Great Content Marketing Ideas for Using Google Plus

By Adam Barber | Published: March 26, 2012

When Google+ was unveiled last year, a lot of content marketers wondered if they really needed another social media platform to develop and maintain. But, with the more recent introduction of Search Plus Your World, Google+ is getting harder to ignore.
So if you’re still figuring out how to make Google+ part of your content strategy, it might be helpful to take a look at a couple of examples of popular and engaging Google+ pages. I’ve chosen Dell — which has embraced Google+ and is doing some really interesting stuff with its profile — and also “Wired” magazine. Unlike Dell, “Wired” produces content as its core business; but like Dell, it has invested time and resources in its Google+ brand page and has quickly built a large following.

+Dell

Regular updates. One of the first things you’ll notice about Dell’s Google+ page is the regular updates, with one or two new posts going up every day. With Twitter, where each post is under 140 characters and users follow hundreds or even thousands of different accounts, you need volume to get noticed. In contrast, posting too many updates on Facebook is a common reason for people deciding to ditch friends and brands from their newsfeeds.
Google+ has had the Circles function since its inception, which encourages users to filter and organize the people and pages they follow. This reduces the risk that your followers will feel overwhelmed if you post more content than you’d put up on Facebook. But at the same time, Google+ is not Twitter, and users will likely expect a bit more than a stream of shared links.
Rich content. Dell provides a great example of a brand page that fully utilizes the richness of Google+ updates. As I scroll through the recent posts there are some links, but there are also embedded videos, photos, and infographics. This variety of content makes for a great look and feel, and I imagine it’s exactly what the guys at Google were after when they designed an interface that sits somewhere in between a Twitter profile and a blog.
#hashtags and +mentions. Finally, let’s take a quick look at some of Dell’s individual posts, as they provide some good examples you might use on your own Google+ page. There’s a broad range of content — some of which can also be found on Dell’s sites or blogs — but there’s also some relevant third-party stuff.
For example, a recent post linked to a newspaper article that talks about an issue Dell has a keen interest in: the growth of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in India. Without the character restrictions of Twitter, Dell can provide more value-add when it shares that link, explaining its stake in the story.
The Dell team also points to an infographic on cloud computing, the thumbnail for which adds to the aesthetic appeal of the page. Whenever it shares third-party content, Dell’s team uses hashtags to help its posts get discovered in search, and it uses the “+” feature to let brands and individuals know their content has been featured. This is a good practice to follow with your own Google+ posts, as it will encourage people to add your page to their circles.

Content to share. Dell has some obvious advantages when it comes to running a cool-looking Google+ page: It has the resources in terms of money and manpower to create posts, respond to comments, and keep the page fresh and updated. It also has a large amount of its own content to share, from media releases and blogs to videos and webinars. Dell makes full use of its great range of material on its Google+ page, in each case providing context or pulling out highlights before pointing users to the full or original version.

+ Wired

While Dell has great resources to draw on when it comes to producing and sharing content, content is not its core business. So, the second Google+ example I want a look at is “Wired” magazine, one of the biggest names in technology publishing, with multiple titles in print as well as a renowned website. Like Dell, “Wired” has attracted a strong Google+ following (more than 400,000 people) over a short period of time, with daily updates pointing to third-party content as well as its own website and blogs.
Personalized sharing. Like Dell, “Wired” leverages its existing assets to engage and grow its Google+ community. A number of “Wired” journalists have their own Google+ pages (Chris Anderson, for example, is in 36,000 circles), on which they share their own work as well as content around the web that interests them or that they run across on their beats.
“Wired” shares some of its journalists’ posts on its brand page, which helps to add a human element and trades on its editorial team’s personal authority and followers. If your business has “social friendly” employees, they can be real assets in this way on your social media profiles, not just on Google+, but also on Twitter and, particularly, LinkedIn.
Expanded posts. I’ve already talked about how Google+ encourages users to create rich posts and add some value and context when sharing links. “Wired” features fully expanded posts on its Google+ pages, with some running to more than 200 words — making them more like mini-blog posts.  
I think this is a great thing to experiment with on your own Google+ page and helps get you out of the habit of plain old link-sharing. Rather than simply posting “Check this out” because you would like to be associated with it, you can offer your followers some opinion and insight to establish your authority and try to get a conversation going. This will also keep people on your page for longer.
Tapping the archive. Finally, I want to return to “Wired’s” greatest asset: its content. “Wired” produces a wealth of editorial material every day, which means it has no shortage of options when looking to populate its RSS feeds, blogs, and social media profiles.
Something you’ll notice when scrolling through the posts on the “Wired” Google+ brand page is that it features archive content as well as the latest articles. Even if they aren’t new, stories that are getting good traffic on Wired.com or that the staff members feel are worth sharing and likely to attract comment, make ideal Google+ posts. There’s a good lesson here in tapping your own content archive and not just relying on your latest blog posts for something to share.

Google+ numbers
To give you an idea of the growing impact and influence of Google+, here are a few stats:

• 90 million – total number of Google+ members as of last month (Larry Page, Google CEO)
• 20 million – unique visitors to Google+ during December 2010 (Compete.com)
• 576,798 – Dell and Wired’s combined Google+ footprint, March 2012 (Google+)
• 69.2% - percentage of Google+ users who are men (SocialStatistics.com)
• 3.86% - percentage of Google+ users living in the world’s Google+ capital, Bangalore, India (NetworkWorld)
• 3.3 minutes – average time users spent on Google+ during January (comScore)

Do you have any great examples of businesses that are making interesting content plays on Google+? We’d love to hear about your experience with this new content marketing tool.

Innovation Is About Arguing, Not Brainstorming. Here’s How To Argue Productively

Written by: Daniel Sobol

At Continuum, innovation’s secret sauce is deliberative discourse. Here’s how you do it.

Turns out that brainstorming--that go-to approach to generating new ideas since the 1940s--isn’t the golden ticket to innovation after all. Both Jonah Lehrer, in a recent article in The New Yorker, and Susan Cain, in her new book Quiet, have asserted as much. Science shows that brainstorms can activate a neurological fear of rejection and that groups are not necessarily more creative than individuals. Brainstorming can actually be detrimental to good ideas.

Editor’s Note

Read Co.Design editor Cliff Kuang’s analysis here.

But the idea behind brainstorming is right. To innovate, we need environments that support imaginative thinking, where we can go through many crazy, tangential, and even bad ideas to come up with good ones. We need to work both collaboratively and individually. We also need a healthy amount of heated discussion, even arguing. We need places where someone can throw out a thought, have it critiqued, and not feel so judged that they become defensive and shut down. Yet this creative process is not necessarily supported by the traditional tenets of brainstorming: group collaboration, all ideas held equal, nothing judged.
So if not from brainstorming, where do good ideas come from?

The creative process isn’t supported by the traditional tenets of brainstorming.

At Continuum, we use deliberative discourse--or what we fondly call “Argue. Discuss. Argue. Discuss.” Deliberative discourse was originally articulated in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. It refers to participative and collaborative (but not critique-free) communication. Multiple positions and views are expressed with a shared understanding that everyone is focused on a common goal. There is no hierarchy. It’s not debate because there are no opposing sides trying to “win.” Rather, it’s about working together to solve a problem and create new ideas.
So we argue. And discuss. And argue. A lot. But our process is far from freeform yelling. Here are five key rules of engagement that we’ve found to yield fruitful sessions and ultimately lead to meaningful ideas.

1. NO HIERARCHY

Breaking down hierarchy is critical for deliberative discourse. It’s essential to creating a space where everyone can truly contribute. My first week at Continuum, I joined a three-person team with one senior and one principal strategist. A recent graduate, I was one of the youngest members of the company. During our first session, the principal looked me in the eye and said, “You should know that you’re not doing your job if you don’t disagree with me at least once a day.” He gave me permission to voice my opinion openly, regardless of my seniority. This breakdown of hierarchy creates a space where ideas can be invented-- and challenged--without fear.

2. SAY “NO, BECAUSE”

It’s widely evangelized that successful brainstorms rely on acceptance of all ideas and judgment of none. Many refer to the cardinal rule of improv saying “Yes, AND”--for building on others’ ideas. As a former actor, I’m a major proponent of “Yes AND.”
But I’m also a fan of “no, BECAUSE.” No is a critical part of our process, but if you’re going to say no, you better be able to say why. Backing up an argument is integral in any deliberative discourse. And that “because” should be grounded in real people other than ourselves.
We conduct ethnographic research to inform our intuition, so we can understand people’s needs, problems, and values. We go out dancing with a group of women in a small Chinese village; we work in a fry shack in the deep South; we sit in living rooms and listen to caregivers discuss looking after a parent with Alzheimer’s. This research informs our intuitive “guts”--giving us both inspiration for ideas and rationale to defend or critique them.
During ideation, we constantly refer back to people, asking one another if our ideas are solving a real need that people expressed or that we witnessed. This keeps us accountable to something other than our own opinions, and it means we can push back on colleagues’ ideas without getting personal.

3. DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES

We’ve all heard of T-shaped people and of multidisciplinary teams. This model works for us because deliberative discourse requires a multiplicity of perspectives to shape ideas. We curate teams to create diversity: Walk into a project room and you may find an artist-turned-strategist, a biologist-turned-product designer, and an English professor-turned-innovation guru hashing it out together. True to form, my background is in theater and anthropology.
On a recent project, I realized the best way to tackle a particular problem was to apply a text analysis tool that actors use with new scripts. I taught this framework to the team, and we used it to generate ideas. Another time, a team member with a background in Wall Street banking wrote an equation on the whiteboard. It was exactly the framework we needed to jumpstart our next session.
When we enter deliberative discourse, arguing and discussing and arguing and discussing, we each bring different ways of looking at the world and solving problems to the table.

4. FOCUS ON A COMMON GOAL

Deliberative discourse is not just arguing for argument’s sake. Argument is productive for us because everyone knows that we’re working toward a shared goal. We develop a statement of purpose at the outset of each project and post it on the door of our project room. Every day when we walk into the room, we’re entering into a liminal play space--call it a playing field. The statement of purpose establishes the rules: It reminds us that we are working together to move the ball down the field. As much as we may argue and disagree, anything that happens in the room counts toward our shared goal. This enables us to argue and discuss without hurting one another.

5. KEEP IT FUN

We work on projects ranging from global banking for the poor to the future of pizza and life-saving medical devices. Our work requires intensity, thoughtfulness, and rigor. But no matter the nature of the project, we keep it fun. It’s rare for an hour to pass without laughter erupting from a project room. Deliberative discourse is a form of play, and for play to yield great ideas, we have to take it seriously.
But we don’t brainstorm. We deliberate.

What Magazines Can Teach You About Using Pinterest

BY Jason Fell | 5 hours ago|

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With Pinterest's soaring traffic, entrepreneurs might find it difficult to resist tapping into the social media site's audience of potential customers. But how can you make Pinterest work for your business?
Among the many users on Pinterest, magazine publishers boast some of the most vibrant boards and engaged users. "Pinterest, whose primary audience at the moment appears to be younger women with interests in fashion, home, health and food, is a perfect platform for magazines whose stock in trade is spectacular photos and quality service journalism," says Cristina Dinozo, director of communications for MPA, the Association of Magazine Media.
While not all businesses are as inherently visual as some magazines, many publishers are going beyond simply posting images to engage their fellow "pinners." Here, managers from three magazines discuss their top strategies for using Pinterest and how you can do the same.

Post images that best tell your story.
Believe it or not, Bonnier Corp.'s food magazine Saveur doesn't necessarily post its most amazing images to Pinterest. For longer feature stories that have many photos, editors will pin the image that "best encapsulates the story as a whole," says Saveur.com senior editor Helen Rosner.
"In a piece about Malaysian cooking, for instance, the most objectively beautiful image might be a close-up shot of some ginger root on a cutting board, but stripped of its context, that picture doesn't tell the right story," she says. Instead, Rosner and her team might pin an overhead shot of a table laid out with beautiful dishes. "It's all about an image that tells a story in and of itself," she says.

When pinning to Pinterest, Saveur editors select images that 'tell a story.'

Related: Chris Brogan on Using Pinterest for Business (Video)

That strategy can be especially important when followers re-pin an image and change the caption. The picture should be able to stand alone without the context of the business's board. "Even better if [the images you post] can convey your mission or message even once they've been re-pinned," Rosner says.
Use a multiplatform strategy.
With 17 pin boards, Time Inc.'s Health magazine shares its wealth of information with its followers on Pinterest. But in February, the magazine jumped on an opportunity to cross-pollinate its Pinterest content with other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
The magazine enlisted March cover model and personal trainer Jillian Michaels to create her own Health-branded pin board. It featured her personal photos, as well as items curated from the pages of the March issue. The board went live February 24, the same day the March issue hit newsstands. Simultaneously, Health hosted a 45-minute chat with Michaels on its Facebook page and cross-promoted it, along with the Pinterest board, on Twitter.

Health magazine's pin board with personal trainer Jillian Michaels.

Related: How Pinterest Is Becoming the Next Big Thing in Social Media for Business

The goal of the multipronged strategy was to "continue the conversation" across its social media sites and to drive more traffic to Health.com, according to Tina Imm, general manager of Time Inc.'s lifestyle digital group. The plan paid off. Traffic from Pinterest was up nearly 70 percent in February, Imm says, and it has become the magazine's second biggest traffic referral source among social media sites.
Engage users with a contest.
Great photos can get people talking and sharing on Pinterest, but Meredith Corp.'s Better Homes and Gardens created a contest to crank up user engagement a few notches. To complement its 62 boards on topics ranging from entertaining to garden design, the magazine started "Pin & Win," a contest that calls for users to curate a board called "My Better Homes and Gardens Dream Home" with interior and exterior images from BHG.com.

Better Homes and Gardens started a 'Pin & Win' contest.

Editors will select 10 finalists, who will receive a $100 gift card and be featured on Better Homes and Garden's Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages. The grand prize winner will receive an additional $4,000 prize.
Running through early May, the contest so far has generated about 1,000 entrants. "We see this as a fantastic way to introduce new people to the brand and engage existing visitors more deeply with content around their passion points," says Janell Pittman, general manager of BHG.com. Currently, she says, referral traffic from Pinterest to BHG.com is greater than from the magazine's Facebook and Twitter pages combined.
Additionally, the magazine is learning more about the people who follow its brand. "The editors have had fun seeing what consumers have picked" for the dream home board, Pittman says. "It's a great source of learning about who she is and what she likes."

What CRM Means In a Social Age

Using Social Data to Better Understand Your Customer

By: Michael Scissons Published: March 26, 2012

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Many marketers now have more fans and followers across social media than they do e-mail or direct subscribers. Brands are forced to adopt new customer relationship management (CRM) practices quickly as legacy technologies, previous partner relationships, and organizational structures are challenged in meeting the needs of today's social consumer. There is no question that consumer behavior has changed. But how can large enterprises shift to effectively connect with their consumers while leveraging the power that good CRM provides?
While there is no silver bullet, practices and technologies are emerging that make the most of connecting with the social CRM channel. Understanding key themes and sifting through the noise is crucial to getting an organization set up. The war for dominance in this area will be brutal, with a landscape that is likely to see upsets while a handful of marketers build solid names for themselves.
Social CRM Defined
An effective Social CRM strategy must focus on better understanding, anticipating and responding to the needs of existing and potential customers by leveraging social data to create stronger, mutually beneficial relationships. Technologies, content, and data management strategies are likely to vary wildly from previous CRM practices, thus creating a new landscape for the marketer.
Why Social CRM Matters
Customer data has no value in itself. What you do with that data is imperative. Social media gives a marketer a unique lens into content, campaign, and customer insight that has not been available until now. Using this new data source to better understand your customer can drive increased marketing effectiveness across all channels. Each vertical will use this data differently and see the power and progression of social CRM unfold in different ways.
Techniques Will Vary By Vertical
Unlike the early days of social media management, one size does not fit all. Big Data management, systems integration, and real-time analytics are coming to a marketing boardroom near you. For many marketers, including consumer packaged goods, automotive, fashion, retail, and airline, social CRM should end, or greatly reduce legacy CRM practices, as relationships managed through the social channel take the lead. This phenomenon has already been experienced with companies like Ben & Jerry's that eliminated their e-mail marketing in July of 2010 to map evolving customer communication preferences.
Other verticals like telecoms and financial service organizations are more likely to see their legacy practices continue as they seek to add a social component to their existing systems. This makes sense as their business challenges are often driven more by direct sales and customer care CRM scenarios than by pure brand-building marketing relationship management. However, even the practices of conservative organizations will continue to evolve over time as their customers shift the ways in which they expect communication.
Guide to Getting Started
The good news is that most brands have already started to build direct connections with their consumers across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Ren Ren and the like. If your brand has not yet ventured even this far, it is unlikely that this article will help you.
Start by mapping customer touch-points—understanding the data provided by each touch-point to better realize consumer expectations for contact by your vertical. This is not solely a marketing exercise and unlikely something that should be tasked to a digital communications agency. This process works best if a consultative process is used that includes PR, digital, marketing, customer care, IT/IS and marketing operations together with other areas, depending on the vertical.
Next step is designing your new "social stack" or the collection of software and services you'll require to reach your customers and achieve your objectives. There is no single-solution software on the market today so you'll likely need some integration processes. This will require yourorganization to map software and services in parallel and to define a project implementation lifecycle. Depending on company size, it may take one to two years to operationalize and realize the full potential of your new stack.
Key areas of focus in this stack should be (1) publishing and customer contact infrastructure, (2) data storage and management systems, (3) analytics and visualization software, and (4) third-party data sources (Facebook, Radian6, Twitter, paid media, web analytics, etc.). It sounds complex but significant work has already been done throughout the industry to make this all easier.
Marketers should speak with a number of vendors to understand their approaches and objectives prior to issuing an RFP. At this stage in the market, it is appropriate to venture forward with a more open RFI model. I continue to see many RFP's that are overly specific and that seek tactical solutions instead of approaches aligned to a company's long-term priorities and integrations. The danger in such a methodology is that it ends up developing solutions in search of a problem or tactical solutions that will not survive over the long-term as they are not connected to a core business challenge.
Ready or not, the world of social marketing and CRM are coming to a new place in market maturity and marketer opportunity. Over thenext few years, the social marketing landscape will shift from one of fragmented tools to a future of integrated platforms interwoven for marketing effectiveness. Marketers who embrace the change early will be best suited to serve their organizations and to meet the expectations and demands of their customers.

What you need to know about Pinterest

March 23, 2012  |  Kristin Laird  |  Comments

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In their most basic form, today’s popular social media sites are really no different than old-school arts and crafts projects, only more convenient and less timely. Gone are the days when scissors, construction paper and a pile of glue sticks were vital to chronicle one’s life. Facebook’s new Timeline for instance, allows users to create an online scrapbook one picture and post at a time. Instagram uses digital filters to crop and mat a photograph into a piece of art. And then there’s Pinterest, a virtual bulletin board containing images and links that a user finds interesting or inspiring. It becomes a visual representation of who the user is or who they hope to be.
Members of the site can collect images or pins to be placed on thematic—and public—boards that are customized around topics of their choosing. An event planner, for instance, can save images of table settings, venues or party favours sourced from sites across the internet or other like-minded Pinterest users.

Launched as a closed beta in March 2010, Pinterest has become one of the top-rising social media channels in the past few months. Its mainstream appeal hit somewhere between Snooki’s pregnancy and the launch of the iPad 3. Data compiled by digital advertising agency Modea shows that on average, users are spending more time on Pinterest (15.8 minutes) than Twitter (3.3 minutes) or Facebook (12.1 minutes).
“Up until Pinterest came along there wasn’t a way to visualize that tagging or bookmarking or sharing process,” says Twist Image president Mitch Joel, of Pinterest’s sudden widespread popularity. “I think part of it is just the fact that human beings are very visual people and to create that mood board is a profound and powerful thing.”
A number of social media sites are moving away from text-only content and introducing more image-heavy applications, but the simplicity and rich, visual experience puts Pinterest over the edge, says Ed Lee, director, social media at Tribal DDB. “With Pinterest, you see it, you pin it. Job done.”
David Jones, vice-president of social strategy at Proximity, says visually, “pinning” is similar to a fashion blogger posting a picture of “something cool” and writing a few lines about it—a task that could take as much as an hour. Pinning an item takes a fraction of the time but still allows the user to create an online identity—who they are, what they value and what they stand for, says Jones.
“You’re creating these emotional spaces driven by imagery, and the way you collect things says a lot about you as a person,” he says. “From an anthropological point of view, it’s creativity without having to actually be creative.” And because Pinterest is built to work with users’ Facebook Timeline, online influencers have yet another platform to engage with followers.
With its vast potential of recipes, decorating tips and fashion trends, it’s not surprising that women are flocking to the site. While reports around user statistics vary, Modea suggests that the majority (68.2%) of people on Pinterest are female. The site’s female users are driving traffic to publications such as Country Living, House of Beautiful and Elle Decor in record numbers. A recent Mashable.com article reported that starting last summer, “Pinterest sent more traffic to MarthaStewart.com than Facebook and Twitter combined.”
Why? Because publications like House & Home have “awesome images” and “cool content” that people want to share, says Jones. If a user repins an image from another user, the original link to the article or website remains intact. “If it’s great imagery, people will find their way back to your site,” says Jones.
So the pretty-picture magazines are enjoying a boost from Pinterest, but is there potential for marketers to boost their brands?
Scott Stratten, president of Oakville, Ont.-based Un-Marketing, thinks so—especially if brands cater to women and have a wealth of visual and relevant content as long as that content is easy to pin. A lot of fashion or retail sites, for example, tend to use Flash or animation, which isn’t pinnable, he says. “If you sell sweaters, you’d much rather have a sweater that’s easily pinnable from your store site or a direct link to where you can buy the sweater rather than have somebody take a screen shot and pin it themselves,” says Stratten. If content is shareable, a brand’s growth on Pinterest is organic rather than forced, which is always ideal.
“If the majority of your market is using that tool, then put that pin on your website,” says Stratten.
Despite Pinterest’s recent surge, the industry has seen buzzed-about platforms lose their luster before (ahem, Four Square and Quora). So is this the kind of communications tool marketers should pin their hopes on? Or is it simply the shiny new social toy of today that will be replaced by something else tomorrow?
The answer? It depends.
Though the referral and adoption rates are compelling, it’s still early days. Industry experts agree that it’s hard to gauge the potential of Pinterest or the impact it will have on consumers—or a bottom line. It’s important to remember that Pinterest is still in its infancy and will likely evolve over time, says Joel, using Twitter as an example. Hashtags and trending topics were introduced to the microblogging site more than a year after it launched in 2006. Eventually, “people will be using Pinterest in new and different ways that we could never have imagined possible,” says Joel.
The real message for marketers is that they must at least be aware of the different social media platforms and then determine which ones are a good fit for the brand, says Stratten. “You don’t have to be everywhere and everything on all these sites,” he says. “You’ll just spread your resource too thin.”

Everplaces Creates A Pinterest For The Real World

BY E.B. Boyd | 03-15-2012 | 8:30 AM

The app lets you capture and store places in the physical world that you want to keep track of. "We wanted to make it easy to share 'insider tips,'" cofounder and CEO Tine Thygensen tells us.

How many times have you struggled to remember the name of that hole-in-the-wall with the decent beer but excellent dartboards? Or the dim sum place in New York whose location you wrote down somewhere but now can't recall where?
Everplaces is a new app that essentially functions as a Pinterest for the real world. It lets you capture and store places in the physical world that you want to keep track of, whether that's a swank bistro in your hometown or a boutique in Buenas Aires that always has the best cutting-edge fashions.
Available on the iPhone (with an Android version in the works), Everplaces is drop-dead simple: You capture locations either from the web, or by searching for them, or importing them from places you've already stored in Google MyMaps. You can add notes, as well as your own photos, to each record. Then when you need to remember where that place is, you just open the app and find it.
"We wanted to make it easy to share 'insider tips,'" cofounder and CEO Tine Thygensen tells Fast Company, "like where's great for brunch (but awful for drinks), what's good if there's afternoon sun, where to have the pancakes, or which restaurants are great for a quiet dinner versus good for parties with groups."
Since its beta launched in December, the system is now in use 65 countries around the world, with the U.S. and Germany leading the charge. Top cities are New York, San Francisco, London, and Berlin, followed by Copenhagen (where Everplaces is based), Austin, TX, Jeddah, Orlando, and Toronto.
Almost a third of the 45,000 places saved so far are food-related, Thygesen says. Art is popular as well, and users have been requesting categories for Architecture and Design.
While refining the idea behind the app, Thygesen and her founding team discovered that around 20% of users struggled to keep track of places they wanted to remember, so much so that they developed workarounds, like adding notes about places to their calendars or note apps. "That told us the problem was big," Thygesen says.

How Brands Can Use Pinterest Without Breaking the Law

Sorry, But Most Images On The Web Aren't 'Public Domain'

By: Brian Heidelberger Published: March 01, 2012

Brian Heidelberger

As an advertising lawyer, I'd like to thank Ben Silbermann of West Des Moines, Iowa, for founding Pinterest, the hot new thing in social media. Given that all the frantic legal questions regarding Facebook and Twitter seem to have slowed down, it is our hope that Pinterest will cover this month's bar bill at the club (and maybe even our annual dues).
For those social media marketers who recently have been too busy tweeting about the Grammy's and Oscars (without permission) to get up to speed, Pinterest offers users the ability to organize images on a virtual pinboard. In practice, users can "pin" images from other's websites to their Pinterest page (or "pinboard") which are then visible to and can be "re-pinned" by other Pinterest users (kinda like a "re-tweet" or a "share" on Facebook). The pins use whole images (not just thumbnails) and link the viewer back to the original source of the image.
How Pinterest is Different
Unlike Twitter and Facebook (yawn! – so 2011) the main use of Pinterest is the posting of photos that the user doesn't own. In contrast, the main use of Facebook and Twitter is to post content created by the person posting and to link to content the user doesn't own. And while consumers may be currently "pinning" images that they don't own to their personal Pinterest page seemingly without repercussion, a major advertiser developing a brand pinboard likely won't have the same luxury. To be clear, just because the Internet gives a brand the ability to pin an image to a Pinterest page doesn't mean that it's legal. In truth, the vast majority of images found on the Internet are not "public domain" and pinning or re-pinning them on a brand's virtual pinboard, risks of a copyright infringement claim by the original image owner.
How to Limit Liability
Given the risk of copyright infringement, how can an advertiser still take advantage of the Pinterest hoopla? First, only pin (and "re-pin") images that your brand owns or has appropriately licensed. For licensed images, pay special attention to any license usage limitations. At a minimum you will want unlimited usage on the Internet, but given that use on Pinterest is such a new use that you may want to consider specifically listing "Pinterest usage" in the license. Another good way to find images that you can pin or re-pin is to leverage brand partners' images (with permission of course), which increases your image library, and affords your partner additional traffic to its sites.
We're not going to kid you, this risk reduction strategy will significantly limit your ability to pin and re-pin content found on Pinterest to your company's brand page. But unfortunately the way consumers are currently using Pinterest just isn't the same way that your brand will likely be able to use it, given that a brand's commercial use will be much more attractive to potential plaintiffs. Pinterest attempts to limit its own legal liability by providing in its terms that users are only supposed to post or pin content that they own or that they have the right to post. From a practical matter, this may give Pinterest some legal protection, but the same legal protections will not likely protect your brand page since you are directly pinning the images.
To address copyright concerns, Pinterest recently introduced the "nopin" code, which allows websites to block users from pinning their images. But a website's images aren't fair game just because it doesn't display a "nopin" code. A copyright owner has no obligation to use a "nopin" code, and one cannot assume that the failure to use a "nopin" code is implicit permission. Similarly, there is even risk for brands that pin images from websites using a "Pin It" button, as there is no guarantee that the website allowing you to "Pin It" actually has the proper copyright to grant you rights to pin the image.
Celebs and Other's Trademarks Are Still Off Limits
Would you post a large picture of the alleged milk-a-holic Lindsay Lohan to the home page of your brand's website? Not without risking her lawsuit for $100 million. With respect to third party trademarks and the use of celebrity names and likenesses, the same general rules that apply to your brand's website should be applied to Pinterest. Pinning images of third party trademarks or celebrities could lead to claims that the brand is using the trademark and/or celebrity for its own commercial purpose without permission in violation of the law. You're more likely to get a complaint if the trademark owner or celebrity whose image is used already has a relationship with your competitor and certainly the higher profile celebrities/brands present more risk. Finally, don't forget that the pinned images link users back to the originating website. So as an advertiser you may want to evaluate whether you want your brand to be associated with all of the content available at the linked site.
Unique Promotion Issues
Using Pinterest for promotions presents its own practical issues. You have limited space in which to make required disclosures, like the official rules (500 character descriptions). Also keep in mind that Pinterest boards aren't private and are viewable upon creation. So before encouraging consumers to create a themed pinboard for your promotion, consider what images the consumer may connect to your brand. Don't forget that consumers may use images they don't own which, in addition to copyright issues, could present complications if you planned on using the winning pinboard for later publicity. To be safe, you may consider providing consumers a library of images to pin from that you own or have licensed.