But you don’t actually have to sell anything in order to market your brand on Pinterest. All kinds of organizations – from trade associations to charities – are taking advantage of the social platform to reach their target audiences.

Below are eight “rules” to follow when creating a Pinterest page for your organization:

1)      Re-pinning and “liking” other users’ content is at least as important as pinning original content. As a matter of strategy, interacting with (and following) users who have a lot of activity on their own Boards will be most effective for solidifying your organization’s presence on Pinterest. A good way to start is by following, liking and re-pinning from organizations that are similar to yours.

2)      Vary your pins. It’s good to have a mix of images. Text-based images, such as inspirational phrases, quotes and infographics are among the most popular. Recently, sites like YouTube and Vimeo have made it easy to incorporate video. Each time you pin something, think about how a user might re-pin it onto one of their own Boards.

3)      Group pins strategically. Be creative about how you might organize pins thematically. Broad categories typically work best because they invite users to peruse the content and find something that appeals to them. The Heritage Foundation clearly understands this concept; Boards for each of their key political issues complement more generalized Boards with titles like “Patriotic,” “Quotable,” and “Fun.”

4)      Get to know your audience. As with any social media platform, being familiar with your audience is a crucial component of being successful. Currently, about 80% of Pinterest users are women. Keep a close watch on the content that is receiving the most attention, and try to replicate those kinds of images.

5)      Consider creating original content just for Pinterest. A great way to get your organization’s name out there is to have a graphic designer create an image with broad appeal that includes your organization’s logo. Think of it as a postcard: the key is to make the image/text the primary focus and have any branding be secondary. Again, it may take some experimentation to figure out which pins resonate with users before you tackle content creation.

 6)      The caption matters. It’s true that Pinterest is an image-driven site, but don’t neglect the caption. Not only does the caption inform the search results on Pinterest, it’s an opportunity to say something that adds value to the image. Keep in mind that the search refers to EXACT terms: if something is captioned “daisy,” for example, it will not appear in a search for daisies. You can also add searchable hashtags (à la Twitter) that are preceded with a # sign. Sevenly does a great job with captions.

7)      Don’t just pin your own content. To keep it fresh, try to find pins from third parties that link elsewhere on the web. That said…

8)      Make sure your pins link back to their original source. There has been some speculation that copyright infringements may become an issue for Pinterest users down the road, so make sure that you’re crediting the right source. Some media platforms, such as Flickr, YouTube and Vimeo have made image attribution easier with a “Pinterest” button in the share menu. Keep in mind that Flickr users can opt out of the Pinterest button, so if the option is unavailable, it probably means that they don’t want their photo shared.

What is Mobile First?

The ‘Mobile First’ principle begins with the design of a mobile site that is then progressively enhanced for additional screen sizes. To put it simply, the same website is being served to every device; the only difference is the manner in which the content is displayed.

Why Mobile First?

Other than the fact that mobile first designs are by nature responsive, taking the mobile first approach comes with multiple advantages. The biggest advantage to mobile first is the fact that designers and developers are able to cater specifically to the screen size in question. Smartphones just don’t have the same real estate that larger displays have. This may sound like a disadvantage at first, but really it’s not. The smaller screen size forces users to focus. As a result, content with higher importance can be emphasized on mobile devices, while content of lesser importance can be made less obtrusive, or even hidden. Other advantages to take into consideration are the native capabilities of Smartphones and tablets. Features such as multi-touch, GPS and device orientation can be built in to a site and can target users who are visiting sites on-the-go.

I need a mobile app!

No, you don’t. Ok, maybe you do, but an app isn’t necessarily the best way to relay your message for mobile users. If there isn’t anything being offered that your website can’t do, then an app isn’t the proper fit. That’s what a mobile site is for.

Mobile First in Action

All this information is great, but it’s hard to get a real understanding for mobile first without seeing it in action. Check out the following links below and see how content adapts as you adjust the width of your browser window. Better yet, visit them on your Smartphone or tablet while also viewing them on your desktop.

http://sleepstreet.be/
http://yiibu.com/
http://contentsmagazine.com/
https://path.com/

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette recently covered the Chamber’s evolution in the digital space, highlighting their use of social media to establish their leadership as thought leaders in the business community and promote initiatives such as their five-point job plan.

PRWeek (subscription required) featured the new Facebook Open Graph application, which is blazing trails as the first app to be used as an advocacy platform.

At Adfero and for our clients, what’s next is happening now. Check out more innovations from the Chamber at http://www.freeenterprise.com/ and http://ncf.uschamber.com/.

The builders of the project started with a working antique GE refrigerator and outfitted it with an electronic lock tethered to a laptop. Using the FourSquare API, the computer tracked the number of check-ins at the exhibit and, after a cycle of every 10 check-ins, would unlock the fridge revealing a fresh stock of Dr. Pepper and Pabst Blue-Ribbon. Their project was so popular that one of the founders of FourSquare, Dennis Crowley, stopped by for a cold one with the GE exhibitors.

By combining FourSquare’s inherent location-based purpose with the goal-based physical feedback of 10 check-ins opening the fridge, the utility of the often underappreciated social network gains clarity. While FourSquare already excels as a promotional tool to award intangible prizes to users for their personal check-in frequency, the GE Social Fridge changes the paradigm by encouraging groups of people rather than individuals to check-in and receive a tangible reward thus facilitating personal interaction and a group connection with the GE brand.

The GE Social Fridge was part of the GE Garages exhibit at SXSW, where event goers were encouraged to discover their inner “maker” by getting hands-on with laser cutters, injection molders and 3D printers. Overall, the GE Works campaign for the exhibit is an effort by the innovation giant to showcase the efforts and achievements of GE employees and customers.

WordPress vs. Drupal vs. Joomla

In its earlier days, WordPress existed as an easy-to-use “blogging software” for the non-techie audience. But due to the demands of additional features and functionalities from blog users, WordPress has evolved over the years into a full blown CMS. In its latest release, WordPress version 3.3 boasts a new dashboard design for administrative pages, updated database querying functions, a new Screen API for additional administrative page instructions, and more.

If learning how to develop a WordPress site were like driving a car, learning Drupal would be like flying an F-16 fighter plane – powerful but very complicated. Drupal boasts scalability and complete customization of a website, but takes programming knowledge, time, and a lot of patience to get used to. Drupal 7 introduces several usability improvements such as a simplified Drupal installer, easier accessibility to administrator pages, and improved update and maintenance procedures.

Joomla lands somewhere in between WordPress and Drupal in usability and complexity. Joomla is user-friendly for developers and designers both, allowing designers to build attractive templates while developers work on website functionality. However, Joomla is not as easy to use as WordPress, and provides less flexibility and scalability than Drupal. Joomla 2.5 features a new administrative search feature with auto-complete, CMS update notifications, and increased database support.

And the Best CMS is…

Well, technically there are no winners (I know, no fun). Like many debaters have claimed, the best CMS is dependent on project requirements and specifications, the client’s preference, and the developer’s expertise. But just to throw a bone, WordPress statistically is the most popular CMS, owning about 54% of the CMS market share of the top 1 million websites, so we’ll crown them “king” of this blog.

From what I see, the top CMS’s realize that improving their weaknesses plays a huge role in winning over more users, especially when their opponents boast those same weaknesses as their strengths. Let’s say Drupal stands on one side of a spectrum that boasts capabilities but difficult usage, while WordPress stands on the other easy-to-use-but-limited side (with Joomla in the middle). Recently, the top CMS’s have been releasing updates that balance out their drawbacks. As a result, Drupal and WordPress are moving towards the middle on this imaginary “capability-to-usability” scale, which is somewhat evening out the playing field. I can imagine this will only spur more nerdy debates among developers over which CMS is truly the best.