Barely over 1 month into 2012 and folks around the web have been dubbing Pinterest as this year’s social media site to watch. This propelled by the sudden growth in users and talk of how businesses have seen considerable referral traffic from the site. Brands like Whole Foods, Land’s End and Etsy have set up profiles and amassed tens of thousands of followers across their pin boards and profiles. Even our very own Jason Falls has been sharing his thoughts on Pinterest’s marketing potential.

A quick overview for those new to the site, Pinterest is essentially a virtual cork board where you post images from all over the web. The images are “pinned” and organized into collections called “boards” which you name based on themes, topics, or just about anything you want.

For instance, I’ve created a a board for my favorite iPhone & iPad apps linking to the apps in the iTunes App store. Also, as someone who likes to frequently cook (and eat) I created a board for dishes I want to cook and inspirational ways to present food. Each pin links to the original web site where it was originally published so I can possibly backtrack and find out how to make that great recipe I found or others who follow me on Pinterest can discover some new iPhone apps I’ve pinned.

Pinterest users can also do much of the standard stuff such as “like”, “repin” or comment on any image they find. Additionally, one of the ways Pinterest is different than other social networks in the way that users can follow individual boards that interest them instead of being forced to follow a user and everything they share. That allows folks who prefer to follow interests instead of a particular person an opportunity to do so.

That said, I’d like to share a few ways you might use Pinterest from a different angle for some quick and dirty research.

Discover What Are People Pinning from Your Web Site

When clicked, every image on Pinterest displays corresponding information like comments, “likes,” other images in the same board and more. The info I find interesting is the area on each pin that shows what other pins came from a specific web domain. Take a look here for instance. You can see all images pinnned from socialmedaiexplorer.com from all users on Pinterest. You can see right off the bat that people enjoy the infographics here on the site. Most popular after the infographics is an image of Jason’s recently published book. Remember, each of these images could have been pinned from any page on socialmediaexplorer.com. Pinterest conveniently collects them all in one place for you.

Want to try it on your site? Type the following into your browser and replace “yourdomain.com” with your own web site: http://pinterest.com/source/”yourdomain.com”. You’ll likely find out something interesting about what visitors to your web site find visually interesting to them.

Let’s look at another example with the folks at FastMac: http://pinterest.com/source/fastmac.com/. Here we can see, out of all the products that Fastmac sells, 99% of people have pinned images related to their USB wall socket. Not only an image of the product itself, but the actual ad image on the product page.

This by itself is insightful, but let’s take it a step further.

Understanding Customer Perception

It’s been said that your brand is not what you say it is, but what your customers say it is. That said, understanding customer perception is important. Pinterest can give you a little insight into that by simply taking a look at the name of the boards that users have pinned content from your web site. In the case of Fastmac, you can see board names like “Products I love…”, “I Want”, “Geeky”, “Home Decor”, “Brilliant”, “For the Home”, and “My Future Home”.  If only a few images have been pinned from your web site then this might not be enough for you to care about, but with hundreds or even thousands of pins it has more meaning. Additionally, by clicking each board name you will be able to see what other images that user has found worth of shuffling into “I Want” or “Products I love…” and how many other users are following each of these boards. Similar to the common Twitter metric, the number of board followers could be counted towards the “reach” of any content shared in that specific board.

Again, let’s dive a little further shall we?

Capturing Descriptions, Comments & Board Names

Being able to take a look at what folks have pinned from your web site is one thing, but might it be helpful to capture it to cull through later? There is a quick way to capture all of the board names, pin descriptions, user comments, likes and repins all into one document. First bring up all images pinned from your web site as described previously. Now scroll to the bottom of the page. When you hit the bottom of the page Pinterest automatically loads up any additional images. Keep scrolling until no more images load. Next, hit “control + a” on your keyboard (“command + a” for Mac users) to “select all” . You should now see everything selected on the page. Open up a blank Word document and hit “control+v” to paste everything into the document. Depending on how many images there are it might take a few seconds for it all to paste. Unfortunately the images are not captured, but all of the other information including links to the boards and user profiles, will be in your document. You can also paste into an Excel spreadsheet. It doesn’t look pretty, but you can use it to review later.

The Wrap

Beyond this there is still more you can do to dig a little deeper to get to know some potential customers and even competitors more. You might take a closer look at the users who seem to be getting the most repins or likes on the images they share. What else are they into? Have they added more social links to their Pinterest profile so you can connect with them on Twitter or elsewhere as well? What might you find out if you looked up what people were sharing from your competitor’s web site?

On a side note, I have recently launched a digital marketing podcast called the SoLoMo Show. In our next episode we will be discussing more about Pinterest and its prospects as a marketing channel. Want to be a part of the conversation? Then leave us a voicemail with your thoughts on Pinterest at (415) 633-6123 or tweet us. We might include it in the show. Also, feel free to check out my Pinterest profile here. Lastly, feel free to share your thoughts here in the comments. Were these tips helpful? is Pinterest a contender or just a fad? Share your thoughts.

Many times, the best way to find out something about a group of people is to simply ask them. However, that isn’t always a surefire source for truth. The gap between what we do and what we say we do is wide enough to support entire industries.

For instance, the people who publicly tell you they back a particular candidate might vote for someone else behind the privacy curtain. We all like to be thought of as smart, progressive, dependable, creative, sexy, good listeners and caring. The temptation to bend the truth on a question is strong, even when we don’t know the questioner. We are just as prone to lie to the Gallup or Nielsen caller as we are to the woman across the street who can’t keep a secret.

That’s what has made the web a gold mine for companies who want to exploit the “Truth and Perception Gap.”

Asks versus Tasks

Websites are more than just a place to store media — they are interactive:

• We track which website (or search) brought you here
• We track which link you clicked
• We track meta-data about which campaign brought you the link
• We know your computer’s operating system
• We know which browser you use
• We know which screen resolution you have selected

… and that’s just for starters. SEO wizards can point to another four-dozen or so attributes about you they can divine without any additional sleuthing or cookie-abuse.

Once you’re actually here, we can measure your time on the site, which links you clicked internally, where you exited, and many other things of interest. We can also do A/B testing, where half of you see the page one way and half a different way, so we can figure out which layout or headline has more impact on driving you through the site.

All of these roll up into a bundle of best practices, and you’re taking part in these grand experiments without even realizing it.

Face to Face

This is the example. Don't click here.

I recently got this ad in the sidebar of my Facebook. It’s asking me about one of my friends.

Yes, I do in fact know Jay. We went to high school together, and I ran into him on a lunch hour about three weeks ago.

Do we talk on a regular basis? No.

Here’s the part that interests me: I haven’t commented on anything on Jay’s wall in quite some time, and I don’t recall him Liking or otherwise subscribing to any of my updates. So I’m not sure what Facebook is after here.

Obviously, the answer I give to this question will go into my EdgeRank algorithm. (EdgeRank is Facebook’s way of figuring out who to throw into your feed. The people that you share more “Edges” with in your life are likely more important to you — and will make the Facebook experience more “sticky.”)

So, what’s the problem here? It’s related to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle: The act of observing disturbs the observed.

Double Think

I haven’t answered the question. I know how I would answer it, but I don’t know what Facebook will do with the information. I’m not against seeing more Jay in my timeline — but the EdgeRank algorithm would change for me in ways I might not like.

All of that adds up to a confused site visitor, which isn’t what you want at all. You want measurement and natural behavior to guide your decisions about how you shape your site.

If you ask your customers for feedback, be clear about what you are doing with it and how it will impact their experience.

If you measure your customers’ behaviors, be transparent about the fact that you are, but as opaque as possible about the process. You’ll get better results over time.

On Thursday I’ll lead a webinar for my friends at NetBase around the topic of research and pulling insights from data. It’s really kind of a fuzzy topic for me because while I know how to do it, I don’t know that I’ve ever tried to explain it to others. But moving through the ideas and trying to come up with some recommendations for folks has been a neat exercise.

You should certainly register for the webinar and join us live, if you can. If not, the event will be archived on NetBase’s website, so you’ll still be able to access it. It kicks off at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT Thursday, May 12. It should last 45 minutes or so. And as of right now, it’ll be a fast and fun talk. I’m not planning on a lot of PowerPoint slides but rather looking at data and just walking folks through what I look for and see.

In preparation, I’d love to hear from some of you who sift through research, particularly those of you who focus on social media data you might glean from monitoring solutions, web-based research tools and the like. I’ll be sharing some ideas on how I try to pull insights from keyword research, anecdotal conversation points and more. But I’d love to hear from you:

• What do you look for when reviewing surveys, monitoring information, keyword research and so on?
• How do you decipher anomalies from potential trends?
• What type of data do you weigh heavier than others?

I’d love your thoughts and ideas on how you find the needles in the haystacks. I’m certainly not the first, only or even best person out there to explain how to pull insights from social media information. Your ideas would be a welcome addition to the conversation.

Come see us on Thursday. In the meantime, drop a comment and let me know how you find insights in the data you see.

Disclosure: NetBase is an online research partner of Social Media Explorer.

Last week I was part of a neat experiment with a group of about 30 or so forward-thinking market researchers to come up with the five “hot” and five “not-so-hot” trends that will affect our industry over the next few years. The goal was for all of us to publish our posts at roughly the same time (I say “roughly,” because I was late ) and see where we all agreed and disagreed. Here were mine, in case you are interested. Fellow market researcher Tom Anderson (who organized the event) produced these word clouds to represent the hot and not-hot posts; if you can tell the difference between them, you’re a frickin’ genius.

One of the common themes from all of these posts was the issue of privacy, especially as it relates to social media research. Some felt it was a dead issue: we have no illusions of privacy – Facebook gives us umpteen privacy settings and we just don’t care. Others feel it will be a hot issue – that there is still another shoe yet to drop, in other words. Certainly, as a researcher, I feel like I have a pretty good moral compass about this sort of thing, and my assumption is that my industry peers also have no desire to “cross the line.” That line, however, turns out to be a slippery sucker. Surely accessing a private message board community that discusses mental health issues should be sacrosanct, yet a company like Nielsen managed to cross exactly that line last fall.

When we complain about a product or service on Twitter, implicitly we are hoping that our pleas will be monitored and responded to. Indeed, by bringing our complaints to the social web, we may be hoping for more – not only that our specific problem will be solved, but that others will benefit, too. Yes, there is probably an element of self-aggrandizement/Klout-fishing that keeps this from being a purely altruistic gesture, but in any case, we voice our displeasure in order to bring about some effect, for ourselves or others, and that model doesn’t work unless companies are listening, and you know that they are listening.

A few months ago I gave a talk at the annual CASRO convention to a group of survey researchers who are grappling with these same issues. In my talk, I used myself as something of a guinea pig, leading my audience down the rabbit hole from an innocent update I posted to Twitter all the way down to the street where I live, a picture of my house, and even how much money I make (roughly), all using publicly-available data and free web services. A username from one site unlocks a profile on another, and a chain of information is revealed about you that is far longer than you think.

From a marketer’s perspective, this information is gold, of course. When you complain about a product, a skilled social media researcher can segment and profile you: are you a parent of young children? An empty-nester? Unemployed? Plop – in you go into the appropriate bucket. Many of you, the readers of Social Media Explorer, are marketers. This information is beneficial to you – but is there a line you won’t cross? At what point do you say, you know – I don’t want to know this. Or do you? One thing is for sure – if you ask for it, social media researchers somewhere will provide it. What do you think? Is there a line? How do you recognize it? Your comments and spirited debate are welcome.