It’s Time to Jump On the Pinterest Bandwagon

Social media marketing. It’s the marketing of the future. It’s the true sign of human interaction that Google and Bing are missing in their rankings. It’s going to prevail beyond the downfall of SEO.
Like me, you may be critical of these assertions. You may hesitate to drop your traditional optimization strategies for social signals, and that’s just fine. But there’s no denying that Pinterest has been the poster child of social success in the past few years, and there’s no better time than right now to make it a part of your marketing strategy.

You heard a lot about the crazy exponential growth of Pinterest back toward the end of 2011. But what you may not know is that even though it hasn’t been so dramatic, Pinterest is still growing, largely due to their increasing presence on the mobile Web during the second half of last year. People just love to pin it.

Even more interesting is the unique demographic split. Unlike other social networks, such as Tumblr and Instagram, which are primarily made up of a 30-and-under audience, Pinterest is split almost perfectly between the age ranges of 18-29, 30-49, and 50-64, with an audience just above or below 15 percent of the Internet-using population of each. This has led to great results for big department stores or retailers like Starbucks, who are able to “sell without selling” (by reinforcing their brand, and keeping their products at the front of their customers’ minds). And it can lead to great results for your business, too.

Time to Get Started!
If you don’t have a Pinterest account yet, it’s time to make one. You can’t change your username once you’ve signed up, so use your business name or the username you’ve used across other social sites. Setting up your profile is easy, but if you need a refresher, read these Pinterest for business tips.
One of the most important parts of configuring your account is verifying your website. Doing so will give you access to Pinterest’s Web Analytics, powerful free tools for tracking the success of your pins.

When it comes to pinning, you might need to take one of two slightly different approaches, depending on if you already have great product photos on your business site. Read on for the two options:

If You Have Great Product Photos
If you have an eCommerce store with beautiful shots of your products, you’ve already won half the battle. (You’ve really got it made if you sell jewelry, dresses, crafts, wedding garb or accessories, quirky gift objects, or anything related to cooking/baking.) Retailers naturally fit into Pinterest’s image bookmarking model.
Who is your ideal customer? You might have one perfect type of customer, but most likely, you have several. Don’t just think in terms of hard and fast demographics, but instead in terms of personality types. Though Pinterest is still composed of primarily women, communities already exist around a number of hobbies, interests, and personality traits. Are your target customers eco-conscious consumers and animal activists? Are they planning their wedding or homeschooling a child or planting a garden? Are they doing DIY renovations to their home? Do they love to cook? There are a number of target demographics that have huge influence on Pinterest. Find the ones that suit your business and latch on.
If you’ve got great product photos on your site, be sure to add “Pin It” buttons to your eCommerce pages; that way, your visitors can more easily share your content themselves. When doing your own pinning, be sure to strike a balance between repinning others’ images and pinning your own. Obviously this doesn’t mean that you should repin your competitors’ products, but try to find compelling imagery to accompany your own images.

If You’re Lacking Compelling Photos, Don’t Lose Hope
If your business is not hinged on your beautiful product photography, don’t lose hope. Think about your ideal customer, and what they are most likely pinning. You can probably find one or two areas that overlap with your business or service.
You might need to get a little creative about what you pin, but there is still room for your business to contribute original content to Pinterest. Use a free image editing tool like Pinstamatic or Pixlr to create tutorials, industry memes, or quotes/sayings that would appeal to your audience. If you are a little more ambitious, do some research and hire a designer to create an infographic for your blog; infographics do well on Pinterest, and you might even get some links from other sites. You can also pin videos; if you’ve got an industry expert at your disposal, put him on camera and share the knowledge!
Pinterest is a small network compared to Twitter and Facebook, but it is still growing much more quickly than most other networks. Your business has the opportunity to make a big splash there. What other ways are you using Pinterest to promote your business? Share in the comments!


http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/05/06/its-time-to-jump-on-the-pinterest-bandwagon/

8 Great Reasons to Start Using Pinterest for Your Small Business

In the past several months, use of the new social media platform ‘Pinterest’ has increased exponentially, especially among young, professional age men and women. While the appeal may not seem obvious to those of us who did not grow up with social media, many small businesses are getting greater reach and building deeper relationships with new prospects and clients.
Here are eight reasons to use Pinterest to market your business and online Web presence now.

1. Consumers searching less, discovering more
There has been a dramatic shift in Internet behavior from pointedly searching for products, services or information to a more free-form method of discovering new things. Discovery allows people browsing the Internet to find not only information, but inspiration. Pinterest is riding the wave of this new phenomenon, stepping in before you perform the Web search on Google. Often, it is even before you have thought of paying for a particular product or service. As such, it is a great way to get exposure for your business by creating quality image-heavy content that people can re-pin on their Pinterest boards. In addition, frequent keyword term searches in Google now result in pinterest page URLs by other companies when optimized for SEO correctly.

2. Little interaction needed to build brand awareness
One of the most pressing concerns for any department managing an online brand is the question of “Do we have the resources (money and labor) to do this right?” Luckily, your involvement with Pinterest can be minimal, and there is extremely low overhead. With a few minutes of regular pinning, categorizing, and tagging a day, there’s little else to worry about. No need to manage commenting or spend a lot of time following and friending others; you simply promote your content in your own time.

3. Connect with your audience visually
Pinterest is almost exclusively a visual medium. It attracts a different type of crowd, as well as behavior, than your standard Weblog. To many people, images and videos have a greater appeal than words, but most information on the Web is rarely delivered through this medium. Think of how many people make their livings as bloggers and podcasters. You can tap into a whole new segment of buyers by building a community around your pinned images. Browsers who are inspired by your account spread the word, giving you more free referrals.

4. Helps connect with people too shy to have their own blog
Many people are simply too shy to have a blog, or don’t care for the work involved of constantly creating content. With Pinterest anyone can have their own online Web presence made up of interesting and inspiring images. People don’t have to actually create their own content, but can express themselves using other found content online. Additionally, this spares you the time and effort of constantly creating fresh content. You can still increase your traffic simply by building relationships with people through unoriginal, re-pinned content.

5. Amplifies original content.
Pinterest is usually best compared to Tumblr, a similar concept, but applied to all forms of Internet content rather than primarily images. The average Tumblr post gets picked up and rerun somewhere else on the Internet nine times. Using Tumblr, it reaches far more people than if it had solely remained on the original content site. It is still too soon to have any definitive metrics from Pinterest, but one would assume the effect will be the same. As your content is re-pinned regularly, your audience grows exponentially.

6. A Re-Pin is the new ReTweet
It is entirely possible to build a community without creating any original content simply by sharing other people’s pins. This is extremely similar to the way Twitter power users were able to build an impressive following by simply retweeting and Tumblr bloggers who have simply reblogged other people’s content.

7. Allows you to find nichesPinterest allows people to express themselves through a blend of their many disparate interests. This allows you to not only find out about new and different market segments, but see the relationship between differing markets and differing segments. You can further divide your content and offerings into particular segments within your market. For example, a garden store might have a pin board for different gardening tools, flowers, vegetables, and other reader-generated needs in the market.

8. Builds authority.
Even if your business doesn’t necessarily lend itself to Pinterest’s model, you can still use the tool to share experiences and expertise on a particular region, industry or relationship. Again you can build different boards to target particular segments and showcase your knowledge areas. For example, a Web strategist might have boards such as “Social Networking Tools,” “Top Pros in the Web Analytics Business,” etc.

http://www.sitepronews.com/2013/03/15/8-great-reasons-to-start-using-pinterest-for-your-small-business/

Guide to Using Social Media for Marketing

Social media marketing is a powerful tool for small business looking to further their reach and interact with customers. If implemented correctly, marketing with social media can bring remarkable success to your business.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing, or SMM, is a form of internet marketing that implements various social media networks in order to achieve marketing communication and branding goals. Social media marketing primarily covers activities involving social sharing of content, videos, and images for marketing purposes.
At WordStream, we’ve created this guide to provide you with the social media marketing training you need to better your business. We want to give small businesses on short budgets an alternative to hiring a social media marketing agency or paying for social media marketing services.
With our Social Media Marketing 101 Guide below, you can begin developing your own social media marketing expert plan.

Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses: Learn Social Media Marketing 101

This education guide gives a basic overview on how to use social media for marketing, serving as a social media marketing for dummies manual. Read to learn about how to reap the benefits of using social media in marketing.

Social Media and Marketing: Start With a Plan

Before you begin creating social media marketing campaigns, consider your business’ goals. Starting a social media marketing campaign without a plan in mind is like wandering through a forest without a map—you’ll only end up lost.
Create a social media marketing plan and brainstorm about your goals: what are you hoping to achieve through social media marketing? Who is your target audience? Where would your target audience hang out and how would they use social media? What message do you want to send to your audience with social media marketing?

Social Media for Marketing: Developing Your Goals

Social media marketing can help with a number of goals, such as:

• Website traffic
• Conversions
• Brand awareness
• Creating a brand identity and positive brand association
• Communication and interaction with key audiences

Best Social Media Marketing Tips: Learn Marketing with Social Media

Here are some social media marketing tips to keep you on the right track across all your social media campaigns.

• Planning – As discussed previously, building a social media marketing plan is essential. Consider keyword research and brainstorm content ideas that will interest your target audience.
• Content is King — Consistent with other areas of online marketing, content reigns king when it comes to social media marketing. Make sure you are offering valuable information that your ideal customers will find interesting. Create a variety of content by implementing images, videos, and infographics in addition to classic text-based content.
• Consistent Brand Image — Using social media for marketing enables your business to project your brand image across a variety of different social media platforms. While each platform has its own unique environment and voice, your business’ core identity should stay consistent.
• Blog — Blogging is a great social media marketing tool that lets you share a wide array of information and content with readers. Your company blog can also serve as your social media marketing blog, in which you blog about your recent social media efforts, contests, and events.
• Links — While using social media for marketing relies primarily on your business sharing its own unique, original content to gain followers, fans, and devotees, it’s also great to link to outside articles as well. If other sources provide great, valuable information you think your target audience will enjoy, don’t be shy about linking to them. Linking to outside sources improves trust and reliability, and you may even get some links in return.
• Track Competitors — It’s always important to keep an eye on competitors—they can provide valuable data for keyword research, where to get industry-related links, and other social media marketing insight. If your competitors are using a certain social media marketing technique that seems to be working for them, do the same thing, but do it better!
• Measure Success with Analytics —You can’t determine the success of your social media marketing strategies without tracking data. Google Analytics can be used as a great social media marketing tool that will help you measure your triumphant social media marketing techniques, as well as determine which strategies are better off abandoned. Attach tracking tags to your social media marketing campaigns so that you can properly monitor them.

How to Use Social Media for Marketing: Know Your Platform

We’ve put together a brief overview on how to use social media for marketing according to each platform’s unique environment. Various social media marketing sites will require different techniques, so develop a unique strategy tailored for each platform.
Facebook
Facebook’s casual, friendly environment requires an active social media marketing strategy that begins with creating a Facebook Business Fan Page. You will want to pay careful attention to layout, as the visual component is a key aspect of the Facebook experience. Social media marketing for business pages revolves around furthering your conversation with audiences by posting industry-related articles, images, videos, etc.
Facebook is a place people go to relax and chat with friends, so keep your tone light and friendly.
Google+
Google+ is the new Facebook competitor, and it promotes the same fun, casual atmosphere. On Google+ you can upload and share photos, videos, links, and view all your +1s. Also take advantage of Google+ circles, which allow you to segment your followers into smaller groups, enabling you to share information with some followers while barring others. For example, you might try creating a “super-fan” circle, and share special discounts and exclusive offers only with that group.
You can also try hosting video conferences with Hangouts and experiment using the Hangout feature in some fun, creative ways. Some social media marketing ideas: if you're a salon, host a how-to session on how to braid your hair. If you own a local bookstore, try offering author video chats.
Pinterest
Pinterest is the latest in social media marketing trends. Pinterest’s image-centered platform is ideal for retail, but anyone can benefit from using Pinterest for social media purposes.
Pinterest allows small businesses to showcase their own product offerings while also developing their own brand’s personality with some unique pinboards.
Twitter
Twitter is the social media marketing tool that lets you broadcast your updates across the web. Follow tweeters in your industry or related fields, and you should gain a steady stream of followers in return.
Mix up your official-related tweets about specials, discounts, and news updates with some fun and quirky tweets interspersed. Be sure to retweet when a customer has something nice to say about you, and don’t forget answer people’s questions when possible. Using Twitter as a social media marketing tool revolves around dialog and communication, so be sure to interact as much as possible
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is one of the more professional social media marketing sites. LinkedIn Groups is a great venue for entering into a professional dialog with people in similar industries and provides a place to share content with like-minded individuals.
Encourage customers or clients to give your business a recommendation on your LinkedIn profile. Recommendations makes your business appear more credible and reliable for new customers. Also browse the Questions section of LinkedIn; providing answers helps you get established and earns trust.
YouTube
YouTube is the number one place for creating video content, with can be an incredibly powerful social media marketing tool. Many businesses try to create video content with the aim of having their video “go viral,” but in reality those chances are pretty slim. Instead, focus on creating useful, instructive “how-to” videos.
Location-Based Social Media Tools
Social media platforms like Yelp, FourSquare, and Level Up are great for brick and mortar businesses looking to implement marketing social media. Register on these sites to claim your location spot, and then consider extra incentives such as check-in rewards or special discounts.
Reddit
Reddit, or similar social media platforms such as Stumble Upon or Digg, are ideal for sharing compelling content. With over 2 billion page views a month, Reddit has incredible social media marketing potential, but marketers should be warned that only truly unique, interesting content will be welcomed. Posting on Reddit is playing with fire—submit spammy or overtly sales-focused content and your business could get berated by this extremely tech-savvy community.
If you have content you believe the Reddit community (majority is young, geeky, liberal, and internet-obsessed) would enjoy, you could reap tremendous benefits and earn valuable traffic.
Using social media in marketing does more than improve site traffic and help businesses reach more customers; it provides a valuable venue for better understanding and learning from your target audiences. Hopefully this guide has helped you better understand how using social media for marketing can improve your business.
Looking for better results? Pay-per-click marketing is a growing form of online advertising that continues to be very successfully for small and medium sized businesses. Learn about PPC and try WordStream's PPC Optimization software for free today!

http://www.wordstream.com/social-media-marketing

Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

It is often a struggle for a small business to find the money for advertising. A great place to start promoting your business inexpensively is through different social media websites, which are often free and can garner great leads when used in a strategic way.

While the popularity of social media sites often originated on personal levels, many businesses have seen the benefits of them and have incorporated social media into their marketing plans. Here are some basic social media marketing tips for your small business.

The first step to taking advantage of social media is to develop a strategy. There are many different networks to get involved with, so determine which ones are best for you and your company – whether it’s the ease of up-to-the-minute information-sharing provided by Twitter, the opportunity to interact with your customers on Facebook, the location-based interaction of Foursquare, or the photo-sharing capabilities of Pinterest. Choose which sites are best for you, and establish professional accounts associated with your business. Of course, review the terms and conditions of the sites carefully, and check that you are following proper procedures.

Once you have a profile set up, explore the functionality of the website. You want to learn how to use it and what it does before you start interacting with customers. After you’ve developed a good grasp of how to manage the site, start connecting with customers. Start with those with whom you have an established relationship already, and once you start being an interesting and active presence on the site, your followers and customers will only grow!

There are a few key things to keep in mind, however. One of the most important is to avoid spamming your followers. Frequent updates are a good thing in social media, but make sure they are relevant and necessary updates. If your activity on the site becomes annoying or tedious, you will lose followers quickly.

As you do start to interact with more fellow users, don’t forget to respond quickly. Social media is all about lightening-quick interactions, and if a potential or established customer is reaching out to you, they expect a quick response, and you don’t want to let them down.

Let’s look at a social media example of my company, TradeStable.com.ng, a free classifieds website with a webpage on Facebook. Take a look at the number of followers it has, the number of posts and how they are arranged on the page, and the use of humor to make the numerous Wall posts seem lighter for the followers.

The main page on Facebook is composed by the logo image (on the left), plus a collage with pictures of online products as a cover photo. It has more than 33,000 followers, which makes the page pretty successful and shows off a good business with satisfied customers.

It’s also important to notice the fact that we don’t only talk about our products and services; we also have posts about environmental issues and up-to-date news, so our followers don’t perceive it as a spamming website which they should disengage from.

Social media is a powerful tool, and if used correctly, it can be an incredible free resource to help your business grow. So, remember to choose the right social media page(s), make your profile stand out by using images and your logo to make it more attractive; and make sure the content of your page is assorted, including your products and/or services, plus some other humorous or hot news so your followers will visit your page frequently and suggest it to their friends. Social media has one rule of thumb for businesses: you reap what you sow. The more time and effort you put on your social media page, the more followers you’ll have, and the more successful your business is bound to be.

 

http://blog.cx.com/business-tips/social-media-marketing-tips-for-small-businesses/

10 Questions to Ask When Creating Your Company's Pinterest Page

Pinterest has quickly evolved into a social media eye-candy powerhouse. People are now pinning images as often as they tweet, according to new data from the Pew Research Center.
If your business isn't on Pinterest yet, you might want to think seriously about jumping on board. Pinterest can enable you to tell your company's story in visually engaging ways that enhance your brand image and attract potential new customers.
To help you create a Pinterest presence, here are 10 key questions to ask:
1. What does my company want to achieve on Pinterest?
You may simply want to create a strong brand image, or you might hope to use Pinterest to help launch new products. Whatever your goal, defining it can help you decide which types of Pinterest boards to create and how to organize and promote your pins.
If your company wants to publicize its commitment to sustainability, for instance, you might create boards that relate to gardening and recycling, as Whole Foods has done. Or, if you simply want to drive traffic to your business's website, create boards with images that link directly to it. The Travel Channel's 37 boards -- with intriguing titles like "Travel Bucket List" and "We'd Rather Be Here Than Work Right Now"-- feature pins linking to relevant travel destination articles on its main website.

2. What's a Pinterest board and what kind should I create?
A board is where you organize multiple pins by topic or theme. You can customize your boards based on themes that directly or indirectly relate to your products and services. For example, Etsy, a popular online arts and crafts marketplace, curates 61 boards for some 235,000 followers with themes that range from handmade gift ideas to holiday decor to wedding accessories.

Related: 5 Ideas for Pinterest Boards That Can Help Build Your Brand
3. What types of images will best showcase my brand without being spammy?
Choose brightly colored, interesting pictures that show your followers how they can use your products and services in interesting, non-promotional situations.
"Images tell the story of your clientele and their relationship to your brand," says John A. McArthur, an assistant professor of communication at Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina, who integrates Pinterest into his curriculum. "Consider how your customers would use your product or service and provide images that would speak to their experience."
Instead of pinning promotional pictures of paint cans, Benjamin Moore highlights its products Pinterest in unexpected ways. For example, the paint maker's popular "chalk it up!" board showcases its Chalkboard Paint in dozens of creative DIY projects, including chalkboard paint-dipped wine glasses and chalkboard-painted motorcycle helmets.
4. How do I upload images to Pinterest and where should I get them?
Add images via the Pin It bookmarklet or by uploading a picture directly from your computer. For businesses, it's generally best to use your own images rather than generic stock photography or other people's images. Your own original pictures can help your brand stand out from the crowd. More importantly, they reduce the risk of photo license infringement liability.
If you have too few of your own pictures or lack the budget for original photography, you can source images for free with appropriate attribution licenses from services like Creative Commons.
5. Will other people be able to contribute to my company's boards?
With Pinterest's "Me + Contributors," you can invite clients, customers, employees and even similar brands, to contribute to a group board. They will be notified via email that you have invited them, and you will receive emails from Pinterest when they add pins to your group board. To be added as a contributor, a person has to be one of your followers already, and you must follow at least one of his or her boards.
Group boards can quickly build an active, engaged community around your brand. The Food Network's "Let's Game Day" recipe group board, which complementary brands like Good Housekeeping magazine and Epicurious.com contribute to, has attracted some 71,000 followers so far. Just be mindful of users posting spammy or inappropriate images.

The Food Network's "Let's Game Day" recipe group board

Related: 6 Tips for Being More Visual With Social Media (Infographic)
6. How can I build an active community?
First, create several boards with compelling images. Then, make sure to #hashtag your pins with descriptive keywords that can help people find your images when searching Pinterest.
Whenever you create a new pin or new board, share a direct link to it, using Pinterest's Facebook and Twitter share buttons. Also, alert your web visitors to your Pinterest boards by adding Pinterest's follow button to your company's main website.
You might want to host a "Pinterest party" to encourage others to pin alongside you in real-time. HGTV recently had a Holiday Pinning Party, that let followers pin their favorite holiday decorations, gifts and recipes, while interacting with HGTV editors in pin comment fields.
7. Should my company follow other Pinterest users?
Following other users shows that you are an active Pinterest community participant and that you aren't just there to promote your products and services. So, make a habit of following people, brands and influencers who share similar pinning topics and themes in related industries. You can repin their images and comment on their pins.
8. How can I find and engage influential pinners?
To discover so-called "power pinners" who share your interests and can potentially boost your reach on Pinterest, click on the Popular link at the top of every Pinterest page. It will tell you which pins are trending and who is pinning them.
9. Should I pin videos, too?
A Pinterest gallery of humorous videos that feature well-designed textual infographics, and offer how-to tutorials can be an engaging way to bring your products and services to life.
To add a video pin, select the Add button at the top of Pinterest's main page. Choose the Add a Pin option and enter the URL of the video you wish to upload, either via YouTube or another link. Click the Find Images button to choose a thumbnail image from the video that best sums up your video. Next, select which of your boards to pin your video to. Click Pin It and you're done.
10. What's the most common mistake to avoid?
Don't go for the hard sell by filling your boards only with images of your company's products, projects and services. Pinterest frowns upon purely pushing your brand in its official marketing guidelines.

"Limit self-promotional pins to 10 percent of what you pin at the most, and stagger them when you do," says Kelby Carr, author of Pinterest For Dummies (Wiley, 2012) and Pinterest Marketing For Dummies (Wiley, 2012). "Use Pinterest as an opportunity to humanize your business in unique, fun and creative ways."
Carr also advises businesses to avoid "pin it to win it" contests that encourage "spammy" behavior, including asking followers to comment repeatedly. Running the occasional promotion or sweepstakes is fine, but don't overdo ithttp://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225936