Pinterest, Pinterest, Pinterest – everywhere you look on the web, everyone is buzzing about the latest “kid” on the social media block!

It’s sort of like “virtual scrapbooking” and is wildly popular among women around the world. They say it can be seriously addictive!

But, as Facebook guru Mari Smith says, anywhere you get droves of people, that’s a golden opportunity for business!

I found this guide by HubSpot to be particularly informative: The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Pinterest for Marketing.

Like any social media or marketing venture, check it out, but formulate a plan first for HOW and WHY you and your business will utilize this new tool before just blindly jumping in and setting up an account because it is hot.  I’m still evaluating if WBA will do so, but I can see it being very useful for social media savvy builders who want to “pin” photos of their projects.

“Our goal is to humanize the company and connect our employees and fans with each other and in the process provide value.” Scott Monty, Ford Motor Company

The buzz was palpable for the presentation by special guest Scott Monty (@ScottMonty) from Ford Motor Company for the January 18 Social Media Breakfast Madison meeting. Even before I got in the room, the large line definitely gave me the feeling that this Madison SMB group has solidly established itself as a group that is here to stay and puts on must-attend events.

A packed house was greeted by swag bags from Land’s End, and the tweet stream was filled with expressions of excitement. One I found interesting was from Zimbrick along the lines of: even though we don’t carry Ford, we are here to learn.  You can either hide from the competition or learn from them and improve! The back and forth continued with some playful tweets from Scott: careful, @dealerfire, you may not feel that afterward.

After the unique “Welcome to Madison” bowtie flash mob, Scott delved in. “We don’t have our audience’s full trust, nor full attention, he said.” “Social Media levels the playing field, because you’re hearing from your friends instead of brands.” That indeed was an attention getter!

Staying True to Their Roots

A brief history of how Ford has turned around had a lot to do with keeping its roots. The name “Ford” was always strongly associated with founder Henry Ford, and that still is true today.  With a new CEO, Ford revamped its strategies and company mission to: One team, one plan, one goal. Prior to this fiefdoms of separate entities characterized their company structure. The new focus added transparency, with a willingness to share information for the benefit of all. In turn the culture became one of people working together in courageous, innovative ways to develop products and give a new way to tell their story. Yet they never lost sight of Ford’s original vision of “opening the highways to all mankind,” a statement that appeared in a Ford advertisement in January, 1925.

The Bridge to Social Media

To bridge into the use of social media Monty quoted Yogi Berra “90 % is showing up, it’s the other half that is hard.” Ford has 50 brand pages on FaceBook (FB), all with different levels of interest. They created a directory to show customers the many options available for interaction.  The goal? Be where they are, and offer content specific to their interest and needs.

To guide content, Ford listens to what is “liked” and simply gives them more. This paying attention, with prompt interaction, showed the company was not only listening, but also spoke their language.

Tweets back and forth showed customers were noticing. It was this kind of interactivity that immediately demonstrated successful differentiation. The overarching goal was to humanize the company and connect our employees and fan with each other and provide value in the process.

Mr. Monty then moved onto details about some specific campaigns that employed social media.

Fiesta Movement.com

The Fiesta was their first global platform car, and at that point was only available overseas. The campaign strategy was to give 100 vehicles to digital influences for 6 months and let them do what they do: Blog, tweet and video their unique experience. Ford created a dedicated website that aired live feed of the posted content. Ford did not edit, nor censor any of the posts.

Results? 6.2 million views, 132,000 handraisers, 750,000 views Flickr, 40 million impressions on Twitter, 30% under 25, 83% new to Ford—all attributed solely to way they were delivering the content.

2011 Explorer Reveal

This was a completely reinvented vehicle, so Ford in turn, wanted to completely reinvent the way it was launched. On a website they created a tab, with a schedule in advance to build up anticipation. Teaser content was posted to give a flavor of what was coming. At every turn, consumers were given choices: watch a video, do a live chat, hop on our wall, and representatives would post responses in real time, further humanizing Ford.

This unique campaign utilizing social media in a variety of platforms and contributors generated more earned media because of process used than if they had run a Super Bowl ad. 99 million total impressions, #1 trending on Twitter, #2 Google trends, 500,000 visits to a site that normally gets 7,000, 1.5x greater completion of build & price forms, hit 50,000 FB likes by end of day, added over 10,000 likes in single day.

Scott’s point: always gave a choice to what content they want to consume and create opportunities for additional engagement, which in turn created greater emotional response.

Focus Doug

Marketing’s next great idea? “Let’s use a puppet!” The rationale? With a defined audience of males in their late 20s, the solution was to disrupt, and create an irreverent feel with enough humor to get their attention. Some crowd-pleasing video samples were played that still live on YouTube. 275 million impressions for Focus Doug spoke to a successful effort.

Shaking up the Car Show

At the world’s largest car show Ford invited 150 online influences from 16 countries to join them for two days in Detroit. The bloggers, from a myriad of interests including “green”, design, fashion, parents, etc. were given the royal treatment, museum tours, backstage behind the scenes tours, a “press” conference where they were the press and access to executives. All the writers were treated as traditional journalists, and they in turn passed on the stories about their experience to a wide audience. “Successful  companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like mad men.” “We focused on winning friends, and the influence grew from there.”

Ford Social

This is a site dedicated to the voice of the customer. Ford believes they should give their customers as many and different opportunities to share as possible. “We give them all kinds of opportunities to share, comment, and we don’t edit it. Even if a posting is about a car crash, the comments are usually thanking our engineers for saving their lives.” Sections are available to post ideas, ask questions, comment. A new feature are badges that customers can post which identify their interests, and creates a kind of “club.” Ford then delivers custom content to match the badge. Monty commented that communication from this effort is often sent through email, which is still a relevant tool.

Who’s listening?

“The power of listening is the opportunity it provides.” Scott showed an example of a friendly rivalry of tweet chat between Ians pizza and AJ Bombers in Madison. He noted, “you can have fun if that is your brand.”

Some ending thoughts from Scott:

“Treat social media as if it were a cocktail party. You don’t just barge in, leave a card, and leave the room. No, you scout, listen and blend in. In this environment if you listen and respond accordingly it will be a positive experience for everyone.

If I can get a customer to feel like we built a relationship with them, trust will follow.

Remember, social media is not just a campaign, it is a commitment; it is about awareness and consideration, not always just lead generation,

Thank you sponsors for making this event possible:

Ford

Engaging Social

Lands’ End

Google

Shoutlet

Suttle Strauss

Melissa Carlson-Creative

AJ Bombers

Annie is the WBA Director of Communications

Guest post by Wayne Breitbarth

In preparation for my recent keynote speech on personal branding using social media tools, I revisited one of my favorite personal branding books, “Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future” by Dan Schawbel. In his book I came across a concept that really resonated, and that is the link between personal branding and LinkedIn. Here is his concept:

“You need to approach your career in terms of differentiation (standing out in the crowd) and marketability (providing something other people want or need). Why would someone choose your brand?

•                A robust professional network

•                Endorsements from respected colleagues

•                Previous accomplishments and cataloged results

•                A diversified and unique skill set”

As I address each of Schawbel’s four reasons for choosing a brand, I will highlight in parentheses the LinkedIn profile section or application that could be used to address that criteria.

ROBUST PROFESSIONAL NETWORK  (Connections)

This one is easy, so it seems. You should have a lot of connections on LinkedIn, right? If you look up “robust” in the dictionary, it does not mention anything about numbers or quantity. It uses words like “strong and healthy” and “rich and full-bodied.”

I am a fan of having lots of connections as long as they are “trusted” or other individuals that are included strategically, but what I want you to consider on this point is the strength and richness of your network. To me that means being able to count on most of the individuals in your network for help as well as having a network that is diverse in terms of industry, organizations, and regions or however you define diverse in your world.

ENDORSEMENTS FROM RESPECTED COLLEAGUES  (Recommendations and Box.net files for pdf files of letters of recommendation)

This is the only part of your profile that you do not personally write. Recommendations are outside corroboration of the credibility and expertise you have described in detail on your profile.

Keep in mind that Dan doesn’t just say “endorsements,” but he adds “from respected colleagues.” What this means is we need to make sure the recommendations we receive are from the best name in the biz, if possible, and people and companies the person looking at your profile would take note of and say, wow – a recommendation from that person or that company; if they took care of them, they sure should be able to take care of me as well.

PREVIOUS ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND CATALOGED RESULTS  (Experience, Summary, Recommendations, Honors and Awards, Box.net files, SlideShare and Google Presentations)

People love to hear about and understand specific things we have accomplished, and these tools on LinkedIn are made to order for this purpose. Don’t hesitate to do some significant bragging in these sections. Remember – your competitor won’t hesitate to do so.

A DIVERSIFIED AND UNIQUE SKILL SET  (Experience, Summary, Skills, Recommendations, Honors and Awards, Box.net files, SlideShare, and Google Presentations)

Skills are defined as “the ability, coming from one’s knowledge, practice, aptitude, etc., to do something well.”

The statement I hear from a lot of people on this point is they don’t feel their skill set is all that unique. My encouragement to you is no one has what you have, and the combination of your unique and diverse skills might be just what someone is looking for in a vendor/supplier or employee.

One thing that might help you craft the presentation of these points is to ask a couple of your closest connections just what it is they see that makes you unique in the marketplace. Do the same thing for them, and then work on making that documentation as compelling as possible.

Just think about how easy it is to tell your “differentiation and marketability” story with a tool like LinkedIn, which is so perfectly designed for doing just that. Now get to it!

Wayne Breitbarth is an owner of M&M Office Interiors in Pewaukee. He is an experienced businessman, speaker, and author who has shared his passion for social media with thousands of business professionals through private business consulting and dynamic presentations to local and national audiences. Visit his website for more information and free LinkedIn resources.
Wayne will be presenting his LinkedIn knowledge at the Wisconsin Builders Conference, Feb. 22-23, 2012

guest post by Wayne Breitbarth
The guys and gals who are smarter than me in the space we call social media are saying the business card as we know it will be a museum artifact very soon.

As archaic as the act of exchanging physical business cards may feel to some of us, I think the power of doing just that has been enhanced exponentially by what that business card represents.

Keep that thought in mind as I shift gears slightly to the concept or idea of the WIP (work-in-process) LinkedIn connection.

I have been a big proponent of your first-level LinkedIn connections being people you trust. This is also LinkedIn’s definition of what the site is designed for. My definition of trust is and has always been the following:

• Do I know them?
• Do I love them?
• Do I care about them?
• If they called, would I take the call and help them?

But I have also always been a big proponent of the WIP LinkedIn connection and have encouraged people to pursue this tactic as a way to grow their network very strategically. It works this way.

Let’s say you are attending a networking event or a convention, and you do your usual thing of picking up a pocketful of business cards. You hope at least one of those cards represents the start of a new relationship that will lead to more business. After all, that is the reason you went to the event in the first place, right?

After the event, you pull out one special card and wonder if that individual actually liked the conversation you had with them as much as you did and whether they look forward to building a relationship that will go past the beer or plate of snacks you shared.

I am suggesting your next move should be to invite the person into your LinkedIn network as a “work-in-process connection.” By sending this invitation, you are saying:

• I liked you. Did you like me?
• I think we can help each other.
• I look forward to taking this relationship to a deeper level.
• Through me, people in my network are available to you if they can help you.

LinkedIn helps you quickly move the relationship to a level of trust (and ultimately usefulness) because of the following techniques or features:

• The details on a person’s profile can give you tremendous insight about their history and interests — information you probably didn’t learn while drinking a beer with them.
• By reviewing the groups the person belongs to, you can see not only who they like to hang out with but what they find interesting in both their work life and their personal life.
• You can now see who they know and trust by scrolling through their first-level connections. This could prove to be very valuable.

Wow. All of this detailed information about the person, plus the ability to ask for an introduction to anyone in their network, came out of collecting one business card. That is what I call powerful.

Wayne Breitbarth is an owner of M&M Office Interiors in Pewaukee. He is an experienced businessman, speaker, and author who has shared his passion for social media with thousands of business professionals through private business consulting and dynamic presentations to local and national audiences. Visit his website for more information and free LinkedIn resources.
Wayne will be presenting his LinkedIn knowledge at the Wisconsin Builders Conference, Feb. 22-23, 2012

Guest post by Wayne Breitbarth

Here are the steps I recommend that you do each and every day (you can decide whether that means just workdays or weekends as well) to receive consistent results in your networking efforts using LinkedIn.  Try to make this time not only consistent but dedicated.  If you find a certain time of day and a specific place where you do this, it will help this to become a consistent habit.

1.      Respond to any messages in your Inbox.  I can’t emphasize enough the importance of being timely when someone is reaching out to you.  Always think about how “antsy” you get these days when someone doesn’t answer a text message in a minute or two.  The world we live in has really amped up this expectation; so don’t let a day go by with something sitting in that box.  If the item doesn’t require a response, like a mass invitation to an event or something like that, place it in archive so you don’t spend time thinking about it another day.

2.      Invite people whom you met yesterday to join your network. Timeliness on this step is important for a couple reasons.  First, you want to make sure the person you met will remember the meeting or conversation you had with him/her that led to the invitation to join your network.  Second, your being the aggressor and sending the invitation shows that you care and are very good at timely follow-through.  This should make a good first impression and suggest that this is how you do all things in your life, including whatever business you are in.

Always be sure to invite people from their profile page so you can use a detailed invitation.  I know they have shortened this message up, which I really hate, but I just can’t stand the standard LinkedIn invitation message when you are trying to begin what should be a long and beneficial relationship.

3.      Review the previous day’s emails of group discussions you are following.  Don’t select the option of following a discussion unless you are really interested in the topic or the person who started the discussion, because you will be overwhelmed by the quantity of these emails.  Be selective, and this will help in just giving you the important discussions to keep tabs on.

4.      Review the status updates from your network for the previous day.  This is your chance to see what your friends think is most important in their lives that you might want to be a part of or comment on.  Remember—when you share a comment, you are sharing it with all the people in their network, and that is great marketing for you.

5.      Post a status update of your own.  Don’t miss this great daily opportunity to share information with your entire first-level network and also remind them that you are still out there doing business and looking forward to their help.  Staying top of mind is where you want to be with your friends, and this is a super way to do that.

LinkedIn etiquette allows you to do some self-promotion from time to time, hopefully crafted in a question type format.  Just be careful not to make this your focus.  Remember—LinkedIn is a networking platform, and that means giving, sharing and helping first and foremost.

Also, doing some homework during the rest of your workweek and saving links to articles and websites will help you to have good information to share.  Try to have a place in your briefcase or on your desk that you keep those links, so that when you do this step you have great content to pick from and share.  I recently read in Mitch Joel’s book “Six Pixels of Separation” that “content is media,” which is so true.  So why not make this part of the LinkedIn experience your own little daily media machine.

6.      Review “Recently Connected.”  Is there anything more important in the networking world than knowing who your friends just met?  I have received more benefit out of this section of my home page than any other part.

Good luck in grabbing that 15 minutes a day to LinkedIn success.

Wayne Breitbarth is an owner of M&M Office Interiors in Pewaukee. He is an experienced businessman, speaker, and author who has shared his passion for social media with thousands of business professionals through private business consulting and dynamic presentations to local and national audiences. Visit his website for more information and free LinkedIn resources.

Wayne will be presenting his LinkedIn knowledge at the Wisconsin Builders Conference, Feb. 22-23, 2012

Guest post by Wayne Breitbarth

Using the LinkedIn Status Update Box to share pertinent business information is a strategy that will pay big dividends when used correctly. Note the emphasis on the word business.

That is not to suggest you should never use the Status Update Box to share personal information or make personal requests, but strictly personal information should be kept to a minimum—or shared on Twitter or Facebook, where such material is not only expected but encouraged.

The LinkedIn website states, “LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities…”

Exchanging knowledge and ideas with your network will build the trust that is necessary to create an atmosphere for positive collaboration and financially advantageous opportunities.

Follow these rules when using the Status Update Box, and you will be on your way to building strong professional relationships that will provide a steady stream of sales and referrals.

DO THIS: 

1.  Share links (using a URL shortener) to interesting articles, websites or video that individuals in your network might appreciate. Don’t worry about whether all of your connections will find the information equally valuable. Use engaging words to grab the readers’ attention and encourage them to click the link.

2.  Pose a question that could lead to solving a problem you have, like: “Does anyone know some good controller candidates?” One of my connections saved $20,000 in recruiting fees by posting an update like this a couple days before calling a recruiter.

3.  Conduct an informal poll of your network relating to a topic of interest to you, such as: “What interest rates are you seeing for lines of credit in the current environment?”

4.  Mention a person or a situation that might be helpful to some of your connections; for instance, “I just met with John Jones from ABC Insurance Company and found out they are saving companies lots of $$ on workmen’s compensation insurance.”

5.  Talk about an event you are attending or have attended to encourage involvement and/or questions about what you learned there.

6.  If you are a job seeker, don’t say, “Hey, I’m still looking for a job.” Rather, mention job fairs you are attending, people you are interviewing with, networking events you are going to, etc.

Remember—having your name show up on a consistent basis on your entire network’s home page is extremely important whether you are in job-seeking mode or not.

7.  Use the “Like” feature when you see a helpful update from one of your connections. This shares the update with your entire network and is a great way to give the writer of the helpful update exposure to your network that he/she wouldn’t normally have.

DON’T DO THIS:

1.  Mentioning personal information—like what you had for breakfast and the fact your dog is sick today—is unprofessional and suggests to your network that you don’t really respect their time.

2.  Continually talking about specific products and services takes people back to the days of big newspaper ads and screaming radio messages. This is not the purpose of social media, especially LinkedIn.

3.  Avoid topics that might be sensitive to some of your audience. I am too embarrassed to even think about, let alone share, some of the items I see posted as status updates. You know what I mean. If your mother wouldn’t want you talking about it, don’t put it in your LinkedIn Status Box.

4.  Think twice before posting your physical whereabouts. I have heard several real-life examples of people’s homes being broken into after putting out an “I-am-out-of-town” update. (Sorry, all you Foursquare users, but I had to share that.)

5.  The LinkedIn/Twitter interface is causing people to have too many LinkedIn updates as well as inappropriate updates. If you are using that interface, be selective about the updates you share between the two platforms. LinkedIn and Twitter are designed with different purposes and strategies.

6.  The netiquette on LinkedIn is no more than a couple updates per day, whereas on Twitter you are expected to tweet many more times per day.

7.  Don’t waste your time reading updates from people who violate all of the above. By using the “Hide” function, you can stop an individual’s status updates from showing up on your home page.

When you see an annoying status update and decide you do not want to see any further updates from this person, simply scroll over to the right side of the status update and unveil the word “Hide.” Once you activate this function, you will be freed from receiving further updates from this individual.

Follow these simple suggestions, and you will be on your way to being a model LinkedIn citizen whose position of respect and authority will pay big dividends.

Wayne Breitbarth is an owner of M&M Office Interiors in Pewaukee. He is an experienced businessman, speaker, and author who has shared his passion for social media with thousands of business professionals through private business consulting and dynamic presentations to local and national audiences. Visit his website for more information and free LinkedIn resources.
Wayne will be presenting his LinkedIn knowledge at the Wisconsin Builders Conference, Feb. 22-24, 2012