Pinterest Too Girly?

According to a recent Pew study of social media users, 25% of woman use Pinterest, while only 5% of men. A common complaint of Pinterest has been that the content is heavily weighted for female interests. Sure if you dig around you can find some manlier topics, but hey, this is social media and everything should be quick and easy. Since the realization that Pinterest is better off left to our female counterparts, a few new manlier versions have surfaced. Dartitup

President of Dartitup, Brandon Harris, was driven to create a manlier pinboard site after failing to get as engaged in Pinterest as his fiancee. This platform seems to be very similar to how Pinterest works, just with manlier topics.

Gentlemint

Started in late 2011, this is another very similar pinboard site, geared for only things manly. From bacon, to power tool, to barbecuing, the manlier the better for Gentlemint. What makes this platform different than others, is its goal to stay safe-for-work. Gentlemint doesn't allow questionable content that may get you in trouble when the boss walks by. We feel this could be a huge selling point for all those guys with hours a day to kill at work.

Dudepins

While very similar to the previous 2 services we mentioned, Dudepins like to think of itself as a place to find "cool stuff". According to co-founder, Kamil Szybalski, people need a place to discover, share and buy manly things. We have always liked a website that can show you something new, and if Dudepins can live up to that claim, it seems like a very promising alternative.

Now these are not the only 3 "manly Pinterests" on the internet, but this is a good place to start. If you are sick of watching your girlfriend pin images of wedding dresses and cupcakes all day, get on one of these sites and start perusing golf clubs and cars to your hearts content.

-Mike

Two-Step Verification for Twitter

It looks like Twitter has finally introduced a new two-step verification process for its platform. We have mentioned before how important it was that Twitter start offering this to its users, in light of the recent hacks to major Twitter accounts. Twitter is calling this service, login verification, and it works in conjunction with your cell phone. Once you set your preferences to require this new authentication process, whenever you login to your account, Twitter will send a special code via SMS text to your phone. Once you receive that phone, you enter it into your Twitter and you are ready to go. This code verification will be required every time a user logs off and back on.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/IsdvJI0AK5M]

It is good to see Twitter answering the calls and providing a more secure login for its users. With people relying more and more on Twitter for the latest news, no one can afford constant hacks from normally trustworthy sources.

-Mike

Turning Complaints into Opportunity

Everyone knows how important word-of-mouth can be to a business. According to Neilsen, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family above all else. Combine that number with these following stats, and it becomes very apparent how important it is to correctly handle customer complaints.

• It takes 12 positive service incidents to make up for 1 negative incident.
• The average "wronged customer" will tell 8-l6 people about it. Over 20% will tell more than 20.
• Happy customers who have their problems resolved will tell 4-6 people about their positive experience.
• Customer loyalty can be worth up to 10 times as much as a single purchase

Every brand in every industry is going to make mistakes, and these mistakes can often be magnified when they are out in the open for everyone to see on social media. There are a few brands out there who excel at turning these potential downfalls into customer service successes. Andy Sernovitz of SmartBlogs highlights 3 strategies used to win over upset customers:

• Make them laugh: There’s obviously a time and a place for jokes when it comes to fielding customer complaints, but a good sense of humor can be disarming and personal enough to defuse a negative comment while showing you’re human.
• Be vigilant: No matter what their concern, your customers will appreciate a fast response — even if you’re just acknowledging the issue and letting them know you’re on it. For example, when one cyclist was almost hit by a UPS truck, he tweeted about the incident — and when he got home, he was contacted within several minutes by their social media team. He later blogged about being blown away by the company’s careful attention on his blog.
• Make it personal: Dell allows their employees to answer customer service concerns with their real names and sometimes post unscripted videos of them working out problems. When your community managers can reply in their own voice, it reminds negative commenters there’s a real person behind your company’s social media page — it also let’s them know a real person cares.

At the end of the day, just showing the customer you care speaks volumes. Remember, the customer is always right.

-Mike

Facebook to the Rescue

When you take a step back and look at social media, it can seem like a pretty trivial thing. When most of you time is spent striving to get the most likes on your new status updates or shares of your latest vacation picture, it is easy to forget the potential philanthropic uses of Facebook.

As you are most likely aware, Oklahoma was just hit by a massive tornado that killed 51 people, while leaving many more homeless. In the aftermath, amongst other destruction, it has been realized that victim's personal belongings have been blown many miles in all directions. To help gather some of these belongings and return them to their rightful owners, a Facebook group has been started, where members can post pictures of the property they have found. Victims can then go onto this group and see if any of the items are theirs and connect with the people who had found it.

We think this is a fantastic use of Facebook, helping people who have just gone through an unimaginable tragedy. If you live in the area and have found such debris, or think you can help in any other way, please join the Facebook group here.

-Mike

Pinterest Gets an Upgrade

As we have mentioned in a previous post, many major brands are still not leveraging Pinterest to its full marketing potential. This may have gotten a little easier with the recent update to Pinterest, which allows brands to display information in the pin, ranging from recipes to product prices, etc. This service is only available to a few brands that have partnered with Pinterest so far, including eBay, Target, ModCloth, Sony and Netflix. The idea behind this new enhancement is to get more information in front of users, without them having to click through links to the original poster. Traditionally, if a user came across a particularly delicious looking picture, they would have to dig their way through the post to try and find the link to the recipe. Now the brand posting this picture can simply post the recipe along with the picture itself, like below:

This is a win-win for both the brands associated, and Pinterest itself. With more comprehensive pins, brands will be able to gain an edge over traditional pins, gaining more followers. On the Pinterest side, having all this information available directly on the news feed, users will be less likely to navigate away from the feed to try and find the information they want. We think this new option creates a huge opportunity for brands who are willing to take advantage of it. It will be interesting to see what brands decide to partner with Pinterest and jump on this new way to reach their fans.

-Mike

Let the Integration Continue

It seems there has been an ever increasing trend lately to integrate as many services into other services as possible. The latest in this trend is Yahoo's move to incorporate Twitter into its news stream. This is not a very surprising move, considering how important Twitter has become to news sources. Consistently proving to be the go-to source for the latest breaking news, Twitter has become a considerable asset in this field. Here is a quote from Yahoo's CEO: "Updates direct from politicians, celebrities, media outlets, and other publishers have become an important source of real-time news and information. 140 characters can connect athletes with their fans, capture live chatter from the red carpet, and inspire global debate... so we are thrilled to announce our partnership with Twitter to bring Tweets directly into the Yahoo newsfeed."

As you can see below, tweets from sources like ABC News will start to appear in the news feed.

This new feature will continue to roll out to all U.S. users over the next couple of days. We think this trend towards integration is great and will only continue to make everyone's lives easier and more convenient.

-Mike

Google Hangouts App

Over the last few days, Google has been announcing a number of new services and enhancements to their offerings.  One of these enhancements we are excited about is the new Google Hangouts app. Google Hangouts themselves are not new, and chances are you have seen or used them before, but until this week, accessing this service on your mobile device was not very convenient. With this new stand alone app, it looks like the bar has been raised for chat services. As an Android user, I am particularly excited for this enhancement. Although I do love my Samsung Galaxy 3, the one thing it does not do well, is group chatting. Since the majority of mobile devices out there are still iPhones, whenever I get included on a group chat initiated from an iPhone, it is impossible to follow. All the messages get broken up into separate texts and it turns into a nightmare. I have since remedied this inconvenience by using a 3rd party app known as GroupMe. I admit GroupMe does to a good job when it comes to group texts, but it does not have the ability to sync with the rest of my Google services or offer video chatting, plus the people  you are chatting with need to have this app downloaded on their phone.

You may be asking, what about iChat and Skype? Sure, they have fairly good video chatting capability, but if you have tried all 3, it becomes obvious that Google comes out ahead in categories like ease of use, quality and functionality.

This new Google Hangouts app is going to be like text messaging on steroids. The nice thing about texting is the conversation stays in a continuous stream that never stops. No matter how infrequent you talk to someone, you can pick up the conversation from where you left it last.  Google Hangouts is going to be just like this, however, now you can throw in fun things like pictures, videos, multiple people, Gchat messages, screen sharing, etc.

If I haven't convinced you of how awesome this new app will be, check out this YouTube video from Google:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/XkpjZ7oA_Qg]

-Mike