Here at Watermelon Media, we’re busily working away on some very exciting social media products and services, but there’s no point putting in all this hard work if it’s not what you want and need!

That’s why we’re asking you what social media problems you would like solutions to. There are just 9 short questions and respondents go into the running to win a $50 amazon.com voucher.

Please feel free to share the link (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PBM328H)

The survey closes at midnight on October 31, 2012. Thanks and good luck!

Click here to take survey

QR codes are similar to the standard flat barcodes we’re all familiar with, except they’re 2D and store a lot more information because they do so by storing the information both vertically and horizontally – and, as you’ll see from the gallery below, can also be customised quite nicely.

I know they’re still very much a novelty for most people/companies, but I think they have a lot of potential Watermelon Media is certainly encouraging clients to at least give them a go.

I’ve started seeing them pop up with direct links to companies’ Facebook pages (allowing potential customers to go directly to a “like” option), but also directing users of the QR code in question to a page that acts, effectively, as a business card for individuals. I even saw a resume that featured a QR code and anyone scanning it was whisked off to an online version of the resume. Very clever!

Other companies use QR codes as calls to actions, so for entering a competition for example or to drive traffic to a specific page on their website.

Though most people have never heard of a QR code, they’ve actually been used widely in Japan since they were invented by Denso in 1994 and they’re starting to pop up all over the place. Check out this ad from GoDaddy.

GoDaddy's novel use of QR codes as featured in New York's Times Square. Image source: Overdigital.com

It’s a novel use of a QR code – and appeared in Times Square last month.

Other practical uses of QR codes include:

- On individual sales pages for products
- On sales brochures
- On business cards
- On packaging
- To direct clients to promotions/competitions
- On Facebook to garner Likes and new followers
- On t-shirts
- Using QR codes to generate SMS messages and embed phone numbers

In a more sensible note, and cool-factor aside, we did learn a few things when creating our QR codes, bright colours don’t work well (hence why my favourite green one above isn’t being used by Watermelon Media) and we’ve actually ended up using our black and red one simply because, in testing, that’s the only one that had a 100% success rate!

Feel free to contact us if you’d like us to create a customised QR code for you, but if you’d like to try out a free one, check out www.qrstuff.com where you’ll find all sorts of fabulous QR-code related goodies, including personalised chocolates stamped with your company’s logo!

So, it seems QR codes are useful marketing tools – and delicious, too!

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I have to admit, with nearly 600 pins across 50+ boards, I’m shamefully addicted and have collated boards on everything from stained glass and staircases to cool geeky products I’ve stumbled across online and wise quotes I’d like to remember.

The first time I saw Pinterest, the hairs on my arm stood on edge and I just knew it was something special. The minute I logged on (having begged an invitation from somewhere), I was knocked out by its potential power, for both business and pleasure.

In the intervening months, I’ve used it for my own entertainment (a little too much, perhaps, but always in the name of research, of course!) and for business. In fact, I’ve used it A LOT for business and with great benefit to Watermelon Media’s clients, as well as in my various other business ventures.

So, what is Pinterset?
In theory, Pinterest is just another way to share images online, but that very simple explanation belies the site’s potential power.

It’s different from other image sharing sites because it’s about collecting images from across the web on myriad topics, not just your favourite family snaps or collections of other great photos from strangers. It’s about sharing images (and now video) that you like, for no reason other than you like it.

Images are shared on topic-based boards, and that can be anything from hairstyles you like to cool new foods. Over time these boards become crammed with, generally, the best images on the topic – and people with similar interests are compelled to follow them because they’re created by someone with similar interests and a similar eye and you’re keen to see what they’ll next stumble across and share.

It’s not even about the person behind your favourite Pinterest board, it’s about the board itself and what wondrous gem will be pinned to it next!

Again, it sounds simple, perhaps not even that compelling, but once you try it, there really is no going back, especially if you’re a visual person or someone who works in a creative field.

Business uses of Pinterest:
Perhaps the best use of Pinterest for business is the ability to drive traffic back to your site. One of my projects involves adding new products from a client on Pinterest with a URL back to the product’s advertising page. Traffic has increased to each of the pages on Pinterest significantly and in the most unexpected of ways as users share the images – of their own accord.

The trick is ensuring that what goes online is compelling, not just an advertisement, but something beautiful, because Pinterest is about gorgeous images – many of them ads – but beautiful images that can be shared on the boards of anyone thinking the image is beautiful enough to be pinned onto their relevant board.

Once they find a gorgeous image and pin it to their board, the link goes with it – and sticks with it whenever that image is shared unless the user changes it and, from my own experience, I rarely delete the original link.

Secondly, Watermelon Media uses Pinterest as virtual storyboards and colour boards for clients, allowing them to peruse ideas online and then collate and share them digitally, not unlike the way a designer or artist may create an inspiration board before embarking on a new creative venture.

Both sides of the equation, the client and Watermelon Media, get a much clearer vision of what is expected and desired – and it can be added to easily by the simple sharing of a new pin.

Downsides:
There are, however, two downsides to this wonderful tool:

1) All Pinterest boards are public. You can’t have private Pinterest boards (yet?), which is annoying because it would improve the site’s potential use in business a thousandfold. I know that for the clients we use Pinterest for, we have to set up nondescript usernames in order to keep projects confidential or at least out of the public eye. It’s frustrating because the power Pinterest holds for the business space. It’s inevitable that the feature will come, eventually.

2) I know I shouldn’t complain, especially given the app is free, but the site tends to buckle under the load and, more often than not, is unresponsive, which makes pinning a little unpredictable. It’s more frustrating than anything else, but it is, essentially, still a startup (it’s not even a year old), so as investors start pouring cash into it, I’m sure we’ll see the site stabilize.

Until then, sign up. You’ll love it. You can also check out my personal Pinterest board – http://pinterest.com/sam_amjadali/ – as well as Watermelon Media’s Pinterest board – http://pinterest.com/watermelonmedia/- but we’re keeping that on the down low for a little while! Oh, and if you’d like an invitation or have any questions, email me, Samantha (samantha@watermelonmedia.com.au).

No offence, sir, but that’s crazy!

Social media, believe it or not, is an art and given how important it’s going to be for business in 2012, it’s an art you want to get right – or find someone who is an artist.

Good social media requires a delicate mix of several elements; an understanding of the “lingo” and technology; an appreciation for the need to build and maintain a community; a measure of legal awareness and common sense and, of course, a modicum of personality as well as the ability to sell a brand or product – without actually selling it (or worse, still, over selling it).

It’s rare to find all these qualities in a single person, either inside the company or outside. So, organisations are desperately trying to find a happy medium between in-house and outsourced resources who can manage their social media.

Tell me, should you outsource your social media?
Well, now, that very much depends on the skills already to be found within your organisation.

If there aren’t any socially media savvy (and socially media responsible) employees in your stable, then yes, you should absolutely outsource the role.

The real problem is that too many people today hang up the social media shingle and call themselves gurus and pros when their knowledge is largely technical and extends to little more than an ability to link  their Twitter profiles to Facebook. Anyone can do that.

Because so few companies actually “get” social media, let alone appreciate the importance of the role or the potential for it in business, they tend to hire people who appear to talk the talk and walk the walk  – or bright youngish things with more than 1000 friends on Facebook, apparently!

Know that there are some truly brilliant and savvy social media marketers out there, you just have to keep looking – and, like a great mechanic or dentist, if you find them, do not let them go regardless of whether they are outside your company or inside it.

When it comes to tone, investment and a knowledge of corporate culture, there is an obvious and very real value in having your own, in-house social media person running things from inside your company.

However, if you don’t have such a person or group internally and must go outside, ensure your third-party social media people know what they’re doing, that they truly understand your brand and are wary of the potential legal pitfalls of social media – as well as the potential power.

That’s my two-cents worth! Why not share yours?

The video (below) highlights the plight of Lala Dheiman, a modern-day slave working in London for employees (well, the term employees is used lightly) who don’t pay her, force her to work 18-hour shifts and have confiscated her passport.

In the words of a younger friend to whom I showed the video, “Seriously? That’s not slavery. Is it?”

Erm, yet it is.

The beauty of that little vignette is that it highlights perfectly the potential impact of a well made social media campaign.

My young friend has shared it on her own Facebook page having discovered for the first time, in her late 20s no less, that that this sort of stuff is happening today, yes, today, under our noses, in big cities across the globe and it’s being perpetrated by seemingly respectable modern-day people.

Now THAT’S a successful campaign.

The video highlights Lala’s lonliness and desperation via Facebook where she is just as isolated as in her real life – with no friends – until she is friended by Anti Slavery International. Very clever!

It’s a heart-rending, but modern take on what is, essentially, slavery in the twenty-first century and is definitely a social media campaign worth following, not just for its ethical merit, but creative genius as well.

XXX
Team Watermelon Media

Of the millions of Aussie Facebook users, 46 per cent are male, while the remaining 54 per cent are female.

The top five Facebook fan pages in Australia are:

 Age breakdown:

It’s not surprising that Aussies who tended to use Facebook most in November were aged between 25-34 (with a total of 2,771, 491 users), while 18-24-year-olds were the next biggest users of Facebook Down Under.

William Shatner (aka Captain Kirk and Denny Crane) takes us through the stages of grief related to being defriended on a social networking site in the thoroughly amusing video below. It first aired on Jimmy Kimmel Live earlier this week during the show’s second annual National Unfriend Day, aimed at getting the world to tidy up their Facebook friends lists.

It’s a hilarious, tongue-in-cheek look at unfriending non-friends, unless you’ve been on the receiving end!

Don’t be offended. It is sound advice because ”flipping” – buying rundown websites, sprucing them up then selling at a profit – is, apparently, where it’s at.

It is the digital equivalent of renovating a house before putting it back on the market at a higher price, only without the back-breaking labour, dust mite-infested carpets and massive cash outlays.

”Unlike flipping real estate, it’s easy to add value to websites,” Melbourne flipper David Jenyns says. ”To add value to real estate, you must do something significant, labour-intensive and, usually, expensive, like building a new bathroom.

”But with websites, you can make small changes such as building links from other sites or improving the overall look for little cost.

”That result can be a significant increase in value.”

Jenyns, the owner of MelbourneSEOservices.com, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars online through flipping and ”domaining”, buying keyword-rich domains, stuffing them with content suited to search engine optimisation (SEO) and selling at a profit.

Among his success stories is forextradingstrategies.org, which he bought for $10 and sold for $10,000 after spending $100 to have SEO-friendly articles written for the site.

The Jenyns domaining repertoire includes wrestlingmoves.org, which was sold for $2000; WoodWorkingProjects.org ($1495) and fireplace-design.org ($997). He paid $10 for each domain and about $150 to set up the accompanying websites.

”Flipping offers the lowest barrier to entry compared with virtually any other business out there,” says Jenyns, who in 2001, aged 19, made a name for himself – and $70,000 – selling pieces of the old Ponsford stand from the MCG as memorabilia.

”You only need to be able to see the diamond in the rough and have a plan of how to unveil it,” he says.

”Even if you haven’t got the technical know-how, you can hire a freelancer from any freelancing site, who can make it happen.”

Freelancer.com founder Matt Barrie

Award-winning Australian entrepreneur Matt Barrie, one of Australia’s brightest digital stars, runs such a site, freelancer.com, a source of freelancers for the digital projects needed by flippers, such as logo design, website programming and Facebook app development.

Freelancer.com is one of the biggest flips of all time. When Barrie bought the site in 2009, at the time called getafreelancer.com, it looked, in his words, ”grey, utilitarian and horrible, like a high-tech Ukrainian prison”.

Nearly three years later, sporting a revamped interface and new name, it has signed up more than 2.8 million employers and freelancers and the range of people making money, either by selling their services or hiring them, is diverse, from programmers and graphic designers to, last week, a scientist in the jungles of Africa needing a poster designed to extol the virtues of saving a rare breed of hippopotamus.

In fact, many of Barrie’s freelancer.com staff of more than 100 come from the site, a situation he says represents a ”seismic shift in the world’s labour markets”.

”It’s never been easier to start a business and it’s never been more cost-effective,” says Barrie, whose own flip turned over more than $US40 million ($38.6 million) this year and has dispensed about $100 million since the original site opened in 2004.

Barrie came upon the getafreelancer.com site while building a shop site.

Needing 1000 pieces of data entered into a spreadsheet, he was unable to find anyone to do it and reluctantly placed the job on getafreelancer.com.

Within three hours, he had 74 tenders ranging from $2000 to $100 from a team in Vietnam.

He picked the Vietnamese team and the spreadsheet was returned three days later.

”It was perfect,” says Barrie, who realised the world’s labour-market model was potentially on the verge of dramatic change and immediately set about building a similar site before discovering getafreelancer.com was for sale.

He sought funding, bought the site, tweaked it and made it more friendly to Western users. ”The site’s revenue doubled in 24 hours once we changed the graphics and, over time, we’ve incorporated other changes, including rebranding and renaming the old site,” he says.

And what of arguments about the West exploiting Third World labour, albeit digitally?

”A very large portion of the world’s population live on $10 a day or less and now they can jump online and earn in one day what they would earn in a month and why shouldn’t they?” Barrie says.

”They are just as smart as us, just as motivated and want a job just as much as we do.”

Barrie cites the example of a young woman in the Philippines who now makes $400,000 a year turning out logos for businesses and websites around the world.

Freelancer.com’s top freelancer earns a whopping $1 million a year creating small $65-$100 websites and selling them to businesses that want quick and affordable web presences.

Another spectacularly successful flip is Flippa.com, the king of the internet’s domain-flipping destinations.

The two-year-old Melbourne-based digital marketplace will this month clock up more than $60 million in website sales and hosts more than 1000 potential buyers and sellers of domains and websites every minute.

Though the digital offerings on Flippa range from $1 domains to six-figure websites, most of them are flipped websites that sell for less than $10,000, on average about $2000 a pop.

Flippa last year hosted the sale of FaceMash.com ($30,000), Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook predecessor, famously created during his time at Harvard University, as well as Retweet.com, which was sold for $250,000, and BlogTopSites, which went for $117,000 in April last year.

Flippa may now be the world’s biggest website marketplace but it, too, started as a flip.

”I’d found this little site, called webmaster-resources.com, run by a guy named Matt Mickiewicz out of Canada,” says co-founder and former Sausage Software programmer Mark Harbottle, who this year made his debut on the BRW Young Rich List with an estimated wealth of $40 million.

”I was buying advertising space on his website for some software I was selling and, eventually, he asked me if I could help him with the site’s promotion and marketing.

Despite a $500,000 offer of sale from a third party, Mickiewicz, then a 16-year-old working from his bedroom, decided to partner Harbottle and the duo spent the next year rebuilding and rebranding as sitepoint.com, which quickly became a popular place to sell websites, particularly flipped ones.

After achieving several years of 150 per cent growth, the pair, still living in different hemispheres, decided to spin out the website sales arm into Flippa.com.

Today, Flippa.com and its three allied websites (99designs, sitepoint.com and learnable.com) employ 110 people on three continents and hosted about 20,000 website sales last year.

”I had no idea if it was going to be three months or three years when I started but today I get to do what I love and this whole experience has allowed me to do lots of cool stuff, especially helping others with great ideas,” Harbottle says.

”And it all started with a $400 investment in a little Canadian website.”

This story, by Watermelon Media’s Samantha Amjadali, first appeared in The Age.