Think of a cork board that has notes, products you want to buy, or inspiration. This is the online version. People post pictures or video of things they love (called pins). Other people can follow them and add them to virtual pinboards (pinning).

The genius of Pinterest is that you can click on a pin and follow it to the source – including your web site or blog post.

Pinterest is one of the fastest growing web sites in the world with over 7 million visits a month.  According to research Pinterest is sending more traffic than Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.

The majority of people on Pinterest are women between the ages of 25 and 44. These are the perfect demographic to reach. Women tend to be “social extroverts” who like to talk about brands online. Together they represent incredible buying power (many are moms who make buying decision for their families).  They have special enthusiasm for arts, recipes and crafts.

Pinterest is simple to figure out and can get you from the home page. It’s addicting. Because of this Pinterest is reaching a new demographic of people who may not spend much time on social networking web sites. Even your mom who can’t figure out how to use Facebook is on Pinterest.

Unlike a lot of social networks, Pinterest doesn’t require a lot of extra time or the upkeep of say, your Facebook page.

How can a small business profit from Pinterest? 3 Ways: traffic, branding and business.

1. Add your products to the site.

There is a section called “gifts” http://pinterest.com/gifts/ where you can add a price with a picture and link to your buy page for that product. Be aware that if you have an affiliate program, Pinterest may become an affiliate and therefore keep a cut of the sales they send you.

2. Start pin boards of things your audience will resonate with.

General Electric posts images of their present (machinery), past (historic photographs) and future (including new technologies). Online clothing company ModCloth pins fabric and dress ideas for their audience to give feedback on.

3. Ask your audience to participate.

Create a board with fun pictures of your staff. If you host an event, you can have participants (or speakers) send in pictures of themselves and links to their other social networking profiles. You can also host contests where people create a board and pin things they want. The winner wins a gift certificate or everything on their board.

4. Get content from your other social networks.

The best pins are funny, creative/unique, informative or gorgeous. Many times your fans on Facebook are already sharing pictures or video of themselves interacting with your business or products. Some of them may be perfect for pinning on Pinterest. Twitpics on Twitter could also be repinned. it can also be the other way around. You can also use content found on Pinterest on your blog, Facebook or Twitter profile.

5. Pimp (or pin) your own content.

While blantant self-promotion is discouraged, there’s nothing against starting a board featuring your own top blog posts, infographics or other content. If you have media mention, pin those in a newsroom board.

Here at OrangeSoda we walk our talk. We drank the Kool Aid (or soda). Follow OrangeSoda on Pinterest. And watch for my new book about Pinterest for business coming this Spring.

Is Pinterest is helping your business? Tell us about it in the comments.

Don’t jump on the bandwagon just because everyone else is.

I’m not saying you should rule out social media all together. But what I am saying is that before you join every social media outlet available, you have to consider your target audience. Instead of spreading your efforts across 10 different social media sites, chose a small number you can really monitor well. You also want to consider if your key audience is more likely to use one form of social media than the other. Because every business is so different, there’s really no right or wrong answer to which sites you choose as long as it’s an informed decision.

Don’t leave your social media sites abandoned.

Results from social media don’t just come by setting up a profile. It takes time, strategy, and effort to create social media campaigns that really make a difference for your business. If you know you don’t have the time or capacity to keep up with your social media sites, either hire someone who can or rethink your strategy. Consider this: If someone follows your site’s Twitter button to your profile and sees that you have two followers and no recent posts, they won’t have a very good first impression of your business. Contrast that with if they were to see that you had several hundred followers and had already tweeted several times that day. Updated and current profiles show your viewers that you care about customer interaction. Don’t make the mistake of detracting from your business’s credibility by leaving your social media sites untouched.

Don’t forget that social media should be a conversation tool

Social media isn’t just about one-way communication. It’s about interacting with the people that like or follow your profile. Create content that encourages comments or feedback.  Make sure this interaction is mutually beneficial—give your viewers something in return for following you on social media. Whether it’s in the form of exclusive deals, promotions, or valuable content, your followers are more likely to share with their friends and followers if they find that content valuable themselves.

These are only a few tips that can help to jumpstart your social media presence. If you’re new to Social Media, don’t let it intimidate you. While any social media campaign takes time and effort to do well, the “return on engagement” will oftentimes turn out to be more beneficial to your business than you thought.

Surprise! Social correlates with SEO

SEOmoz recently released the 2011 Search Engine Rankings Factors Study that analyzes data from more than 10,000 Google results and factors in the opinions of about 130 of the world’s top SEOs. While this study covers an array of in-depth information about ranking factors, one section that was particularly interesting to me was the Page Level Social Metrics Correlated Data. This graph shows a surprisingly high correlation between Facebook shares and summed activity in relation to ranking on search engines.

While SEOmoz makes it very clear in their follow-up post that these results show correlation, not causation, it still does bring up an interesting point. According to this data, Facebook shares and overall visibility may be even more valuable than activity on Twitter, contradictory to the data of opinions from top SEOs.

Good content is the key; it’s always been the key

So why exactly is this trend happening with Google search results? While I don’t claim to have the exact answer, in my opinion, there seems to be a logical reason to what this data is showing. Think of it this way: what does it take for you to “share” something with all of your Facebook friends? For me at least, any link I share on Facebook is considered valuable enough that I want my friends to see it or read about it. This situation is a bit different than “liking” a page to follow it for information or good deals. But wouldn’t a Facebook share in essence be the same as tweeting that same information? Possibly so, but maybe Facebook shares are deemed more influential because there tends to be a lower volume of activity, placing more value on each individual share.

Because the Google algorithm is so complex, no one will probably ever know the exact reason for Facebook shares and activity outranking Twitter. While we may not know why, we can clearly see that it’s important.

So what are the takeaways from all of this?

• Don’t forget about Facebook—it’s valuable for both your direct and organic search volume. Keep your presence on Twitter, of course, but make sure you find a decent balance between the two.
• Take the time to make your content awesome. Whether it’s in the form of an article, blog post, deal, etc., if people like your content enough, they won’t hesitate to share it with their friends.

After many years working in the IT industry involved in many hardware, software, and IT deployments, I know from personal experience that it’s not something to be taken lightly nor alone. You definitely need a plan of action and an adept partner. It’s a lengthy process of a lot of blood, sweat, and tears—especially if your rollout is late or over-budget or both. It’s not a pretty picture when you say that your capacity is there and a sudden burst of demand brings the infrastructure that you just toiled over down to its knees—unhappy bosses and even unhappier customers. My words: just don’t do hardware installations anymore!

Over 3 years ago when I was brought on to help GoGrid.com (link: http://www.gogrid.com) launch our Cloud Infrastructure service, I realized how inefficient infrastructure build-outs could be. As GoGrid’s Executive Chairman, John Keagy, says time and time again (link: http://blog.gogrid.com/2011/05/26/the-actual-truth-about-the-economics-of-cloud-computing/ ), people were (and still are) underutilizing the CPU, RAM, and storage on the physical hardware that they had purchased. There is nothing worse than being under-extended and having to justify that. So you cut back on infrastructure, and suddenly your IT is over-extended. To build on technology efficiencies of automation, virtualization, and economies of scale, GoGrid pushed into cloud computing, and we haven’t looked back since. Not only is it more cost effective for us as infrastructure providers, these cost savings are passed on to our customers at GoGrid.

Take a look at the image below.

It represents a few different things:

• The reduction in CapEx
• The labor and man-power required to maintain your infrastructure
• The reduction of underutilized infrastructure in your environment
• The amount of hair you tear out of your head during implementation

Just by reading this article, you are doing yourself and your company a service. Do you want to grow as your business demands it? Look to the cloud. Want to have flexibility in infrastructure? The cloud can give you that. Need utilization efficiencies? The cloud is designed to expand and contract to meet those needs. Still want more? Read on…

Let’s quickly look at some of the hosting options available:

Your Own Data Center

• The Good – it’s yours, you own it, you can do what you want with it
• The Bad – it’s yours, you own it, and you pay for the power, cooling, security, network connectivity and all of the infrastructure you want to put in it…plus the people to run it

Colocation

• The Good – you don’t have to worry about security, cooling, and a few other things. You can put your own hardware into it
• The Bad – you still have to pay for power, network connectivity, and the staff to keep it running and updated

Dedicated Servers

• The Good – you aren’t buying hardware, someone else is keeping it up and running, and you have machines dedicated for your use
• The Bad – you are probably locked into long term contracts, and your servers are probably underutilized as you leased too much in anticipation of demand

Virtual Private Servers

• The Good – you aren’t paying as much as compared to Dedicated Servers, and your deployment time is probably faster than getting a new Dedicated Server
• The Bad – your performance is throttled or tied directly to others’ on the same machine, which means you are impacted by other users on that box

The Cloud

• The Good – take a look at all of the bad points above and convert them to Good:
  • You don’t have to pay for cooling, power, security, network, people to manage, long term contracts, upgrades, etc.
  • You optimize your usage
  • You get better performance from your infrastructure
  • You can cost effectively scale horizontally with your business demands
  • You can scale vertically to give your servers more oomph!
• The Bad – well…possibly that you haven’t been using it yet!

Still not convinced? Or are you confused on your next steps to embracing the cloud? Here are a few things you can do to get going:

• Read this blog post “What The Heck Is The Cloud Anyway” (link: http://blog.gogrid.com/2011/02/10/what-the-heck-is-the-cloud-anyway/ )which has a link to a whitepaper I wrote titled “Skydiving Through the Clouds.”
• Talk to one of our Cloud Experts. These guys are smart—cloud smart; they can help you figure out what you should do with your infrastructure, how to optimize it, and how to get the best cloud-bang for your buck.
• Try it yourself —know what you are doing? Since I live and breathe “cloud” daily I want to be sure that you share my passion.

The best thing to do is to deploy a cloud environment in a few minutes and see if it meets your needs. Compare that against other physical infrastructure out there. Can you deploy multiple, load-balanced, easy to use, networked environments in minutes with the “old way” of provisioning infrastructure? I doubt it. With a credit card and a web browser, you can spin up a few cloud servers, load balance them, link them via a private network, store some data on cloud storage, and be enjoying the cloud in merely minutes. Can your dedicated servers do that? How about your colo? And you might as well get out your jackhammer for any modifications to your data center.

Try the cloud…it’s here, it’s real, it’s technology for the now!

If you’ve taken on the task of personally creating and designing your site’s content, here are a few tips to make sure it’s not negatively affecting your image.

Always, Always Use Spell Check

Nothing screams “unprofessional” more than misspelled words and poor grammar. You’d be surprised at the number of sites I’ve reviewed that have a plethora of misspelled words as a result of not using spell check. Always write your text in a word processing program first before putting it on your site. The small extra effort will go a long way.

Less is More – Don’t Be Too Wordy

It’s important that the main pages of your site have a decent amount of content; however, too much content can hurt more than it will help. In reality, very few people actually read every word on a page – most viewers scan it to find what they’re looking for. Using clear headlines and bullet points can help to get your point across in fewer words than you would use in a paragraph. If you choose to create pages with an extensive amount of content, just make sure it’s relevant. You don’t want your reader to feel like they’ve wasted their time reading the entire page.

Never Use Duplicated Content

Again, you’d be surprised how many sites I’ve seen with copied content from another site. Not only is it considered plagiarism (if not properly sourced), but it can also result in duplicate content penalties from search engines – something you don’t want to mess with. In addition, don’t use the same content for multiple pages on your site just for the sake of having content. When the viewer clicks on a different page, they expect to see different content.

Don’t Use Distracting Elements

Trying to make certain text stand out by using excessive bolding, exclamation points(!!!!!), ALL CAPS, Capitalizing Each Word, and bright colors is usually quite distracting, and frankly, annoying. Occasionally bolding keywords and important sentences are acceptable, but make sure it doesn’t overrun the rest of your text. Don’t turn your page into a rainbow using different colored text. Instead of using distracting elements, it’s usually a better idea to re-word your text to convey the intended meaning.

Always Get a Second Opinion

Nothing could be more valuable to your site than having an actual viewer give you input about what you could do better. Ask a friend, relative, or colleague to look over your text and formatting. You might be surprised to find there were things you initially overlooked.

These are just a few of many tips that can help improve your site content and add credibility to your brand. The extra time you spend making sure your content is in good shape will definitely pay off in the long run.

Be the Center of Attention Fast

The crowd utilizing public transportation on a daily basis is full of variety. From musicians having concerts in the Subway to my teal coat in a sea of black – there are many ways to be found fast.

During the low point of our economy, Mom N’Pop shops need to be found online. The internet influence is undeniable in every industry. Pay-per-click is the quickest way to ensure that your ads are being seen on the first page of search engines. However, there basic questions that are determining factors in the success of your campaigns. These questions must be answered in your ad copy.

Text ads on SERPs are all the same format. So, why should a consumer pay you? What makes your business different? What makes your service the best? What promotional offer will make you more affordable? Some businesses do not answer these before they outline a marketing strategy. It shows in their lack of results.

Navigate the Tunnels

Though I am not fluent in Russian, riding the metro in Moscow was easier than the NYC subway. Why? The Russian metro system has color coding, route maps blown up on every level, and blatant line names 50 feet long protruding from the walls. New York routes have a small digital sign that updates the name and time of the next train.

Apply these comparisons to your website usability – what is the most important thing on your site? Is it easy to find? When you receive traffic from your marketing campaign is it as easy as possible to get from point A to B?

Finding the most efficient transportation from the city to the airport in a short time frame resulted in using the service whose website was easy to navigate, understand, and I could ensure an appropriate time frame. Having the necessary information for a consumer to buy your service most obvious will provide a quick and efficient consumer experience.

When you start advertising on AdWords, you will get some basic data, including impressions, clicks, click through rate, CPC, and several other pieces of data that are all great if, and I mean IF, you are tracking conversions, too. One of the greatest things about marketing online is the ability to track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. But if the tracking isn’t in place, all you can do is make a guess at what is or isn’t working. Let me remind you: just because you are getting clicks on your ads doesn’t mean people are buying what you are selling. You have to dig much deeper than that.

When you decide you want to start marketing online, you need to consider all the channels that people will use to reach you. For example, if your ad is leading them to a page with a phone number, how are you going to track the phone call to a sale? Consider a form on your website. Are you going to track form fills and sales? I hope so. The problem I often run into is the tracking hits a dead end before a sale can be attributed to it. What is the value in that?

Things to consider…

• Can you put tracking codes on your website? (hopefully, this isn’t a problem)
• How are you tracking phone numbers?
• How are you tracking form fills?
• Can you tie phone calls or form fills to a sale?

If your online marketing can’t tie a lead to a sale, it’s likely that you will wonder how effective it really is and eventually stop your campaign. Conversely, if you have set up tracking right from the start, you will know how effective and awesome marketing online can be. It makes it easy to justify spending more of your marketing budget when you know it exactly how valuable it really is.

Google with me…

Google is constantly testing new pieces of their algorithm, constantly trying to provide better results to the end user. I see these related search results as yet another test and possible change to help refine that algorithm and search results, as well as gain better insight as to how people query (correlating the original search phrase to what they clicked next can give great statistical data to help further refine SERPs).  My observation is that the top results on the first page for “road bike” are somewhat linked to what items show up in many of the results of the “brands” and “stores” related search results. For example, of the first page results for “road bike”, 5 of the websites also show up in the related searches results. It also appears that major brands that may not show on the first page are also showing up here.  Interestingly enough however, when I search “road bike brands”, the results do not correlate to the “brands” showing up in the related search results when searching just “road bike”. So where Google is actually pulling this information from seems a bit unknown, but it does reflect some of the major brands in the industry. (The same thing happens when I search “road bike stores” and compare it to the related search results found when I search “road bike” – no good correlation)

What is also interesting is that when one of these related search results is clicked, it doesn’t take you directly to say Trek, it gives you the search results for “Trek road bike”. This also leads me to believe that Google is doing some heavy statistical analysis of the click paths to figure out better pathways and results to give users.

Showing up in the Related Search Results?

Good question. Best bet at this point from the information and deductive reasoning that I can come up with is to have a great SEO strategy in place that is not just generally focused on one keyword. The more expansively focused (meaning long tail), aged, and serious your SEO strategy, the more likely you will be considered a major player in that industry, and possibly the more likely Google will be to include you in these related search results. At this point it looks like you’ve got to be an REI or an Amazon to be considered.

How fast are you?

I would recommend looking at how fast your site currently loads. There are many free tools out there such as webpagetest.org or tools.pingdom.com. If the site loads in under four seconds, I wouldn’t worry too much about it; you’re faster than about 80% of the sites on the web. Even 5-7 seconds isn’t too bad (personally I would improve), though it is crucial to consider what type of connection you are testing with vs. what type of connection most of your traffic is coming from (information typically found in analytics under visitors). What type of connection your users are coming from will help you understand what type of experience they are having on your site. Slow load times lead to lower page views and higher bounce rates, which ultimately leads to less conversions and moola in your pocket. Any improvements help, so if you can make it faster…I say do it.

Image cache

A basic alteration to the .htaccess that can improve load times greatly is altering the image cache values. This is done depending on what type of server you are on, and the following is for an apache server:

ExpiresActive On

ExpiresByType image/gif “now plus 9 years”

ExpiresByType image/png “now plus 9 years”

ExpiresByType image/jpeg “now plus 9 years”

ExpiresByType image/x-icon “now plus 9 years”

This is a basic implementation that should help improve the load time of most sites, improving SEO and user experience.

When I went to checkout, I had to register and then re-register, and once I did, my “cart” was empty and I had to find the item again.  I went from dream client, ready to buy with a credit card in hand, to disgruntled grump in a situation that was 100% avoidable.  Will I buy there again?  Not if I can help it.  Is this happening to your clients?  Nooooooooooooo!  A customer’s path through your website should be clear, concise, and obstacle-free.   Improve your customers’ experience on your website with these three tips:

Offer suggestions

A customer should never get the screen equivalent of a “blank stare.”  No matter what they type in, your website should give them a few relevant suggestions or at the very least, a few guesses about what they might be looking for.  If a holiday is approaching, have items people are likely to be looking for on the front page.  The longer someone has to hunt for something on your website, the less likely they are to make a purchase. Harnessing the inherent impulsivity of online shopping is what separates “meh” small businesses from outstanding ones.

Don’t make the registration process into a headache

Capturing email addresses (and then using them efficiently) is obviously important, but you don’t want to drive your customers crazy in the process.  For example, consider having a “guest checkout” option in addition to a “returning customer” option, and make both easy to use and navigate.

Intuitive layout

Are things where customers expect them to be?  Can they adjust their order after they’ve entered shipping info, or is the only option a round-about way that requires them to start over?  Can they call or livechat if they have a question?  Is that information readily accessible?  Make sure your website has an intuitive layout that capitalizes on the expectations the consumer may not even realize they have.
Avoid frustration and increase revenue by making your website flexible and easy to navigate.  It shouldn’t feel like an obstacle course they get a prize for surviving.  If they have to clear their path with a machete, chances are they won’t be back.  If the path is already clear and welcome, they’ll return again and again and your business will flourish.