Your Marketing and Design Reading for The Weekend

1. Tap into fan passions. focus on the unique personality of your fans to determine what type of messaging or content they'll respond to with the greatest enthusiasm.

2. Ask simple, closed questions. While open-ended questions require fans to consider and write out their answers, "yes" or "no" questions or simple requests for Likes make it very easy to respond so they get much higher engagement levels.

3. Tell fans what you want from them. Make it clear what you want them to do even if it is only to click Like. In Wildfire's own experience, this simple instruction meant double the number of"Likes" as a post without it.

4. Treat your fans like they're VIPs. Share exclusive information or content you won't be sharing anywhere else. Typically, coupons, giveaways and sweepstakes get the highest response rates.

5. Invite one-on-one interactions. Address fans by name and respond to comments one-on-one. Wildfire suggests inviting personal conversation with your fans by soliciting their opinions (Okay, but that goes against the advise to ask closed questions!).

6. Humanize your brand. When you adding depth to your personality or provide insight into your business's character, it tends to go over well with fans.

Not everything here would work for Affinity Express but I do think tapping into fan passions and humanizing the brand are worthwhile objectives for messaging.

28 Creative Pinboard Ideas from Real Brands on Pinterest

I was really trying to have a post without including content from Hubspot (despite reading several items published by this company). Unfortunately, because I've been struggling with the right kind of content for this vehicle, they had me at "Creative Pinboard."

Since Affinity Express is not a B2C or product company, one idea that appealed to me was a 6) product/services board where we could show a visual example of each type of design we do (e.g., videos, websites, rich media ads, etc.). We could also develop a 13) content/resources board, building on these weekly posts.