They say you learn something new every day. I learned something about Pinterest the other day that blew my mind a little. Users like links. This might seem like a no-brainer to some, but it goes against what I’ve learned in my years on the various social networks. On most networks, there are images and there are links. Images normally perform the best across the board. Links, on the other hand, do not. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ all prefer images over links. It isn’t just the algorithms on Facebook and Google+, it’s also the overall community sentiment on all three, including Twitter. Pinterest…

In one sentence, the advice that business owners and marketers need to hear is this: “Everything on your Facebook page should be centered around the real world.” No, I don’t mean the reality TV show that launched it all in 1992. When The Real World launched on MTV 27 seasons ago (yes, it’s still going strong in case you weren’t aware), it set in motion a genre of television that many people claim to hate but that still gets millions of viewers every day. Today, the day to day version of “the real world of marketing on Facebook” should take one concept from the original show intro: “…start getting real.”…

There are plenty of articles, blog posts, videos, and testimonials out there demonstrating that businesses are having tremendous success using Facebook and other social media sites to communicate successfully with their customers. Those aren’t the stories that you ever hear about, though. Instead, many are terrified of a major Facebook misstep such as what recently happened to Applebee’s. Those are the stories that are told, the ones that gurus discuss and warn about in blog posts to keep pageviews going to their websites. Just as the real world news has always had an attitude of, “if it bleeds,…

When Google first announced the Glass Project nearly a year ago, it looked like a nice enhancement to life that puts many of the powers of smartphones into the handsfree realm of wearable tech. Using voice commands and visual displays in the top right corner of view, the dream was to connect the world through the web in an intuitive interface that combined form and function beautifully. After watching the video below, Google Glass now appears to be the most dangerous new technology coming available. I’m only half kidding. This technology may be so cool, so useful, so distracting, that the funny…

The changes are cosmetic and symbolic. They’re also the most important changes that have happened to the Yahoo! homepage ever because of what they mean. This is CEO Marissa Mayer’s Yahoo! whether you notice it or not. The functionality on both the PC side as well as the mobile side are improved. It’s dramatic in that it’s quite different from the old look but not so much that people have an opportunity to complain. The same basic design is there. This is important because wholesale changes to look, feel, and functionality have proven disastrous for most who try it and Yahoo! doesn’t have a popularity…

Twitter is still the most used social network by businesses. This surprises some, but the latest statistics showed that 77% of businesses were on Twitter versus 74% on Facebook. It’s not a big difference, but it’s still at least a little surprising to many who view Facebook as the big social network and Twitter as the other guy in the field. Twitter is easier. It requires less time. It’s more about communication than popularity and there are no algorithms that can make your efforts meaningless like they can on Twitter. I’m not suggesting that businesses should be on Twitter and not Facebook. On the…

“Never” is a bold word. It is absolute and endless. To say that something can never happen is one of the most ignorant things that someone can say (or blog) in public. Thankfully, I tempered my statement with the word, “may”. “Impossible” is word that is similar to “never”. I’ll invoke it now: it isn’t impossible for social media to continue in one form or another indefinitely because of its nature. As long as there are humans, there’s a good chance that there will be some variation of social media. It’s a hard cat to put back in the bag. The folks over at Dashburst put together a graphic that explains five…

There’s a strange change that has been happening since the dawn of social media and that continues to accelerate every day. Teens are talking less to their parents and engaging more with their peers through social networks and mobile devices. The first shift, not talking to parents, has been happening for a long time but social media has made it even more prevalent. Engaging with their peers – it seems many communicate more with their fingers than their mouths nowadays. As a natural result of this shift, the art of parenting has shifted from watching where their kids are going to monitoring their…

Do you remember the person who consulted with you about social media and told you that brands are having tremendous success on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest? That’s the type of person that you’re reaching the most according to a report by NBCUniversal Integrated Media. The report is designed to show how consumers who are part of GenX and GenY are digesting their influences. It took a split approach to the study which consisted of 2,500 people – 2,000 were average respondents age 18-49 and the other 500 were “digital trendsetters” in the same age group which represent 5% of the national…

If it’s possible to be a true filmmaker using only the 6-seconds allowed on Twitter’s Vine app, actor Adam Goldberg would be the director, star, producer, writer, and mastermind behind the project. I have a lot to say about the combination of genius, randomness, and mystery that goes into his videos, but it’s best for you to see if for yourself. Check out his page and click through to all of his Vines or just check out a selection from the ones below. If you don’t watch everything he posts, you won’t understand any of it. Then again, you can watch everything he posts and still not understand any of it, but…