TheFancy is a growing social media Web site  specifically used to catalog (or digitally hoard) your  images, fancy images, or high-priced images. For users the images are quite eye-catching and quite masculine.  TheFancy has major financial backing with high hopes of changing e-commerce.  Actually not just changing it but revolutionizing it!   For example, instead of throwing out special limited offers at to-good-to-be-true prices, at TheFancy.com a merchant can claim the item once it has been fancied.  Merchants can then offer a deal thru TheFancy.com.

With it’s overwhelmingly masculine imagery and a reported sixty percent male users TheFancy appears to be “a mans world”.  A world with mostly men “fancying”  things – funny as that sounds.  Attracting  men first could turn out to be a monumental win if the ladies follow their lead.   Users are prompted to ‘fancy’ images after they log in.  Then users can  upload images to fancy.  Just like Pinterest, users can add a bookmarklet to their browsers and fancy images they find surfing the web.  It is very easy to “fancy” that photo of a very cool resort built on the water or the photo of that dream house built on a mountain top. 

After you have done some fancying,  check out the Fancy Deals. Deals are where it’s at!  It’s almost like they know your style.  Oh wait, they do!  By “fancying” items the site knows exactly how to tempt you.  The Deal imagery can also be fancied.  However, these fancy images are different.  You can choose to “buy it” with a convenient link next to the fancy image and once you fancy one of these images check your inbox because you’ve just UNLOCKED a Deal!  It will make you feel special and tempt you even more.  We have to admit we were very tempted to buy a funny tech toy.

So, go ahead check it out.  Start creating your own online catalog now.  Imagine one place with all your fancy dreams right there at your fingertips ready to purchase.   Don’t forget to link to your other social media accounts so your Facebook friends and Twitter followers know what you fancy. Who knows maybe some nice friend will show up with the keys to that new Mustang Shelby… just because.  Everyone deserves to dream, even men.  ;-)  We are just kidding.   We think the site is cool no matter what gender.

Depending on your business type you really might benefit from Pinterest. For example, Let’s say you supply Pennsylvania Flagstone and your website has beautiful images of landscapes showcasing your beautiful product. Then you are in the perfect situation to benefit from a Pinterest account.

So, now we know your business and Pinterest are a match. Scanmaster has compiled a top ten list of tips to help guide you to the future.

Tip 1:  Start pinning. We suggest the 80/20 rule. Pin other web sites media 80 percent of the time and pin your own media 20 percent of the time.

Tip 2:  Select someone to manage your Pinterest account who is social media savvy and has a sense of style.

Tip 3:   Use Pinterest to sell your product. Businesses can sell their products on Pinterest by adding a price to pinned items.

Tip 4:   Use Pinterest to improve your search engine results. Key words and key phrases can be used when titling pins and within the pins description. You can also create custom links back to your web site. Businesses should take advantage of this benefit not offered with many other social media outlets.

Tip 5:   Let your followers inside - meaning pin images of your main office, satelite offices, staff, etc. Be creative about it and be sure everyone is smiling during their photo op!

Tip 6:   Non-profits can use Pinterest to raise awareness. You can share images, videos and post notes of inspiration on your organizations boards.

Tip 7:   Don’t forget to follow other brands. Businesses can follow vendors which  in-turn improve business relations, making it easy for either party to pin each others pins. Businesses can follow competitors however, we do not suggest this practice. By following regardless of if you repin their pins, it promotes the competition.

Tip 8:   Add Follow on Pinterest button on your web site making it easier for admirers to find and follow all your boards on Pinterest.

Tip 9:   Make it easy for to share and pin your web sites images and videos.  We’ve made it easy by adding a share button.  It’s floating, right there…to your left.  (No, your other left).   Remember the more pins, the better.

Tip 10:   Have fun with it! Every one needs a laugh from time to time, use some humor in your pins and descriptions.

We hope these tips give you something to think about.  We think Pinterest is not going anywhere, and momentum is building.  But, look out Pinterest, rumor has it the guys are Fancying things.

Stairway to Heaven

Statue of Liberty, Las Vegas, NV

Kiddie Piggy Cake from New Zealand

For those not so young and hip, Pinterest, like other social media outlets, utilizes following and followers. Sorry – as of right now, you can only gain access to Pinterest through an invitation. A friend who is on Pinterest may invite you or you can sign up and go on a wait-list for Pinterest to send you an invitation. Rumor has it that it could take two weeks! We got ours in less then 24 hours.

With all the hype about Pinterest, their inbox is probably overflowing. It was recently reported to have made the top ten list for social media websites!

So you have now been invited to Pinterest, awesome! Makes you feel special, right? Now you log in and fill out interests, but be careful, you could start following total strangers based on your likes. Pinterest will even help set up your first “boards”. Boards are where it’s at in Pinterest. Thus the name. Pinterest as in “pins of interest”. You pin images and videos that you find on the web to one of your boards. It’s like the bulletin boards of olden days when one would cut out an image of their teen heart throb from a teen magazine and pin it to the board. In this case its all done using an internet browser.

So how do you pin? Well it’s pretty easy to get started pinning online. Don’t worry, Pinterest walks you through setting up the ability to pin. Once the set-up is complete “Pin It” will show in your favorite list. Now you surf the Web and there it is! The place you always wanted to visit! You go to your “favorites” in your browser and hit “Pin It”. Like magic you are shown images from that web page that are “pinnable”. You select to pin the image of your desire to one of your Pinterest boards. You can create new boards right there on the fly while pinning. Once pinned, your board now displays with this cool picture or video. Pretty cool. Users can also upload items to pin to their own boards and you can allow others to pin items to your boards if you desire. Maybe you want others to share hair style ideas for you. Pin a photo of a haircut and ask others to pin photos of hair styles they think will look good on you. This is just an example of what we’ve found happening at Pinterest. The possibilities are endless.

Ensure your Pinterest profile looks good to others who will visit. For example, you can rearrange your boards. Think of it like decorating your office wall or bedroom wall. Maybe now you’ll see why you might not have heard of it if you’re not a young hip chick? Don’t worry guys – you’re not purposely being left out – we have seen some young men out there, but they are far and few between. But now the word is out, so time will tell if more of the male species will start pinning in numbers. Boards with boats and cars and pretty woman. It’s very easy to use and for those not into tweeting or posting status updates to your Facebook friends, Pinterest makes it easy to keep in touch using imagery and few words. Like anything, time will tell.

The first tweet ever was on March  21, 2006 by Jack Dorsey at 9:50 PM  (PST): “just setting up my twttr”.   Twitter has made great progress since the early days of messaging.  Today Twitter has over 10 million accounts.  Twenty one percent of those accounts have no tweets.   The vast majority of Twitter accounts have less than 100 followers.   Women account for more than half of Twitter users.  Thirty percent of Twitter users access their accounts on thier phones.   Twitter accounts can be linked to other social media accounts like Facebook, LinkedIn, RSS and WordPress.

With Twitter, users can “tweet” whatever is on their mind to their followers.  For a business, let’s say a deli, a tweet could be as simple as “Today’s special is #chickensoup.”  For an individual, one could tweet “Making #chickensoup.”  Notice the hashtags (#).  By using hashtags, tweeters are categorizing their keywords making for better searching and trending on Twitter.   # Hashtags allow users to discover what others are tweeting about or what is trending at any given time.  When #TEBOW threw a touchdown pass in a championship game, the tweets came in fast and broke records.   Any major event that grabs the attention of the world has the possibility to break trending records as Twitter continues to grow.  In addition to hashtags, Twitter users can use the @ symbol to tweet out to another tweeter.  Example, “@scanmastertweet when is next shuttle leaving?”  By using the @ symbol it makes the communication between users easier.  Another popular Twitter feature is the ability to retweet tweets. It may sound funny but it is easy to do, fun and part of using Twitter.

Your fan base knows to follow you.  It is up to you to keep your followers engaged.  The more you tweet, the better chance you have of attracting more followers.

You can follow Scanmaster on Twitter at twitter.com/scanmastertweet.

Google+ Scanmaster Page

What is Google+?

Hmmmmm, that’s a very good question.  After much testing, Scanmaster has determined the obvious!   Google+ and Facebook have many similarities.  After all,   the success of Facebook is the reason that so many others want to imitate what they do,right?    Well,  we want to give you some quick information so that you don’t have to do the research yourself.   You determine if you want to go further and join Google+!!

The obvious similarity between the two Social Media outlets is the use of  ’people’ and  ’pages.’   Google+  allows you to post updates, share photos, videos, and play games  - all similar to what Facebook allows. But not in the same way. There are also some key differences.   With Google+ you do not post on your friends “wall”, you, instead message, email or make comments on photos and posts directly.  You can also follow anyone you wish, however that doesn’t mean they will share anything with you or follow you in return.  You can easily control what you share with Google+ Circles – which is a way of organizing groups of people. You can put both ‘people’ and ‘pages’ into circles, in fact, you can place people in multiple groups or circles.

When posting at Google+ you can easily control what your ‘circles’ can see.  For example, you may have a ‘family’ circle that you allow only family members to view – you may have more personal items in this circle such as baby pictures, family gathering videos, etc.   No one else can view those without being a member of that ‘circle’.  Another cool feature is that you can publicly Google + websites.  This allows you to ‘show’ this tab on your Google + profile.  But the main difference between  Google+  and Facebook is the “Hangout” feature which includes an option for live video and chat.  We see the hangout feature as the most valuable addition to any Social Media venue.  Potential uses include customer service and support, employee or customer meetings or just “hanging out”.

Time will tell if people will migrate from Facebook to Google+ or if people find time for both. For now, as they say if you’re not there, you don’t exist – by the way, Scanmaster is there and we do exist in both venues!  Check us out!