are finding new ways which they're hoping pull people back over and over and over. Just like we instinctively head to google to look up anything and everything, these companies are looking for their own sort of "just google it"

Facebook's "Suggested Page" layout has
improved to be clear and separated

Facebook's "Suggested App" started
showing up last fall, but its layout has
improved over time.

Now, let me also say that the features these companies have been focusing on are not just whiz bang new features like chatheads or #music discovery, the features also include incremental improvements to each of these sites & apps which make them easier to use or just plain more useful.

The facebook website and mobile apps look quite a bit different now than they did just six months ago and many of those differences are about making the app look better and I've definitely noticed the improvements...and yes, I'd call them improvements. I've provided just two examples from the Facebook iOS app, but Twitter has made lots of tweeks which make it easier to scroll through your tweetstream, click on links for other users or websites. Each of these seemingly small improvements make each service more friendly to use

I love to see all of this change in this space. While we may sometimes wonder what big new feature a site may release and we may sometimes be underwhelmed those big features, each of those big changes is a try and expanding and changing our usage on the site. Additionally, between those big feature announcements, there are so many little things done that over the course of just six months, those incremental changes amount to big things.

And I believe that is all designed to encourage us to use their services more often, for different reasons, and help us all be more social.

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Social Media Platforms Playing Well With Others

If you're reading this, then you likely frequent Facebook and Twitter. And while you may see a lot of content from friends, family, and other contacts, when there's an article, photo or video posted, you pretty much experience in a couple of ways:

• Embedded within the stream
• As a click to a new page with the full content

This isn't a big deal when you're on your computer, but it can be sort of a pain when you're on your smartphone.

• If it's embedded in your stream, it's likely just a tiny snippet and you'll have to click through to the site anyways
• If you have to click through to the full site, you may end up some place that's not well formatted for smartphones. You might get popups to install their mobile app, interstitial ads, or you simply have to double click on the content column just to read an article

Basically, you have to leave what is a pretty well designed mobile app into an unknown. Twitter and Facebook may be fine providing you links to other content outside of their networks, but they typically leave it at that. They don't care if they leave with you a nice pat on the shoulder or a kick in the pants.

Well, Twitter just announced an expansion of their "tweet cards" which may be an interesting way  help ensure that as users walk out of Twitter, they're given a nice handshake and pat on the shoulder.

Tweet Cards first showed in June 2012 and they're a nice way to show some good embedded content within the stream so you can make a better decision about whether you want to click through to another site. This is actually pretty nice on a computer, but on a smartphone, it's not always helpful for the reasons I mentioned above.

So what's new? Now tweet cards can actually be really helpful on smartphones. Not only will they show some additional content within the stream, if you click through, they don't have to simply go to a website, they can actually open up the relevant app on your phone. So if it's a photo on Flickr, you don't just go to their mobile site, if you have the Flickr app on your phone, it would open up the photo in that app, which is a much nicer experience than their mobile site. Presumably, the same could happen  with a Pinterest or Tumbler link.

While this can be seen as a double-edged sword, as noted on this GigaOm article by Mathew Ingram, I think this is a great sign. It shows that social media platforms are actually thinking about how to provide a good experience for users. Not just a kick in the pants as you leave the network, but hopefully a warm  "Au Revior". Not only that, users can be made aware of interesting or useful smartphone apps. As the article notes, this could mean that Twitter could wield its power to push developers and smaller players around, but that's just part of reality. Twitter can do that since it is indeed so popular. And while doing so, it can presumably make more money without degrading the experience for its users through more in-stream ads.

I'd love to hear from you all about your experiences in frequently multiple social media sites and how you discover new sites or content through them.

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Insta-Market-Gramming

As you may know, I've been following a lot of interesting tidbits about how social websites make money off of their users and how companies are using social media to their benefit.

One kind of interesting wrinkle in this has been corporations finding people who are very active in social media and having them become sort of brand ambassadors. Not by wearing their logo, but by giving "insider access" to these people and having them use their social media presence and prowess to show a new side of the company. I wrote about this how this was done for the US Open last summer.

I think this is a pretty cool way for companies to provide unique access and reward people who really love their products or to take nascent individual talent and apply it to their brand.

Well, Business Insider has written an article about 15 Instagrammers who have taken their talents and converted them into some pretty cool work for big companies. The companies range from Nike and Volvo to Johnnie Walker and Samsung. (The article is a bit difficult to follow to be honest since it mixes photos of the individuals with photos they've Instagrammed for the companies)

I see this not just as corporations taking advantage of a potential new marketing stream, I see it as recognition of the way in which media itself has changed to a much more two-way, grassroots thing. Just like the internet has allowed people to connect in so many different ways, I think companies across the world have recognized that their marketing and connections with the customers needs to change.

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Is Facebook following you to the supermarket?

Are you paying attention to ads
like these on Facebook?

I've been trying to get back to documenting some of my thoughts and one of the things I keep coming back to is about the engagement that users have on social media sites is turned into something more for the company itself. I wrote before about how Facebook is looking to monetize user engagement on their site and how Facebook gets "mid funnel" users to act on things they see on the site. 

I read a really interesting article by Farhad Manjoo about the very structured analysis Facebook has done to determine how users are actually responding to ads they see on the site. They may not be clicking the ads, but they seem to definitely making buying decisions based on the ads they see on Facebook? Don't believe me? Well, read the article to learn more:


Facebook Followed You to the Supermarket: Even if you never click on Facebook ads, they are making you buy things.


What do you think? Do you pay much attention to the ads? Even if you don't pay attention, do you at least notice them?

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Social Media for Big Time Events

(via Fstoppers.com)

I came across this article and thought I'd share it. It's a great way to bring a big time event like the US Open to individuals in a very unique way. It harnesses the power of social media rather than discouraging any "non-official" use. Since I have a photography background, I find that socially sharing photos is a particularly great way to share experiences, especially things like special behind-the-scenes access or one-time events. After so many headlines at the beginning of the London Olympics about not allowing personal photographs, etc, this is really refreshing.

Top Instagram Users Receive Red Carpet Treatment at U.S. Open

via SportsGrid.com

On a related note, I never mentioned the really cool way that the US Men's Basketball team personalized their experience at the London Olympics. As you may have heard, many of the players used Instagram to document things like taking the Metro or having lunch. I thought that was REALLY cool and gave a much better feel for what it might be like to compete and was much more authentic than the overly-produced athlete profiles which NBC provided. Here's a link to an article about some of those Instagrammed photos:

The USA Basketball Team’s Instagram Shots Are Ridiculously Awesome

And more highlights:
The U.S.A. Basketball Team’s Olympic Journey, In Fantastic Instagram Photos

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Innovative Social Engagement

There's a lot of talk about how companies and brands should engage their fans & followers on social media. In the title I use the work "Innovative", but let's face it, social media is so new and ever changing that everything could be considered innovative.

But I have seen a good deal of movement away from the stale model of posting brand specific content on a regular/set schedule. I see two aspects of the move away from this model to something which is much more fluid and also not quite as specific to the brand itself. In my mind, the moves broaden the usefulness of the facebook page (or twitter presence) for both the company/brand as well as the fans & followers.

The first simple part of this is the frequency of updates. People check facebook and twitter at different times of the day and for different reasons throughout the day. Mornings might be all about sending birthday wishes. Afternoons might be to see how the day has been going and plans to make for the evening. Nighttime might be for a quick update before heading off to sleep. Each check can be a valuable time for brands to be on the timeline.

This post from PostRocket goes into much more detail and after reading it through, it's obvious that a single daily post isn't really that useful (via @maneesh1):
4 BIG Reasons You Should Be Posting to Your Facebook Page MORE Than 1x Per Day

So it's clear that posting more often is a good thing, but what if the company doesn't have much unique content about their brand to post so frequently? A software or service provider could post tips to make their service more useful (eg, how can Evernote be used while landing on Mars?!), but what I've started to see is something way more interesting than simply "more posts, more often"

I'll call it expanding the relevance of the brand and I'll provide two examples. Essentially, it's all about finding things that brand followers & fans would be interested in. Call it playing to their sense and sensibility.

The first brand who's doing a great job with this is Oreo. They are finding significant news events and tying them back to the simple Oreo cookie. Read more about it here:
Oreo’s Facebook Salute to the Mars Landing Will Make You Hungry

They obviously have a big budget for this, but they've expanded the relevance of the simple cookie by tying it to things that their followers are probably interested in anyways. Whether it be the Olympics, Batman, or Air Conditioning; they've found a way to remind their followers about Oreo cookies (and hopefully go buy some!). I'd consider Oreo's social media brand work to be cutting edge. Finding interesting & relevant news events, creating a cool message about that news event, and inserting Oreo cookies as the key ingredient for the message. With thousands of likes and hundreds of comments for each post, it's obviously getting the attention of Oreo lovers everywhere.

Another simple example is by a company that my friend Maneesh runs, MightyText. The company provides a service for Android phone owners to enable SMS texting from anywhere. You'd think the brand page should focus on texting and the Android OS, but as you can see from their facebook page, there's a good deal of content that's just slightly related to texting or not at all related. But the commonality across those posts is that they are things which MightyText fans are probably interested in.  As you skim through their facebook page, each post has a dozen or so comments and many dozens of likes. So they're getting increased engaged by NOT JUST posting about their service or even just Android phones. As a startup, they don't have a huge budget to create brand new content, but they're finding content which their followers find interesting and running with it.

I'm looking forward to a lot more interesting and engaging ways that brands get their message out. Have you seen other cool social media from brands that keep you engaged with them? Let me know!

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Facebook's Money Engine - "Mid Funnel" Users

Back in March, I wrote about ad placement on social versus search sites. I was basically trying to break down some of the differences in a person's intent when they go to a search or social site and what they might do with ads. It seemed pretty clear to me that someone going to a social site isn't likely to just click on ads and immediately purchase something, but that much of the marketing on facebook is to build awareness.

I just read an interesting piece on Wired about Facebook's advertising products (via @Lessien). The piece is actually an interview with the director of Facebook Advertising Product Director, Gokul Rajaram, and gets at some things which I find really telling. They seem to match with many of the ads or sponsored content I've been seeing on Facebook of late (both on the desktop and on mobile)

Here are some interesting tidbits which align pretty well with what I wrote previously:

Facebook’s advertising mission, then, is not to inject commercial messages into social discussions, but to amplify the messages that are already there. And it’s not to drive immediate purchases, as Google’s contextual advertising does, but to influence buying decisions a little further down the road. 

They use a term, "mid-funnel" which I find a little odd, but makes sense because a person on Facebook typically isn't ready to buy something that might be shown on an ad, but specific other things they see on Facebook may nudge them lower into the funnel to actually buy something (such as a gift for their friend's birthday or a Groupon type offer for a local restaurant that a friend loves.

To that end, here's a quote from Rajaram exactly on that point:

“We always think about, how can Facebook add that extra social, viral dimension to advertising,” Rajaram says. “We always think about stories and how, it’s not just businesses communicating to people, it’s businesses communicating with their loyal lists of fans and how then those fan’s interactions with that message can lead to their friends being impacted.”

It's nice to see that a research article posted recently aligns pretty well with what I wrote almost 5 months ago :)

I've been compiling examples of ads on Facebook over the past few weeks (again, both on the desktop and on mobile). I promise to post those along with my commentary soon!

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Facebook - Featuring Pinterest Pins more visually

Yes, I've been very lax in posting updates so I'm trying to get back in the swing of things now.

Since I usually login to Facebook both on the desktop and iPhone everyday, I tend to notice things out of the ordinary. Sometimes it's rollout of new features I've heard about and others I think it's just A/B testing.

The latest feature I saw was a different, more visual way to show Pinterest Pins. One of my facebook friends pinned a few things to her boards and they showed up in my timeline like this:

The tiles go the width of the timeline and graphically feature what she pinned. Moreover, there are "Like" and Comment links for each one. When you hover your mouse over images, a Pinterest logo pops up in the top left and you can click-through to the pin on Pinterest. This was the first time I noticed this new format and I like it.

More broadly, what I've seen Facebook doing is not necessarily about adding brand new features, but making existing features more readily available and customized based on the content. In this case, even though they're featuring the pins prominently, they're also featuring their own Like and Comment features very prominently. They've found a way to make the timeline more visually appealing while also encouraging interaction on the timeline.

Have you seen other similar formatting for other content on the Facebook timeline? I'd love to see!

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P'Oh My Gawd! - What you're obsessing about on Pinterest

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the differences in marketing to search vs social users and how Facebook is working towards monetizing user engagement. I thought I'd expand a bit more on this and talk about the hottest social/discovery site out there: Pinterest

If you're not familiar with Pinterest...well then, why are you reading this blog?! Go there and check it out now!

I'm not a huge Pinterest user, but in my several months of usage, I've seen a lot of Facebook friends begin following me on Pinterest as well. Since I don't pin very many things, those followers don't see much from me. But since I follow-back everyone, I see a lot of new pins every time I login. What have I noticed?

Well, safe to say that the stereotypes about Pinterest users are based on some fact :)

• Lots of female users
• Lots of pins about recipes, fashion, & home decorating

A series of desert recipes. Hmm...where to buy organic raw sugar?!

The more interesting thing I've noticed is that people seem to pin a series of items all about the same thing in a short period of time. It could be holiday dinner recipes or kids' bedroom designs or hairstyles, but people seem to obsess about really specific things. They may move onto other obsessions sooner or later, but pinning habits definitely show what users are thinking & obsessing about.

I'm not going to get into the pinning habits themselves, but I want to compare this with typical social and search usage:

• Social - Lots of random sharing about life, things you've read with a few specifics like check-ins or location-tagged photos. It's hard to really know what a social user is thinking at the time they login since the sharing is kind of random.
• Search - Lots of specific queries typically layered on with location specifics. It's easy to know exactly what a search user needs right at that moment, but the user will move onto different searches and may or may not come back to the topic.

Compare that with a Pinterest user:

• Pinboards are typically well-organized and if the "Pin-It" bookmarklet has been used, it's easy to link back the pin to the original site, therefore it's easy to build further organization based on where the pins came from.
• Users seem to focus on specific topics for a day...could be shorter or longer, but it's really clear what they're obsessing over during that time.
• Users may not be looking to buy anything at the time of pinning, but the pins are certainly things that inspire them or what they want to buy or re-create in the future.

So taking those thought onto the ad/marketing side of things...

There's been a lot of talk about click-through of Pinterest users where they end up on the original site from which the pin originated and maybe even buy. However, I think Pinterest as a targeted ad platform could be just as interesting. Afterall, pinboards are well organized and you can tell exactly what the user is thinking about. Not just randomly thinking about for a moment in time, but obsessing over.

Lots of wonderful decor ideas...time to get DIYing!

Sure, the user may not be ready to re-decorate the living room as displayed in a pin from Martha Stewart's site, but targeted ads from the brands highlighted in the pin or from related vendors will have a step-up with the user since they're already engaged and interested in what they have to offer. It could be an ad from Ethan Allen for a current sale or from Lowe's for paint which matches the one in the pin. On the local front, it could be an ad from Whole Foods for the maple syrup in a recipe or from Target for the mixing bowls.

It may seem difficult to tie-back all of this to specific products for which ads can be placed, but the reality is that most of the details aren't that difficult to obtain. Martha Stewart doesn't always list out brands especially if it's a home tour, but many other sites already do. Recipes already have the details listed out and fashion is typically tied back to specific designers.

My point is that Pinterest is positioned well to monetize the user engagement they've developed. Clicking-through to the original pinned site is an obvious way, but targeted ads are another possible direction. Due to Pinterest user-behavior, those targeted ads would likely be way more relevant than  ads that Facebook users see. Additionally, users aren't at the stage of searching for something they want...they've already FOUND things they love.

It's the perfect opportunity to convert interested and engaged users into buyers.

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