I’ve been looking for case studies of people who are making money directly from Pinterest. I’ve found affiliate marketers who are (stay tuned for more on this in a future post). Geoffrey is one of the first to make money by promoting his products on Pinterest.

I’m not advocating that making money directly from Pinterest is the holy grail of marketing. Just like making money on any social network, it’s usually because you’re visible and people like you that you end up making money. In other words, people see and like Geoffrey’s work so they contact him for a design project. It’s rarely a direct sale (someone sees and buys the product).  But sometimes it is and that is what this case study is about.

I interviewed Geoffrey Sagers (that’s such a graphic designer’s spelling, isn’t it?). He’s a graphic designer who got on Pinterest about 9 months ago. He just started to experiment with selling his work. He didn’t set out to do it, but after people asked for copies of his designs, he began to see the potential.

Geoffrey noticed quotes, which are super popular on Pinterest, but a lot of them are ugly. He thought he could do better, so he started making his own versions. Quotes do well on Facebook too (I didn’t ask if Geoffrey has a page for his business). If you design a quote, it’s good for a blog post, a Facebook update, a new product, and a pin.

When he was starting out Geoffrey wasn’t pinning his work, he pinned photographs and things that inspired him. Things that gave him ideas for his own business.

Pinterest is nothing if not a form of inspiration and enchantment. There’s always something to be discovered. I believe in participating from a mindset of sharing and connecting with whatever inspires you, not from a mindset of how much money you can make. Although I’m not a purist. You can use Pinterest any way you choose, or create multiple accounts to use as you please. In fact, you could create a themed account like this one that just showcases Facebook design services.

Of course someone can copy your work and take credit for it. Or Pinterest could decide it’s theirs. But so far it’s worth the risk Geoffrey says. You win some…but not all. Granted it’s not his full-time gig.

Lessons in Fulfillment
At first Geoffrey ran to Walmart to print orders as they came in, but that took a lot of time. He now uses Smugmug . I must say I hate their shopping cart with the small buy button that you have to look for, but that’s not the point of this story. The point is the quality is better and he doesn’t have to do any of the fulfillment.

Appeal to your Target Audience – in this Case Usually Women
The majority of people pinning and repinning on Pinterest are women. That does not mean that men or things that appeal to men can’t do well on the site. It does mean that the majority of pins in most cases are things that appeal to women. I like this. Most businesses like this because you know, the power of the purse. Women make a lot of the purchasing decisions for their families. Think educated, higher income moms and grandmas.

My friend Karen says men are more reluctant to use Pinterest because of the name. Her husband says it’s because men don’t pin things, they nail ‘em. But it was started by a man (who launched Pinterest at Alt Summit, a conference in Utah that mostly women attend).

Timing – When to Pin
Geoffrey says if he doesn’t get at least one repin on his work, he deletes it and pins it another time. Your pin appears as a new item in a category for about 7-10 mins. So if you don’t get a pin in that time it’s unlikely you’ll get them later. I’m sure there will be services that do this but I’ve started to see people hiring for this task.

He’s found that the best times to pin are between 7-8am (before work or school), 11-1:30 (during lunch), and 6-8pm (after dinner).

Colors are Important Too
Again and again I see how colors are important. Geoffrey uses pinks and red when the image is has a love or marriage theme. Otherwise he uses blues or greens. If the quote is hard-hitting then he’ll use a darker background image or grungy look. This could be a coffee stain look or black. So that infographic you create might do better on Pinterest if you change the color scheme.

End of my Long-Winded Post about Pinterest
I can write and write about Pinterest because I genuinely love it. For many reasons both personal and business. I think it’s the most accessible of the social networks. We’re always looking for the fastest way to get information. It’s much faster to skim images than to read. You don’t need to click to be whisked away into dream mode, you’re just in it, bang. I also love how people love Pinterest.

Here’s one of the pins that got Geoffrey the most repins. You’re not used to seeing quotes like this on my blog are you?

Now you can pin this post.

Related articles

• Pinterest, Google+ and Facebook Tips and Techniques (slideshare.net)
• PinPuff For Pinfluencers And Other Ways To Find Pinterest Users (makeuseof.com)
• Pinterest: We’re not going to be sued into oblivion, and here’s why (nextlevelofnews.com)
• Pinterest For Personal Branding: 7 Cool and Practical Uses (personalbrandingblog.com)

This infographic has some insights that made me pause. One of the simple takeaways is make a more secure password with 8 characters and by using at least one capital letter.

Here’s how your identity gets compromised:

Created by: Online Marketing Degree

“From what travel agents are telling me, that horrifying image (of the massive ship on its side) is going to turn the cruise industry on its side, too.”

-Mike Driscoll, editor-in-chief of Cruise Week Magazine, as quoted in USA TODAY

What a quote. It’s my favorite of the week. I’m pondering this as I read stories and see images of the Italian cruise ship that hit an obstacle and within minutes starting to fill with water and go down. How no one was prepared. How it was so unexpected. And how tragic it is because it was entirely avoidable. But most of all how the captain of the ship reacted.

Talk about a PR disaster! I can see the headline: Cruise Industry Sinking!

Not only is the cruise industry facing this but Italy also has a PR disaster because the captain of the ship walked off! Now he’s in jail. What a coward.

Contrast this to Sully who successfully landed a plane in the Hudson and carefully helped his passengers off in freezing water. We felt a surge of national pride.

What would you do if this were you, your industry or your country?

In a sense when bad news hits, it’s like an obstacle you didn’t see coming and after a point, couldn’t avoid hitting.

The story of the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia sinking (here are some great photos of the cruise ship on Google +) in fair weather with clear skies is more than a PR disaster for the cruise industry though. It’s more than the story of people dying and the person in charge running off while everyone else suffers (bringing to mind the stories of Enron, Bernard Madoff, execs from major financial institutions).

It’s a story that reminds me of what happens to industries (newspapers, music, books), people, companies (Borders, Circuit City, WordPerfect, Hollywood video) and products (dvds, text books) all of the time.  I’m fascinated by what happens next after  you go through the shock and clean up the damage, what emerges.

This story is sad, true and it’s a powerful metaphor for business. What did it teach you?

This past week I went back to work after maternity leave. I’m starting off with just one day a week, going to two days in a few months. While it was a little difficult thinking of leaving my 2 month old baby for an entire day, I also realized it was time. I needed to get back to work again to save my own sanity and Alexis is getting some great bonding time with grandma.

I realized years ago that I don’t do well making friends with other moms. Much like at work, just having one close friend at work makes a huge difference in your happiness. I haven’t found that friend at home and I’m going nuts. I’m social and hate being alone most of the day. Which is why I go into work at least once a week now.

When I left I trained someone to do my job. She did so well I didn’t even worry about things while I was gone. That was such a relief. When I returned I realized a few things:

1- My temporary replacement was better at doing my job than I was.

2- I don’t think she had another job lined up.

3- The plan I had wasn’t going to work as I’d hoped.

Things had also changed dramatically in the company since I left. I have a new boss and team. With all of the changes I haven’t gotten updates and some of tasks I did have been assigned to others. At first I panicked. It’s not uncommon for someone to take your place while you’re on maternity leave. I could’ve been angry or threatened and demanded or fought to get my position back. Instead I saw it as an opportunity to be creative (one of my strengths).

It’s not unusual for a woman to get passed over for a promotion or lose a position because she takes maternity leave. Look what happened over at TechCrunch.

My solution? I’m creating a premium version of the product I started (a blog network). I still get to work with bloggers but now I’m just working with the best. The group will be much smaller but that will free me up to be partners with them and develop more creative solutions for our clients. I get to pass off some of the parts I didn’t like about my job to my replacement. She’ll have more work and I will too. I see it as a win.

Why am I blogging about this? I want other women in the workforce to consider these issues. I also want to show that when you feel threatened you can fight the change or you can make a change. Usually there are solutions you don’t see at first. Look for them. Most of all I want women to stand up for themselves and to think ahead and plan — something that took me years to learn.

I’m a little late to post this story but I have a good excuse.  I’m now mom to a sweet baby girl named Alexis who was born over Labor Day weekend. That’s why I haven’t been tweeting, responding quickly to emails or writing many press releases lately.

This post is about another baby though.

Last week the country marked 10 years since the attacks on America on September 11th.

For me, the best antidote to the sadness and losses of this awful day came from being with people in my community. I was a community organizer (just like Obama!) and had a police picnic planned in the neighborhood I worked in. We had a potluck dinner and invited an officer to talk about neighborhood safety, drugs and crime. It was so healing to be together even though I didn’t know a lot of the people who attended.

Meetup is a web site that lets you find and meet people in your community who share your interests. Because of this web site I’ve been on hikes, gotten business advice, and looked for moms to hang out with. It gives you hope that there are good people who are talented and smart that you might otherwise never know in real life.

Speaking of babies, did you know that Meetup was a 9/11 baby? Co-founder Scott Heiferman wrote an email about its beginnings from Meetup headquarters in New York.

He said:

“Let me tell you the Meetup story. I was living a couple miles
from the Twin Towers, and I was the kind of person who thought
local community doesn’t matter much if we’ve got the internet
and tv. The only time I thought about my neighbors was when I
hoped they wouldn’t bother me.

When the towers fell, I found myself talking to more neighbors
in the days after 9/11 than ever before. People said hello to
neighbors (next-door and across the city) who they’d normally
ignore. People were looking after each other, helping each
other, and meeting up with each other. You know, being
neighborly.

A lot of people were thinking that maybe 9/11 could bring
people together in a lasting way. So the idea for Meetup was
born: Could we use the internet to get off the internet — and
grow local communities?

We didn’t know if it would work. Most people thought it was a
crazy idea — especially because terrorism is designed to make
people distrust one another.

A small team came together, and we launched Meetup 9 months
after 9/11.

Every Meetup starts with people simply saying hello to
neighbors. And what often happens next is still amazing to me.
They grow businesses and bands together, they teach and
motivate each other, they babysit each other’s kids and find
other ways to work together. They have fun and find solace
together. They make friends and form powerful community. It’s
powerful stuff.”

Today, there are over 10 million Meetuppers and over 100,000 Meetup Groups.

What a success story!

It’s inspiring to see how tragedy can motivate people to do extraordinary things. What other businesses and nonprofits got a start because of 9/11? If you have an example, please share your story in the comments.

You have to love it when one of the best SEO firms in the world shows up and gives you a compliment like that!

When SEOMoz made their first Mozcation stop in Salt Lake City, they brought good food, free t-shirts and some kick-a#!@ presentations. I’ve been to a lot of conferences and heard a lot of people talk about SEO. It’s usually a rehash of the same old. Not this. I was trying to listen, write and tweet the insights, but it was tough to keep up.

The place was packed with SEOMoz groupies. Rand said they couldn’t have hoped for a better turnout if they held this event in Seattle. For me it was like a reunion – I saw Twitter friends I’ve never met in real life, friends from the industry I haven’t seen for a while, and met new friends. I love this industry. They are still very open. Rand and his team were stars, he talked to just about everyone in the room and was totally down with us snapping pictures with him.

Rand spoke about the value of social to SEO. Search is intent-driven – people search for specific information. Social wasn’t always important to SEO but that’s changed. Now search engines started to take cues from social to influence search results. Even though they’ve denied it Google is tapping into social networks to determine how to rank web sites.

Having a large, most powerful network helps you more than ever. Tweets can be crawled almost instantly and can rank well, esp. if you are well-connected. Think of it Google Klout score – your authority matters. Rand gave a few examples of how well-received social campaigns can net higher rankings faster than traditional SEO.

“Social influences every other type of marketing.” – Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz

Perhaps the biggest impact is how most people are now getting personalized Google search results based on their interests and their networks. Content that has been shared by someone in your network will be listed higher than other content. So if you want people to see you on the front page, then  you need to care about social.

It goes something like this:

higher social influence/large social impact = higher search engines rankings

higher search engine rankings = more people find you & can mean higher leads/sales for your business

So if you’ve thought that social was a big waste of time and you just can’t be motivated to get into it, you’re missing the new frontier of SEO. If you want to be found online (even for small niches), social matters.

It’s graduation season so commencement speakers around the country are doling out the common advice. I heard it from Mark Zuckerberg last month. Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock who directed the documentary Super Size Me (great film), recounted being $250k in credit card debt & sleeping in a hammock to follow his passion. He told students that’s a good idea.

When asked for business advice, this is probably what most people think to say first: follow your passion.

But is it good advice?

I just finished reading, Today we Are Rich by Tim Sanders, author of one of my favorite business books, The Likeability Factor and Love is the Killer App.

I subscribe to his newsletter & he asked if people wanted to review his new book. I replied and the book arrived. We exchanged a few emails. I have a lot of admiration for Tim. However, my hopes for the book were low. I expected more of a rehash of common platitudes so I put off reading it. It was much better than that. I should not have doubted.

Tim talks about the difference between following your PURPOSE rather than your PASSION. He says it’s more important to discover your purpose and let it give you passion for life.

“Parents, giving your children lifelong permission to follow their passions (self) instead of purpose (service) is bad advice…that philosophy has produced millions of broken lives in which people drift aimlessly, doing what they want to do and not what they need to do to contribute to society.”

He talks about how following his passion to be a musician hurt his family and put them on shaky financial and emotional ground. But he learned! He made his passion into a hobby and focused on providing for his family’s health and happiness (his purpose).

I’ll never forget my former in-laws words after I explained how my former husband’s career choice was hard on our family. Their words still come to my mind all these years later. They said, “you have to support his passion” and I was thinking, I’ve been supporting his passion for years…YOU support his passion. It’s killing me.

Over time Tim developed passion and love for his career equal to his former passion. He talks about how knowing your purpose and living it instills confidence. It also fills your need for meaning and gives you a feeling of worthiness. When you achieve success it doesn’t make you arrogant, it makes you grateful and charged to continue to fulfill your purpose and contribute.

“When I give a speech, I’m concerned only with the mission, not with being liked or achieving a standing ovation. When I wrote this book, I wasn’t focused on winning awards or making money. Instead, how well I accomplished my purpose is the end-all measurement of my success.”

Those are my favorite type of speakers or performers. You can feel the energy of giving rather than needing (approval). It’s a very different vibe.

There were so many themes in this book that resonated with me, but this one stuck. Probably because I’ve been an idealist who thought following my passion would make me happy. I had friends that seemed to feel being/looking hip or artsy was most important. I’m not saying there isn’t room for your passion, but if it’s all you follow it can lead you off onto side roads that never get you anywhere worth staying.

If I followed my passion I’d probably ignore my family and be online or building my business instead. Sometimes it’s easier. But my purpose is more than that (though I’m thankful I found something I love that could support my son, which became one of my primary purposes).

What do you think of the advice to “follow your passion?” Does your passion require that you sacrifice things that are more important, like your family or responsibility? Or is this proof I’ve sold out  old and practical?

This is my first post about a Facebook game.

I’m not much of a game player. I get bored easily. When I do have free time I mindless surf the internet or read a magazine. Plus playing a game is so solitary and I’m quite social when I’m online. A new Facebook game called Family Village has the potential to keep my interest. Why? Because I’m the star and my family is in the game with me.

When you start the game you enter info about your current family members and then build out your entire family tree. So I got out those pedigree charts my mom gave me.

While you build out your village (I’m trying to keep a lot of green space in mine) the game looks for documents about your family members. Your own life and family can be endlessly fascinating. I think of that Oscar Wilde quote: “To love oneself is the beginning of a life long romance.”

At first it’s just a game, that’s until you find a piece of your own history. The game presented a newspaper clipping from my great-grandparents who I never met. They were off to my parents wedding. It struck me how much more real it made them feel to me. It’s also why I play the game, to discover moments like that.

Check out their sweepstakes where you can win a trip for 2 to a ranch in Argentina (where many famous people have stayed) or a Kindle just for telling us about your most famous relative.

If you play the game on Facebook www.Facebook.com/FamilyVillage let me know what you think.

Disclosure: I’m part of the team promoting the game.

When I wrote my book, I had a decent reputation, but it instantly got stronger. One indication of that is how almost instantly as a new author, I was asked to speak in public. I have spoken many times in the last year. At major universities, conferences, and on webinars with people and brands I have such respect for. My webinar with PRWeb was voted the best of the year. So I think I have it made. But there’s a next time and a next.

All of this speaking has been both exhilarating and frightening.

Sometimes I thought I might pass or blank out before they turned the mic over to me. My stomach hurt and I had no rational thoughts except of hoping to escape. That doesn’t happen any more thankfully.

At first, I told myself I didn’t like to speak in public. I’m a writer and I’m comfortable being a writer where I can think about what I want to say and revise it even after hitting publish.

But speaking is very good for building a reputation and for selling books. You don’t work so hard on something and spend your money and time on it to have it sit in boxes. I firmly believe small business owners especially need to understand how press releases and news can be a powerful online marketing tool and introduce them into building publicity for their business. So I accept invitations.

5 months into this adventure, I got braces. They have made my teeth straight but they also made it harder to speak. If I’m nervous or my mouth is dry my teeth stick to my mouth. If I talk too fast (guilty!) it hurts. This has sometimes tested my self esteem. But at one PRSA conference I met a woman who I connected with because we both had braces (which happened often at first, bonding with other adults who wore braces). I think she was also quite pregnant (that’s next for me). She told me about all the public speaking she did to places like Disney. She showed me her scarred mouth. After that I relaxed a little. Still, I’m so happy I only have one public speaking engagement before they come off next month.

The thing about speaking is when it goes well, I love it. I feel I’ve contributed something worthwhile. I like the audience and they like me. To me, if there is a connection and we both learned, it’s a success.

But if it doesn’t go well I second guess myself. I got the order of my ideas wrong. I check Twitter to see what people say. I compare myself to others and wonder how come I’m not more like them. I think I should be more entertaining and funny. I wish I had instant recall of facts (when you’re focused on speaking, someone may ask a question that you know but you cannot remember the answer. Sometimes it’s tough to understand the questions people are asking).

If you know it didn’t go well, it’s tough to stop picking yourself apart wondering where you went wrong.

That’s when I think, I am done. I will never again accept a speaking engagement.

It’s a lot easier to be in the audience. It’s just the payoff isn’t as great if it goes well. Perhaps the biggest moment of dread I’ve faced is realizing at a conference that it wasn’t an audience I was familiar or comfortable with. I could see what I had to say didn’t fit. I was talking about press releases to a corporate crowd who churned them out and found them boring and was much more interested in talking about social media. Twitter specifically. There was so much Twitter love.

I like reading Penelope Trunk’s blog because she’s really good at putting things into perspective. She makes me less hard on myself because she goes through very uncomfortable situations and admits to doing or saying things that make me cringe. Even though it’s comforting to know you’re not the only person who has experienced these things, it’s hard to read. Yet she makes us root for her and she comes through it. I like her style of seemingly wandering around a point with interesting stories but then punches the point at the end and makes it all work. Probably because I relate.

She writes this about speaking:

TAI taught me that you have to connect with a single person in the audience. Talk to that one person until you know you have made a deep connection. And then move to another person. Do not scan the audience trying to connect with everyone. If you try to connect with everyone, you connect with no one. If you connect deeply with one person, the whole audience can feel that connection and they actually feel connected to you.

I can do that, but then what about in webinars, how do you connect with people you cannot see?

To me, it’s not the best speaker who wins over an audience, it’s the person who loves what they are speaking about and communicates that clearly. The times I can be myself and let my personality and my passion for the topic come through are the best. Not always easy to do because when I’m thinking logically it’s often difficult to be emotionally open too.  Yet the worst presentations are too technical with no personality. My best math professor made me warm up to the subject because he was clearly unabashedly enamored with math.

I know no substitute for practice and know that at times practice can be awkward, I keep trying. I have no aspirations of being on a speaking circuit but I do want to be more consistently great at speaking. I’m much closer than when I started. I respect for people who do it well practically every time.

He Didn’t Read a Newspaper for a Year

Social media consultant Adam Vincezini was a newspaper reader who conducted an experiment. Instead of reading his favorite papers every day, he got all his news online and from magazines. In the experiment he allowed himself to read the newspapers online. What happened? Getting his news online permanently altered his reading habits. I believe this is a microcasm for what’s happening to newspaper readership.

Once people start switch to online sources, the way they get news, what they read and how they read it shifts and will not go back. Even, if like me, they really loved newspapers. This is how just about anyone college aged or younger gets their news. And it’s not good for the newspaper industry.

Over a year ago I noticed my newspapers were piling up in the recycle bin. I simply didn’t have the time or will to read them. I have had a newspaper subscription most of my life until then. When I got my news all day through my Twitter and Facebook friends, on my phone, on Google news, and through blogs I wasn’t as hungry for it when I got home. Now I don’t even make it through Friday or Saturday’s paper. I usually only read the Sunday paper.

Adam went from reading The Sun, The Times, The Guardian, Metro, (he lives in England), and the London Evening Standard
to Twitter, Google Reader, Alltop.com, Popuris.com, Other People, Yahoo Pipes and mobile news apps such as Snaptu.

What happened:

• ‘My enjoyment of reading disappeared.’

• He realized that for PR in social media it’s more important to create evergreen and shareable content than it is to create timely content.

• He got a more narrow view of the world: “…online, you can always keep going and it’s easy to move off in tangents,’ he says. Online, he adds, you follow your interests, so you may miss stories that have an impact on how you live but you may not seek out…”

• He lost interest in mainstream culture and football. “He also found that he watched less commercial TV and lost interest in mainstream culture, including celebrities and, surprisingly for the ‘massive footie fan’, football. He notes: ‘I used to get my regular fix of football, but when you take it out of your routine, you lose interest.’

I can see these same things happened to me but over time since I didn’t go cold turkey, I gradually scaled back (I never was into football or sports so I saw no change there).

I asked Adam on Twitter if he went back to reading the newspaper after his experiment, here’s what he said:

My question is, is this shift good? That we segment ourselves off according to our networks, that are worldview shrinks? Does it really matter anyway?