It can be challenging to find content that resonates with your brand’s social fans. So why not let them find it for you?

Here are five tips for searching and sharing your fans’ social content:

1. Advanced searches: Whether it’s a “quick search” or “advanced search query” on Hootsuite, a #discover search on Twitter, or an “explore” search on Foursquare, all are legit ways to search your product using keywords or phrases within a set number of miles from a city. You’ll be amazed what people say about the product! For example: If you’re running social for the Milwaukee Brewers, you’d probably want to search not only “Milwaukee Brewers” but also “baseball,” “national league” and “Bernie.” On Twitter especially, advanced searches are an excellent way to find conversations you might not otherwise be privy to. Facebook’s GraphSearch has yet to impress us. But it’s still new.

2. Photo-sharing sites. Statigram is a resource where you can view Instagram photos tagged with your brand name, or find shots of patrons in your location. However, if you chose to use a photo, don’t forget to give attribution to the fan who snapped it. One way to do that is give a shout-out with their Instagram handle. Fans love it when you use their photos. But first, know each site’s terms of use, and whenever possible, give fan credit where fan credit is due.

3. Review/check-in sites: Foursquare, Yelp and UrbanSpoon are also places to find pictures of your product or company, along with reviews. Again, if you’re going to use a customer’s public photo, it’s probably best to get permission and give credit to the owner before using them to “sell” product, or associate with your client’s brand.

4. No-brainer: Never use a picture with someone under 18 in it without parent or guardian permission. End of story.

5. Share the love: You don’t always need to self promote. It looks great to support your community and surrounding businesses. When posting content that involves another community or business, tag them in it! Now your message is going out to your fans, and those following the business/community you tagged. Win-win!

Search and you shall find. It’s amazing what’s out there and you don’t even have to ask for it.

Mindbenders Media Vine: Tour with Tom Crabtree

Vine: a six-second video app powered by Twitter.

Within two days of the app being released Jan. 30, it had more than 13,000 users. That number is skyrocketing.

Unfortunately, if you don’t have a iPhone or iPad, you can’t use Vine. On the bright side, there are tons of online sites that post Vine videos, you can watch those and be jealous. Once Vine works out most of its kinks, it will be released for Android.

Within the last 24 hours there have been a number of “experts” opining on ways Vine can improve. This is the reason this app is going to be HUGE!

Vine has infinite potential to expand and be refined. And it’s Mindbenders’ closely-held belief that instant videos will be more than a trend — but a widely-adopted way of sharing hyper-local happenings. Vine has already been tested and adopted by news organizations. As early as Feb. 1, the Wall Street Journal was assigning stories using Vine, and NBC New York was the first to use the app.

It’s easy to get excited about Vine’s potential. It’s minimalistic. Easy to use. It’s green! Despite being in its infancy, developers are already running with the app, creating a “Being John Malkovich”-type portal call Vinepeek where you can view (even record) newly-posted Vines in realtime. Very voyeuristic.

Why should you give Vine the time of day (in your personal life):

• It’s amazingly simply and fun. GIF vids=social media gold.
• It allows you to SAY more than 140 characters.
• It’s super sharable! Sharing is the new reading.
• It’s the fastest growing app ever. Ever. EVER. Now is the time to test it!

Good ways to use Vine for business:

• Create a simple “How-To.” Example: How to cook a sauce, how to mix a drink, how to use a hair product, how to shave your manly beard. Whatever. Just remember — keep it concise. Not that you have a choice.
• Event update: Vine is a perfect way to keep fans updated on what’s happening at a grand opening, conference, party, training session, etc.
• Promote a sale or deal: Instead of using written words to promote, tell customers to send you a Vine, and you can send them back a video of a coupon with a specific whisper code or number. “Thanks, Vine!”
• Showcase a product or service: It will help raise awareness. Release an “exclusive first look” via Vine.
• Entertain! Be random, fun, creative and get personal. People eat that s@#! up. It makes you seem real vs. a greedy machine.

Who to follow on Vine:

• Urban Outfitters
• Red Vines
• GE
• Ritz Crackers
• Malibu Rum
• Tyra Banks
• Paul McCartney
• Emmy Rossum

In 2012, Facebook tweaked its algorithm, turned down the reach, and turned up its push for paid ads. We found ourselves screaming “Damn you Zuckerburgggggggg!,” more often than not. Like any tool used correctly, Facebook ads are effective. Best advice for FB ads: Less is more. Be smart. Do your research, Zuckerberg be damned.

We can’t wait for the new MySpace. Justin Timberlake & Co. purchased the social media grandaddy, and are attempting to reinvent it by catering to a hip/hipster audience of bohemian 30-somethings. Only problem: It’s late! It’s got more buzz in social circles than a Kimye baby bump at a sorority rush party. We waited months to get our invites, finally receiving access to the beta site just recently. It looks pretty sweet. But one has to wonder: Will the wait for the new MySpace be justified? To quote Robin Gibb: “No … no it won’t.”

Google Plus is the best-kept secret in social SEO. G+ is a haven for wonks,
geeks and businesses if they know what’s good for them. Retailers and restaurants, especially, should know that 2013 ain’t nuttin’ but a G+ Thang, bay-beh.

Twitter should stay strong in 2013, but will diversify. Like all social sites, expect it to tweak its algorithm and start bombarding you with opportunities to advertise. Resistance may be futile, but stay resolute — Twitter is still the most social, social-media site. Who to watch: Justin Bieber. The king of “selfies” will continue his public self-reflection. We’re still amazed at his 35 million followers. Honestly: Do you know anyone that follows him?

Pinterest. The leader in visual content. Well, maybe. Instagram is expected to see an 89 percent increase in 2013 — the LARGEST among major social networks. Hopefully this increase will involve #fewer #hashtagged #photos. Rumor has it that Pinterest is going to gang up with a sporting goods/outdoors store and run a campaign that will attract men like a Kate Upton Google search. Best advice: Unless you’re a visually oriented business, steer clear of the Big P.

Aside from running legal Facebook contests (which almost no one truly does) analytics are still the biggest obstacle to overcome for most “socialites” in 2013. Expect the Facebooks, Twitters and Pinterests of the world to introduce suped-up analytics offerings native to their site/helping show ROI.

Tout: Replace a 140-character post with a 15-second video.
SnapChat: Real-time picture-chatting.
InstaCollage: Instagram, but with more borders, filter options, texts, and background color.
Tappr: Milwaukee start-up has 11 bars added to its local app. We love the idea of buying a beer for the lady at the end of the bar … with our iPhone.
Overgram: Add text captions to photos and pictures for Instagram.
RetailMeNot: A coupon go-to when shopping at Target, online or in-store.

Happy socializing in 2013!

For years, Mindspike has shaped the design landscape. Now, Mindbenders Media will drive the conversation.

The newly-launched Milwaukee-based social-media marketing collective was an idea hatched at the turn of the 21st century — a time when MySpace was your space and the American business landscape was populated like a dot-com boom town.

In the ensuing decade, the idea of mindbenders media developed as social media evolved. We’re launching it at a time when nearly every person and every business on the planet with an internet connection has turned an interested eye to social media.

A picture may say a thousand words, but an entire story can now be told in a Tweet. Mindbenders Media understands this. We provide the intuitive social-media marketing strategy and multi-faceted content businesses are looking for. We have specialists focusing on every array of multimedia and social media. Mindbenders Media’s team of experts create a veritable beehive of social-media buzz around clients, while ensuring they don’t get stung online.

We’ll help you predict the future. Welcome to our world.

Mr. Mindbender may look like Mr. Clean, but he composes tweets like a digital Mozart.

What do you get when you mash together the geo-social elements of Foursquare, the visual components of Pinterest and the crowd-sourced expertise of Wikipedia? Something that looks a lot like Pinwheel.

Currently in private beta, this new social platform allows its users to post notes and photos about anything and everything at specific points on the site’s global map. The photo component of the platform comes without surprise, considering that Pinwheel’s founder is Caterina Fake – the mastermind behind Flickr.

I received an invitation to join Pinwheel a couple of weeks ago and I have to confess – it’s fantastically fun. Streamlined, organized and easily usable, the platform allows you to discover interesting places and tips left by other users by simply searching the map by place, tag or zipcode.

Since joining Pinwheel, I’ve spent some time posting pictures, stories and factoids of local destinations and places I’ve lived, including some personal details of why I found the place interesting or particularly meaningful. I think this sort of “vox populi” perspective on places offers valuable addition to knowledge shared across the social web, without the ‘Citation Needed’ pressure of doing a Wikipedia entry.

Pinwheel already showcases a wide variety of notes and photos on its map, from deeply personal memories to tidbits on what spot is good for lunch. Just as Yelp became successful for its crowd-sourced knowledge on where to go (and likewise, avoid), Pinwheel’s potential for influencing consumers will, I believe, prove to be the most valuable function of the platform.

You can request an invite by going to the Pinwheel website here.

Regardless of whether you like the new Timeline or not, Facebook Fan Pages are officially switching over to the new Timeline profile on March 30, 2012. This means that if your brand has a Facebook Page, you will need to revamp and re-customize it to fit the new design. The switch to Timeline can be a confusing transition: in addition to the significant changes to appearance and navigation, Timeline poses new rules and restrictions to how brands will be able to market themselves on Facebook.

So what to do? Mindspike has prepared “Facebook Timeline For Dummies” – a simple guide that outlines the top 5 things you need to know about Facebook Timeline for your brand.

1. Your Brand’s Cover Photo

If you’re familiar with Timeline, you’ve noticed that a major change of the layout is the large cover photo that appears at the top. This is significant because brands will now have the capability to showcase a large, visually striking element to visitors as soon as they reach the page. Timeline cover photos will have a pixel size of 851 x 315.

There are several restrictions to the cover photo, which brands must adhere to, or run the risk of getting the ban-hammer. A brand’s cover photo may NOT contain any of the following:

1). Any price or purchase information

2). Any contact information (e-mail, phone, website, social media links)

3). Any calls to action (“Come buy this”, “Win this prize”, “50% off”)

4). Any references to Facebook features (“Like us”, etc.)

These rules apply to the profile picture as well. The best advice moving forward? If your picture resembles an ad, don’t use it.

2. Your Brand’s Profile Picture

Just as with your current Brand Page, Timeline will allow you to have a profile picture. The difference? It’s much smaller. The new size is 180 x 180 pixels, but the displayed thumbnail size will only be 32 x 32.

3. Tab Changes a.k.a. Say Goodbye To Your Landing Page

Your custom landing page used to be the first thing visitors saw. However, with Timeline, this will sadly be no more. All visitors to your page will see the same page layout – regardless of whether they are fans or not.

Your Application Tabs have been replaced by a series of square icons located directly underneath your cover image. Four applications will be displayed – if you have more than four, users can access them by clicking on the drop down arrow to the right of the boxes. Since these additional apps will require an additional click to see, they won’t receive the same visibility as the four apps that are constantly displayed. This is important – you must choose which apps are the most essential for your brand, because those will be the only ones highlighted in your application banner.

The nice thing about this change? You can now choose which of your apps appear and adjust the order they appear in, with the exception of photos, which will always appear first. Doing this is easy: Expand the view of your app menu by clicking on the arrow to the right of your app bar. Click the pencil icon that appears to edit the positions of your apps.

4. Pinned Posts

This is a pretty sweet feature – completely new and unique to Timeline. All posts by your brand can now be “pinned” by your page’s admins, which will stick particular posts to the top of your page for up to seven days. This is an excellent way to highlight important, buzzworthy posts to the top of your timeline for longer promotion and visibility. How to pin a post? Simply go to a post on your page and click “edit” –> “pin to top”.

5. Add Milestones

With Timeline, you can add important events relevant to the history of your brand on your page. Milestones like “opening day”, or when your business was founded adds a storyline to your brand – you can even add funny events or amusing dates to your milestones if you wish.

5. Fan Messaging

Timeline now allows fans of your page the ability to send private messages to your brand directly, in the same way an individual can send a private message to a Facebook friend. This is a great way to provide customer service to your consumer base, as individuals will now be able to utilize Facebook to send your brand messages outside the public forum of your Facebook Wall.

However, if you don’t want to be contacted by your fans, you can disable this feature by going to your admin panel and clicking “Manage” –> “Edit Page” –> “Manage Permissions” and then unchecking the box titled “Messages“.

There you have it! The switch to Timeline can be confusing; but if you’re prepared for the necessary changes, the new layout will both benefit and help your business in more ways than one.