Pinterest has exploded in popularity and one thing that keeps coming up is “How do I get more followers?”. I’m not sure why people are asking this. You get more followers in Pinterest the same way you get more followers on Facebook, Twitter or even real life. You engage with people.

With Pinterest in particular, you should have well organized boards and also have a variety of boards. Don’t lump everything together. I don’t care about shoes or dresses, but I do care about recipes, gardening ideas and art of all sorts. Also, if you break things up into multiple things, try to at least group them together on the main board. An example of this would be if you had boards for drinks, appetizers, desserts, etc. You would want to have all of these things near each other. It just makes things a little easier. Of course, you need to repin other people’s pins and also comment, but that should be a no brainer.

But really, it all comes down to forming relationships with people . People don’t feel like they are just being talked at, but talked to.   Try it and see what happens!

For me, the thing about the Super Bowl that I was anticipating most were the Coke Polar Bears. I mentioned this in an earlier blog and how it was one of the things to watch out for during the game.

At first, it was little boring. The polar bears were just hanging out on their sofa and moving around a little, but not doing anything particularly interesting. I kept my second screen up and kept up with them as the game progressed and it ended up being more interesting than the game for me. Overall, I think Coke did a great job. Below are some screen captures I took with my comments.

During a Pepsi commercial, the Polar Bears feigned sleep. During the Elton John Pepsi commercial, the bears just got up and walked away (perhaps to get another Coke?).

Throughout the game, the bears were tweeting. One was @NY_Bear and the other one was @NE_Bear. I thought this was a nice touch.

People were tweeting the Polar Bears and the bears were in turn showing the rest of us random pictures people were sending to them as well as what people were tweeting them. I though this was a great touch as it helped with interaction and engagement.

During the halftime show with Madonna, the bears offered a little more.

During “Vogue”, the bears and some of their penguin friends decided to join Madonna and Vogue too.

The polar bears also got involved with the game. They’d cheer when something good happened for their team, shake their heads when something bad happened and sometimes, they’d go all out with props to cheer on the defense.

And sometimes, the Polar Bears weren’t even around. Sometimes, you’d see just their icy couch or you’d see their penguin friends make an appearance.

Did you keep up with the Coke Polar Bears? What were some of your favorite moments?

For Super Bowl 46, I wasn’t really interested in either team. What I was interested in were the commercials and the integration of social media into the game.

One of my favorite parts about the game was the Coke Polar Bears who were watching the game at cokepolarbowl.com. It got off to a shaky start as there seemed to be some server issues, but it was more interesting than the game at some points for me. I’m going to write a blog just about the polar bears because there were a lot of things I loved about them.

The commercials are always a big part of the Super Bowl. Sometimes this is referred to as Brand Bowl or Ad Bowl. There were some groups of people watching the Super Bowl just for the ads. Some were great. Some were funny and there were a couple that were just not good at all. Below are some of the highlights and some of the low points in my opinion.

First the high points.

Nice touch by Bud Light to include a link to get more information about rescuing dogs.

Now the low points.

I am not sure what needing to pee has to do with tax preparation.

I found this commercial kind of creepy and weird.

And finally, GoDaddy. Their commercials are usually just based on the premise of sex sells. But this one, was not good because of the inclusion of a QR code. QR codes can be useful, but not on TV. No one is going to get their phone, look for the barcode scanner app and then try and capture this code. I have no idea what the QR code even pointed to because I didn’t look. I’m assuming it was something about the Pussycat Dolls since they’re mentioned at the end. Bad move GoDaddy.

For a full list of all the commercials last night, Mashable has a feature.

What were your favorite commercials of the night?

One of the stickers you can get from Get Glue

It’s no secret that the Super Bowl is a big deal, regardless of who is playing. Last year 111 million people watched the telecast, not just for the game, but for the ads and the half time show too.

This year, to add to the Super Bowl hype, some brands started releasing long versions of their ads early. For instance, many people have already seen the Honda CRV Ferris Bueller ad. Commercials cost between 3 and 4 million dollars for a 30 second spot. Companies want to get the most bang for their buck and try to extend the social chatter around the broadcast and their products.

But how are they doing it?

On Get Glue, Pepsi currently has a sticker that you can get if you check in to the game before it even starts (and people love their stickers!). Unlock the sticker and get coupons and exclusive content. Of course, you can’t forget the stickers for the game that NBC is sponsoring.

Coke is going all out with their popular polar bears. The bears will be at CokePolarBowl.com and the bears will respond in real time to the game’s action like touchdowns, interceptions and even ads for other brands.

Chevy has their Chevy Game Time app that users can download to their phones or tablets. The app will have trivia and opportunity for people to win tons of prizes, even cars.

Pizza Hut and Amex are teaming up with Foursquare to offer rebates on pizza.

Hyundai is teaming up with Miso to deliver branded content during the game.

Subway and GoDaddy are using PrePlay Sports to let fans predict plays with an app they can download.

The NFL itself is offering their own app for Verizon customers and NBC will stream the game on the internet.

Many people use a second screen while watching TV. People check in and get stickers from Get Glue, live tweet while the show is on or talk about the shows on Facebook. But this is really the first time that so many companies are trying to leverage the second screen. The second screen is definitely a trend that will be taking off ten fold in 2012 and the Super Bowl is ready to kick it off in a big way.

Will you be utilizing a second screen during the game? If so, what will you be doing with it?

I had a conversation with a friend who works for a Fortune 500 company about Twitter authenticity. The company in question has been through a transition recently and a new CEO has come in. Part of the communication plan is to have the new CEO tweet. They think this will help with transparency and I would agree. However, the head of Communications and the VP over the Communications group think that the CEO should send them his tweets and then they will edit them and post them on Twitter.

My reaction was “What??? Are you serious???”. This completely defeats the purpose of Twitter in my opinion. If your goal is transparency, then having someone else do the tweeting is not a great idea. Even if most of the words are his, you never know how his message will be cleaned up.

Twitter is about relationships and while I know a CEO of a Fortune 500 company must be really busy, I can’t help but think that this is overall a really bad idea. I know for me personally, if I know someone has someone acting as a proxy, I unfollow them. I don’t want the edited, sanitized version. I want the authentic person. Two people come to mind when discussing this. The first one is Martha Stewart. She currently has over 2.4 million people following her on Twitter. And a woman who is known for everything being just so has a Twitter account full of misspellings and shortcuts and seems to be a real person. Martha Stewart is a big fan of Twitter and has said it’s  better than Facebook. Her account is unsanitized and authentic, the way it should be. Another example is Mark Cuban. He has over 800,000 followers and all the tweets are his. He is unapologetic and completely authentic. He retweets people. He responds to them. He is a real person. I’m pretty sure that Martha Stewart and Mark Cuban are both as busy (if not more so) than this CEO. Somehow they manage to tweet without a bunch of cleaned up PR speak.

What do you think about this topic? Would you follow a CEO or a celebrity you know had other people tweeting for them? Does this affect transparency or authenticity? Tell me your thoughts.

Someone asked me last week what I thought the next big thing was going to be and I said social curation. For years, I’ve been saving pictures on Flickr of craft ideas, backyard ideas, art ideas, and travel pictures and while it was somewhat adequate, it didn’t make it very easy to find things later or to share. Enter Pinterest. Everyone seems to be buzzing about Pinterest in 2012. I’ve been using Pinterest for about six months, but over the past three, usage has grown exponentially and that growth is being driven by women. It is the first major social networking site with a majority female base (currently 58% of the users are women).

So, what is Pinterest? In short, it’s a way for people to share pictures and videos. You have “boards” and on those boards you “pin” things. People can then repin, like and make comments on your pins. What you can pin is limitless. A few of the boards I have include one for interesting recipes, my travel bucket list, artists that I play on my podcast Rubyfruit Radio, various craft and art boards and the list goes on and on. It’s is virtually endless.

In August, Pinterest had 1.2 million users and has grown to over 4 million today. That is a 4,000% increase! That increase has made Pinterest the 10th most visited social network or forum on the entire internet. Why has Pinterest grown so fast? For one, Pinterest makes it very easy to pin things. If you are on Pinterest and see something you like, you just click the button on the picture and it will pin it wherever you want. If you are outside of Pinterest, there are bookmarklets you can install on your browser. You click the bookmarklet and it will let you pin the picture you find interesting and also include a link which is particularly handy when you’re talking about recipes. Another reason for the shift is that some prominent figures in lifestyle living have Pinterest accounts. Martha Stewart has many boards about crafts and recipes and Paula Deen features many of her recipes. Television networks with broad female bases also have accounts. These include the Food Network, HGTV, and WE TV. They are able to grow interest in their programming by catering to their followers on Pinterest.  Many retailers such as Michael’s are also on there with boards about holiday crafts and scrapbooking, things that are traditionally geared towards women. But you can’t leave the guys out. I follow a few men who post pictures of travel destinations, outdoor projects, tech gear, and things related to sports. There is something for everyone on Pinterest!

I am an avid user of Pinterest, as are most of my friends. Often at work, I find my circle of friends talking about things we pinned or saw on Pinterest or things we made that we had pinned previously. This also helps the growth of the site as people who aren’t on Pinterest might hear us talking about pinning things and ask what it is. Pinterest will be one of the ones to watch in 2012.

Do you use Pinterest? What kinds of things do you pin? Follow me on Pinterest!

I am not ashamed to admit that I love Pinterest. I see so many cool things that I might never have seen otherwise, but there are some things that I would change.

1) Private Boards- I pin a lot of things and some of those things are gift ideas or other surprises that I might not want the person I’m compiling the pins for to see. I also see a fair number of women who are not engaged saving pins of wedding related things. They might not want their boyfriends to see these things, especially if they haven’t really talked about getting married. The ability to have a private board that no one can see but you would be a great addition. Likewise, if you could share a board with just a couple of people for an internal collaboration mechanism, the usefulness of Pinterest might increase.

2) Better Notification System- It is really hard to keep up with the notifications. Currently, I have all notifications sent to me. This includes when someone likes something, repins something, follows me etc. And it’s fine that these things are coming through email…except when I get a lot and I’m having to click on 30 links. It would be much easier to also have something in place like Facebook where you can easily go and see all the activity.

3) Searching Within Boards- I currently have 23 boards. Many are related to various craft related things that interest me such as painting, mosaics and upcycling but I also have boards related to recipes. Searching for a recipe you know you have pinned is pretty much non existent. You basically have to scroll through everything to find what you’re looking for. This is fine if you don’t have many things pinned, but I have almost 100 and it’s growing daily. It’s going to be really hard to find things. A better search would make a world of difference.

What do you like about Pinterest? What would you change?

Follow me on Pinterest.

Twitter rolled out another round of updates. What’s different in this incarnation?

Everything has been reorganized into fewer categories.

1) Home- Your news feed, but improved. Media like pictures and video are viewable right in the tweet. You can also see information about @replies and retweets.

2) Connect- All your @replies and mentions live here.

3) Discover- Not just searching for keywords, trending topics and hashtags, Discover helps identify stories based on your connections, language and location. However, there doesn’t seem to be a way to “thumbs down” things that don’t interest you.

4) Me- Your Twitter profile that now has more activity recorded. Also, your info is not on the left side instead of the right.

This is what the home section of Twitter looks like now.

The mobile apps (both iPhone and Android) have been given the same treatment.

Have you been using new Twitter? What are your thoughts about it?

As 2011 draws to a close, many people are talking about resolutions and goals for 2012. For me, the new year means doing some digital house cleaning and starting fresh.

Email- For 2012, I want to utilize Inbox Zero. My mailbox was out of control for most of 2011, sometimes having upwards of 4,000 messages in my inbox. It’s currently sitting at 118, but zero would be nice. Archive old stuff, delete stuff you don’t need and put things you need to keep in a folder. Sounds simple enough. Let’s put Inbox Zero to the test.

Organize files- Not only does this include the random files and folders floating around on my laptop, it also includes the multitude of things piled up in Google Docs, Drop Box and Amazon Cloud Drive. Drop Box and Amazon are full of music that has been been sent to me, shared and downloaded. I need to get it all in the proper place.

Clean out RSS Reader- Are there blogs I don’t read, blogs that are dead? I need to focus on the blogs that I really read and pay attention to and get rid of the ones I don’t even skim.

Pinterest Boards- I love Pinterest. I am have a lot of boards but feel like I need to be more concise. I need to consolidate some boards, make new boards and just generally stay better organized which I think will help contribute to the Pinterest user experience. Having a board called Random isn’t going to help anyone (even me).

Bookmarks- I bookmark a lot of things. Bands, articles I want to go back and read etc. I need to go through my bookmarks and get rid of the things I don’t need.

Evernote- I use Evernote a lot. I put down ideas for shows for Rubyfruit Radio, ideas for blog entries for this website, ideas for my clients I have with Ariel Publicity/ Cyber PR, and just random things I want to remember for later. I need to setup new folders and basically overhaul the entire thing to make it better utilized.

What are your digital resolutions 2012?

I’ve started using Foursquare a lot more recently. This is due in part to the fact that more people at work are using it and we make kind of a big deal out of being mayor of the office or having more check-in points. However, none of us are using Foursquare to it’s full potential and one of the big things that makes Foursquare more social is lists. Think about all the sites that have lists and how useful they are. You have Amazon where people make lists of their favorite albums, favorite authors, favorite books etc. You can even make wishlists. On Yelp, you can make lists of your favorite Vietnamese restaurants, places to go on a first date, free things to do in a city etc. Foursquare can serve the same sorts of purpose. It could be a very valuable thing for people who are traveling and can even be used as an educational tool of sorts. But if you make a list, don’t you want to get noticed? Here are some tips to help make that happen.

1. Be different There hundreds of lists devoted to “stadiums”, “best burgers in Atlanta”, “best BBQ”. Why not do something else. What about Chad Elkins who has a list of movie filming locations in Georgia? There you can find places where shows like Walking Dead are filmed, where scenes from Forest Gump were filmed and all sorts of interesting places like that. Oakland Cemetery has a Gone with the wind list that features such places as Oakland Cemetery where Margaret Mitchell is buried and her house where she wrote the book. On an educational note, a list about a historical figure such as MLK or JFK could be interesting. Places they lived, visited, could be put on the lists. I plan on making a list about NYC, where I lived for a while. It’s going to be a list of places you should go that are way cooler than all the places you’re “supposed” to go when you’re a tourist in the city.

2. Focus on local spots On a list about restaurants for instance, don’t put places that are everywhere such as Chili’s, Applebee’s and things like that. Have local flavor. Include unique things that you don’t find everywhere. I pass over lists with chains and I’m betting most other people do too.

3. Include Tips and Pictures Pictures get a lot of attentions in foursquare. In fact, the list discovery page on Foursquare is completely picture driven. Tips can give users a more complete picture of the places you think people should go. Both of these things together are invaluable.

Do you have any tips? What are some of your favorite lists? Tell me in the comments!