Recently, I came across an old story by PR Daily titled, “7 proven ways to create viral Pinterest posts.” These tips provide helpful insight on how one can easily promote their blog through Pinterest.

Understanding how to use Pinterest as a marketing tool.

However, this social site has a number of marketers wondering how they can use the fourth most popular social media site to benefit their business and market their product or client.

With this in mind, and with PR Dailys’ tips as a guide, I’ve discovered “Four simple ways to market brands through Pinterest.”

1. Use text on your photos, or create a title graphic.

When people pin and repin on Pinterest, they are scanning through tons of graphic thumbnails. Having text on a photo makes it easier for users to identify what an image is and if they want to pin it.

 2. Write a post as a list.

Readers like lists because they understand what they are gaining from the article.  I’ll refer to writing tip of mine from an older post, “Five quick tips to improve your writing.” This post, in three years on our blog, has consistently ranked as the highest-read article. The power of lists, especially simple ones, is huge.

3. Add a “Pin It” button.

Pinterest isn’t always on your readers’ mind. So, when you draft content for your website or blog that could be beneficial to your readers, add a “Pin It” button beneath the photo you want to be pinned, and write a smart, searchable tag for the caption.

4. Use searchable keywords.

As mentioned above, you can customize a description when using the “Pin It” button. Be smart and include key words and hash tags to make your content searchable. The more your pin is repined, the more searchable your post becomes, and the more likely your views will increase.

Remember, Pinterest is simple and user friendly, so follow these same guidelines when drafting content you want readers to find on Pinterest.

Confession: I love personality quizzes. Flip through the magazines in my house and the tell-tale check boxes will inform you of more details about me than you would ever want to know (although I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to know which Downton Abbey character I am).

It’s a basic, human need to figure out where we fit within our communities, what our quirks reveal about us, and how our personalities define our unique personas in relation to our peers. This need extends into the brands we follow. Our brains are hard-wired to form associations; therefore, we naturally associate a specific personality with a brand. Savvy marketers like Converse, Starbucks, The North Face, and Hermès capitalize on this tendency of ours, and have built successful brands with loyal followers.

One way to determine your brand’s personality is to think of your brand as if it were a person. Ask yourself: How does your brand talk? Does he/she like to party and be “in-the-know” about the latest trends? Is he/she an expert in a particular subject matter? How does he/she dress? To give you an idea of how this approach can be effective, check out this hilarious video that personifies popular websites:

When you identify your brand personality with its unique attributes, it becomes easier to create content, design your website, and launch marketing campaigns that will attract the type of followers who will be eager to be associated with your brand.

Of course, brand personalities evolve just as people’s personalities do; however, solidifying your brand personality will create a strong foundation that will ensure you don’t lose your “reason for existence” as you change, or alienate the loyal customer base you have built over the years.

Our evolution was based on the desire to more accurately portray Marketwave’s personality on our new website, with the tone of our writing, and our Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ pages. We’d love to know what personality traits you associate with our new brand!

This weekend, the Marketwave team traveled to Georgetown, Texas to celebrate the wedding of our Account Manager, Bana Varnon, to Cade Jobe. True to her personality, the wedding was down-to-earth, charming and perfectly organized.

A gorgeous outdoor ceremony.

From the wedding programs (which Bana had proofed by a Marketwaver) to the music selection (ranging from Brooks and Dunn to Metallica), the wedding was an extremely fun celebration. It included an outdoor ceremony, lawn games and a reception with the most delicious pork loin ever.

The wedding vows were written by the couple, and had us teary-eyed one second and laughing the next, with heartfelt promises giving way to a quote from Star Wars thanks to Cade. Finally, as a tribute to the beginning of the couple’s relationship, when they were both trombone players on the University of Texas Longhorn Marching Band, Cade surprised Bana by asking their former marching band friends to play right after their first kiss as a married couple.

Oh, and the newlywed Jobes totally rick rolled their guests during the first dance.  We’re so happy for our fantastic Account Manager, and wish her and Cade all the best! Check out their pictures on Instagram with #banaandcade.

No one loves awkward moments more than the Marketwave team. Luckily, top brands have provided us with great fail fodder over the past 12 months. Here’s a list of our favorites:

1. BIC for Her: A beloved local columnist, Ellen DeGeneres and sarcastic Amazon reviewers agree that this was one ugly mistake by a typically vanilla brand.
   

   Pretty much everyone finds these pens ridiculous. Photo from Dallas Observer.

2. JC Penney’s “Kill the Coupons” Strategy: Somehow managing to alienate both loyal shoppers and new ones alike, this bold idea didn’t quite align with the brand promise of great shopping at great prices. Plus, with the positive buzz about couponing in the past couple of years, it wasn’t on trend, either.
   

   JCP’s new logo couldn’t save its bad strategy.

3. Brand Fails on Social Media: Stubhub’s angry employee tweet, insensitive posts about Hurricane Sandy and Mercedes’ failure to respond to a Super Bowl burn all got equal nominations from our team. When it comes to social media, brands must exert clarity and control, or face angry backlash.
   

   Social media is an easy place for brands to fail.

It’s a little known secret that print media, while hurting overall, has one contender that remains strong. According to the Association of Magazine Media (MPA), a robust 91 percent of adults and 96 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds engage regularly in this “traditional” form of media. I’m certain that the reason for this is due to powerful branding.

Turning through the pages of a great magazine, sparking not just our visual senses, but also our sense of touch (let’s face it, glossy outweighs newsprint, any day) and even smell, is something we can all identify with. Most of all, we appreciate the relevant content and even advertisements, which are always built around the magazine brand’s target audience.

New York Magazine tailored its cover to its audience, and created loyalty to its brand, while selling copies. Photo from MPA.org

Three years ago, I wrote a blog about a campaign launch to restore the image of magazine media in today’s increasingly digital world. Today, I can say that magazines are not only fighting back, they’re thriving, because they know the real secret – that a truly great brand, one closely aligned with its audience and the experiences that audience seeks – is still the best way to survive in a cluttered world.

Slow and steady wins the race, right? If the tortoise didn’t prove it, Google+ certainly has.

Slow and steady wins the race – and Google+ has proved it.

G+ is gaining so many new users that it now outpaces Twitter as the world’s number two social network, behind Facebook. Google’s path to dominance can be attributed to its connected services: search, YouTube, Gmail, maps and more. The accounts are ubiquitous – once you’re logged into one, you’re logged into all. (Scared, Zuck?)

For brands, Google+ is providing two key items increasingly valuable to marketers: deeper engagement, made possible through Hangouts and Communities, and measurement capabilities, provided by Google Analytics, Insights and G+ Ripples. In a competitive, data-driven world this information is critical.  BMW, Red Bull and Samsung Mobile USA are a few brands stimulating high engagement from their fans.

 And there’s more, if you’ll allow us to get geeky for a bit: Google+ Sign-In will soon provide app developers with a big boost in search results. For those not fluent in tech speak? Searching for a site or app on Google will now pull up popular, aggregate user activity to the right of search results. Check out this Fandango example.

Your brand page may not have a plethora of followers or fans, but don’t neglect it. Foster deep relationships with your early brand advocates. And remember, the content posted on Google+ is what matters most – because it drives SEO.

Head over to Marketwave’s G+ page to chat about all things social.

At the crux of Marketwave’s new brand experience is a brand management strategy – one that captures our identity across multiple channels.

By now, you’ve likely noticed some changes at Marketwave – from our new website and vibrant logo to the punchy content.

But it’s not just about pretty designs and catchy phrases. It’s all part of a refreshed brand experience that really speaks to what we’re all about. At the crux of that experience is a brand management strategy – one that captures our identity across multiple channels.

Telling our story? Easy. Telling it the right way? That takes foresight and perspective. And so, as we launch our refreshed brand, we’re following the same three-phase playbook we use to guide our clients:

1. Employee Engagement – Make sure everyone is apprised of (and involved in) the new direction, and get buy-in before the changes are final. Once they are, craft a “brand book” for everyone to easily implement the new identity across all channels.
2. Voice Continuity – Establish a brand personality and ensure that all channels (social, advertising, website) reflect it unilaterally.
3. Experience – Once employees are looped in and channels are in sync, craft the experience in a way that best captures the new brand – from the office environment to customer interaction.

Marketwavers are engaged and our voice is one, but YOU’RE the judge of the experience we’ve created.

Care to comment with your thoughts, judge?

In the game of technology thrones, Blackberry is not exactly known for its strategic moves. But it sure isn’t stopping company executives from making them.

Are tablets on the way out?

Blackberry’s Chief Executive Officer employed an interesting PR strategy this week as he predicted the tablet’s demise, “within five years.” In an interview that ran today in Bloomberg, Thorsten Heins went against analyst reports, sales figures and general market consensus to explain why he probably isn’t going to make a follow-up to the company’s ill-fated PlayBook. This caused quite a stir in the tech journals today, and seems to have pushed shares of Blackberry up (for the moment, at least).

While this type of bold statement may garner some short term PR, it will make the company look less desirable in the long run. Tablets, with their mobility, ease-of-use and flexible applications, are more likely to replace laptops than disappear quickly into the graveyard of tech trends, and far more likely to succeed in a technology-driven world than say, Blackberry.

One of Marketwave’s core values is giving back.  As a company, we have a service mindset and want to serve others in our community by giving of our time, talents and resources when we can.  One way we do this is through our membership in Entrepreneurs for North Texas (EFNT). EFNT facilitates community involvement and philanthropy for small and mid-size companies that want to make a positive impact in their communities, and we’ve greatly benefited from their help identifying and organizing the ways our team can plug in and give back.

As we’ve been connected to EFNT it has made me take notice of other companies who truly make the effort and put the energy into community service. And, with that energy in mind (and since we do a lot of work with energy clients), I decided to give a quick shout out to a couple of energy companies that are really doing it right when it comes to community involvement.

I know first-hand about what Dallas-based natural gas company, Crosstex Energy, is doing in their communities because they are a client and we’ve helped them shape their approach.  They have something called the Connectors Program that provides resources and training for field personnel who interact with community stakeholders daily. This program allows Crosstex to be closely connected in the communities where it does business.

Also, although they aren’t a client, I’ve admired Reliant from the sidelines and what they’ve done from a community service standpoint. Recently we had the pleasure of interviewing Manny Rodriguez, VP of Sponsorship and Community at Reliant. We talked in-depth about how important it is for them to give back; not just as a company, but as individuals. In 2011, Reliant’s employees donated more than 13,000 hours to charity! Some of the recipients of these hours were The March of Dimes, American Heart Association and Rebuild Houston, where they are headquartered. As a company, Reliant participates in the Scholarship for Champions, which recognizes and rewards students who achieve a balance of academics, athletics and community service. They also offer “Beat the Heat” centers which serve as community centers to engage, support and assist the elderly and lower income households with programs during the hot Texas summers. In addition to offering food, water and air conditioning, Reliant employees host breakfasts or lunches throughout the year at these centers.

Reliant’s executives are encouraged to participate on the boards of non-profit organizations. Manny is an active board member of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in Houston. “In addition to giving back to the community, Reliant believes in supporting the research and treatment of diseases. Houston has outstanding medical facilities, and as an 11-year survivor of Leukemia, it’s personally important for me to actively participate on the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society board,” stated Rodriguez.

What does your organization do to give back to the community? If you aren’t involved in or connected to a non-profit in your community, but want to be, here’s a great website to search for organizations in your area.

To reach a younger audience, PBS Digital Studios transformed their classic programming into catchy, fresh content.

If you haven’t seen this video, you should.

It would have been funny – probably viral – if some Joe Schmoe had autotuned Bob Ross. But the fact that it was done by PBS, as a series of autotunements, made it brilliant.

PBS realized that it had to connect to and engage with a young audience, because its traditional programming lineup of Nova and NewsHour didn’t do the deed. Enter PBS Digital Studios, a grand effort to reach that generation by resurrecting and autotuning the retro programming of yesteryear.

And it captured all the classics in its YouTube series – from Reading Rainbow, to Julia Childs and Mister Rogers – and repackaged them into fun, catchy tunes that will outlive their air dates for years to come.

If you’re looking to connect with a younger audience, take a nod to PBS. They were fearless in crafting an innovative, light-hearted marketing campaign that has attracted the hearts, eyes and ears of the young and the reminiscent.

Plus, every day’s a good day when you paint (and sing about it).