1.     Get out of your comfort zone

Give yourself a chance to experience something new.  Consider a new product or service that you may have overlooked because it is not in your everyday realm of interests.  See what other people are working on and get some insight on the latest trends and developments.

2.     Magnify the edges through extremes

Instead of observing the typical fans, take a look at the extreme fans with interests that are far different from the norm.  People who have unusual perspectives and interests are often the most inspiring.  They may think “outside of the box” and have influential ideas that can spark improvements on your idea.

3.     Explore outside of your field or industry for analogous behavior

It is important to investigate how other businesses and people work.  Many people make the mistake of focusing only on what is going on within their own industry.  However, by taking a step away from your business and viewing others’ ideas and solutions, you can actually improve your own industry.

4.     Try it on for size

Take time to gain some knowledge from others.  You can get some significant insight by actually participating in how other people work in different environments.  Getting a hands-on experience can be a crucial part in understanding and learning from how others work.

5.     Get tangible: Introduce and encourage experiments

If you have an idea for a product or service, do a trial run.  Make a tangible representation of the idea and bring it into the real world to get some feedback.  This will help you improve upon your idea so you can produce your most successful product or service.

In order to keep up with this ever-changing electronic society, stay one step ahead and always be looking for ways to anticipate people’s future digital behavior.

In keeping with our last blog about Pinterest analytics, it’s only natural we talk about how to really utilize Pinterest as a business. The first obvious step is to recognize what kind of audience Pinterest attracts. You don’t need access to complicated statistics to know what your Facebook feed can tell you: Pinterest and women are synonymous.

Besides its aesthetics, Pinterest almost holds a certain sentimental value, a reminder of our youth where most of us had an actual pin board up on our walls above our beds pinned with pictures of either something of emotional attachment or that just appealed to our senses. Pinterest has successfully honed in that memory and made loyal users out of each of those individuals – which sums up to be a lot to put it in the least (currently women make up 82% of the 11.1 million users on Pinterest).

A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words

Businesses should realize what a huge target market Pinterest itself contains and what could be months of market research is practically condensed in a virtual board with a crafty title and a detailed look into an individuals’ preferences. Use this to your advantage! Find boards that are specific to your business, and follow them to see what trends are being repinned. Your potential customers are answering all of your questions and you’re not even hassling them to take a survey in order to get a vague idea of what goes on inside their head. It’s all there in picture form.

If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them

Being an active user on Pinterest is also a good idea because, other than the fact that your most loyal customers are very likely to repin your content ensuring that it is seen by their followers, it creates the potential of running Pinterest specific campaigns. This is generally the same concept as many brands running campaigns on Facebook to generate interest, awareness, and followers. Another reason of investing in a Pinterest account is its referral heavy nature. Many businesses find it important to drive traffic to their website and Pinterest recently has been ranked in the top 5 of referring web traffic to other sites, more than the combined efforts of Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Be Selective

Marketing your products would be the obvious use of Pinterest, but keeping the demographic of the social site in mind, Pinterest actually allows a business to selectively market their products. A company that has products meant for both sexes doesn’t need to waste their efforts marketing both, rather just focusing on the items meant for women specifically. It might be smarter during the gift giving seasons such as Valentines Day or Christmas to showcase full product lines as gift giving ideas. Remember, you are appealing to the demographic that keeps a firm hand on the spending (women make 85% of the purchasing decisions in any given household, and 22% shop online at least once a day), creating tremendous potential for your business.

Repin Therapy

One of the best things that Pinterest offers is that you can kick back and relax while you explore the content the site offers, so much so that it’s therapeutic. Respect that philosophy and don’t go for an aggressive approach when posting pictures, with the goal of turning individuals into immediate customers willing to spend. Pinterest has created a very homely environment and no user will appreciate an influx of corporate clutter taking over their homepage. Keep it warm, friendly, and most of all, simple.

For all businesses still on the fence about the site, know that Pinterest’s users definitely have a very deep level of involvement with it, suggesting not only their loyalty, but Pinterest’s staying power. It’s time to take an interest in Pinterest.

Pinterest is driving a serious amount of traffic, making it the next great tool for connected consumers and all different kinds of businesses.  Having the ability to analyze your content is crucial to staying informed on the success of your social strategy, and Pinerly wants to help businesses do just that. The aim of Pinerly is to become a complete Pinterest analytics dashboard.

Pinerly began only about a week ago but has already gotten 35,000 users including some major brands. It currently offers basic data such as how well “campaigns” (Pinerly-tracked pins) are doing. By the end of the month, Pinerly hopes to expand their services to offering more detailed information about pin performance and the ability to schedule pins.

Pinerly’s site design is quite similar to the design of Pinterest and gives an overview of your account on the homepage, making it easier to navigate through the site. By creating a campaign using Pinerly, you are given the ability to track the stats of the pins.

These campaign pins, like on Pinterest, can be uploaded from your computer or obtained from a web link. After uploading the pin, you can add a link and description to the selected content or image. Then, just click “Pinerly It” to send the campaign pin to Pinterest where you will select a board to pin it to. After this, head back over to Pinerly, hit “Finish”, and begin tracking those stats!

Once campaign pins are created, you’ll begin to see your “Pinalytics,” a chart that shows you how many clicks, likes and repins are earned each given day. Pinerly also provides suggestions for pins that are broken down into categories. These could give you inspiration for your next pin!  For those of you just getting started on Pinterest, Pinerly has a tips widget, constantly giving you helpful hints on how to get the most out of Pinterest.

Keep in mind that Pinerly is brand new, still making changes, and accepting and helpful suggestions on improving their site. By the end of the month they hope to be able to have the capability to schedule posts and eventually give the option of Premium Accounts. Are you excited for this brand new tool for collecting analytics for Pinterest?