Edgerank isn’t new, but it is important. Edgerank is a Facebook specific algorithm that still seems to have a lot of social media marketers stumped, but it’s really not the dark-art many think it is. A lot of social marketers either don’t know about it, think it’s complicated, or just aren’t using it efficiently to create and distribute the most visible content possible for their community – and as a result the messaging from a lot of Facebook brand Pages is wasted through lack of exposure.

Just like the search engines, Facebook uses algorithms to determine what shows up in people’s newsfeeds. Unlike the search engines it’s nowhere near as complicated. Put simply, whenever an image is uploaded to your newsfeed or someone comments on a status it creates the opportunity to be seen.. and we all want to be seen, right?

Facebook Edgerank is broken down into 3 components, all playing a part in the overall perfect mix for how our content can be displayed to our audience:

Affinity

This is the level of interaction between a Page and its followers. If someone’s already posted or commented on your previous content they have a greater chance of your fresh content appearing in their streams. You’ve established a relationship already. If a dialogue happens between the Page and the individual, even better. It pays to say ‘thank you’, or even (heaven forbid) just ‘lol’ – but make conversation natural, Pages that always have the last word are a personal pet peev.

As a point: all interaction should be done ‘by-hand’ via the Facebook interface. Facebook doesn’t like automated tools (like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck) and we never recommend them to our clients for Facebook (though they are invaluable for Twitter scheduling etc.). By Facebook lowering the affinity rating on all 3rd-party applications it prevents them from having a higher EdgeRank and spamming people, such as gaming applications like Mafia Wars and Farmville.

To boost your Affinity give people a reason to comment. If you post a picture of a box of cream cakes with a message saying ‘It’s Claires birthday today, so we bought cream cakes! ‘Like’ if you like cream cakes.” Then it ‘s fun content with a clear call to action that will get people clicking and commenting. Simple messaging like “Friday at last. Anyone got any plans for the weekend”, all help to give Affinity a boost by promoting conversation. Ask questions, host competitions, all the usual things to get people interacting work, and use this as an opportunity to build relationships.

Edge Weight

Certain content has a greater ‘weight’ (or importance) when the algorithm is deciding if it should display it in people’s streams or not. Image posts rank higher than simple status updates, as do links, and leaving a comment on a post carries more weight than just “Liking” it due to the Edgerank perception of the effort involved in that level of engagement.

Custom text added to links and photos, a description and explanation, are important. Those without have a lower Edgerank rating. The pattern here is the effort (or Edgeranks perception of effort) that you put in. At JustSearch, every post we do is custom created for our community, and we know when we press ‘send’ it will hit the widest audience possible. Experience has shown us that posts that have in excess of 141 characters (possibly to differentiate them from auto-posting via Twitter) actually receive the lions share of engagement (apparently size IS important).

Time Decay

‘Time Decay’, I love that phrase. Basically, this is how current a post is (and unfortunately nothing to do with Doctor Who). The older the post, the further it drops down in your newsfeed.

Posting regularly helps, if you are the sort of Page or business that has suitable content without seeming spammy, but it’s also important to know how frequently you can do this without alienating your audience. Most of our clients only post once a day, but we make sure this is at peak viewing times to get the best possible exposure for them. Some of our clients, the more conversational or international brands with larger communities, post up to 4 or 5 times in a 24hr period. It’s important to experiment and consult your Facebook Insights (measure and adapt) to discover what works best and when the most interaction and distribution of your content is happening. The JustSearch Facebook Page, for example, consistently gets it’s most viewers around 2.15pm due to our various European clients and internal departments checking in around lunchtime for their daily news. Looking closely at your Insights will also help you work out which content and topics are most popular with your followers.

So, in closing, make sure you have good rich content – images, uploaded videos, links to original blog content, polls, etc. Make sure you’ve put the effort in. Speak to your audience and experiment with what’s available. Don’t use 3rd party applications for posting. Ask questions, and provide answers. Give nice, clear, fun, calls to action on a regular basis, and post when your audience is there to see it. There’s no real hidden magic to it. Just be social, and remember there’s no short cuts.

We want to make sure our clients channels are fit for summer and working for them, so we’re doing a special deal this month exclusively for customers renewing their social campaigns:

Only £600 (+ VAT) save over £355! (usually £955)

Feel like you’re running out of things to say? We’ll create a conversation guide for you, giving you a list of subjects to talk about – with examples – designed to get you talking and sharing. These are touch points of real value to your audience that will keep you in the conversation.

Not sure how to reach out? We’ll build you a custom stream of people who are asking about your product right now, so you have a constantly updating conversation to join. We do this through custom code in Hootsuite, so it’s always there and always up-to-the-minute with people who want to know about your product or service.

Not confident about how to say things? We’ll create a brand personality for your company, especially for social media. This is a voice through which you can be heard – documenting clearly the way you should talk to stay on brand and engage your friends, fans, and followers.

Need some examples to get you going? We’ll then take that ‘voice’, and use it to create a whole months messaging for you in Twiter and Facebook, 3 Facebook posts a week and 3 tweets a day, to give you some great examples and to get the conversation flowing again.

Fancy some feedback? We’ll add a whole months measurement, plus recommendations on how to improve your efforts for the future. Look at it as your social media report card for 2012!

Channels not growing as quickly as you’d like? We’ll show you how to import up to 5000 email addresses into Facebook. Regularly inviting new people who have subscribed to your newsletter (or bought from your firm) to sign up to your page, via Facebook!

And the cherry on the top? How about an extra 1000-targeted Twitter followers to boost the credibility of your twitter account? Guaranteed!

Now that’s a bargain way to get you fit for summer! Contact our UCR team to learn more, on 0844 8531391.

“Tommy has a long and proven career in sales. His knowledge and talent for leading sales organizations is well known and he will continue to build a strong and successful sales team within our company.” Urban Johansson, CEO Getupdated.

Tommy worked for Jajja during their most successful years between 2007 – 2011, first as sales manager then in the last two years as CEO.

Tomorrow (March 31st) it’s all change for Facebook business pages. In a compulsory update there are no more default landing pages and no more tabs. We talked about some of these Facebook Business Page changes at the beginning of the month, here on the blog. It’s nothing to be be scared of, but are you ready?

So what’s changing?

Business Pages will be mirroring the new timelines of Facebook personal profiles. This is going to give brands fresh options for self-expression, complete with an option to highlight corporate history with milestones (such as product launches, store openings, etc.), however, there’s going to be a lot of overnight changes that will seriously change the look and feel of pages for businesses not prepared.

Tabs are going to change considerably, and the left-side panel of links will totally vanish. Applications are still going to be there but they’ll display very differently – in rectangular panels underneath the cover photo. Only three tab panels are now viewable at any given time. Brands may want to consider switching around which tabs are visible and giving them custom artwork to highlight them, according to their current company goals. The new layout breaks Facebook’s existing Page tab configuration (including a tab’s 520 px width) completely, and replaces it with a new 810 px layout, so things are going to look pretty broken from tomorrow for a lot of firms.

The default-landing page is gone, a favoured feature for many of our socially savvy clients. Since there are no more tab Pages, there is no way to set one as a default. No more landing pages inviting visitors to ‘like’. This will drastically change user impressions when they first visit a brand’s Timeline Page and something that might help with first impressions is the new ability to “pin” certain posts to the top of the Timeline for up to 7 days. There’s a few tips and tricks already emerging from a month of experimenting with these pages in beta, notably on our own Facebook Business Page.

An interesting new feature is going to give us the new ability to send and receive private messages between companies and their followers. While great for communication this also means it will require monitoring and support. Someone has to be there to answer those queries and respond in a timely way to those direct messages. Do you have the monitoring in place, and the time allotted to cover this?

This is not a bad thing. This is a great excuse to give your Facebook a boost and take a fresh look at your messaging, design, and objectives. If you need any help making the change, or just a quick update or to talk about your social media for the future, give our social team a call.

We’re here to help – 0845 1211194.

Since the farmer update, Google seems to be very vocal about rolling out changes and ‘updates’ to the algorithm. Google’s latest ‘penalty’ is going to be for over optimised websites. Its not uncommon to come across a website with hidden H tags, blocks of links, stuffed content, 20 H tags on a page etc. The latest out of Google HQ is that they can target people who go mad with reciprocal linking. All this news is something that will make people stand up and look at their own website wondering if they have done something wrong.

I personally don’t think any google algorithm change/update should be feared. The aim is to improve the search results and rank the most relevant page. If you optimise your website correctly from the start then there should never be a real issue with algorithm changes. If you have scrapped your way to the top with quick wins, talking advantage of a flaw in google that just works, then you need to step back, and go back to basics.

Nail the basic rules, then you will never have issues.

• Ensure you are a leader in your industry and not a follower.
• If you go for quick wins, good luck, but just like loopholes they can be closed.
• Never rely on quick wins for the basis of your rankings.
• Establish a USP, give Google a reason to rank you above your competitor

Google recently published a video of an algorithm meeting, it showed all the heads of google talking about the change and it finished with the words ‘yeah lets implement it’. This meeting was nothing new, they have algorithm meetings all the time, they haven’t just started implementing more changes, they have simply been more vocal with the changes they have been making.

Its important to keep pushing with any SEO campaign, its great to find new methods that work well. Ensure anything you want to do is user friendly, that means pages, content, site structure, out bound links. Google will never penalise anything that is useful to a user.

Gary Douglas
JustSearch SEO Project Manager 

For example:

We have a women’s jeans brand targeted at African American women aged under 30. It’s fairly obvious who we are talking to here, and so we need to be able to join the conversation and provide value to that audience.

The client approved ‘confident, fashionable, and sassy’ as brand attributes, and ‘The Maverick’ as an archetype. The character should be female and Afro American, naturally, to speak to the audience and reflect the brand. This is the bare bones, let’s add some more meat. It’s often good to think visually about what the person might look like, and starting with an image (even if it’s just a temporary one sourced via Google Image Search) is a good place to start.

Here’s some things to think about:

• What’s their name?
• Where do they live and where did they grow up?
• What do they (or did they) do for a living?
• Who are their friends and family?
• What’s their favourite band, movie star, or TV show – and why?
• What are their likes and dislikes and loves and peeves? Do they have a jokey penchant for kitten pictures or are they a member of the grammar police? The little details often give structure and help the voice.
• Where do they stand on any current events or issues of the day?

Use your imagination and create some of your own questions that are unique to each character, so long as you keep referring back to you core archetype and brand attributes this shouldn’t be a difficult process. In this instance what jewelry or perfume they wear and what magazines they read and where thy meet friends are just as important as anything else.

It should be noted that this voice is invariably not used in the first person, but a guide to understanding communication. We’re writing the brand here, not a brand representative for social – that’s a whole different approach.

By now we should have our character, or voice. Sometimes the way we do this isn’t written, but more a mood-board of graphical content and concepts depending on our clients, but we should always end up with a clear and creative persona – and overall brand voice through which we can talk to our friends, fans, and followers in a way that they’ll recognize and in a tone appropriate to our product or service.

Now we need to consider how they communicate textually and how we represent aspects of that persona in the written word. This is the final step in presenting your brand to the world.

• Do they use contractions like ‘isn’t’ or ‘won’t’?
• Do they use slang, be it regional, cultural, or even created just for their social circle?
• Do they use abbreviations?
• Will they use mild profanity? If so, what’s the acceptable limit? It’s good to set a standard here – there’s a big different between ‘darn’, ‘OMG’, and ‘WTF’ to the reader of a post or tweet and it’s easy to alienate an audience if you don’t stick to your voice.
• What ‘style’ does the brand use for linking or re-tweeting? Do they put a chevron or dash before a link? Do you use Bit.ly’s or Owl.ly’s or a custom shortner? These things should be documented to maintain a style – trust me, it matters, if you change style mid-flow your audience will notice (and probably comment) and it’ll break the flow of your brand character.
• Do they favour a certain hashtag?
• Maybe you have multiple contributors who need to identify themselves and will be using and identifying their own voice in the channels? If so, you’ll need to set guidelines and policy and provide them with the overall tone of the channel.

The more you document the more this will solidify your voice.

So there you have it, by now you should have your brand voice for social media. Keep referring back to it regularly and consult it often when creating your social media editorial calendar and building your messaging. Consider it when replying, in calls-to-action, and across all your channels (yes, even in video). If you put the work in now you’ll reap the benefits further down the line and build a strong community sympathetic to clear messaging that’s always on brand.

When a brand’s associated with a universally recognizable persona it’ll be much, much stronger and clearer to your social audience. This is not the same as assigning attributes. An archetype can have an entirely different collection of attributes to a brand of the same archetype when creating our brand voice – and this process is a means to end (creating our voice in social) and this will help make the character much easier to understand as a concept for all concerned. The key word here, as ever, is ‘social’. Social is about people, and we are building a person through which your brand is going to communicate. We start by taking our brand attributes, using knowledge of our target audience and our objectives, and thinking about how we want to (and can be seen) in the form of a simple character or archetype.

Think of the characters in any great novel, legend, or from and great story. The archetypes in the Harry Potter series or those from Greek legends are prime examples. Cinema is peppered with them – Mr. Miyakki, Han Solo, Dirty Harry, Doctor Frankenstein, Igor – the wise old man, the unlikely hero, the loose cannon, the mad scientist, the feckless minion etc. – because they’re easy to identify with and come with certain pre-conceptions we can use to quickly carry a message (and clearly identify the core principals of a brand for our audience).

So what’s your brand story? Are you a rugged out-door Marlboro man or a jolly red-face caregiver?

Here’s a few brand archetypes to get you thinking:

The Maverick (Rebel, Rogue, Outlaw)
• Brands and People: Harley Davidson, Sid Vicious, Virgin, MTV, Rimmel, Steve Madden, Urban Outfitters, Barcelona FC, United Colours of Benetton.
• Goal and Method: To achieve freedom from the establishment through defiance, disobedience, and nonconformity, while sticking to your values and not being influenced by outsiders or the general consensus.

The Everyman (Girl Next Door, Joe Normal)
• Brands and People: Benefit, Tom Hanks/Forrest Gump, Princess Diana, Skoda, Sergio Rossi, Sonic, Visa, LIDL, Jack Black, Homer Simpson.
• Goal and Method: To deliver simple things in a reliable and friendly manner. This archetype promotes humility, hard work, and making the most of what you have in order to bond with others.

The Sophisticate (Affluent, Well Spoken, Demanding)
• Brands and People: Braun, Bose, Posh Spice, Mercedes Benz.
• Goal and Method: A step above. Brands like this have a unique place in the minds of the consumer by using innovation and creating efficient products through the application of advanced production techniques and engineering.

The Innocent (Goody-Two-Shoes, Saint, Angel)
• Brands and People: The Scout Movement, IKEA, Dove, Lysol, Master Card, H&M, TAG-Heuer, Renault, Gandhi, Google, Apple.
• Goal and Method: Aimed at the laid back person who takes simple things in life and makes them feel exclusive by the attitude they adopt towards the products. Main goal being to achieve a simple, pure life by consistently doing what’s right.

The Entertainer (Jester, Performer, Clown)
• Brands and People: Ricky Gervais, Marmite, Bruce Forsyth, Doritos, Jonathan Ross, WKD, Woot.com, Robin Williams.
• Goal and Method: To make friends, and to avoid conflict/making enemies, through fun and humour – even at the cost of self ridicule.

The Villain (Bad Guy, Vampire, Monster)
• Brands and People: Marilyn Manson, Darth Vader, Megadeth, Magnum Ice Cream, Dr. Horrible, Eric Cantona, Vinnie Jones.
• Goal and Method: To satisfy their passions and internal drives through ‘any means necessary’, often including the (illusion of) exploitation of others.

The Intellectual (Expert, Sage, Genius)
• Brands and People: BBC, Stephen Hawking, Marie Curie, Oxford, Dyson, Doctor Brian Cox.
• Goal and Method: To find the truth through objectivity, diligence, and research.

The Sensualist (Hedonist, Pleasure Seeker)
• Brands and People: BMW, Hotel Chocola, Chanel, Omega, Victoria’s Secret, Louis Vuitton, Posh Spice.
• Goal and Method: To pursue perfect enjoyment through physical experiences. To make glamour the essence of people and to promote success, happiness and freedom as a part of the overall package. Only exclusive individuals can be associated with these brands.

The Servant (Martyr, Slave, Priest)
• Brands and People: Humane Society, Police, Amnesty International, Mother Theresa, Red Cross.
• Goal and Method: To lose oneself in the service to others.

The Traditionalist (Conservative, Old School)
• Brands and People: Old Spice, Ronald Reagan, Procter & Gamble, Wimpey.
• Goal and Method: To restore the world and promote stability through the return to ‘good old-fashioned values’.

The Nurturer (Mother Earth, Healer, Mother Figure)
• Brands: Campbell’s, The Queen, Pampers, Volvo, Johnson & Johnson, Bianca Jagger, Loreal.
• Goal and Method: To make others feel loved and wanted by providing for their needs.

The Connector (Politician, Networker, Keynote Speaker)
• Brands and People: Sir Alan Sugar, BT, Facebook, Virgin Media, David Cameron, Tony Blair, Linkedin.
• Goal and Method: Making things happen through knowing the right people.

The Artist (Craftsman, Creative, Creator)
• Brands and People: Hewlet Packard, William Shakespeare, Danny Boyle, Adobe, Lego, Royal Albert Hall, Dyson, Salvador Dali, Michael Buble, Black and Decker, Beethoven.
• Goal and Method: To create something special of enduring beauty and true value.

The Philosopher (Prophet, Guru, Sage)
• Brands and People: Scientology, Calvin Klein, Plato, Nikon.
• Goal and Method: Using a different and fresh perspective to help people understand the world.

The Dreamer (Wizard, Magician, Sorcerer)
• Brands and People: Steven Spielberg, Disney, Carlos Castaneda, Harry Potter, Rock Band, Tim Burton.
• Goal and Method: To facilitate the achievement of ‘supernatural experiences’ by promoting faith, wonder, and transformation.

The Motivator (Mentor, Promoter, Preacher)
• Brands and People: James Dyson, Richard Branson, (RED), Penguin Books, TED, Barack Obama, Richard Simmons.
• Goal and Method: Getting others excited about a cause in order to achieve (sometimes seemingly impossible) goals.

The Ruler (King, Father, Leader)
• Brands and People: Steve Jobs, Rolex, Gillette, Manchester United, Franklin Roosevelt, Rolls Royce, British Airways, Microsoft, Moses.
• Goal and Method: To make people feel successful by providing top quality results and to lead people to a common destination through confidence, determination, and influence. People connected with these brands want to feel they are winners and role models, whilst others yearn to achieve their success.

The Explorer (Wanderer, Seeker)
• Brands: North Face, Wrangler, Blacks, Subaru, Starbucks
• People: Ben Fogle, Richard Attenborough, Jacques Cousteau, Steve Irwin
• Goal/method: To learn what’s constant in life by always changing your environment

The Defender (Warrior, Knight, Superhero/heroine)
• Brands and People: British Army, Andy McNab, SAS, Tim Collins, John Wayne, Greenpeace, Marlboro, Batman.
• Goal and Method: To prevent others from coming to harm through dedicated service and bravery.

The Thrill-Seeker (Swashbuckler, Adventurer, Gambler)
• Brands and People: Richard Branson, Pepsi Max, Carnival Cruise Ships, New Zealand, Camelback, David Walliams, Errol Flynn.
• Goal and Method: To achieve great rewards through great risks. To seek out danger, and through it to achieve greatness – be it physical or ‘spiritual’.

The Achiever (Hot Shot, Athlete, Strongman)
• Brands and People: David Beckham, Aston Martin, Roger Federer, Nike, Adidas, Andrew Flintoff.
• Goal and Method: To prove yourself – and thus ‘win’ – through amazing physical acts.

So, now we have our brand archetype and our 3-5 brand attributes, we can turn these into a person – though we’ll cover that in Part 3: Strategic Character Creation. What you should have by now is the firm grounding of a character and be well on your way to finding your voice in social media.

We’re please to announce that Urban Johansson was been appointed as the new CEO of Getupdated,  on March 9 ’12, succeeding Peter Eriksson.

Over the last 25 years, Urban has held senior positions in sales and marketing in a number of companies, including Leisure Travel, Eurovent Marketing, Swedish Open, Ramundberget and Ogilvy. His primary responsibility within Getupdated will be the development of the company’s position as a total provider of integrated online marketing, with the ambition of becoming the leading one-stop-shop provider of innovative online services.

Getupdated’s Chairman Åke Eriksson commented: “Getupdated has recently undergone a period of change, and the appointment of Urban Johansson as CEO will further strengthen the company’s leadership. Former CEO Peter Eriksson becomes the new international sales director and will continue to work closely with Urban. Urban’s extensive network in the industry both nationally and internationally, as well as his focus on results, place him in an excellent position to successfully increase the company’s growth and development.”

“Right now we are in an exciting phase for the company’s further development. I am convinced that the group’s common broad experience and strong expertise in online media will be important factors in the success of our quest to become the leading player in the market,” said Urban Johansson, President of Getupdated.

At the same time, Urban has become a substantial new shareholder of Getupdated.

Great news for everyone at Just Search.

A ‘fan-gate’ (sometimes called a ‘reveal tab’) was a piece of much-exploited custom-coded ‘fan-only’ content that let Facebook businesses show one type of information to fans and another type of content to non-fans. Perfect for coupon codes, offers for ‘followers-only’, promotional give-aways, and other reasons to drive sign-up.

Visitors landing on the new timeline pages will, as of March 31st, see a large ‘cover photo’, and while there will still be apps they will be much harder for visitors to find – allowing you only display a few at the top of the navigation as opposed to the old tabs system. Many of those currently available aren’t graphically optimized for the new layout, and many of the ‘off the shelf’ solutions are going to be a low priority for developers to update.

To add a further blow, according to Facebook terms and conditions, the new ‘cover photo’ can’t contain calls to action (like an arrow promoting visitors to ‘like this page’). It also can’t contain phone numbers or addresses that would otherwise be in the info section of your business profile.

The big question is, how badly is this going to cripple your Facebook business presence? Personally, I say good riddance, and I think this is a real opportunity – it’s a good excuse for a clean up of our business pages and a fresh look at our campaigns if nothing else. Sure Fangates promoted sign-up, but so can the right graphics and the right presence – we’ve no stats for how the change is going to affect us yet, so let’s not panic here. There’s still plenty we can do.

There’s no restrictions in the new terms and conditions regarding letting visitors know what they’re signing up for, and this is how we get loyalty. Telling visitors what to expect, via the ‘cover photo’, and showing them what they are signing up for (by using a headline or tag-line) can be a powerful tool to grow a genuine virtual fan base. There’s no point in attracting visitors who won’t care about the community. There’s no point in getting people to opt in to something they’re not interested in just to get 20% off whatever you do or a free something-or-other. We’re looking to create and foster evangelists; it’s not all about the numbers.

Where we do have apps they are now in a prime position. Right under the ‘cover photo’ and key graphical real estate. Sure, it’s going to be a little bit more expensive to create and host our own, but your calls to action could be right there as part of plain English graphics in-line with the rest of our branding. These can act as ‘buttons’ to further content, and I can see apps saying ‘shop’ or ‘newsletter’ becoming a staple in the coming months to boost sales and house-lists across all our clients’ pages. Yes, we can have less and we’re going to have prioritise, but is that such a bad thing? There’s nothing worse than an irrelevant and cluttered navigation, and the new layout is going to make us think more about our objectives, tactics, and social strategy.

Let’s not forget, everything else we do is still the same. We can still place those ‘Like Boxes’ on our websites, giving that pocket-sized representation of our business pages on our sites to promote click-through and sign-up. We can still run social ads with our business pages as the prime destination – far better than driving people to our websites ‘just once’ then risking loosing them forever. Facebook social ads are some of the most affordable and targetable ways of reaching out to your online community. We can still leverage signage at points of sale to promote visitors to sign into Facebook Places and adding our business pages to our email signatures and newsletters. There are a million and one strategies to conversion depending on your objectives and there’s still a lot of, if not more, options.

Personally, I think the opportunities far our weigh the negatives and I’ll not be sending flowers to the funeral of Fangates. These are genuinely exciting times for the future of Facebook business.

Are you going to be ready for March 31st? If you need any help with your pagers just give us a call. We’re here to help.

The premise is very simple, and that’s a part of its appeal. Users ‘pin’ a picture of something they like to their ‘board’, and each board can be themed by them as a collection. Imagine, if you will, bookmarking pages but in a visual scrapbooking way. An easy to access ‘clipping’ tool in the form of a button can be added to your browser to make this even more painless, and people can ‘like’, follow, share, and comment on their friends content in an uncluttered, social, and viral way.

Unlike the US, where user numbers are vastly skewed in favor of woman, the UK balance of male/female is around 56/44, with 50% of these users having families. Worldwide users are now in excess of 12 million (with over 9 million using Facebook to sign in and further spread the message). With growth, numbers, and demographics like this it isn’t something that can be ignored – especially by the ecommerce market and when click-through rate for life-style content are greater than LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube combined.

Now we come to the obvious question. Is it safe for business content? Justifiable concerns over copyright infringement have caused some users to think twice about embracing the platform – especially users producing original artwork – despite the obvious benefits of it driving traffic back to image sources. Worries continue regarding attribution and creative commons.

The crux of this lies in the channels information architecture during the action of ‘pinning’. While many users repost and reuse other peoples content all the time on their social networks, Facebook (for example) asks you each time you upload a photo if you have permission to use it. In order to smooth out the ‘pinning’ process and make the experience simple Pinterest doesn’t do this.

While sharing helps get your content seen, many firms and individuals (understandably in many cases) want to be asked (or even paid) before anyone shares their legal property.

The Pinterest copyright page is something of a minefield of (mostly US-centric) legalese, though does offer connection to a copyright agent who can be contacted in order to have ‘stolen’ content removed. On the surface they appear to be genuinely trying to placate the artists, companies, photographers and copyright lawyers by giving them the tools they need to deal with any infringement (after the fact), but the debate still rages as to whether it should be doing more ‘up-front’.

By way of further smoothing the waters Pinterest has come up with a simple (if somewhat black and white) solution in the form of the ‘nopin’ code. Those sites that want to stop their content from being added to Pinterest can insert the following:

<meta name=”pinterest” content=”nopin” />

Image hosting site Flickr has already made this universal across its pages, and more will no doubt follow suit. Don’t be surprised if the likes of DeviantArt soon offer contributors the option to push a button to include this code on their content – thought in actuality the coding logistics of something like that in an already established platform boggle the mind.

So right now there are 2 choices. Either use the code and stop people sharing your images, or optimize your images (making sure you have full rights to them) and get pinning yourself, hoping to spread the good word about your products and capitalize on it’s outstanding targeting and current buzz (and possible SEO boost). If you need any help with either of these, just give us a call – our social media department can help you with any potential pitfalls.

Either way Pinterest is here to stay, and we need to be considering it as part of our future online marketing mix.