The NWA Addys are a tradition for our headquarters in Rogers, AR and this past weekend was no different.

We're proud to have received the following awards:

• Best In Show - White Cloud Roll-Volution microsite
• Gold - mobile app - Sam's Club iPad App & Micro or mini-site - White Cloud Roll-volution
• Silver - micro or mini-sites - America's Health Rankings; video sales presentation - Osh Kosh video; & video sales presentation - CouponFactory promotional video
• Bronze - video sales presentation - Sam's Club POS video; video sales presentation, The Digital Revolution; mobile website - Sam's Club mobile website; mobile apps - Sam's Club iPhone app; mobile websites - Sam's Club holiday gifting iPad

We hear it a lot - what exactly is a digital innovation partner? CEO Kenny Tomlin recently sat down Digiday Editor-In-Chief, Brian Morrissey and talked about who we are, what we do and why we do it. 

As the home of P&G, Kroger and Macy's, Cincinnati has long been recognized as a hotbed for brand marketing, but the sense that the city is primed to become a center for digital innovation is picking up steam by the day.  This is increasingly evident by the onslaught of digital events and groups popping up around town, with the most recent being Digital xChange, which launched last night. Founded by our own Director of Business Analytics and Accountability, Michael Lamontagne, Marla Reichard from Possible Worldwide, Matt Booher and Russ Shirley of CRM Metrix,  Digital xChange was created for people interested in the digital space to hear from speakers and to exchange thoughts and ideas.

Topics will include "all things digital", including social, location-based services, mobile and more. The cornerstone of the group is to better understand new and upcoming trends, marketing strategies, and measurement/evaluation of performance. The inaugural speaker was J.B. Kropp from Twitter who spoke about engagement and how brands are leveraging the platform. 



Meetups will take place monthly at The Brandery, Cincinnati’s startup incubator founded by CMO Dave Knox. All are welcome and those interested should contact Michael Lamontange for details. 

Pinterest, the very popular social bookmarking site, is well known to many but a bit more difficult to grasp for some. Below you'll find a list of people who are great both for beginner pinners and pros. The best way to learn the game is to play, so sign up already and get to pinning.  

Ben Silbermann

As CEO of Pinterest, Ben is a power pinner with almost 4,000 pins in a variety of genres and interests. His boards also are perfect for the minority of Pinterest users — men. Some of his best boards include “You can’t have too many t-shirts,” “Infographicon” and “Man Crafts.”

http://pinterest.com/ben/

West Elm

This upscale-furniture brand REALLY gets Pinterest, and with 8,658 followers, it shows. Do you ever think to yourself,  “Hmm, I wonder what I could do with chevron stripes in the living room?” Look no further. West Elm has you covered with their “Chevron” board. The best thing about this brand is that they obey the unspoken (well, sometimes spoken) rule of Pinterest: Don’t just promote yourself; be an inspiration.

http://pinterest.com/westelm/

Bonus Tip: If you’re a brand, claim your page now. You’ll be glad you did down the road.

Keegan Adriance

According to Keegan’s profile, he’s a designer and student from Spring Arbor, MI. His boards are great for beginners and certified pin-addicts. He keeps his boards simple and straightforward with names, such as “Tilt-Shift Inspiration,” “Illustration” and “Food.”

http://pinterest.com/keeganadriance/

Susan Gregg Koger

The founder of ModClothe, a popular vintage-inspired clothing website, is already a pro at using social media to promote her business. Susan shows she knows how to use Pinterest the right way, too. Pinterest users heavily frown upon promoting one’s own products. So, Susan’s boards are all about things she personally loves. For example, her “lovely vintage,” “50’s and 60’s inspiration” and “cute hair” boards are especially fun and quirky, just like her brand.

http://pinterest.com/susangkoger/

Joy Cho

Joy’s Pinterest account is an explosion of all that is sparkly, yummy, pretty and fun. She has a little bit of this and a little bit of that with boards ranging from “Cute Overload” and “Florals” to “Photography” and “Typography.” She’s an accumulation of everything that has propelled Pinterest into the spotlight and is a great person to follow.

 http://pinterest.com/ohjoy/

Christine Martinez

Pinterest is more than pinning pictures, it’s for video, too. Christine pins her favorite YouTube videos to share. If you’re an avid Instagram user, keep all of your Instagram pictures in one place like Christine. She has a “The Dogs of Instagram” board that’s worth checking out.

http://pinterest.com/chrisem/

Bonus Tip: To create your own Instagram portfolio, publish your Instagram pictures via Twitter, Facebook or blog. Then, click on the link and pin. You can’t pull pins directly from Facebook. So, you’ll need to click the link below the picture. You also can pin your Instagram pictures from Statigram, a site that displays and gives you stats on your Instagram photos. The site also lets users view the pictures they follow and comment directly on the site — no autocorrects!

Michael Gass

I stumbled across Michael’s board about agency interiors and thought Rockfish would make a great addition, especially with the new offices that we opened this year.  It also is fun to see how the “other side” lives and get design inspiration..

http://pinterest.com/michaelgass/

Water.org

This non-profit is curating its boards with things they care about and love. Their boards revolve around water, their mission and ways to help. Followers will see pictures of beautiful ocean scenes along side facts about drinking water across the globe. This is one collection of pins everyone can get behind.

http://pinterest.com/waterdotorg/

Roadtrippers

This start-up is all about travel and leisure, bringing a sense of wanderlust to its boards. For anyone itching to find a new destination, check out its “On (and off) the Road” board. Roadtrippers also pins pictures from its own trips. So, if you’re stuck in the office, you can live vicariously through these professional travelers.

http://pinterest.com/roadtrippers/

This article was written by Rob Reed, CEO of Momentfeed and originally posted at iMedia Connection
  

Foursquare Explore is a social search engine for the real world, and it can be optimized.

Foursquare has made its previously mobile-only Explore recommendation engine available for the web. The feature provides personalized recommendations based on a user's check-in history, the histories of their friends, their current location, and other preferences. Not only does the Explore feature considerably increase Foursquare's value proposition for users by facilitating the discovery of new places, it significantly changes the value equation for brands as well. Indeed, Foursquare Explore is the first SoLoMo search engine.



I wrote about this potential in November of 2010 in a post entitled "Why the Hell Would I Do That? Four Reasons to Check-in."

"The promise of intelligent recommendations is the feature that gets me most excited. Based on the data I volunteer through checking-in everywhere I go, whether it's a public or private check-in, location-based services can use their aggregate data to accurately recommend other places I'll like."

Foursquare Explore is powered by algorithms that intelligently recommend places to consumers based on a broad range of criteria. These recommendations ultimately drive foot traffic (and sales) just as Google Search drives web traffic. As such, brands need to optimize their locations for search, discovery, and engagement in this new medium.

With the introduction of Foursquare Explore, as well as its counterpart with Facebook Recommendations for Place Pages, it's crucial that brands optimize their locations on these platforms. This goes well beyond simply claiming or registering them.

Optimizing a brand's locations is an ongoing process, much like that of search engine optimization (SEO). In fact, there are many parallels. Following are the three primary areas of optimization:

1. Venue Registration & Optimization: This is a multi-step process, whereby a brand's locations (venues) are claimed and registered on Facebook and Foursquare. By taking ownership of these venues, the brand unlocks valuable data about its customers and how they're engaging. The first objective, however, is to optimize the venues for search and discovery. Much of this has to do with accurate venue metadata such as the geocodes (lat/long), street addresses, and descriptions. In SEO terms, these are akin to having proper tagging structure and keywords. It is relatively straightforward, but with hundreds or thousands of locations, it's easier said than done. Above all, the geocode must be pin-point accurate for each location. As we've found, proper venue optimization alone can increase location-based engagement (LBE), including check-ins, by 100%.

2. Engagement Campaigns: LBE has tremendous value. Each engagement represents a customer sharing their brand experience from a smartphone at the point of sale. Each is distributed through one or more social feeds, and each provides insightful data about that customer. With the introduction of Foursquare Explore and Facebook Recommendations, these engagements serve yet another objective: increasing the likelihood of a referral or recommendation. In SEO terms, LBE is like fresh, original content and inbound links from highly ranked sites. It is the currency of the SoLoMo economy. The more engagement a brand earns, the higher it will rank and the more incremental foot traffic it will drive.

3. Competitive Intelligence: Competitive benchmarking is now possible at the local level on a one-to-one basis. Through the MomentFeed platform, one can track and measure individual competitor locations relative to their own. In turn, these data can be analyzed at the regional and global levels. This provides valuable insight about how competitors are performing within the LBE platforms, from which other metrics such as sales and foot traffic can be inferred. With the introduction of Foursquare Explore and Facebook Recommendations, these data also signal the likelihood of one location being recommended over another. The reality is that multi-location brands don't compete at the national level. They compete at the local level and should be measured and optimized accordingly.

Rob Reed is Founder and CEO of MomentFeed, the first location-based marketing platform for the enterprise. MomentFeed brings together Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter as a holistic solution for increasing customer engagement at the point of sale. Reed recently authored The SoLoMo Manifesto - Or, just about everything marketers need to know about the convergence of social, local, and mobile. It is now available as a free download.