With the world of electronics constantly changing, it is impossible to predict exactly what our future in digital behavior will become.  We can look at some of the popular new technologies and apps that people are actively using today as a guide.  Apps like Google Maps, Yelp, and Foursquare are creating a modern approach to map out physical places worldwide.  Also, people are using different methods to converse, for example, multi-threaded conversations.  We are now able to communicate in a group setting by simply posting and commenting on photos or posts via social media outlets like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.  Although we can only speculate what advances are to come, here are a few ways to approach the future of digital behavior:

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?

Searching for a job while you’re still employed can be a bit problematic. Of course you would like to leverage yourself via social media networks, but you need to make sure you aren’t endangering your current job by advertising that you’re on the hunt for a new position. You don’t have to steer clear of all social media during your job search though. In fact, 54% of social media users used Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter while job-hunting last year. One in six even found their current job via the use of social media networks. Here are five ways to look for a new position without publicizing it to the world:

1. Raise Your Personal Visibility…Carefully!

Make all of your networking profiles as complete as possible. Build a strong resume by adding content and information, making updates to areas such as key skills, education and experience. From there, build your networks. Re-connect with people you’ve known for a while, like your boss from that job you had in high school or your dad’s buddy who works in the same field as you. You never know, one of those people could be the key to landing that next job!

2. Don’t Broadcast Your Job Desires

Don’t blow your cover by putting “Looking for a position in…” or “Seeking a new job in…” on your profile. Don’t assume that your current employer can’t see your profile. Instead, stay active and participate on the site by sharing content relevant to your industry, showing your expertise in that particular field. Be sure to join and take part in industry groups and communities and keeping in touch with your network connections.

3. Understand Your Company’s Social Media Policy

It is incredibly important to be aware of how you are conducting yourself online – your current employers are completely aware of what’s going on. Most companies today have a social media policy for their current employees, so it would be in your best interest to make sure you aren’t doing anything that could potentially lead to disciplinary action.

4. Monitor Your Contact and Privacy Settings

In your contact settings on LinkedIn, you have the option of checking the options “career opportunities” and “job inquiries.” If one day you suddenly check these options, or even update your profile, your current employer is likely to take notice, raising red flags. To avoid this, you should constantly be updating your profile, even when you’re not looking for a new position or manage your settings and disable broadcasting your updates. You may also want to adjust your privacy settings if you are trying to be stealthy on your search for a new job. If you are discussing the hunt with your friends or family, you don’t want your current employer to see it, do you?

5. Don’t Job Hunt at Work

Often times, employers monitor email, voicemail and web surfing. Bottom line: Don’t conduct your job search at your current job. Getting caught is pretty embarrassing. Not only that, but if you’re using your work email and/or phone number, you may be unreachable by potential employers if you quit or are fired. It is your best option to provide your personal email and phone number to be contacted.

Social media networks are an incredible source for networking, sharing information and exploring job opportunities. You may need to be more careful using social media when searching for a job while employed, but the above tips should help with your use of these tools and land your next job!

Let’s talk virtual goods. What are virtual goods? Nothing. Really, they’re nothing because they’re not real. Yet they have now become an industry of their own, starting off as a niche market and spilling over onto the masses. It’s pretty much been broken down into a six-step process:

1. Buy an iPad (replace with a Smartphone or tablet of choice)
2. Promise to find many productive uses of the device
3. Instead, discover and download Draw Something (replace with game of choice)
4. LOVE Draw Something
5. Draw a cryptic drawing of Nicki Minaj and find that the only thing missing is that exact shade of pink from the neon package
6. Tap buy to purchase that neon package

Hundreds of millions all over the world are avidly following these steps.

Virtual goods have only really popped up in recent years, though it seems like they’ve been around a lot longer. Think back to 2009 when Facebook still had the “birthday gift” feature available, and its cash cow Farmville, was in the beginning stages of reaching extreme popularity, and due to the horrifying amount of invitations we all got from that one friend who got a little too into the game, reaching the extreme of annoying. These, plus other virtual goods, reached nearly a $1 billion in sales in 2009 and $2.3 billion in sales in 2011. 2012 is has been forecasted to be the claim to fame for virtual good sales, as if they haven’t made their place in the market already. This is evident in the simple fact that they are pretty much everywhere.

This is the world in which we currently live in. People rush to buy something that is intangible and has no real added value, other than psychologically forcing us to think our gaming experience has suddenly gotten so much better. But after all, isn’t that the whole point?

Since its inception, blogging has been transformed from a place where overly opinionated teenagers go to vent, into a medium where businesses are able to engage with their customers and keep them informed. It’s not enough, however, to say,”We have a blog”. If you’re going to blog, you might as well do it right.

1. Leverage Your Resources

What’’s the strongest resource that a company has? Its employees, of course! Finding out individual strengths and utilizing them in such a way that helps in furthering a business as well as nurturing the employee’s’ skill is no new concept. In the case of blogging, keep those who enjoy writing, who are knowledgeable about the general subject matter, and are familiar with blogging as designated company bloggers. Create a blogging team, that way each member can feed off each other’’s ideas, and keep each post creative and away from monotony.

2. Blog As a Person, Not a Company

Humanize your blogs! Many people make the mistake of treating social media mediums as a separate category than what they term as “real life contact” such as meeting in person, talking on the phone etc. Social media is “real time contact” and it is imperative for businesses that it is treated with as much care as the rest. You are still engaging with a customer so write each post as if it is a one on one conversation with you and another person.Bloggers shouldn’t be afraid to write in their own tone of voice and superiors shouldn’t discourage it. A diverse tone goes a much longer way than a generic one.

3. Don’’t Advertise, Just Talk

This almost goes hand in hand with the previous point. Advertising and PR is crucial to a company’’s success, but there is a time and place for it. Despite popular opinion, your blog is not the place for it. Customers want to hear from you, your thoughts, opinions, and your expertise, not your selling skills. In fact, that’ is probably what they came to your blog to get away from. Talk about what your company specializes, put it in a different perspective by providing a helpful use for it in their daily lives. Put yourself in your customer’s’ shoes, and think about what they’’d like to hear, that you know you can engage in constructive banter about, and write what comes to you naturally.

4. Be an Open Book

We’ve mentioned this before in a previous blog that “Tweets” should not be protected when marketing a business. The same applies here; let your readers share your blog! This is something that you would think is a given, but surprisingly many businesses forget to enable such a simple tool. This is free marketing all on it’s own. Furthermore, make sure you are promoting your blog. Synchronizing all your social media outlets not only maintains a level of synergy but your customers will thank you for the consistency. Announcing a new blog post on Twitter, Facebook, etc. goes a long way.

5. Three Words: Track, Track, and Track

Google Analytics is an easy-to-use interface and is a great start for those who are currently not using web analytic tools. It’s important to keep track of which posts generate the most traffic, and everything of that nature. You’d want to know which product sells the best in the market, how is this any different?