By  Melissa Lawhorn
While there are a lot of social networks out there, one of the golden rules of digital marketing is to go where your customers go. Right now, that place is Pinterest.

Not convinced? According to Compete, unique visitors to Pinterest.com increased by 429% from September to December 2011, and the social network already boasts a user base of 3.3million.  In order for brands to be successful on Pinterest, they need to engage fans in a way that convinces them to do one of two things: either engage or convert. By engaging with the content (repinning, commenting, or liking) they are sharing the content with their followers.  By converting, a Pinterest user has seen the content the brand puts out and actually follows through to making a purchase from that brand.

Sometimes seeing who else is doing a great job can be the best way to learn to use a platform for your own brand.  With that in mind, we’ve chosen 4 brands that maintain a presence on Pinterest and we’re sharing our thoughts on what they’re doing right.

Birchbox has taken beauty product lovers by storm with their monthly delivery system.  Each month, Birchbox delivers customers with a box of 4-5 designer product samples. If thecustomers like the product(s), they can purchase the full size version directly from the Birchbox online store.

What they’re doing right on Pinterest: Birchbox is doing a great job of utilizing Pinterest to not only connect with current customers, but also to reach out and interact with those people that may not yet know about the service by creating boards like “Backstage at New York FashionWeek.” Our standout board from Birchbox is their Your Birchboxes board, where they share photos that customers tweet them after receiving their monthly delivery. This is a great way to show that they are actively engaging with customers and paying attention to what they’re saying about each month’s products.

Etsy: The place for all things handmade. Etsy has storefronts selling everything under the sun: physical products like jewelry, clothing, and home décor, and non-physical products like blog templates and website layouts.

What they’re doing right on Pinterest: Etsy does a fantastic job of using their boards to draw attention to all of the wonderful artists that create custom items and then sell them on the Etsy platform. Our standout board though is one that doesn’t promote Etsy sellers. Instead, it relates to what Etsy users may be interested in: handmade products. Their board DIY Products shows a variety of projects that come with instructions on how people can complete them at home. This is a simple way to get users thinking of other handmade items they may beinterested in making, but aren’t able to do it themselves… and then that Pinterest user can search Etsy for a similar product. This is a great way to encourage customers to go to Etsy and interact with their site, which will hopefully lead to a purchase.

Chobani is a very popular brand of Greek yogurt, and is considered to be one of the best because it contains only natural ingredients, no synthetic growth hormones, and is Gluten-freeand Kosher-certified.

What they’re doing right on Pinterest: Chobani is utilizing Pinterest to promote their product, like any other brand using the platform but what we like is that they’re using customer recipes to do so. For example, did you know that you can actually replace some of the most commoncondiments with Chobani, a much healthier option? Based on that not-so-well-known fact,we’ve chosen Simple Swaps as our standout board. This board shows you how to make simple swaps in your everyday diet choices, like Chobani in place of mayo and sour cream.

Oreck, a company known for making vacuums and other small home appliances like airpurifiers, may not seem like an obvious brand to make the leap into the Pinterest world. Between that and their pinning strategy, we felt they were a great choice for our top 4.

What they’re doing right on Pinterest: We’ve chosen our standout board for Oreck based on the fact that they’re using their Clean Made Easy board to give tips that users are actively seeking out on the site. The board includes cleaning tips, how to make your own dishwasher detergent, and other pins similar in nature. The board fits in perfectly with the products Oreck creates, but also shows that they understand what kind of content their followers are interested in seeing.

With those examples in mind, here are a few tips from the Real Bullets team on utilizing Pinterest for your brand:

• Try things out… Maybe you’ve noticed that people following your brand aren’trepinning your product photos, but they are pinning the photos of your product sitting in someone’s well-decorated kitchen. Start an “Around the Home” board and ask customers to submit their photos of your product in their home via Twitter, Facebook,or Instagram. Not only does this increase engagement on your other social channels, but it makes customers feel valued by your brand.

• Don’t be afraid to ditch something that isn’t working! So you started your “Around the Home” board, but you haven’t gotten very many photo submissions.That’s okay! Pinterest is still new, and there aren’t established best practices. If something you try doesn’t get much engagement, toss it out and try something else.

• Pin when people are pinning. It’s important to keepin mind that Pinterest is primarily a place where people are hanging out during their lunch break or after work, so try to pin during that time. That way, your content will be right at the top of their stream instead of buried under other people’s pins. This is important because with so much pinning going on, it’s easy to get distracted!

• Incorporate Pinterest into your social media strategy by utilizing a hashtag. Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest all recognize hashtags as a way to find and/or identify content. Because of the common hashtag recognition factor, a brand cancreate a campaign and utilize the hashtag across all of the platforms.

These are our 4 best brands and tips from Real Bullets on how to get started usingPinterest for your brand. Have a question or want help? Give us a shout info@RealBulletsbranding.com

My heart always gets a little warmer when I turn away from the gathering I’m at (who is there to watch football of course) and log on Twitter and visit with my people about the REALLY important stuff. People who say things like:
“I’m here for the ads”
“Are you ready for some… Commercials!?”

So I was pretty excited this year to take a look at the ads and despite the fact that they seemed to have been posted everywhere, I held out to watch them live with the game. In total, Bluefin Labs estimated the total social media comments to be at 9 million, which broke last year’s record.

BEST: For me, M&M’s took the cake with the entertainment factor.

Runners Up:  Chevy Apocalypse, Sketchers (for those of us who prefer dogs in our ads), and of course Chrysler (for those of us who prefer Clint Eastwood in our ads).

Worst: That Audi commercial. For those of you that forgot about it (understandable, it was at the very beginning and was less than memorable) it contained vampires. I’ll stop there. To me, this commercial was the equivalent of wearing MC Hammer pants about 6 months after the trend was over.

Runners up: GoDaddy, nothing new here. Scantily clad girl with promises of ‘see more if you come to our site’

Best Social Media Move Ad:
When the Best Buy commercial came on and featured entrepreneurs all over the country everyone in the room said ‘who is that?’, ‘what’s a Shazaam?’ but online the Twitters were positively buzzing with praise for this nod to the tech industry. Did they get a ton of social media mentions because of it? Yes. Was it worth it to alienate probably 85% of people watching who had no clue who the commercial highlighted? Remains to be seen.

Most interesting Branding Move: Century 21 This is where the ads got a bit more interesting. Century 21 had a commercial that focused heavily on its realtors which I thought was a really

great branding move. I’ve written about the real estate industry before and always thought that it would be useful if the parent company (Keller Williams, Century 21, etc.)  would push the realtors to the forefront of their business instead of promoting a giant logo.  If Century 21 really goes all the way withthat idea, it could be huge for them both as a brand as well as for recruiting new agents.

Runner up: Chevy – they had a huge range of demographics covered by their ads and while they weren’t necessarily at the tip top of my list, I think as a brand they satisfied more people with their ads this year than most others.

What do you think?  Which brand did the best job this year?

When I was invited by a friend to go to the Bushmills Whiskey party in Boston the first thing I asked was:

“are they going to have anything besides whiskey drinks?”  I’m not a huge fan of whiskey (until last night).  My friend said “no, it’s a whiskey party, what’s wrong with you?”

Since I hadn’t seen this friend in a while, I went.  I assumed it would be another branded event where I’d be handed informational pamphlets, had the sellers bug me about how whiskey is made, why I should buy it, cram in a room with 600 people, blah blah blah.

This wasn’t like that.

1) Bushmills knew who they wanted and they wanted tastemakers so that’s who they invited.  They didn’t need to pack the place to the gills until it was uncomfortable so they could report numbers back to corporate.  It was an event that you could wander around in or even find a seat if you wanted.  wonderful.

2) They recorded and branded content for themselves and their partygoers.  A ton of it.  It was genius.  Since they had all the right tastemakers at their party they launched a small army of photographers into the room to take photos of everyone enjoying their product.  Good lord they probably have a zillion videos and photos of happy, real people enjoying Bushmills.  They also had a cool photo group set up in one corner to take fun photos with your friends and some hipsterish props (think antlers and mustaches).  They had iPads there so you could immediately upload your photos to your Facebook page, Twitter, and whatever other channel you wanted to upload to.  Here’s mine:

Since they were inviting kind of a hip crowd they made sure that the photos, the props, the food, etc. were all in a certain style so that this crowd would want to upload it.  Can you imagine if they had some bright splashy frame around this photo?  Not nearly as many people would have wanted to upload them.

They also printed some of the photos out so that I had hard copies to take home.  The rest I can get off of their Facebook page.

This is genius because in one night they got a non whiskey drinker to:

try their product, have photos taken with it, upload a lightly branded photo to my Facebook page, visit their Facebook page to check out the rest of the photos I was in, and also have hard copy Bushmills branded photos on my refrigerator.  All because I happened to like the style everything was created in.

3) They knew what else their audience would like from an event.  Some of the tastemakers they invited were foodies, so their appetizer offerings ranged from bacon brownies to gourmet baby back rib bites, to cupcakes.  Branded cupcakes of course.  This gave people additional options to capture the event the way that they wanted to.  I saw people all over the place snapping iPhone pictures of the food.

Overall Lesson:

When you want to do some type of event that has branding to it, go all the way.

Think about your audience and the style they will like, not your style.

Create content at events and also, think of ways to help people at your event create their own content.

There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.

~ Indira Ghandi

When it comes to competition, I know a lot of people might say ‘don’t worry about what other people are doing’.  My mom would say that.  My grade school teachers would say that.  I might even be tempted to say that if it weren’t so helpful in strategy building to know exactly what other people are doing.

I had a client recently that came to me very worried about the Facebook pages of its nearest competitors, we’ll say that this client had a diet product.  They wanted to know how each of their competitors were communicating with an audience that wanted to lose weight online so that they could build a better website and Facebook page.  They listed out each weight loss product that sold something similar to them and I took a look at their strategies – none of them were very good.

But knowing your competition isn’t just about knowing who makes the same product or offers the same service as you.  The wonderful world of the internet has made it possible to click from your site to your competitor’s to a shoe site to a site for baby pandas in about 30 seconds.

After I was finished with their strategy the competition landscape had changed completely.  The top groups talking about weight loss weren’t my client and their competitors.  It was yoga studios, The Food Network, and Special K cereal.  They had no idea that they weren’t just in the ring with competitors they knew about, they were going to have to participate with anyone having a similar conversation with their target audience.

1) Find Out Who They Are:

Who else is talking to the audience I’m targeting about the same type of ideas?

You can do a number of searches to figure this out.  Search Twitter, Search on Google, set up an alert for the topics you talk about and see who else is weighing in and how, look through Facebook, etc.  This is a better view of your landscape and will help you construct a better strategy because you will have a better idea of the conversation and who is participating.

2) Where Are They Succeeding?  Where Are They Dropping The Ball?

Sometimes, these are obvious.  Let’s take my weight loss product client again.  While most of their competitors were on Facebook and Twitter having great conversations, there were lots and lots of individuals uploading photos of their healthy meals for weight loss on Flickr, and no one was responding to these.  This is how we started to determine where there were opportunities online for my client to take the lead.

3) If You Can’t Beat Them…..

Sometimes the brands having robust conversation online won’t be competitive enough that you can’t work together.  LOTS of brands co-write blog posts, host contests, and come out with online deals together because they can better have a conversation with this audience if they do it together.

Strategy Thought: Building your strategy shouldn’t be just about keeping up with the Jones’s Facebook Page.  Determine where there is unique opportunity by finding mediums or platforms that aren’t as heavily used (Tumblr is doing VERY well with audiences but most brands haven’t jumped in here yet) but will still resonate with the audience.

“Forget safety, live where you fear to live”  ~Rumi

I started telling people a week or so ago that Ryan and I were moving to Boston.  We collected boxes, started packing the kitchen stuff and talked a lot about the move.  We discussed how this might work, how my business would do, how I would meet people.  The more I talked with the people in my life about moving the more I found myself using  the same analogy to describe it:

“I’m jumping off the diving board and hoping there’s water in the pool” ~ me

I thought it was kind of a funny/true way to describe it and was feeling rather brave and bold by the idea.  But as this became my moving mantra a little pinhole of worry crept into the statement.   At the end of this week I had something of a lightning bolt hit me – I am actually afraid there’s going to be no water in the pool.

Then the flood came over the weekend:

what if I don’t meet people?  What if people in Boston only want to work with people from Boston?  Who do I think I am moving a whole business? What if people think my logo is stupid?  What if people think my ideas are stupid? What if I have a bad day and want to go to a movie with a friend but can’t because I haven’t met anyone who likes me enough to hang out with me on a bad day yet?

I realize reading those last statements that if someone told me that they were afraid of that above list that I would tell them that they were being ridicuous.   Yet there they are, first thing this morning I’m thinking ‘what if I forget to forward all of my business payment addresses and I NEVER get a check in the mail again and I am homeless and shoeless under a bridge?” – yes, it’s that dramatic.

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that this big change is a huge opportunity for me but to get to the opportunity part I have to let go of some old things that I don’t want to have in my life anymore and I have to basically let go of my entire comfort zone.

The rational thinking side of me knows that leaving your comfort zone can be a really great thing.  I’ve read loads of posts about it:  here’s a good one from Business Insider,  here’s one from Tiny Buddha,  here’s an article about why moving is good for you.

This week none of those posts worked on me, it’s still really scary.

Confession over.

Anyone else moved to a completely new place and felt the fear?

So, big news for Real Bullets Branding!
I’ve decided to move the whole show to Boston after long hours of trying to figure out if Madison was the right city (for a while it was), or if the winters were going to be warmer than Wisconsin (they aren’t really), and if I could learn to root for a team that’s not the Brewers (no way).

Truthfully, a smaller city like Madison is awesome for starting a company.  Living expenses are reasonable and there aren’t as many crazy fun things to distract you from doing something like working insane hours on a business.  Even the New York Times says you have to be a little bit cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs to be an entrepreneur so its best if you can make the ‘where you live’ part really easy.

At first, this was great – I had a nice reasonable rent and I didn’t have to make all that much money to survive.  Then after a while I started getting clients in other states that wanted me to come see them.  I started having to fly to conferences because the big ones are almost never near Madison and it’s altogether possible that I am personally supporting Kayak.com and Starwood Hotels.  When I added it all up, I could be living in a more accessible city for the same amount.

Actually, you should just read Penelope Trunk’s post about where to start a company: Starting a company in Silicon Valley is Stupid.  I asked her one time where she thought I should move the company and she told me Detroit since it’s rebuilding AND low cost.

So with the move now in full swing I became obsessed with all of the great sites and apps devoted to helping you figure out where you should live like:

Walkscore.com – you put in an address, a neighborhood, a street, and it tells you how walkable it is.  It’s like a gift from above.

Eat St. - app that tells you where all the food trucks are in the area.

Aroundme - Great app that tells you quite literally, what’s around you – this is perfect for a person like me that finds themselves in a strange city or neighborhood and wants to walk to coffee, nail salon, vodka bar business meeting.

I’m going to do my best to document the process of moving a company across the country so if any of you would like to hear about any specific part of the process – let me know!

I’ve been working from Boston this week so I’ve had the great fortune to hang out with some internet friends I haven’t seen in a while as well as meet some new people.  One of the things I love about conferences, parties, and seeing old friends is that you usually end up having loads of good conversation.  One in particular really stood out because we went around and around with this for hours.

Is being an entrepreneur the same as being a business owner?  Are the terms interchangeable?

It seems like being an entrepreneur is such a popular title these days and it’s being applied to every possible job title from franchise owners to the unemployed.  I should add that all of the people talking about this subject were in fact business owners.  Yet, we couldn’t agree at all on the answer.

The actual definition of an entrepreneur is this: A person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on financial risk to do so.

My take: Not interchangeable

I always felt that ‘entrepreneur’ was more of a characteristic than a vocation.  That a person who was an administrative assistant or a construction worker could be ‘entrepreneurial’, much like being creative.  Perhaps once you start labeling yourself as an entrepreneur you should have created some sort of business that is different or that aims to further an industry.  So, a franchise owner wouldn’t necessarily qualify under my definition just having bought a franchise.

Another sides:

A few people considered the term ‘entrepreneur’ to be completely interchangeable with ‘business owner’.  It was vocation based only and some even said that you had to have reached some level of success with the business before you really qualified to call yourself an entrepreneur (we couldn’t even remotely come to an agreement on what that level of success might be).

Some thought that to be an entrepreneur you had to have employees – this would exclude consultants and bloggers from being entrepreneurs.

It became such a hot topic that we eventually decided that it would be a great question to pose to others over the next few weeks while I’m here and return to the subject later.

So what do you think?  Who can be an entrepreneur?

I wasn’t supposed to go to Coachella (which, if you are over 30 you might not know is a music festival of about 100,000 people in the desert outside of LA showcasing a huge lineup of bands, mostly indie) but ended up there because of some good luck (thanks Christina and Asos.com!), in 97 degree heat, with a lot of sweaty people.

So, the first thing I did was of course, look up the sponsors and see who was doing what.  100,000 music fans are a good group to be able to get in front of for 3 days straight.  The demo here is an under 30, style forward, “I was listening to that band way before they were cool”, kind of group.  In other words – the cool kids.

Who Did It Right

H&M:  H&M got it spot on with their tent because they understood that being out here for 3 days (some of these brave souls camping) this group would have needs.  A lot of them.  So their tent wasn’t about jean shorts, paisley tank tops, or hoop earrings.  They had a tent full of something more valuable than gold here – deodorant.  By supplying basic items like deodorant, smelly sprays, sunblock, etc. they became so much more relevant to this audience.  Case in point: the line 50 people deep at some points during the weekend. H&M did provide several other things as part of their sponsorship,  this part was just the most creative.

Who Was OK:

5Gum. They made a nice dark tent that was somewhat air conditioned for people to take a break in, which was absolutely necessary for the heat that weekend.  Still, with the sensory coolness they are showing in their commercials they could have done something more interesting – piping in scents?  More tactile experiences using textured walls?

Then The Trouble Started:

Coachella is held in Palm Springs, Ca where there are maybe 50 cab drivers that work there regularly.  At 3AM, there are 100,000 people trying to get somewhere.  I managed to make friends with a driver right away and convince him to pick me up every night at the same time and place but from my window view I saw hundreds of kids trying to get to a hotel, or anywhere.  I asked my driver why there weren’t any cabs coming. “There aren’t enough.  Some of these kids will have to sleep here tonight”  They were hitchhiking, jumping in front of cars, seriously – desperate for a ride. I was thinking:

“wait a minute…..  isn’t Hyundai a sponsor of this thing?”

For the rest of the weekend, getting a ride was a common complaint at Coachella.  People waiting 2-3 hours to go somewhere.  As a sponsor, Hyundai could have saved the day by sending cars, golf carts, cabs – even if they just took VIP guests they could have come off as a hero here.  I honestly kept waiting for them to step it up but night 3 was as bad (if not worse) than the first night.

The Brand That Didn’t Sponsor But Was The Most Visible:

When Kanye West came onstage, people began to cheer and a funny thing happened that everyone in the crowd felt.  Everyone raised their iPhones to the sky – videotaping Kanye’s entrance.  The Jumbotron to the side of the stage captured and showed to the crowd tens of thousands of iPhones in the sky.  Even the occasional iPad could be seen taping the show.  People noticed.  A girl next to me said:

“this is like a religious thing, everyone praising the Apple gods”. I wondered who would actually use the recording of the show, which sites it would end up on, or who’s Facebook page the next day.  Didn’t matter, that Apple icon was on the Jumbotron hundreds of times.

So with all these people bringing recording technology into this festival, sponsors could have really gotten some great press here.  Just sayin’.

Trends From Coachella:

Boho chic, boho chic, and more boho chic.  We took dozens of photos of feather earrings and fringe bags. ( I bought this one right away when I got home). There were feathers in hair (from tasteful to outlandish), feathers on bags, and feathers on shoes.

Bright sunglasses and unique sunglasses. The huge oversize sunglasses trend seems to be out in favor of rocking your own style.

Waiting for a ride.

I did it.  I launched a new company.   It’s called Real Bullets Branding – here’s the site.

I’d love to say it was because I was hit by a lightening bolt idea and had to make it real, but it didn’t happen that way.  What happened was, I was developing strategies for lots of different brands.  First small-ish ones, then bigger, and then eventually I was on calls with 10 people in New York and California telling them about how I help my parents on their farm over the weekend (people on the coasts love my farm stories) and how to find their ‘people’ online.

Then they would ask me if I could handle big projects because I was only one person and I would say “yes, I can handle big projects because I have a lot of friends in this industry and if we need a bigger team I’ll get one”.  But I ran into this question over and over again.  I needed to change my perception.  I also got so busy that I outsourced my paychecks, accounting, and got a virtual assistant.  Like, you know, a bigger company and not a consultant. 

Another thing that changed was that I stopped updating Twitter feeds  and Facebook pages for people.  I don’t think social media is about that.  In fact, I don’t think social media is necessarily even online all the time anymore.  It’s about creating kinship with the people that love your brand or would love your brand if they knew about it.

Once you get to the point where you are talking to ‘everyone’ – like maybe Pepsi you’re just mass advertising which isn’t even working for Pepsi.   Brand advocates are the ones that are passionate about an industry, an idea, or even…. a brand or product and what I realized is that over the last year I’ve been fantastic at finding those people.  So that’s what my new company does.

Thanks for your patience during my extreme hiatus while I wrote what seems like a novel in copy for the new site!

3 years ago I fell in love with a painting I saw in a gallery in Santa Fe.  I stood there for nearly 2 hours looking at it.  From every angle.  First one way and then walking by it, and then going into another room before coming back.  Then  trying to decide if I could justify spending more than 2 months rent on this.  I took the card of the gallery telling myself that I could always have it shipped.

Over the next 3 years, I thought about this painting often.  It literally was haunting me.   Also in this time period, I lost the gallery card and forgot the artist’s name.

Last week I went back to Santa Fe, found the gallery and ran from room to room looking for the painting.  Or something from the artist.  The gallery owner came up and asked me what I was looking for and I described the painting to her.  She told me that the artist had beautiful work but was ‘difficult to motivate’.  That she often painted entire paintings only to sand them down and start over, often completing only 1 work in long periods of time.   She had even told the artist that she could sell her work easily if she would just stop ruining it before it made it to the gallery.

“she’s feeling like she’s this tortured artist, but… it’s a business and she could make a good living”.

She then told me that she hoped I had learned a lesson about things you love at first site.  “You take them, you don’t miss out on things you’re going to think about for years.”  She told me how she wanted to go over to the artist’s house and grab the paintings before she could paint over them and bring them into the gallery.

So I’ve been thinking about this artist that ruins her own paintings.  It’s not so uncommon, there are Buddhist poets that burn their poems once they write them and even Picasso was known to paint right over his work with a new work. Less romantically, there are also a lot of entrepreneurs that do the exact same thing.

Bloggers that excessively edit their posts and never publish them.  Business ideas that are never opened because the owner has a bad day and decides it’s a stupid idea.  People that get a few bad reviews and discard their great idea.  Even social media and marketing plans that never see the light of day because the creator is too afraid to speak up at the brainstorming meeting.

I’ve ruined plenty of perfectly good ideas, most notably in my first business.  I had done this artsy (really cool in retrospect) event that got a lashing in a local publication the next day.  I let that review become my gallery owner, I started editing out the creative parts of every event until they were stale, boring, and eventually not fun to create anymore.

So here’s what I propose:  When you are having one of those ideas that you want to shoot down imagine this gallery owner over your shoulder grabbing your idea and taking it to market for you.  Envision your gallery owner taking an objective look before you cover it up with something else.  It may not turn out to be the most excellent idea ever but I think having a moment where you allow an outside perspective (even if it’s yourself thinking about it from a different angle – like the gallery owner looking at it through a seller’s eyes) can get you out of your own way.  It just doesn’t make sense to kill an idea, business, or half finished project with a jury of one.

Have you ever tossed an idea you wish you hadn’t?

pic of artist is Matte Stephens, here’s an interview with him.