If you use images or photos on any of your sites, you’re already on Pinterest, whether you’ve registered on Pinterest or not. So, what are you going to do about it?

If you’re not on Pinterest, you’re already losing control of your visual brand as we speak by virtue of not participating. Pinterest is going to push you to better brand your content and IP in such a way that people know where that content is from without imposing grotesque watermarks, oversize copyright notices, or garish splashes of brand that takes away attention from the message in the image.

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I really felt like I needed to rush it through my recent free 30-minute How to Use Google+ for Business webinar, and that made me sad.

There is so much ground to cover.

So I sat down and used my trusty copy of Camtasia to record just about everything I know in this 80 minutes of (obviously unscripted) tutorial on how to use Google+ for business, because there is so much to discuss. Via Biznology.

Image via Wikipedia

The best thing about social media marketing is that you don’t have to be the most popular, have the most followers, or be the most sophisticated, you just have to do a better job than all your direct competitors.

You don’t have to be the fastest, the biggest, or the strongest in order to win at social media, you just have to be faster than Mark. Who is Mark? Well, I am sure you’ve all heard the joke about outrunning a bear…

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Look for the cumulative power of the long tail

My long tail blogger outreach strategy is periodically challenged or criticized as being too aggressive.

The argument generally goes as follows: If you send thousands of email pitches to topically and demographically relevant bloggers and online influencers in one go, you’re spamming. The real way to do it right is to reach out blogger by blogger, with each pitch being lovingly and relevantly written in series over time after investing months of time, previous to actually initiating a pitch, becoming best friends. 

In my opinion, it is virtually impossible to resource enough time, talent and treasure to engage meaningfully with enough people, enough influencers, enough bloggers, to result in the sort of impact required to move the needle with any level of immediacy or timeliness.

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In order to mine social media marketing gold, you really need to roll up your sleeves, put on a pair of sturdy work boots, get into that little elevator, and descend that deep shaft into the gold mine yourself, pick in hand, and get to work.

Message boards and forums are full of marketing gold, but if gold were that simple to collect, everyone would be loaded.

Instead of walking you through the boring pedantics required to be an effective message board marketer, I will instead share with you an exemplar using the author and journalist Paul M. Barrett, author of the new New York Times best-selling book about the cult and culture of the Glock handgun, Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun.

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The problem with most social media marketing agencies is that we’re fickle. We tend to keep rushing into the future, adopting anything and everything hot and new and overlooking the rest. In our constant hunger for the latest and greatest, we have mostly abandoned working class heroes like forums and message boards, preferring exciting new money to boring old money. But isn’t any kind of money good?

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