1. Familiarise yourself

Pinterest is a social network that was founded in 2010 by entrepreneurs Ben Silbermann and Evan Sharp. It works as an online pinboard, where you’re the ‘pinner’ and you manage themed ‘boards’ based on things you find interesting.

You can attach (‘pin’) content from websites to your boards, copy (‘repin’) content from other people’s boards to your own, and comment or ‘like’ information that has been pinned.

When you join the network, some boards and suggested people to follow are created for you automatically. You can edit or delete these suggestions and create new boards to reflect your personal or professional interests. You can also look for people or boards sharing those interests, to see what people are sharing and potentially connect with them. (This is a useful differentiation; you may like the look of someone’s work on a specific topic but not want to follow all of their boards, for example).

2. Read the small print

Following a massive upsurge in Pinterest users, a storm has been brewing about Pinterest and copyright; in particular, when it’s OK for individual pinners to attach other people’s material or images as a source of inspiration or interest.

There are potential implications for brand managers that you need to be aware of. The views put forward so far are quite varied, including:

How brands can use Pinterest without breaking the law

In All This Talk Of Pinterest And Copyright, The Fact That It’s Driving Massive Traffic Seems Important

Pinterest and copyright: what I’m doing

In the absence of any definitive guidance or formal legal advice, you might want to weigh up the risks. You can potentially minimise impact by restricting your pins to content that you either directly control, or ask permission from others to post their content. However, this scenario is potentially an issue for Pinterest, because it places extra responsibilities on brands that some may not consider worth risking; there have already been some high-profile withdrawals recently from people who didn’t feel it was worth the effort.

It feels a bit like the YouTube ‘Video ID’ approach, where content owners upload their films and then anyone else trying to add content matching that digital ‘fingerprint’ would receive a warning and be prevented from completing the upload. The reality is that potential copyright infringement actions may preclude some people from joining. Flickr took matters into its own hands recently by disabling Pinterest pins on copyrighted images and Pinterest has subsequently provided an opt-out option for site owners but the debate continues, so watch this space…

3. Have a plan

Let’s assume that you’ve weighed up the risks and are still keen to give Pinterest a spin. Now it’s time to think about what you want to achieve.

As with any social network, we’d recommend you put your target audiences first. Who do you want to connect with and how do you want to engage them?

Depending on what your business does and how your culture works, there’s plenty of scope to connect with people. You could use Pinterest to show off your products, inspire people with recipes or home trends, crowd-source ideas for design modifications or position your business as a thought leader. Tip 4 (‘find your niche’) looks at this in more detail.

Note that Pinterest is not a place for hard selling; it’s more of a personal space, where people share and talk about things that they find beautiful, interesting or inspiring. So you have to recognise that and look for things you have in common.

Authenticity, as ever, is critical. Liking someone’s landscape shot just so you can squeeze in a comment on how your widgets will change their life is probably not the way to go

4. Find your niche

One of Pinterest’s key strengths is its potential to promote highly niche topics; the ability to follow either people or boards means that you can sift what content appears in your browser or mobile.

There are potentially opportunities to connect with people around the ‘ABC of Pinterest’ – attractiveness, belonging and content:

Attractiveness – if your brand involves products, places or people that are gorgeous to look at, you’re onto a winner. Fashion, food, architecture, photography and crafts are consistently popular topics and are frequently shared within the Pinterest community, precisely because of their visual appeal

Belonging – if your brand is strong on customer experience and has good targeting insight, there are plenty of opportunities to make strong connections. Run a food business? Tasty product shots and inviting recipe contributions are worth considering. Local landlord? How about uploading photos that tell a neighbourhood story, film community feedback or show a time-lapse video of regeneration projects coming to life. Looking to build engagement? Maybe a photography competition based on popular team members, products or landmarks would work (if you’re nervous about the imagery copyright, submit your own and ask people to talk about their experiences of an area/service?) If you’re looking to position yourself in a specific geographical area you can also use hashtags or strategically name your boards to reflect this…

Content – If you want to highlight thought leadership, you could use Pinterest to highlight the availability of white papers, ‘how-to’ guides and key articles that you’ve produced. Econsultancy, Hubspot, and Mashable all follow this approach, which is predominantly aimed at driving traffic back to original content on their sites.

5. Track your progress

Ultimately you need to keep tabs on whether Pinterest is working for you and/or your brand; if there isn’t a business benefit in being involved, it’s time to step away from the cookie jar.

There aren’t any hard and fast rules about how to monitor success; what matters is what works for your brand. Blogger Andrew Nattan argues that site traffic and subscribes will drop as a consequence of people viewing posts via Pinterest; in his view, network users aren’t serious about converting and he’s suggested that bloggers set up the ‘no pin’ rule to stop people referencing their content. Yet others, such as Jason Falls, mention examples that have seen huge increases in web traffic and sales. So you need to work out what success looks like for your team and then make sure you measure it.

Depending on your overall plan and objectives (point 3 above), possible Pinterest metrics to consider could include:

• The level of inbound web traffic from Pinterest to your website or blog
• Numbers of customers or leads originating from Pinterest
• Increased signups to newsletters or blogs originating from the network
• People sharing your content on other social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
• Responses to questions or test designs that you share on the network
• Entries to any Pinterest competitions or polls that you run.

There are also ‘fluffy’ (secondary) metrics such as the numbers of people following you and your boards, liking your posts and repinning your existing content. These things won’t necessarily have a big impact on your business but can give you a sense of brand awareness, trust and mentions as part of your overall social media monitoring.

That feels like quite enough for now but if you’re on Pinterest and want to say hello at any point, we’d love to connect…

This post was written by Kerry James, Associate Consultant at VU-tbg.

They (as all good journalists now know, I should have a source here, but I don’t know who said it. And nor does google. Answers on a tweet please) say you never forget how to ride a bicycle. I’m not about to test that theory for your comedy value , but I’m hoping that if my brain can forever retain push-power, there’s hope for me having not forgotten how to communicate. Or punctuate. Or calculate*

After nearly a year off (‘off’ probably needing inverted commas as I wasn’t exactly sunning myself on a beach), I return to a work place where Lord Justice Leveson rattles off the tongue, the housing sector actually has a hashtag and tbg has acquired a new company. And with it a hypen and some extra initials. By 2013 I’ll be answering the phone ‘hello, VU-tbg’ but until then, please bear with me. And if there’s any reporters hacking said phone, don’t report me to Nicola or our branding police. Or they’ll be telling me to, well, urm, get on my bike.

This is all a (very) long way of saying, ‘hello’ and ‘I’m back’ for those that noticed my absence. I look forward to working with you all again and getting back in the very-much-metaphorical saddle. Now to find out what I missed and start the catch-up. The media has a theme that 2011 echoes 1981 so perhaps I’ll just have to find some Bucks Fizz tapes and a copy of the 1980 Housing Act and that’s my first return-to-work challenge overcome…

It is with huge excitement that we launch our annual VU-tbg Brand Amnesty – your chance to win two days of design. That’s two full days of design work, completely free of charge to help give your brand a boost for 2012. All you need to do is get in touch via our dedicated Brand Amnesty website. And remember we’re not just talking about logo’s, but any branded materials from brochures to your website, adverts or social media. Submit your entry through the website or drop us an email at marketing@vu-tbg.com.

I was asked by staff at our client WM Housing Group to be videoed about my thoughts of their organisation.  I’ve been assured that my words will be just one of a compilation of many videos, all of which will be shown at WM’s upcoming corporate celebration evening taking place next week.  I will be present at the event, and I can assure everyone that will also be there that when I appear on screen I’ll be looking somewhere into the mid distance, or down at the floor, or in fact anywhere but at my own projected image!

Modesty aside, I was flattered to be asked for my opinion from an organisation which I truly respect.

I was asked to answer two questions.  The first one was ‘What do you think of when WM Housing Group is mentioned?’  I replied that the housing association is as at home in inner-city locations, working in places like Birmingham and Coventry, as it is working in small rural settlements, like they do in Worcestershire and Herefordshire.

I also responded that they put people and their needs at the heart of what they do, but staff are also concerned about the places in which people live, and will go beyond basic housing needs in providing services.  In particular WM is strong at supporting people to live independently, and in helping residents to develop skills and capacity to train and get and keep jobs.

The second question was ‘What is WM like to work with?’  My answer was that the people at WM are straight-forward and honest.  I also conjectured that I believe that this has helped them to be a good and respected partner, whether that’s in the development of new homes, delivering major refurbishment programmes, or community-based work with local partners to help support people in their lives, beyond the bricks and mortar.

Phew, that’s one burst of fame nearly over.  All I need to do now is practice my unperturbed ‘I’m not embarrassed at being on the big screen’ face.

Nicola

Nicola Winn is Managing Director of The Bridge Group and VU Creative. Follow Nicola on Twitter @NicolaWinn

Kelly Field, chair of the NHF’s East of England PR group, former head of communications at Cross Keys Homes and new associate consultant at The Bridge Group, offers some tips on how to manage resident communications and make the most of PR opportunities.

The biggest impact of the Welfare Reform Bill for a majority of social housing tenants will be the introduction of a Universal Credit and the under-occupancy benefit cap.

The Universal Credit will bring all types of benefits under one payment to be paid directly to individuals. The under-occupancy benefit cap will penalise those who have one spare bedroom or more.

Most organisations are fully up to speed with these proposals, having assessed their tenant demographics to test the likely impact on customers and their own rental incomes. But how many have asked a sample of their own tenants some simple questions to test their awareness and understanding of the changes, or briefed their local media?

Too often the sector makes assumptions about how tenants will feel, or what they will understand about changes in legislation. A small community audit can generate some frank responses, and help you to direct your communications accordingly. Some time spent at the outset will make your resident communications more effective and could reduce the impact of queries to customer services teams.

When it comes to the media, management boards and senior teams often advocate keeping a low profile in the hope that any potentially negative changes will avoid the attention of the media.

However some proactive engagement and education can ensure your organisation is on the front foot. Be the one to break the news – not the one reacting to a bad news story.

A full press briefing can show that you have done your homework to understand the impact on your residents – how many and which type of household will be most affected by benefit changes and what will this mean for their income. To add further weight include quotes from engaged residents and demonstrate the measures you have put in place to help.

The result is likely to be much more favourable and can support direct resident and stakeholder communications to achieve consistent message making.

Hot tips for hot topics

1. Consider carrying out a community audit to find out what your tenants really think and know about the welfare reforms. You can then use this to inform your communication strategies and action plans
2. Draft a press briefing/media pack outlining the key changes and the likely impacts for your tenants to avoid misinterpretation and reporting inaccuracies. Issue this to your media contacts and key stakeholders
3. Issue regular communication to your residents to keep them updated on the proposals with a special welfare bulletin and send it out with their rent statements so they read it
4. Make sure your communication teams are fully informed of the proposed changes and timetable so they can keep key messages up-to-date and plan engagement activity

If you would like to discuss how your organisation could better engage and educate on the impacts of welfare reforms email our Head of Communications, Jonathan Goode or call the office on 024 7656 0440.

The best annual reports put residents in the driving seat – and if you are going to give residents a real say then you can’t take any shortcuts in the production process.

Many organisations start by looking back at what they did last year. It’s a good place to start – and hopefully you will already have a bank of customer feedback to review alongside.

But don’t let your residents be limited by the format you have taken in the past.

The kick-off session should be the chance to cast your net wide – look at what others have done and think outside the box. How about putting your performance stats on a tea towel with a design inspired by children, create an interactive video with information hot spots or turn your annual report into a fun day, where families can come along and pick up information in a variety of formats.

Of course you will need to balance value for money with the effectiveness of the tool, but you can always do some cost modeling with residents once you have made a shortlist of the options.

You might also want to think about consultation techniques – don’t just assume that you need to form a focus group. While this might help in the later stages, you could also use online tools like surveys, web polls and social media forums to get some ideas and discussion going.

Ultimately your residents should be able to decide on the style and format that suits them best, but you might need to be creative about prompting and challenging their thinking.

If you want to discuss your annual report contact Jonathan Goode or call the office on 024 7656 0440.

Payday lenders charge extortionate interest rates and impose tight timescales for repayment. It’s the original bridging loan on acid – and although legal, these lenders take no prisoners, often expressing the jargon-ridden lending terms in the smallest of the small print.

Having worked for one of the UK’s biggest retail banks in my early 20s, I have some first-hand experience of selling loans. Not something I stuck with, but we worked in a regulated, responsible environment, taking time to explain agreements to customers who were eligible only if their credit history and outgoings could cope with loan repayments.

In contrast watch daytime TV and you will see the Jeremy Kyle-style tactics that payday lenders employ – big, bold graphics, eye-catching fonts and “cute” cartoon characters designed to elicit trust.

Fact is most people looking to payday lenders are in desperate circumstances. They are being exploited and it works – by companies seemingly offering a simple solution to all their problems.

To have some hope of redressing the balance, money advisory bodies will need to level the comms playing field by meeting payday lenders on their own turf. Individual charities will struggle to pay national advertising costs, making local media their best bet to keep payday lenders’ reputations in check. The government’s Money Advice Service kicked off a multi-million pound television ad campaign in October 2011, but their remit to help people take control of their money could be too broad to tackle payday lenders effectively.

With families due to see their incomes drop by £1,250 in the next three years, it’s time for money advice comms machines to prepare for battle if the reign of the payday loan is to come to an end.

I am not surprised it gets a bad rep. After all, when the build up to Christmas begins in September, we are likely to feel a little deflated.

The media doesn’t help. First it hails January 3 the most depressing day of the year.

If you listen closely you can almost hear the population heaving itself from the sofa for the first time in days, stopping only to make a pathway through the chocolate wrappers and mince pies to find its car keys and venture back to whatever it did before Christmas Eve.

It feels alien, other worldly. And when we return, our desks were just as we left them. No-one can quite bring themselves to put the office tree lights on and in the style of some Narnia-esque wardrobe trickery, a week off feels more like a year.

It wasn’t helped this year when the weather seemed to take on some symbiotic reflection of the national mood, and lashed down rain and gales from thick grey skies.

This most depressing day is only surpassed by another two weeks later – when the media realise they were too quick to label January 3 the years worst and discover a much more deserving cause.

Black Monday arrives just as the credit card bills land, December’s early pay has all but run out and people realise yet again, that it’s still only January.

But enough of all this doom and gloom – let’s show why we love January and ring the bell (not the jingle variety) for the month above all other months.

And so our PR campaign begins. Here’s why:

• Routine is good for us – so the experts say. We may think we like lazing on the sofa, ditching the alarm clock and eating on demand, but eventually it becomes demotivating and debilitating. Get back into the 9 to 5 and your body (and mind) will thank you
• The nights are drawing out again and we are on our way to the longest day – yes we’ve done the shortest day and spring is on its way. That means flowers and lambs, and sunshine
• Valentine’s Day is coming – try and inject as much enthusiasm as you would muster for Christmas (please note this doesn’t work if you are single and is in fact likely to push you closer to the edge)
• Celebrate a month that is filled with hope and expectation – why you have made a New Year’s resolution for goodness sake and this year have every chance of sticking to it
• Think how healthy you will feel for swapping festive trans fats for steamed veg and oatcakes. Your mind will be alert and your body will soon be as toned as it was in November (and the less toned it was then, the sooner you will achieve it)
• You can finally put the tree out – not only does this make your lounge feel big again, but it means your carpet can resemble carpet once more, and not a forest floor. Enjoy your new-found sense of space – dance and twirl your arms around in a celebration of all that is January.

So, to coin the phrase of a certain online money hypermarche, January can be epic! Join the campaign and tell us why you heart January by leaving a comment.

And if you’re still not convinced, well just don’t look forward to Christmas quite so much again next year. It’s better all round.

It was nonsense back then, and technological leaps in brain scanning has now proved this for all to see. “Functional imaging has shown us that there are very few parts of the brain that can’t be activated by something,” says Professor Sophie Scott of the Institute of Cognitive Science at University College, London. Even doing something simple, such as clenching your fist, uses much more than 10% of the brain. A functional brain scan reveals that a vast number of brain cells spring into action as they plan and initiate the contraction of muscles in your fingers and palm.

Anatomically, the brain is divided into two halves – the left hemisphere and the right one. There is some division of labour between them. “There are really big differences between the left and the right sides of the brain,” says Professor Scott. “But that’s never what people actually mean when you hear the terms used out in a wider discourse. That’s very frustrating.” From some self-improvement books and business management courses, you might think the two hemispheres are in effect two separate entities.

The left is portrayed as the seat of logic and rationality. The right is described as the font of intuition and creativity. Therefore, if you are a logical person, you use your left brain more. If you are more touchy-feely and artistic, you are right-brained. According to the myth, we would all be more successful and fulfilled people if we learnt to tap the full potential of both hemispheres.

Professor Scott says individuals do differ in the way they think through problems and reflect on the world, but this has nothing to do with different balances of power between their hemispheres. “Some people have really good visual imagery. Some people have good auditory imagery. There is lots of variation out there in how we take information in and process it. “But boiling it down into a left brain ‘logical’ and right brain ‘creative’ approach does not follow from what we see in how the brain operates. Also it also suggests you could be using one hemisphere more than the other and that’s not really how it works.”

The two sides communicate with each other and work together via a complex wodge of neural cabling known as the corpus callosum. The two sides of the brains are complementary and work in concert.

Posted by Leigh, Creative Design Director for The Bridge Group.

Follow Leigh on Twitter @tbgleigh

But there may be a new kid on the block with a different perspective on brand valuation. New website, Fan Page List has been created to help users find the official Facebook and Twitter profiles of their favourite brands. But it also ranks brands according to their Facebook popularity and this, unsurprisingly gives an entirely different focus to the Top 100. Our Brandz number one, Apple, is nowhere to be seen , although Interbrand’s number one, Coca-Cola does come in at number 16. The top 20, according to their Facebook equity, includes many more FMCG brands, with Starbucks featuring as the breakout star (long recognised as one of the most switched on brands in social media with more than twenty-five million Facebook ‘likes’). Perhaps less obviously, Starbucks is accompanied on the list by much less obvious brands like Nutella, Skittles and Oreo.

We’re all about building brands in inventive ways and increasingly using Facebook as part of integrated marketing plans. So well done Fan Page List, it’s good to have you around as a great source of brand building inspiration.