Pinterest is now one of the top-five social networks, and it’s only becoming more popular. And why shouldn’t it? Users connect purely on the stuff they like, creating collections – virtual scrapbooks – of their favorite styles, fashions, places, recipes, and… cute things.

We like Pinterest too, so we thought we’d jump on board. Our new Pinterest Template displays your pins so your Facebook fans can access what your Pinterest followers already enjoy. We’ve even included a “Follow Me on Pinterest” button so you can turn your Facebook fans into followers. To use the template, log in to ShortStack, click on Templates, head to page five, select the Pinterest Template, and click on the orange “Make Tab” button. It’s important to note that Pinterest doesn’t host its images from a secure site, so visitors who have enabled the “Secure Browsing” in their Facebook settings may see a warning message when they visit your tab in Internet Explorer.

The Pinterest template is a great addition to a number of Facebook Pages. Have a Page for your interior decorating business? Show off your eye for lighting and use of space by displaying the designs you’ve pinned to your board.

Maybe you teach a cooking class at the university, and you’ve got some easy practice recipes for your freshman students pinned. Make a template out of the tab, and invite your students to Like your Page so they can see what you recommend.

Or maybe you run a machining shop, and you want to prove that there’s more to you and your company than turning, boring, and drilling. Pin some kittens, scarves, and little bridges in Italy, display them on your Facebook Page with the Pinterest template, and enjoy your newer, deeper, more complex reputation.

The uses really are endless, so start pinning and have fun!

Since Facebook converted personal Profiles to Timelines, the rumor mill has been fired up with speculation that Pages will soon follow suit. I’ve heard from numerous ShortStack users who are worried that Timelines will replace Pages and their custom tabs will cease to function, so I wanted to take some time to assuage these concerns.

Custom tabs serve as an integral piece of the social media puzzle for companies big and small. Companies rely on their custom tabs for gathering user data, generating sales, customer support, and much more. More importantly, companies spend lots of money on Facebook ads to promote their custom tabs. Because custom tabs are the cash cow they are, it’s doubtful that Facebook will get rid of them.

But say Facebook does change things up, and custom tabs are history. Because of the ad revenue they’d be missing, Facebook would be shooting itself in the foot if there wasn’t at least some way for companies to present custom apps to their fans. There would have to be some kind of new Timeline App. If this is the case and monumental changes are coming, it won’t be overnight, and we’ll have time to adapt. Feel free to check out the official Facebook Developer Roadmapto get a feel for upcoming changes. Also part of the Facebook Developer policy includes a 90 day window to allow Developers to adapt to platform changes:

“We’ll always announce major Platform changes 90 day prior”

Facebook has gone through numerous overhauls in the past. Tabs used to look like actual tabs across the top of a Page, but Facebook relocated them to just under the main Page image. Tabs used to be served via FBML, but Facebook put the kibosh on that, and mandated tabs be served via iFrames. These were huge changes that could have rocked our world, but in these and many other instances, we made the necessary adjustments before our competitors, and our users were ahead of the game before Facebook implemented its changes.

No one knows exactly what Facebook is going to do next until there’s an official announcement. But I do know that Facebook will continue to make changes, just as they have in the past. When they do, our talented, agile team will allow us to adapt, no matter what Facebook throws at us.

Let us know if you have any questions, thanks!

Jim Belosic
CEO/Overlord,  ShortStack.com

The search engine king brought in $37.9 billon in revenues this past year. In an infographic released today by WordStream titled “Breaking Down Google’s 2011 Revenues” they were able to use their analysis to determine the top 10 industries that spent the most on Google advertising in 2011, as well as reveal some insights into the current state of the US economy.

Of the top spending industries, the Finance and Insurance industries take the cake, spending $4.0 billion on Google advertising in 2011 alone. Coming in close behind are retailers and the tourism market.

Oddly enough, it was discovered that Google ad spending and the current state of the US economy may be more closely linked than one would think. Occupation Wall Street, the recession, the unemployment rate and the real estate market all have their own direct connection to the revenues Google earned in 2011.

For more findings and insights into Google’s 2011 revenues, check out WordSream’s infographic below.

With a network of over 800 million active users, Facebook is a platform marketers cannot afford to ignore. Advertising on the social site is relatively inexpensive, easily accessable and offers advertisers the unique opportunity to narrowly target their market on space that’s intensely popular and frequently visited by millions every single day.

According to the Flowtown infographic, 69 percent of small businesses use Facebook as a marketing tool. However, for those small businesses with owners over the age of 54, they are less likely to rely on Facebook for their marketing.

Facebook marketing budgets vary greatly depending on the industry, Flowtown found. The health care, internet and telecommunications industries spend far more money on Facebook advertising as compared to travel and e-commerce with the average cost of earning one fan being $1.07.

For more statistics and findings, see Flowtown’s “Find Your Fans: The Cost of Marketing on Facebook” infographic below.

Photo from AllFacebook.com

According to a post by All Facebook, the way Timeline distributes users’ wall content and activity will be different in the near future.

Currently, Facebook distributes both user application activity and wall activty  on both  the right and left side of Timeline’s columns. This will soon change.

From the report, it was noted that the left side column of Timeline will be comprised of all traditional user wall activity and the right side column will show all application activity.

For the Facebook users complaining about Timeline’s design, this change may be Facebook’s chance to win over some of those nay-sayers. Once implemented, it will be easier for users to recognize on their profiles their most recent postings–an issue brought to light by many.  It will also be easier for users to view and manage their application activity; great for those concerned with the implications of Facebook’s frictionless sharing.

Creating and managing a Facebook Page for your business or organization is only half the battle. For a Page to have real value, its content needs to be seen and shared. The best place for this is in Facebook’s News Feed.

Getting your Page’s content to appear in your users’ News Feeds can prove to be challenging. Facebook uses two sophisticated algorithms called Edgerank and Graph Rank to determine what content is shown in the News Feed. To bypass the complexity, here are six tips to improve your Facebook Page’s News Feed presence.

1. Content is not always king. The logical thing to assume is that the more content you produce and share on your Page, the better opportunity there is for your posts to be seen in the News Feed. But this tactic can quickly backfire on a Page’s Like count. Posting too often is one of the top reasons for a Fan to unlike a Page. The idea is to post quality content that receives high user feedback, as opposed to having a lot of posts with low user feedback, as this could in turn hurt your Page’s chances of getting into the News Feed. As a simple rule of thumb, limit your Page’s daily content to two to three posts that you think will receive high rates of engagement.
2. Vary your posts. Often it’s not what you are saying, but what you are sharing that makes a post worthy of a comment, share or Like. Facebook posts that include photos, videos and polls receive the best engagement rates. By accompanying text posts with interesting, trending or funny media content or poll questions, you’re optimizing user engagement, as well as claiming a space in your users’ News Feeds.
3. Timing is everything. There have been several studies done that provide great recommendations as to what day and what time content is most viewed by Facebook users. These recommendations should be interpreted loosely. Facebook log-on and engagement tendencies vary across Facebook user groups. To determine the optimal posting time for your targeted Facebook audience, you’ll need to experiment a little. Break from your regular posting schedule and see what results come of the change. Once you think you’ve discovered your optimal posting time, take advantage of Facebook’s real-time content stream, Ticker, to post content during that time.

Marketers and advertisers have a new reason to love Facebook: Sponsored Stories are now being featured in users’ News Feeds. Camouflaged amongst other News Feed posts, Sponsored Stories are revealed only by the text “Feature” located at the bottom right of the post.

As reported by Inside Facebook, Marketers can only pay for posts to be featured in the News Feeds of users that have already Liked their Page. However, other Sponsored Stories types that promote friend activity allow Pages to effectively reach new fans as well.

When Mashable spoke on the topic in December of last year, a Facebook rep provided confirmation that the Sponsored Stories ads will be used sparingly with most users only seeing the maximum of one ad per day in their News Feeds. Despite the minimal ad exposure, the inconspicuous nature of the advertisements still remains the issue.

What are your thoughts; is it upsetting that Facebook is allowing Sponsored Stories in the News Feed?

Not surprisingly, there’s a swarm of unhappy, newly converted Facebook users already wanting to opt-out of Timeline. For those in a panic, rushing to try and revert their Timeline profiles back to the old profile view, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. It can’t be done and anything or anyone telling you otherwise is a scam or lying.

After making the decision to convert your profile to Timeline, Facebook users have 7 days to edit and review before their Timeline goes live and is seen by friends. At this time Facebook is not allowing users to revert or opt-out of Timeline and chances are, they won’t flex on this issue. Soon Timeline will be made mandatory for all users.

Photo taken from AllFacebook.com

Feeding off these users’ blind vulnerability are scammers. These scammers are developing Pages with fallacious instructions on how to revert from Timeline back to the old profile view. According to Inside Facebook, these fraudulent Pages have been promoting users to click a number of Like buttons, invite friends and even watch Youtube videos and download malicious files.

As recommended, users who find fraudulent Facebook Pages should use the “Report Page” button on the lower left hand side of the page.

Although there’s not an exact proven science as to how to get more Likes on a Facebook status update, the released “The Truth About Facebook Depression” infographic featured by Mashable provides evidence that users who post positive content receive more Likes than those who post negative content.

The infographic further illustrates that positive emotional updates receive fewer comments, whereas negative emotional updates receive more comments. The below findings are not earth-shattering by any means, but they do offer some good insight as to what type of content Facebook users respond best to.

Here are some more major takeaways: 

• Longer status updates that use more pronouns receives more of both Likes and comments

• More negative emotional words receive less Likes

• More positive emotional words receive more Likes

• In the mornings Facebook users post more positive updates and later in the evening updates become more negative