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A while ago, I wrote a not-so-serious blog post about using Twitter for dating. It was not a research project, but rather an experiment, and to my surprise a lot of people liked the post, and sent me their thoughts.  Today is Valentine’s day, and relationships are on everyone’s mind. This might be just the perfect time to publish an updated blog post about using social media for dating. Using these easy steps, even if you are single in the morning, you are guaranteed to have a date by the evening. 

1. Using Pinterest to tell a story

Unless social media is not your thing, you have heard about Pinterest. The question is how to properly strike a balance between telling an interesting story about yourself with pictures, and not getting overexposed by showing to much. Stay away from having a Board with only pictures of you – leave those pictures for Facebook galleries. You want to use a Board to tell a story about yourself. For example, one Board can have all the books that you like. This will immediately tell another person that you prefer adventurous novels or science fiction or graphic novels or fast pace thrillers. You want to tell the audience a story about yourself.

Be careful about what you pin, a picture of the book on how to fix bad relationships and your broken heart does not belong.  Another Board can be with movies that you like, or may be places that you would like to visit. You do not want to sound desperate, so never pin a picture of Venice with the following description – “when we get married, this is where I will take you.” A Board that showcases your favorite Renaissance paintings  might just be perfect.

2. Leveraging YouTube

Having a fun video about yourself, and how you live a life in the fast lane is always a good start. But, you want to mix it up. All the videos should not be just about you. Create a couple of playlists to showcase your personality. For example, Marathon Playlist will immediately tell another person not just what music you like but how active and athletic you are. Another playlist that I recommend having is one with your favorite funny moments. If another person is checking out your YouTube channel, you want them to have a great time. You want them to associate you with fun and laughter, and the best way to achieve it is to have a nice collection of smart and funny videos.

3. LinkedIN – Show Professional Self

According to the American Research Institute for Dating (this makes it sound important) women look for men who have their act together. Therefore, LinkedIN is your way to demonstrate just how accomplished you are. Go well beyond basic information about your job and education. This is a place to share where you volunteer and all the skills that you have that make you distinctly better than anyone else on the market. And, do not forget to ask for recommendations. It is a sure way to prove how good you are at time management, work-life balance and stewardship. Lastly, belonging to professional groups is like attending various networking events, only better, since you do not actually have to leave your house.

4. Facebook – Largest online pool of people

In 2010, Some 43,869,800 Facebook users changed their relationship status to single (Mashable). Here, you have to be careful. What you do on Facebook will not be only visible to people whose attention you are trying to get, but also to your parents. Using Facebook timeline feature, you can showcase your personal growth, and what an esteemed member of the community you have become in the past 10 years. Do not forget to post cute pictures – borrow your friend’s pug if you have to. On Facebook, you can look at the pictures of your friends’ friends. Use this as a way to get it. If your Facebook friend is a friend, they will make an introduction.

5. Twitter – Your elevator speech in 140 characters

Telling a story in 140 characters requires practice. However, besides tweeting about yourself, use this as an opportunity to follow people of the opposite sex and strike a conversation with them. (Guys, this might be the only place on Earth where following a woman will not get you in trouble.) Use common # to participate in discussions and learn more about the people you are trying to approach.

6. Google+ – Use Hangouts and get to know a person better

We are all very busy, and do not have the time to meet with every person individually. Use Hangouts to simultaneously meet with up to 9 prospects, and find the right one for you. Google+ is still not being used by everyone, but it is better to get started now. You do not want to be left behind. This network has two other features that are worth using in the dating process.

1. Place people in Circles, this way you can be more organized and only share relevant content.
2. Play games, beating someone’s high score is always a good excuse to say hi.

7. Blogs – the window to your soul

Blogs are a great way to get personal and lay all your issues out on the table. Your blog is not for bragging; do not write extensive posts about why you are the best thing since Brad Pitt or Angelina. Share your views on politics, child labor laws in Malaysia or what impact the church had on medieval society. Think about your audience, and tailor your content accordingly. Blogs are also a great way to pull your online presence together under one roof.

8. Foursquare – Single person is in the house

Foursquare already gives you points for checking in at the locations where the mayor is in the house. Now, I think it is time to use geo location services to announce that single people have just checked it. This way, once you are at a a social gathering, it becomes extremely easy to find other single people who are shy and hide near the bar. However, you do not want to overdo it, and look creepy. Be very casual about it.

9. Craigslist – Only if you are running out of options

Summary

Well, I think we covered quite a lot here. There are certainly a lot of other tools and techniques that did not make it on the list. We will add them later. For now, my last recommendation would be to power off the device on which you are reading this and go out to meet new people.  Happy Valentines Day!

I admit that I do have a slightly biased opinion towards SalesForce.com. You can say that I am drunk on Marc Benioff’s cool aid, to which I’d respond that I think they have one of the most amazing technical platforms in the world. But what I’d like to share today has nothing to do with SalesForce.com platform. I want to share a little story about an amazing customer service and the ability to listen to the customers and turn around on the dime.

Please follow the timeline:

December 13, 2011: SalesForce.com announces Analytics Edition on its blog: http://blogs.salesforce.com/product/2011/12/introducing-the-analytics-edition.html. The edition includes features such as:

• bucketing, a feature which lets you group data and place them in categories – buckets. For numeric data, you can say that deals under $1000 are small, and over that are large
• cross-filtering, that allows you to filter on related objects, for instance, in a report on accounts and contacts, to show all contacts in accounts that don’t have a closed opportunity.
• a new report format – joined reports – where you can join reports together, to report on multiple children of the same parent, for instance, meaning you can have a report showing the products, and team members on each opportunity in your team.
• higher limits on snapshots, scheduled reports and dashboards, and dynamic dashboards.

However, analytics functionality is priced at an extra $40 per user.

Late December, January 2012: SalesForce.com user community passionately cheers the arrival of analytic abilities, especially joined reports, however, the users are outraged with the cost and the fact that every user in the organization has to pay an extra $40 per month.

User community starts rallying against price increase. Here is just one place on SalesForce forum - http://success.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=08730000000gDktAAE

Some quotes from LinkedIn Groups:

…I am sure that almost every other salesforce.com user out there would agree as well. Let’s make our voices heard. Please go vote on this idea: http://success.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=08730000000gDktAAE..
Marc speaks eloquently of how Netflix, BOA, etc, have had to reverse proposed pricing changes. The Salesforce community needs to raise it’s voice - Please go vote on this idea: http://success.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=08730000000gDktAAE

and guess what… it worked:

January 31, 2012: Blog post on SalesForce.com Product blog “Responding to customer feedback“:

…We got it wrong, and we sincerely apologize to our customers.

Today we are announcing that, as part of the Spring ‘12 release, our new enterprise analytics features will be included in Enterprise Edition and Unlimited Edition at no additional charge.

As a social enterprise, it’s essential we listen to our customers and what they expect around continuous innovation and enhancements on their existing products. We welcome your feedback.

George Hu,
COO, salesforce.com
@georgehusf

All I can say is it takes guts to admit mistakes. There is a legend that when an executive at Google made a mistake that cost Google a few million dollars, Larry Page thanked the employee and continued by saying that it is ok to make these mistakes. If you are not making mistakes then you are not taking any risk, you are not innovating.

If you don’t innovate – you die… just plain and simple. One of my most favorite quotes is a quote from Alice “…it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”. I recently published another blog post about that. Check it out – http://infotrustllc.com/blog/education/leadership-and-capability

Slow Friday night, my wife and I just finished watching the latest Harold and Kumar on-demand and while she is quietly sleeping on the other side of the couch, I decided to quickly get all my to-do items and the plans out of my head and notes into Evernote( which is now my new best friend when it comes to capturing pretty much everything that is going on in my life).

As I started going over my notes from this week, I couldn’t help but wonder about how did I manage to keep all these balls in the air, get some things done and even have some life?… So, lets summarize:
I started the week doing some pretty advanced web analytics work for one of the largest companies in the world. Can’t talk much about this project, except to say that I absolutely love analytics and working with this much data is a pretty awesome experience.

On Tuesday I had a planning meeting with our customer, one of the Centers at Xavier U, about their website and the complete closed loop marketing integration of all their online marketing activities, the website and SalesForce. Kind of one of my favorite topics.

On Wednesday we launched a new Product – InfoTrust Tester for Google Analytics. We launched this product in what we believe is a true Lean Startup manner. We have identified the minimum viable set of product features that we feel add the most value. Our goal is not to make a commercial product but to validate that there is a market need…And boy, oh, boy, have we validated! Our brilliant marketing leader Michael, along with our incredible UC Intern (fellow BearCat) Amin, put together a comprehensive social media marketing plan for getting the project in front of the right people that would serve as our early adopters. We finally finished some cosmetic CSS changes on the report around 3pm in the afternoon on Wednesday and around 4pm Amin launched our first social media marketing push – primarily on Twitter and a little bit of Linkedin. That’s it. No PPC, no ads.

That same Wednesday night I took my wife and my aunt to an Opera. That wasn’t a true real Opera, but a live broadcast of the “Enchanted Island” from NY Metropolitan Opera. I have to admit, I fell asleep for a little bit, but other than that, I enjoyed every minute of it, especially fantastic Danielle de Niese as Ariel and magnificent Placido Domingo as Neptune (see photos). Oh yeah, and during the intermission I ran out to Yagoot next door to sneak in some Frozen Yogurt. Frozen Yogurt and Opera – what can possibly be better?

However, that wasn’t it – when I got home around midnight, I found out that we were totally swamped with request and of course our ‘minimum viable product’…well, kind of crashed…A sleepless night, caffeine and donut-fuel code crunching in the morning and we were back together. Oh yeah, I crashed on a couch in our office and snored so loud that I woke myself up. Kind of funny and embarrassing at the same time. Dinner with friends wrapped up our Thursday night.

Dinner with friends wraped up our Thursday night.

Friday morning was my monthly CEO roundtable meeting. I feel that joining our roundtable has been one of the best things I’ve done for my professional growth. Someday I will share a story about the roundtable and the invaluable lessons that I’ve learned, but not today…

George and I finished Friday at an onsite meeting with a sound and music control system engineers, brainstorming the implementation of Washington Park Walk of Fame project. We’ve been writing quite a bit about it on our Walk of Fame Blog, but the short version of what we are doing is: we are building an integrated mobile experience where the Washington Park visitors will be able to play music on the phones and request that a certain piece is played through park speakers and… park fountain. Now, how cool is that? You push a button on you iPhone and within seconds 11000 sq.ft splash fountain starts playing the music. Of course, little things like sharing what you are doing on Facebook, and showing your friends pre-recorded YouTube videos, so they can share in the excitement, is just a part of the overall Walk of Fame experience that we are building. There is going to have to be a lot more crazy coding sessions and all hands engineering discussions about how to build something for the City of Cincinnati that has never been done before. We are also contributing a lot of in-kind services to make it happen, but that’s a topic for some other day. I am not exaggerating, there is no other park in the world where the visitor can listen to music on the mobile device, push a button, hear it play through park speakers and see the fountain play and splash to the sound of the music.

Looks like Saturday is going to be quite a bit of work in the morning and early afternoon. Then my wife and I are going to have a romantic dinner downtown and go to symphony to listen to some Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Schumann – a performance dedicated to Valentine’s Day. Some time on Saturday I am going to pick up my wife’s car – my Valentines’ Day present for her was to install an aftermarket remote car starter for her 2011 Rogue which she absolutely loves.

What are we doing next week? Hard to say, but one thing for certain – at the end of this week I definitely have some things to remember and it is never boring. Hope you enjoyed reading this story. Do you want to share yours?

“What should our business do with Pinterest?” This is one of the popular questions that socially aware businesses are trying to answer. The reason I say socially aware is because companies who have been ignoring social media are still trying to figure out if they should be on Facebook. So, is there room to promote your business on Pinterest, who according to comScore just Hit 10 Million U.S. monthly unique visitors? The way Pinterest is gaining popularity, our clients will be using it in no-time. So, what can you do to be proactive and leverage Pinterest to gain advantage?

1. Experience Rules

My guess is that Pinterest will have Boards for companies in no time. However, while they are getting there, let’s use what we have. The first step to creating a successful presence on Pinterest or any other hot social platform is drafting your value proposition. In essence, value proposition is answering the following questions. If I am your ideal audience, then why should I like your Pinterest Board and not your competitors? What will you offer your audience that will not be available anywhere else? Use your Board to tell a story. If you are a restaurant owner, do not just post pictures of random items on your menu. Tell a story.

• Share what ingredients are used to make your top dishes.
• Share best food pairings – how to pair an appetizer with the main dish or what wine to choose for each main dish.
• How your desserts are crafted?

2. What if my business is not photogenic?

That happens. We offer web analytics and CRM integration services to companies – we do not sell cupcakes, do not make clothes and do not give advice on interior design. In case your company does any of these, Pinterest is an ideal marketing channel for you. So, what can we do in a complicated world of B2B sales?

• Add value. We may not sell cupcakes, but we can post the 10 most important analytical charts that your business needs to measure its importance.
• Pin the best infographics on web design, conversion optimization and web analytics.
• Share some of our best slides from the the presentations that we offer.

The best thing you can do when thinking about content is to listen. Companies often ask us to share the best charts that they need to look at when tracking their marketing performance. Our seminar attendees often ask us to publish slides online. If we are careful at listening to what our audience wants, we can produce content that will add value.

At the end of the day, Pinterest is not right for everyone. However, we first need to try it out, see if our audience responds and then make a decision.

3. Do the research

You just might be the first organization in your industry to have a Pinterest board.  However, there is still room for research. Here is a great article from Mashable on 21 Must Follow Pinterest Users.  Review what others are posting. Research what some organizations are doing, and make a list of what people seem to like. However, the most important research is asking your client base.

4. Think beyond marketing

You might not be sold yet on using Pinterest to market your services, but think about HR. Pinterest is a great platform for building an HR brand and telling a story of what it is like to work at your organization. It is still marketing, but it is focused on a different audience. Remember that last company outing that you had, consider posting pictures from the event on Pinterest and explaining why your company is such an awesome place to work at.  Even web developers are seeking out Pinterest.  Our web developer, Alyssa Roll, finds Pinterest fascinating and very “design focused.”

5. Keep an eye on metrics

It might be too early to have a complete measurement strategy for Pinterest. But, it is always a good time to look at your Google Analytics and if people come to your website from Pinterest.  Also, keep track of what pictures people like the most.  This will help you figure out what to do next.

There are no experts in Pinterest, we all are just users. Let’s give it a try and learn from each other. HAPPY PINNING!