Do you Yadda?

There’s a new kid on the social media block: Pinyadda. And, I’d like to heartily welcome it to the neighborhood with a recommendation for you to pay a visit to Pinyadda.com. You’ve tweeted and now you can Yadda!

What is Pinyadda?

According to Pinyadda 101, “Pinyadda is a social and personalized news platform.” Maybe you’ve tried to keep track of your favorite sites (blogs, news or any RSS-enabled web site) with Google Alerts and Google Reader. Or, maybe you’ve even built a custom listening station as I suggested in the post: How to Create the Ultimate Listening Station on iGoogle. Now, thanks to  Pinyadda, it is all a great deal easier – and fun- to monitor and interact with your favorite information resources.

Listening & Monitoring with Pinyadda

Pinyadda solves a very big challenge: how to stay on top of all the information relevant to your business and other interests – all in one place – with a simple and easy to use interface. There should be little argument today that listening is the new marketing. Inbound marketing is first about getting inside the head of your ideal customer.  And then delivering great and useful  information they can latch on to. Before you can know what to publish you must know what’s going on. That’s where a tool like Pinyadda can help.

Using the “My Sites” Feature

Pinyadda makes it easy for you to select and follow the sites you want to monitor. These are listed in the “My Sites” drop down as illustrated above.  All you need to do after registering for a free Pinyadda account is to start selecting the sites you want to monitor. You can use the “Search Sites” tab to find the sites you’re interested in. Just type in the name of the site you want. In my example, I typed in “HubSpot” and because Pinyadda had already indexed this blog it came up in the results and I was able to easily click to select it.

If a site you want to monitor is not indexed yet by Pinyadda you need to first find the site you want to add, locate its RSS feed and then click the “Submit Site(RSS)” link in the upper right of the Pinyadda page. I noticed this (Zephyr Marketing) blog was not yet in Pinyadda and I was able to easily add it using this method.

The “Add Link” button is for you to add articles that may not have been brought in via the above method (because they’re older than the RSS feed submits to the tool), or maybe a non-RSS feed resource you want to bring into Pinyadda to  share with others by the action of  pinning it – more about that later.

Clicking on the blue hyperlink title of the article will take you to where you can read the article on the original site by opening a new browser window. You can then click back to the Pinyadda tab to return to your My Sites view.

Pinyadda says the average person follows 10 sites.

Using the “My Topics” Feature

In addition to selecting individual sites and articles, you can select from a large list of topics Pinyadda covers. This allows you to see articles published from sites across the web on that particular topic. In my example, I’ve selected the topics of Inbound Marketing, NFL, MLB and Social Media. I first heard of Pinyadda through a partnership announced with HubSpot to provide all in one place the best sites across the web that have to do with Inbound Marketing and Social Media.

According to Pinyadda the average user follows 12 topics.

Getting Social on Pinyadda: Just “Pin It!”

Not only can you keep on top of all the sites and topics you find important and interesting, you can also share them with others in the Pinyadda community – and beyond. Interacting on Pinyadda allows you to earn points, badges, have some fun and and gain influence within the Pinyadda community.

Speaking of gaining influence and visibility, one suggestion I would have is for Pinnyadda to allow you the option of including a link to your blog or web site in your profile. That way other Pinyadda’ers (or are they “Yadda’ers?”) can link to your site and get more information about what you do.  All of the popular social media networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace) have this feature. Why not Pinyadda?

Through an action called, “Pin It!” you can essentially share articles with the people who follow you. But Pinyadda allows you to take it one step further. You can also send out a comment with a link to the article to those in your Twitter, Facebook and/or LinkedIn networks.

Above, example of an article (7 Habits of a Highly Effective Landing Page) that was Pinned by 3 people, and 2 of them also sent it to their Twitter followers.

Here’s an example of pinning an article to Twitter and LinkedIn:

And here’s how it looks on Twitter:

To do this now you need to “Pin It!” from within the Pinyadda screen. What would be really great in the future is if you could Pin articles right from the article itself through a widget, similar how you can Digg, Retweet or share it with any number of choices available today. But this is a new service and it probably needs to catch on a bit more before those who aggregate links to social media networks will include the “Pin It!” choice in their widgets.

Getting Yourself Known with Yadda Points and Badges

Perhaps you’re familiar with Foursquare, the geo-location marketing and social media tool where you can earn badges for checking in at local businesses with your wireless device. The more you check-in and interact the more points and badges you earn. The competition this generates makes it interesting and fun – and potentially profitable for the businesses who offer special deals and discounts to those who become the “Mayor” of the place. I’m currently boasting the fact I’m the Mayor of Sterling Vineyards in Napa, and waiting for them to offer me some discounts on their wine!

By pinning the articles you read on Pinyadda you earn points, badges and influence. Pinyadda says “you can become the Maven of the topics you’re into, the Ambassador of your favorite sites, and even the coveted media Empire badge!” Now who doesn’t want to be a Maven, Ambassador or have the Empire badge?

Maybe those with commercial sites could offer a discount or special deal for Yadder’s who achieve a certain number of points or badges for interacting with their sites? HubSpot offers a number of different badges for interacting in the Inbound Marketing and Social Media Topics. I like getting recognition and gaining influence, but what would be even better is some level of discount or exclusive offer to anyone wearing the HubSpot Pro Badge!

So far in a day-and-a-half of being a Yadda’er I’ve earned 31 points, the Paperboy Badge, the HubSpot Newbie Badge, and I’ve become the Ambassador of the ZephyrMarketing.net site (surprise, surprise). Please, I dare you, take this away from me!

Passing the Test of New Technologies?

So, Pinyadda offers some new and interesting ways to keep on top of information and interact with others. But will it catch on and gain enough critical mass so as to keep going? The authors of the book, Groundswell – winning in a world transformed by social technologies, written before Twitter was a dominant social media network offered a 5 question test for evaluating whether a new tool will catch on:

1. Does it enable people to connect with each other in new ways? Pinyadda not only allows you to easily gather and read all the information you want in one place, it also has the social/sharing component that makes it very compelling.
2. Is it effortless to sign up for? I created my account and completed 100% of the get started set up steps in about 30 minutes.
3. Does it shift power from institutions to people? Pinyadda is all about people sharing their thoughts, reactions and insights on the news and information they choose to engage with.
4. Does the community generate enough content to sustain itself? Time will tell if others find value in the content pinned and shared, but so far it looks like it has a good shot at it.
5. Is it an open platform that invites partnerships? Yes, I’ve highlighted the partnership with HubSpot to create topics and badges around their areas of specialty (inbound marketing and social media).

From my view, Pinyadda has a great chance to pass the test of new technologies with flying colors. Now is the time to get on it and check it out. Who knows, maybe you’ll become hugely decorated with badges and numerous ambassadorships. And, maybe the holders of the sites you promote will reward you with some special deals (hint-hint).

Or, maybe you just like to keep on top of all of the information and news you’re especially interested in from across the web all in one place.  With Pinyadda there’s something for everyone. Don’t wait until you see the “Pin It!” sharing widget show up on your favorite sites. And tell others: “You Yadda try it today!”