Your website speed is highly important. It doesn’t usually get much thought what a second or two can make, but recently an article in the New York Times reinforced it’s importance. I highly recommend you read the full article, because I feel there is tons of great info (especially about mobile sites). For me, it was a real eye-opener that now researchers are talking about milli-seconds when it come to site speed. Some of the other key nuggets I found worth consideration include the following:

People will visit a Web site less often if it is slower than a close competitor by more than 250 milliseconds (a millisecond is a thousandth of a second).

“Two hundred fifty milliseconds, either slower or faster, is close to the magic number now for competitive advantage on the Web,” said Harry Shum, a computer scientist and speed specialist at Microsoft.

In 2009, a study by Forrester Research found that online shoppers expected pages to load in two seconds or fewer — and at three seconds, a large share abandon the site. Only three years earlier a similar Forrester study found the average expectations for page load times were four seconds or fewer.

The two-second rule is still often cited as a standard for Web commerce sites. Yet experts in human-computer interaction say that rule is outdated.

I know, its not a surprise that website speed is  important. In the past I covered how Google now looks at Page Speed as part of their algorithm, but now I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the tools and ways to measure how you are doing. One of the best tools for this is right in Google Analytics with their own Site Speed analytics. At the end of last year, Google announced enhancements to Google Site Speed analytics that make it really useful. The best part of using Google Analytics is that you can segment the information, by country or time and get a real feel for the issues on your site. The only downside of Google’s implementation is that it’s based on averages and not by median, so a couple of slow connections can skew your numbers. That’s why it’s great to have other tools for analysis. For this reason, I will focus on those.

Personally, I have found the three below tools best for checking on how you are doing, not only because they analyze your performance, but they also give you each something special:

Free Speed Test (by Internet Supervision): The best part of this tool is you can quickly see how you are doing in various countries.

Web Page Test: This tools allows you to test different browsers in different locations. It allows for testing tour site mobile perfomance and compare yourself to your competitors (visually). Other features in the advanced setting include multi-step transactions, video capture, content blocking and much more. Best of all it runs diagnostic information against your web page to output recommendations and suggestions for improvements from  Google Page Speed.

gtmetrix: This is a tool that I can hardly believe is free, but it is. Not only do you get a detailed report, you can export it to PDF for presentation purposes. Also if you sign-up for a free account you can graph performance of your site, save your reports, get historical overviews and analyze sites with HTTP authentication. You also get recommendations to improve your performance from Yahoo YSlow.

As you can see, some of the tools above leverage Google Page Speed and Yahoo YSlow for recommendations. If you want to have constant access to the recommendations, you can use  Google Page Speed and Yahoo YSlow  by downloading their respective browser  add-ons or widgets.  Combining these insights with user location testing can really help you figure out the most efficient ways to increase your site speed. If you are not comfortable in making changes to your sites, all of the above websites offer services to help you in making changes to your site.  Another option, if you have money and are looking for an end to end solution, you may want to consider Aptimize. It’s a great add-on to any site which can help with speed up your site without the need to get your hands dirty with deep code.

So there you have it, some tools to help speed up your site. What tools do you use? What have your found to be your websites worst speed enemy? Let me know in the comments.

Pinterest is the hot new social start-up everyone is talking about. With the exposure it is getting, it is quickly becoming the most exciting opportunity for businesses on a social platform I have ever seen. If your business has any way to share its product visually in an interesting way, than you need to seriously look at Pinterest. I covered yesterday the basics about Pinterest and what it’s all about. For today I thought I would dig a little deeper with some info and tips for using Pinterest to market your business. These are not the end all to be all tips, but some basic things I have noticed in using Pinterest and just spending time on the site. I also recommend you do your own research too, with a personal account, before you start with a business one with your brand.

But wait, before you start ask yourself two key questions:

• Do you have the time and resources to take on another social media platform? There is really no point to join if you have no time to engage and keep your content fresh. Your page will look barren, and it could reflect badly on your brand.
• Does your brand/business have a natural fit for Pinterest? Right now Pinterest, is mostly about lifestyle content and the main users are middle class 18-34 year olds women from the US. The latest data from Quantcast and Alexa can help you determine a bit more of there interests. With the amount of traffic these sites are generating, the demographic data tends to be more accurate.

So now that you have a market in mind here are the tips:

1-Yes, it’s all about Pinning, but it’s not all about you. If all you are going to do is pin stuff about your products and self-promote, you might be disappointed in the results you get from Pinterest. People don’t want to follow someone that is only pushing their business. You need to add personality to profile. One way is to show the human side of your business, for example creating a pinboard that showcases behind the secnes life around the office. Also re-pinning followers’ pins. By not only sharing your content, this will add a non-marketing dynamic to your pinboards. More importantly, it can help in promoting engagement with your followers. Make sure to read the rules of Pin Etiquette.

2- Make great visual content. Take time to think about how your products will be photographed. The shot of your products with a webcam and low quality lighting or that out-of-focus shot from your iPhone is not worth sharing. To get a feel for what your pictures should look like, spend time looking at what’s popular on Pinterest. This is best way to get some great ideas and a feel for what works.

3. Promote, Promote, Promote: Make sure you add the Pinterest follow button to your website and on all your product pages. Make sure you write a blog post and include it in your monthly newsletter. Promote your presence to your followers on other social networks. Most importantly integrate with Facebook. Pinterest makes sharing with/on Facebook so easy. The login option for Pinterest is Facebook. Users can invite friends from Facebook. To really integrate with Facebook add a Pinterest tab to your Facebook Page. This can help you better engage your current Facebook Fans to follow you to Pinterest as well.

4. Let your “fanvocates” promote/help your brand and business. Every person has brands they love, so make it easy to allow people to share pictures of them using your brand or business. On Pinterest you can create a fan Pinboard, where you can allow other users to contribute their own pins to your pinboards.

5. Engage Followers and Fans. When you first start out, follow the “big names” for your category on Pinterest. See what they share, and how they interact. Getting them engaged will be important so they will want to share the products of your business. When people start following you, follow them back. And if people place comments or questions on your content make sure you respond in a timely manner.

6. Don’t put everything on one board. Segment your business or products onto relevant boards. By keeping a narrow focus you can see what areas work better than others, but you also allow users to follow only what they want.

7. Lights! Camera! Action!: Pinterest is not limited to images. You can pin videos too! This opens an avenue to create a pinboard of How-To Video’s, Testimonial from customers, Videos from Events and more.

8. Everyone loves a contest. Before doing so, make sure to read Pinterest’s terms of use to make sure you don’t have any issues. Your contest idea can be as simple as creating a board on your account or asks users to create there own pinboard showing off what they love about your brand or products.

9. If you are launching a new product or need feedback, consider Pinterest as a social media focus group. It will make users feel involved in your product and business, but also help you gather first-hand opinions from potential future customers.

10. Make measurement easy. Add hastags to your content, especially if you plan a promotion across other social networks. Tell users where to find you. When you post content make sure you include a link to your website. If possible create specific landing pages. Make sure to tag those links. Once you make sure you content is tagged, crack open the Analytics. Look at what sends traffic back to your website. Make sure Pinterest is worth your time and effort. Focus more energy on what is working and tweak the areas that are not.

This list should get you on your way, or at least inspire some thought in how to use Pinterest for your business. If you are still looking for basic information on how to set up your account and get going, I highly recommend the Mashable Guide to Pinterest.

Now it’s your turn. How are you using Pinterest? What have you learnt? What are the tips you think are helpful to marketing businesses on Pinterest?

Wow, it seems Pinterest is really the place to be. I covered yesterday why Pinterest was worth your interest, but I underestimated how hot it really was at this moment. How do I know this? Because everytime a business becomes successful, people start to attack. Same thing happened to Twitter, Groupon and Facebook. The interesting thing for me is how  Pinterest could plod along silently for almost two years without issue, gain a massive following and huge traffic without a peep from the press–and now just explode. Almost every second article on tech-blogs is about Pinterest (yes, I guess I’m guilty too). This to me means it’s about to really blow up (if it hasn’t already). Right now, if you are deciding to join Pinterest, I would not hesitate if you are in following industries:  fashion, food, home improvement, design or event planning. Other industries can work on Pinterest as well with keeping in mind some handy tips for using Pinterest. I would not fear the naysayers either, because, usually negative opinions  are harbingers that good things are coming for Pinterest.

The main issue Pinterest seems to be facing is the Copyright issue. The points are summarized in the following articles: Pinterest Might Be Enabling Massive Copyright Theft and  Pinterest is blowing up – with cries of copyright infringement

The idea Pinterest is “enabling” copyright infringement is simply not true. Do they have a platform where users post copyright pics? Sure. Do they not do anything about it or turn a blind eye? No. Those screaming about the copyright issue are ignoring the fact that the internet is one huge vast copyright infringement.  What I’d like to understand is how is Pinterest more guilty of copyright issues than users posting a copyrighted photo on Twitter or Facebook? How is it worse than the thousands of “illegal” clips on YouTube?  This is also an argument from those who do not use Pinterest. Most of the photos on there (atleast right now) are photographs users took themselves or they are of items where traffic will be driven to a store and create revenue for the copyright holder of the image.

So what about Pinterest and Copyright? Well as far as I see, from the time I have been using Pinterest, they take Copyright seriously. Right under the about button is the words “COPYRIGHT“. Once you are on that page, the first paragraph states: “Pinterest respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects its users to do the same. It is Pinterest’s policy, in appropriate circumstances and at its discretion, to disable and/or terminate the accounts of users who repeatedly infringe or are repeatedly charged with infringing the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of others.” They are using the standard DMCA template that Google and others use.

Before I get roasted, I’m not saying copyright is not a non-issue, but I think Pinterest is not turning a blind-eye to copyright theft. Furthermore, when you post a picture on Pinterest, the source gets a link of attribution. Frankly as a business, when you posted your own photos, you want them are shared and the traffic. Isn’t that the point? Personally I see this as a non-issue from the perspective of a business trying to increase their market visibility.

What is your take on Pinterest and Copyright? Fair concerns or Blown out of proportion? Leave a comment below.

*****Update 02/20/2012*****

Pinterest also allows Webmasters to block images from their site appearing on Pinterest via a no-pin Meta-Tag:<meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" />. You can add the code to the head of any page on your site. When a user tries to pin from your site, they will see this message: “This site doesn’t allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!” Personally, I think it is better for you to allow pinning because you get the link back to your site. Remember a user could still save an image to their hard-drive and post it on Pinterest, and mistakenly “forget” to give you credit.

Pinterest.com has described themselves as a Virtual Pinboard, that let’s you “organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web.” Pinterest was co-founded in December 2009 by Ben Silberman, Paul Sciarra and Yashwanth Nelapati. The site launched as a closed beta in March 2010 and has since proceeded to operate as invite only (Though it’s not hard to get an invite).

Even though Pinterest is more than two years old until now, it has gone about its business, with a massive following in relative quiet from the tech press. All of sudden (especially) this month, Pinterest has become the become the darling of almost all the tech blogs. One reason, might be is that it’s not your typical social media platform.  As The Next Web points out:”It’s a social shopping experience, disguised as a website full of interests.” So what are some of the other reasons Pinterest is becoming “interesting”? It won startup of the year at Tech Crunch award show The Crunchies a couple of weeks ago. It’s market is almost all female. And this month, according to Comscore/Techcrunch, “Pinterest just hit 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors,  crossing the 10 million mark faster than any other standalone site in history”. So what do you as a marketer need to know?

First off, Pinterest is still young, so you are not late to the party. I expect the coverage to get even more vocal in the coming weeks and months. They (and there users) will now have to start dealing with brands and marketing professionals ”discovering” them( if they haven’t already). There are sure to be brands that get it right and wrong.  Even more exciting for them is that they have yet to hit their full potential. They might want to think about investing more in servers and hard-disk space. If you think I’m nuts, just reflect on this: One of the main login systems for Pinterest is Facebook. Facebook alone has over 800 million users, (roughly 400 million of which are female). What is the main thing most people like to do on Facebook? Look at pictures. So in short, Pinterest has an opportunity to be  huge. So what is the marketing plan for you?

I would say the initial step is the marketing basics. Look at your market and your products. What is the audience you sell to? If it’s predominately male, Pinterest might not (right now) be the best fit, but there are alternatives out there (http://gentlemint.com/). Do you have a product or a service that is visually appealing? Be honest. Pinterest is a about photos, pictures and things worth sharing. If the photo of the product is not shot in a visually captive way or not worth sharing don’t waste your time. Basically don’t leap without research.

The best  advice with Pinterest, is the best advice with any social media:  get an account and explore it as a user. Get familiar with the audience and what others are doing on there. See where your products fall, see what gets repinned (the Pinterest version of retweet) and which are the items that get lots of comments. Follow users that have similar interests, and see what kinds of things they share. See what kinds of things get reactions. The beauty of Pinterest is you can make a board of things that interests you. Sometimes marketing your business doesn’t always have to be about marketing your products. Coming across genuine, as a person with multiple interest is much better then just beating the drums about your business. People can read through that. Think of it this way, if you post pictures that people find interesting, they are more likely to want to learn more about you. This will allow you to expose them to your other boards–maybe just focused o  your products. Remember, if it’s all business all the time, it could get boring very fast for your audience.

Now having said that, during my time on Pinterest, I have noticed items related to fashion and event/party planning do really well. And who doesn’t have an event or know someone who has an event to plan? These were things I could easily share with people in my network that are looking for ideas. If I was a business in this sphere, I would be sure to include Pinterest as much as I would  Facebook in my marketing plan. For Pinterest though, you need to be visually appealing to stand out and to be shared. If I was in the wedding tablecloth business, for example, I would post a shot of my Tablecloth at an actual wedding. If I was a bakery, I would show off a lovely closeup of my artwork with cupcakes–or design one specifically about a recent news event so its relevant and highly share-able.

Also a word of caution to non-believers.Wait  before you write-off using Pinterest for your marketing needs. I still think it makes sense to create an account and explore. This is a relatively new social network and things are still fluid. The Pinterest identity is not set in stone. Sure Pinterest started with mostly women, but I suspect the broader appeal will increase in the coming months with increased exposure. People love to share and find pictures, so it has a built in appeal. Don’t forget, Pinterest also has all the sharing tools up and running: It has a handy iPhone App, a bookmarklet, and sharing buttons. It’s login/sign up is as easy as a connection to Facebook and Twitter. It’s only a matter of time that the makeup of their audience/market will change. Furthermore, with the amount of press, and momentum they now have, the earlier you get in and learn about Pinterest the better. Don’t forget  how you wrote off _[insert social network here]_. You should also not be concerned about their future/financials. Pinterest is has investments and advice from some of the smartest in the tech start-up world.  Those are only some of the major reasons I feel 2012 will be the year Pinterest becomes the newest addition to the “core” social media companies we talk about when it comes to social media marketing.

Now it’s your turn. Are you on Pinterest? What do you like/hate about it? How do you use it?

More reading:
What you need to know about Pinterest.
Mashable Guide to Pinterest

In Janaury, IE9 finally crept onto desktops of users with more than a  15% share. Now that it finally has some audience base, I thought it would be a good time to talk about “Pinning” & “Jumplists”. What are Pins? What are Jumplists? Basically, a “Pin” is an action to pin a website to your taskbar in windows 7.  A Jumplist, is a list of urls a user can jump to on your webstite, from their Windows 7 desktop. So basically by getting user to Pin your website (or brand) you get a price of their toolbar. In short, think of it as the Bookmark Favorites 2.0. So what makes it different than a regular bookmark? A Pinned Website can be interactive. Once a user has your website pinned you can send them notifications via an RSS feed, or make it easier for real brand advocates to find what they need faster on your site. All they need to do is drag you to their desktop. The best part of all, Microsoft has actually  made the process of creating Pinned sites super-easy. Check out their site called ” Build My Pinned Site” and follow the step by step guidelines to have yours done in under an hour. One thing to consider as you build your Pin is to  look at your audience and the items to include. You are taking real-estate on their desktop, so make it count. A Pin makes a great impact in keeping you in the face of your customers, but they will delete you just as quick if there is no real need to have you on their desktop. To see a great example of Pins in action check out the IE Gallery.