Just in time for Valentine’s Day, here’s my story.

Since getting married I’ve had to switch my crushes from men to other things. Like ideas, bloggers, or web sites.

My biggest crush was first for WordPress, until they deleted my blog. Like most first loves it’s hard to recover from. I have never gotten over it, even though I still like Matt.

My next big crush was Twitter. It was so bad my friend Chris threatened to stop reading my blog if I didn’t stop writing about it.

Various crushes have come and gone but my new love is Pinterest. The visual search engine (sure that part needs some work but Pinterest is a baby). It’s not all gushy love though. There’s data to support my adoration. Pinterest is sending more traffic to web sites than YouTube, LinkedIn and Google Plus COMBINED.

Why do I love Pinterest?

I love Pinterest because it conveys emotion so quickly. And marketers know if you can get a person’s heart then they will likely buy from you. They are forever trying to get you to fall in love. Telling you beautiful stories and showing you gorgeous pictures.

Much like all social networks Pinterest has a personality, but the face you see is formed by who you choose to follow. Like the beginning of new social networks a lot of people don’t get the fascination. Until they see how it applies to them. Men will likely see it as a place for women. There is even a male version of Pinterest called Gentlemint (anyone who says men are more visual than women ought to compare the sites, it’s awful). This social network is fun and uncomplicated (like a summer fling).

Here’s what it’s like to rejected when you go to pin something on Pinterest – and really why you should make your blog posts and content pinnable. You’ll get this:

Pinterest is so easy. Even your mom who can’t figure out how to do Facebook is on it. All day. It’s going so mainstream that I overheard 2 twenty-something women at the gym talking about a swim suit they found on Pinterest (as they were sharing magazine photos). I clicked through and it’s sold out on Nordstrom.com.

Pinterest is both a marketer’s dream and a dreamer’s play land.

It’s so easy to get happily lost in it. Oh, and while you’re there, will you pin this blog post?

Related articles

• Pinterest’s Obvious Secret (forbes.com)
• Pinterest Tips for Web Marketers Infographic (webmarketingtherapy.com)
• The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Pinterest for Marketing (hubspot.com)

I could subtitle this post: How to Learn Social Media Marketing.

The ecairn blog has a list of the top 150 social media blogs. The list was created by their tool that identifies influencers. I wish it were a graphic and I would pin it on Pinterest. Since it isn’t, go check it out.

Here’s a preview:

#1 is Chris Brogan

#2 is Seth Godin

MarketingProfs is #10.

Peter Shankman and others are on the list. It’s fun to note who I’ve met or heard speak. There are a few I haven’t heard of. I consider many on this list my marketing heroes and people I’ve admired and learned from for many years. I’ve invited or worked on campaigns to get them to speak locally.

At this point I mostly follow my favorites on Twitter. Recently I’ve subscribed to some on Facebook. I don’t spend as much time learning as I did in the beginning because I’m implementing what I’ve learned and come up with.

Many times people think that they can become an expert by attending conferences and reading but at some point you must practice. Once you learn the principles of social media marketing and get to know the tools a lot of the work is creative. You have to think. I wish there was a magic wand but there isn’t. While you can be inspired by seeing what other people do that is successful (I search Google and press releases because most of the time people write brag about what worked) you have to do it to really learn.

Just remember that even experts are still learning, thinking and trying out ideas.

Someone asked me recently how to learn social media marketing. Here’s my answer:

• Go through this list and add each blog to your reader (like Google Reader)
• Set aside consistent time to read posts they write. You’ll find who you like and learn from the most, so then just concentrate on their blog.
• Comment on the posts you love.
• Really get to know the bloggers you read. Find out when and where they are speaking and try to not only go hear them, but meet them. Get your picture taken with them.  This is very motivating and inspiring.
• Follow your favorites on Twitter, subscribe to them on Facebook and Google+ (depending on where you’re most active). Everyone shares slightly differently on each platform, find one or all ways to track your favorite bloggers.
• Look for webinars, recordings (search Google to see if they have podcasts), slides (slideshare) and YouTube videos by your favorite bloggers.
• Practice applying the principles you learn from reading and listening to the bloggers.

As mentioned in the blog post I’m referencing, BlogWorld is a great place to meet several of your social media blogging heroes in one place.

One last thing, there are people who do this as their job and that is all. I’ve never considered it work because I’m passionate about social media marketing. Even after a full day of work I want to come home (ok, most days I work from home as a consultant) and read more, learn more and try different ideas. If you have to make yourself learn this because it would be good for your career you might want to consider a different career. While knowing social media will help you in most careers there are many jobs that don’t require or even discourage it.

To me this is FUN. Not every second, but overall I love it.

It’s a big week in Utah for social media and the outdoor industry. There are 2 social media events and 2 social media conferences on Wed., January 18th. The Outdoor Retailer show is also going on.

I’m going to Shift Summit and going to try to also make it to the tail end of the SLC Social Media Club meeting.  (Gabrielle Blair of the amazing Design Mom blog is coming over from ALT to speak at Shift).

Here are the events taking place this week:

1. ALT  runs Jan. 18-21. It’s huge for design/mom/craft bloggers.
2. Then there’s Social Commerce on January 18th from 6:30 to 8:30.
3. The Social Media Club (SLCSEM) is meeting at the Leanardo on January 18th 6-9pm.

For the SLCSEM event Bing, Sundance, SEO.com, and SLCSEM.org are speaking about video search. It features speakers from Bing and Sundance.

Topics:

• Video search engine optimization

• Why search engines are changing to videos and images

When: Wed. Jan. 18 from 6 to 9 p.m.
Where: The Leonardo, 209 E. 500 South in Salt Lake City, Utah (the old Salt Lake City library building that has been turned into a museum of sorts)

I didn’t know this but Bing, (owned by Microsoft) controls about 30% of the search engine market and a major sponsor of Sundance.

More info and register for the Salt Lake City Social Media Club event here. Unfortunately it says to get on the waiting list. When I tried signing up last week the site wasn’t working and I finally gave up). Too bad because I just got the press release a few moments ago.

Hope to see you at both events!

I saw a press release today from Dunkin’ Donuts that made me pause. Get this. Their new Twitter campaign is all about how to EAT HEALTHY and keep your New Year’s Resolution to lose weight. By going to Dunkin Donuts.

How clever marketing agency!

Sorry, anything with the word donuts in its name isn’t where I’m going to get healthy food, no matter how low calorie your other items might be.

For one week they are asking people to tweet weight loss tips using the hashtag #DDSMART. They are promoting their “better-for-you” menu (which is way too healthy to be a mid-level calorie choice). One winner per day gets a $50 gift card. And yes, if you are actually on a diet going into a doughnut shop to spend that $50 might not be that smart. Or are you going to pass up your favorite glazed with sprinkles for an egg white sandwich on multigrain bread? And the rest of the menu, well, it’s a landmine! You’re in the war zone, so don’t even tell me you’re going to eat healthy.

Here’s how your tweets will be judged (from their contest rules): A) 40% – Overall Appeal; B) 30% – Adherence To The Theme; and C) 30% – Originality/Creativity.

They got it all wrong. Well, not all wrong. They are capitalizing on a trend with a social media campaign (this would be perfect for my book). That’s good. People are coming out of the holiday fog/binge and want to lose weight. They are onto something there. But here’s what their Twitter campaign should’ve been.

Everyone makes and breaks New Year’s resolutions right now. Almost everyone decides to go on a diet. Almost half of us have fallen off the wagon within 6 months.

“Within the first week 25% of people break their resolutions. After half of the year, only 46% of people are still keeping their promises.”

People on diets dream of things like donuts all day until they go crazy and eat one. So why not help them out a little by suggesting they break their resolution with you? Or, if you’re like me and a lot of other people you have a cheat day (another trend, diets that have cheat days) that you dream of all week long.

Why not have people tweet what they plan to eat on their cheat day? And, oh, btw, if you want healthy, we have you covered. They can make some suggestions off their healthy menu item but focus on the large percentage of people who break their diets.

That’s how I’d do it. I don’t think I’m the only one either:

I’m very tempted to tweet snarky suggestions such as: Park as far away from the front door as possible then sprint to the front door. That way if you die of a heart attack, at least you can get a donut on your way out. But I’m too nice for that.

What can you learn from this? Capitalize on large trends like New Year’s resolutions in your social media campaigns. But don’t confuse customers with competing messages. Stick to something that will reinforce your brand image. Because donuts and diets just don’t go well together.

One of my favorite business activities is hosting, attending, or studying great blogger events and campaigns.  I’m still fascinated with the power of blogs and what a revolution it is in the media world.

Tonight I had dinner at Cafe Zupas. They are a casual restaurant chain that serves gourmet soups, salads and sandwiches.

Zupas is great at blogging. The blog looks great (or at least it used to – not as crazy about the new look) and they enlisted several local food bloggers to write for them. They chose  bloggers are influencers who already have followings of their own. Since Zupas started in Utah, I know some of them.

The bloggers write about their post on their own blog (example) and draw in their readers. They are brand ambassadors for the restaurant. I’m hoping to interview their marketing department.

Tonight I noticed that they are now selling a simple but nice cookbook with the best recipes from their blog. In other words, they made it into a product. A product that promotes their brand. Smart. This could make an ideal giveaway for a brand to give away to Facebook fans (a PDF version for new likes), new newsletter subscribers, or as a download on your blog.

The great thing about the cookbook is it features a profile of each blogger. The bloggers get copies to give away on their blogs and are of course helping to promote it. Don’t tell my sister but I bought her one for Christmas.

Related articles

• Local Business Marketing – Host a Blogger Event (newspapergrl.com)
• Pitching to bloggers – the do’s and don’ts of blogger pitching (buildabetterblog.com)

I’m really getting into the marketing, I mean holiday season this year. Like some people like to see the decorations or Christmas tress go up,  I like seeing all the holiday social media marketing campaigns.

I’m a fan of gift guides and SmartBrief, one of my favorite social media email newsletters, has examples of many gift guides including their own. You could get inspired to create one of your own or find gifts for your friends.

AllFacebook has a post with great ideas for holiday posts (be they blog posts, wall posts, tweets or even the basis of social media campaigns).

I must end with gifts. It’s not from me, but I’m telling you about it. Get 30 mins. of free wifi on Delta flights that have wifi capability from December 12 through January 2. Here’s the press release. I’m going to Vegas, hopefully we get lucky.

If you’re looking for some holiday music, check out this indie Christmas music from Deer Child. I have it playing as I write this. When it comes to nostalgia and connecting with your fans a little music could help create the right mood. These are religious because I am but snag a local indie band to create something for the background in your video or as a gift to your fans.

I’ve always said that when it comes to marketing the internet is an open book – and it’s even searchable. Since it’s almost Christmas most retailers are running holiday campaigns with social media.

Learn from watching what others do and then modify their ideas to fit your needs. Note the landing pages, the rules, design, and apps they use. Look at how they titled the contest. Try out contests just to see how easy (or not) they are to enter and share with others.

Here a few ideas to get you started.

1. Run a Holiday Themed Facebook Photo Contest
This is a classic Facebook contest idea (see the article I wrote for American Express OPEN forum for more ideas). Gap has the “12 Days of Joy” c0ntest. Fans are asked to “Submit a photo of your most fun, cool, sweet, or in any way interesting holiday tradition.” They will pick 12 winners to will get $500 Gap gift cards. They use OfferPop to run their campaign.

2. Start a Movement with a Cause-Related Social Campaign
MoveOn is queen of cause-related email marketing. I love their new campaign for Christmas called, “Love Makes a Family.”  If you know me you know it doesn’t matter if you like the industry or agree with the politics – you can still learn from them.

4. Ask your Fans to Make a Christmas Wish List (with your products)
I like this campaign because it is sure to boost sales. If you’re going to the trouble of making a list of what you want to buy, you may as well go ahead and click “checkout.” Amazon should do something like this for their wish lists (mine is pretty long if you are wondering what to get me for Christmas this year!).

You could also make that wish list into a competition and you could win your wish list. L’Occitane en Provence: “Wish List Competition” http://on.fb.me/uSPQkB (OfferPop powered)

5. Start a Gift Guide or Recommendation List
You can go basic just by publishing a PDF file or web site full of gift ideas, or you can go fancy. The grandmama of them all is Etsy’s Gift Ideas for Facebook Friends.  It culls through your Facebook friends, looks at their profiles and makes recommendations of homemade gifts you could buy for them based on their tastes. Brilliant!

6. Twelve or 25 Days of Christmas Promotions
Talbots is doing a 12 Days of Christmas sweepstakes. Each day there’s a new product they are giving  away and you get extra entries for fans. Great way to subtly suggest products for their customers to buy with a nice picture of the day’s product on their Facebook landing page. They also use OfferPop’s referral app.

7. A B2B Christmas

It may seem easier to promote consumer products, but you can get into the holidays even if you’re B2B. Red Rock Media did a great job on this with their 12 tips of Christmas. Each day is a new tip on their blog. Anyone could do this. I could give 12 tips of a PR Christmas. If you are a design firm you could do 12 days of Christmas designs and showcase your past work (and promote people to order cards from you – this combined with SEO could really help you out every Christmas).

My Gift to You
Alright, your turn. Any ideas or examples you’ve seen of excellent holiday social media marketing? This is your chance to share (and promote your good work or business too). As my gift to you, if your example is good I’ll tweet it to over 9,000 people on Twitter. Just leave a prewriten tweet with a bit.ly in your comment that I can use or edit.

Mark Cuban is an Internet billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. He has a new book out. It’s short at just under 100 pages and it’s cheap too, at $2.51. He hopes to sell a billion copies (he seems to think in billions). Imagine if he does sell a billion copies. I’m looking for the current numbers, and don’t know what Amazon keeps but even if he gets $1 a book, that’s one hell of a profit (over $1.5 billion).

You’ve heard of blog to book deals. The newest rendition of this is blog to ebook.  And you won’t need a book deal or publisher. All you need is some big success and a lot of friends. Cuban has over 330k friends on Facebook and 760k followers on Twitter.

The book is basically a compilation of Cuban’s blog posts you can read free on his blog. But that hasn’t stopped it from becoming an instant bestseller. It’s titled: “How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It.” I like this interview with Mark Cuban about his book and life.

I love this line, it just strikes me as so amazing: Of all your business ventures, the profit margin for this book is unmatched. Much of the book already had appeared as blog posts, and the production, promotion and distribution costs were negligible.

I love to use Twitter to find great headlines. Here’s a few about this story:

The Book World Is Changing: Mark Cuban Creates A Best Seller Out Of Some Blog Posts

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban hopes for a slam dunk with his new e-book

I’m buying it to see how it differs (in format) from his blog and to read it in one concise place on my Kindle. But really I’m reading it to see what all the hoopla is about. And to learn.

Check out

Mark Cuban’s book on Amazon

In related news, the Justice Department is looking into if Apple is keeping prices for ebooks artificially high.

My business partner Ponn Sabra and I have known each other for several years. We are enthusiasts of online press releases to promote businesses.

We recently launched a new venture called Publicity Spark. We want to help small businesses get the spark of PR and social media for more traffic, search engine rankings and sales. Most of our products are downloadable guides because print books about this topic go out of date quickly!

We just started a 6-week blogging tour.  That simply means we will be guest blogging on a different blog each week for 6 weeks. We share tips from our ebooks and we’re giving out prizes.

How to Win

Each comment you make will give you another entry into that week’s prize drawings, the grand prize drawing AND will help your search engine optimization. There are many ways to enter each week, from answering the questions we post, to following Publicity Spark and our gracious hosts on Twitter, etc. Check out the contest posts on each blog for more info.

Tour Schedule

Here is the schedule of blogs we will be stopping at each week, make sure to follow along and comment on our posts for a chance to win free prizes!

August 1-5th: Kelly McCausey’s Solopreneur Expertise at SoloSmarts

August 8-12th: WorkingWahm: By Christina Lemmey

August 15-19th: Lesa Dale, Teen Biz Coach

August 22-26th: Social Marketing For Small Businesses at SocialBuzzClub

August 29-Sept 2: Small Business Expert Denise O’Berry’s Blog

September 5-9th: Glennette Goodbread at PremiumWebDesign

Thanks to the bloggers who have participated, we are honored.  If you would like to be a part of our future tours feel free to contact us as we will be planning another blog tour program soon!

Should you or shouldn’t you put your unborn child on Facebook? This is the question for many soon-to-be-new-parents.

Facebook recently added an expectant parent option to your profile page.

If you ask a social media nerd like me I’d say Yes, OF COURSE you should add your baby to Facebook. But a lot of people say NO WAY.

But if you’re already listing your relationship status, your job, your relatives, your every thought on Facebook, then why not announce that you’re pregnant there too? Besides, we’re already doing it.

You still have to be 14 to have a profile and Facebook has deleted people who break this rule.

You can also put up a picture of the ultrasound.  However, that doesn’t mean that your baby can have their own profile and amass a bunch of friends both born and unborn. As far as I can tell, it’s just an acknowledgment. A formal step that was already happening informally.

When you add your baby, they’ll show up underneath your list of friends on the left sidebar. You can add all your kids with their birthdays (I didn’t include that info).

To add your baby, click on “edit” at the top of your profile and find the “family and friends” tab.

Privacy & other concerns
The biggest concern I’ve seen is people wondering what happens if you have a miscarriage (I’ve had a couple myself and the 1st time I had started to tell people, it was awkward sometimes but then it was sweet how people reacted). Also, it seems like Facebook takes what we say about ourselves & uses it to make money. Remember they’re a business and businesses exist to make money or they go out of business and we have no way to brag publicity connect with our friends or customers. Then there are privacy issues (you can control who sees what, to an extent).

No such thing as TMI on Facebook?
Remember, you decide when to put up the news and you take the risks. Believe me, I have thought about what to post if something were to go wrong. But that’s part of life, a life I’ve chosen to share with my network (and why I don’t often include professional contacts unless we’re also friends).

It does get a little dicey sometimes, but life is dicey. Besides if I were to lose the baby after I thought it was safe to post I would appreciate the support of my friends and family. A lot more people will comment than actually call you and it is comforting to get sympathy when you need it. Who wants to call or bring the sad topic up to dozens of people? Not me. I plan to tell most people when she’s actually born by you guessed it, posting it on Facebook.

Competitiveness
I hope that there’s never a time when your baby can have a profile and friend count of their own. It’s already tough to keep the jealousy at bay.  Now the popularity contest could start before you’re even born. Who has more friends? Who got the best gifts/baby shower? Are your ultrasound photos ultra hip? It can get out of hand.

Already some of my Facebook friends who seem to live a charmed existence can get on my nerves. I’d rather not be inundated with their charmed children’s lives too. That’s what mom blogs are for!

Get your unborn child on Twitter instead
If you’re squeamish about putting your unborn baby on Facebook, there’s always Twitter. Who can forget Penelope Trunk’s tweet about her miscarriage that made national news? And did you know Lance Armstrong has a Twitter account for his baby @cincoarmstrong? It’s no longer updated, but who has time and what’s the point?

Yes, you could spend your entire life tweeting or Facebooking for you, your business, your children (born and expecting) and impersonating people you admire if you want to.

The new marketing frontier — marketing to expectant parents on Facebook
As a marketer I can’t help but go here. If Facebook knows that you’re pregnant and when you’re due they can do a lot with that info. Businesses that sell baby portraits, diaper services, hospitals, and others can run ads targeted to new moms. Happens offline all the time. If I were Baby Center (who claimed at Evo that 70% of expectant moms get their newsletter!) I’d be all over this. I’m sure you can already create baby registries, now you need to link them to your baby.

I predict in the next few years we’ll be able to send our ultrasound pictures directly from the doctor’s office to email or to our Facebook page. Instead of living life for the sake of life, we could just live it to look good on Facebook.

My take
We already put up YouTube videos of us telling our families the news of a baby on the way. We are thinking about taking the perfect photo to post before or after birth – even before the baby is cleaned up. There are pictures of our dating, marriage, divorce, pregnancy tests, ultrasounds and all sorts of details that were once private. No one is forcing this either, we’re choosing to do it (or not).

Facebook is just evolving with their customers, just like any savvy business should.

So now I have to ask. Have you or would you put your unborn child on Facebook?