5 Reasons You Should Not Ignore Pinterest From Your Social Media Strategy

Are you using Pinterest for your Business? Have you included this dynamic image based social media tool in your Social Media Strategy? If not? Just read on!

Social Media conversations are shifting from text to pictures, making images the new language of fan engagement, as they say a picture is worth 1000 words! Pinterest is quickly becoming a powerhouse social network for businesses. As Pinterest continues to grow its business platform, it has become apparent that brands that are not active on the social pin boarding site are surely losing out on valuable traffic and visibility opportunities.

As I rightly pointed in my previous article, even Oreo has not started using Pinterest. May be they never realized the value these pins can offer, or may be they have some different reason. With 70 million users and increasing as per Social Media Stats 2013, Pinterest isn’t going to go anytime soon. Thus its time brands started caring about this influential network, better late than never!

Here are 5 reasons (actually more than that) why you should not miss on Pinterest while creating a perfect Social Media Strategy:

1. Pinterest is not only Images

Pinterest introduced a new type of pin, “Article pins” on 24th September 2013. Pinterest board does more than collect images of your favourite band and recipes for desserts. Pinterest is rolling out a new look for article pins, complete with more information like headline, author, story description, and link- and can include a logo, by-line photo or infographic message. With this new article pin, it shows that the social network is getting serious about content sharing with users. Brands they traditionally use Pinterest for highlighting products, with Article pins the potential to add a lot of depth to existing boards, and with readers that are increasingly looking to learn the stories behind the products they buy.

Like the New York restaurant review boards, where they have the name of the author, story headline, a Meta description, the source URL with this the reader get a better sense of what they can expect inside the article.

2. The Online Showroom

Pinner’s certainly love to spend! The average shopper on Pinterest spends 80$. Pinterest is transforming. The site that has always been the place to pin your visual wish list, is now turning into a true e-commerce player. Pinterest has become the top social site for e-commerce sharing, accounting for 41 percent of shared retail content compared to Facebook at 37 percent.

In May, Pinterest introduced “Rich Pins”, a feature that allowed users to post detailed information about an item, such as the originating image site, product purchase information, or ingredient listings for recipes. Although other users were able to repin these details to their account, nobody was able to tell if an item had dropped in price. But not anymore, price drop email notifications will solve just that.

Some numbers to reinstate your belief, that you cannot ignore Pinterest anymore, 41% of pinner’s engage in reverse show-rooming. Those pinner’s discover the product on Pinterest but end up purchasing those products in the brick-and-mortar stores. 59% of the pinners buy the product 2 weeks after pinning the product.

3. Mobile for the win

One ongoing trend in social media is the growing use of mobile devices. It is no surprise that more and more users are visiting social networks on their phones and tablet devices. This trend applies to Pinterest as well. It is easy to browse and pin on the go. Brands need to be mobile ready as 35% of unique users, browse from their phones. It would be terrible to lose all the Pinterest traffic that will come to your brands website if the website isn't ready for it. 50% of social sharing happens via the ipad.

For brands it is extremely important to have your brand pages on websites be mobile friendly, as a large segment of online population uses their Smartphone devices to browse, share and buy. Thus brands have to be in it, to win it!

4. Promoted Pins The New Angle For Advertising

Pinterest rolled out promoted pins a couple of days ago, with Promoted pins the idea is to allow businesses category feeds in a way that doesn't feel like advertising, because they aren't flashy banner ads or Pop-ups, But rather relevant items designed to match user’s Interest. They work just like regular pins, only they have a special “promoted” label, along with a link to learn more about what that means.

With this it gives brands a chance to make user’s wish list a reality by advertising in the right places of their interest. Normally advertising on social networks irritates the consumers and makes it feel like spam, but with this gentle approach it is doing so subtly and not making it seem like the brands are trying to hard!

5. Are you a B2B Marketer?

The days of Pinterest being an effective tool for only retail and food brands are over, and its popularity is quickly spilling into the B2B sphere. Regardless of what you sell or offer, images remain a provocative way to tell a story, and Pinterest gives brands a great chance to do so immediately. Pinterest got 53.3 million unique visitors in March 2013 – roughly double its traffic a year earlier.

• Leads- with Pinterest you can find new leads as this social networking site is rising at an incredible rate. If you have customers overseas, with Pinterest your chances to crack them have increased by 45%, as in June this year that was the amount of users from abroad.
• Customer Engagement- 80% of users on Pinterest is women, who are the key decision makers! So as a brand if you are presence is not felt here. You are leaving a large segment untapped and saying goodbye to your potential customers.
• Repurpose content and drive traffic- As being a B2B marketer your brand has access to wealth of content, you can repurpose this content by having attractive visuals in a creative way. With this you share content as well as drive traffic to your websites.

6. Bonus Reason

Dismissing Pinterest as a scrapbooking portal for women can be a really wrong deduction for brands. Even though more than 70% users are women, brands should keep in mind that mostly the age group of this audience falls in the 25-44 categories. This age group constitutes a huge final decision making audience when it comes to making purchases.

So if as a brand, you are catering products for women and are not on this platform, you are losing out on a whole lot of customers. But that doesn't mean brands should only keep catering for produces related to women and their needs, they even buy products for their loved ones it may be their spouses, brothers, friends and fathers! Don’t forget women are pro when it comes to the buying, they know what they want. As a brand you need to know how you are going to sell all sorts of products to women, including products for men as well.

For Example: Gillette may give exclusive offers for Pinterest users only, with providing solutions for Valentine’s Day, Fathers day etc. By making it personal and easier for them to decide the gift they want to buy for their loved ones.

As you can see that there is more to Pinterest than cupcakes, craft and cat images! Over the last few months this social network has been bringing changes with new features like rich pins, promoted pins etc.

Pinterest is an excellent way of showcasing your brand products and of demonstrating your passion and expertise in a particular area, and when the content engages people, they will like and share (repin) it, helping your brand's content spread virally. This ensures that your brand reaches additional would-be customers, who might not otherwise have been exposed to your existing or usual marketing channels.
Your turn

Are you ready to jump on board and start pinning? Are you facing some problems there? If you are already on Pinterest, you can share with us what is working and not working for you.

Article Source: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/5-reasons-ignore-pinterest-social-media-strategy-0653573#p6qLbBOz5Vy74xdh.99

Instagram Introduces Adverts

The photo sharing social network site, Instagram, confirmed last week that adverts will be introduced to the site in an effort to turn the site into a ‘sustainable business’. The site now has 150 million users who share their images on the social media platform, forming a global community. Instagram’s introduction of adverts comes as no surprise as it follows in the footsteps of many other social media networks who have already introduced adverts over the previous months or years. But how will it affect the user experience of the photo sharing network?

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Instagram announced the addition of adverts to their site on their blog in a post entitled “Instagram a Growing Business”. They stated that “we have big ideas for the future, and part of making them happen is building Instagram into a sustainable business”. This shows that the chief reason for the introduction of the ads was as a way of monetizing the business and to build revenue from the popular photo sharing site. It follows the moves of other social media platforms who have already introduced similar money-making features – a couple of weeks ago Pinterest introduced “promoted pins”, which look just like ordinary pins but have a special “promoted” label, with a link the learn more about what it is. This has been heralded by Pinterest as a move to “plan for the future”.

Instagram has stated that US users will start to see the occasional ad appearing in their Instagram feed in the next few months. These will be in the same format as the photos and videos that they already see from the brands they follow on Instagram, but instead the adverts will be from brands that they are not already following on the site. They have declared that this form of advertising will start slowly, in order to maintain the enjoyable experience of using Instagram, and making sure that the adverts they do include are high-quality, comparable to those you see when you flip through your favourite magazine.

The social network stated that they plan on delivering “a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community”. This shows a similarity to the introduction of promoted pins by Pinterest, with a focus on blending in the adverts to the existing content so that it is more subtle.

Instagram has also commented that its users will still be in control of their news feed on the site, and will be able to control which ads they see and which they don’t – if you see an ad you don’t like you will be able to hide it and provide feedback to the company to say why you didn’t feel that it was right for you. They hope that this will help to constantly improve the experience that you get from Instagram, and provide the user with an enjoyable experience of the adverts that they see so that they do not feel bombarded by irrelevant content.

For now, the sound of advertisements on Instagram does not seem to threaten the user experience and we will have to wait and see how the adverts actually work when introduced to the site. If they are filtered in seamlessly with the existing content which you follow on the site, it shouldn’t affect your experience of using the site too much. However, if the company begins to get carried away by its monetization, it could significantly affect the user experience and could affect the number of users on the site.

This latest announcement may however be good news for a number of smaller brands struggling to compete with the huge following of successful brands who use Instagram, such as Nike and Starbucks, as it will provide them with the opportunity for their content to be seen by a much greater volume of people if they choose to pay for their ads to feature on the site. At the moment the use of Instagram ads still relies on a heavily visual form of advertising, and therefore it is limited in its scope of which brands will use the feature for now. But if your brand relies on beautiful imagery, and fits in with the square format and filtered images which the site creates, then it could be a great new place to advertise to a receptive audience who have logged on to the site to see visually appealing content.

What do you think?

Do you think the introduction of adverts to Instagram will ruin your experience of the photo
sharing site? Would you use Instagram ads as a way to market your product to a greater
audience?

Instagram for Business

There are a number of benefits to using Instagram as a marketing tool for your business. Instagram is particularly beneficial for brands or companies that have a lot of visual content to share – good examples include food retailers, clothing brands, and any other company which is selling visually appealing products. Marketers should give Instagram consideration before implementing a marketing strategy as it can be used as an effective platform to market from providing a way to communicate directly with customers, who will subsequently be influenced into purchasing products.

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A recent study has shown that the top 5 brands on Instagram include Nike, Starbucks, Forever 21, Adidas and Victoria’s Secret – brands which all produce visually appealing products and have focussed on the way that they can use Instagram to tell a story to their audience and entice them into buying their products or support the brand. These brands use Instagram as a way of showing off their products but also as a way to engage with their potential customers. For instance, Nike has used the Instagram platform to further connect with their audience asking Instagram users to tag their photos with their tagline #justdoit in order to have the possibility of being featured on the channel. This shows that the use of the hashtag on Instagram is an important marketing tool as it allows greater audience engagement and helps brands to find people who are talking about the product or brand and means that you can follow these people or their conversations.

Brands who bring a bit of originality into their images tend to be most successful on Instagram, for instance, Starbucks who is second in the rankings for top brands on Instagram. Starbucks posted the image below in order to advertise their fall special ‘Pumpkin Spice Latte’ which featured the caption, “Ready, steady, #PSL #stackit #pumpkin #love# Fall #boots”. The image has been liked by 73,800 people – showing the real power that an original image can have on a brand’s fan base, helping to create a stir and excitement over a new product or a seasonal offer. The message is to get creative in whatever way you intend to use you Instagram account for your business – through this it will be more likely to attract a positive fan base, whether your company is large or small.

Another way in which brands can engage with their audience is through creating compelling stories or content on their Instagram pages. Brands need to create a balance between fun images and their business images which will help sell their product – this makes sure that the customer is drawn in and doesn’t always feel like they are being sold something. Anthropologie are a great brand for striking the correct balance on their images – a good example is that every September they hold an annual Sit. Stay. Love. campaign, which is a pet adoption event and pet supply drive for animal centres across the U.S. They feature images of dogs and hashtag #SitStayLove to get their audience engaged with something that is slightly different from their products but still represents their brand ethos. These images are juxtaposed with those which advertise their products, and effectively strike a subtle balance between their product placement and other interesting images. The two images below are both featured on the Anthropologie Instagram site and show the variety of visually appealing content that they post.

Geo-tagging Instagram images is another great way for local businesses who use Instagram to get the most out of the application. Geo-tagging lets people know where you are and can help specific campaigns link with certain locations. It can be particularly valuable to advertise the brand’s presence at a marketing event that the company is hosting or when the company attends a particular conference. By sharing a specific location with fans, it can help develop the relationship that is built up with customers and allows it to become more personal. This is often a feature which is not used enough by businesses.

What do you think?

What are the best ways you have seen brands advertise themselves on Instagram? Would you consider using Instagram as a marketing tool for your business?

5 Social Media Tactics to Increase ROI

Social can be one of the most challenging platforms for brands to measure return on investment. Companies that grew up on traditional advertising and metrics often have trouble making sense of the value of the online ecosystem. But with 52% of U.S. consumers using the web as their primary purchase tool, it's an area brands can't afford to ignore.

Last week the commenting and social curation platform Livefyre hosted an evening chat with a handful of influential analysts, marketers and publishers, sharing thoughts on need-to-know ROI growth tools. It's a formula Forrester Senior Analyst Kim Celestre calls "social depth," a fancy phrase for discovering, exploring and engaging with online consumers, eventually leading those conversations back to brands' websites.

Here's the social depth formula broken down into five, easy tips.
1. Engage

User-generated content, blog posts, videos, tweets and chatter are all over the web. Harnessing the power of brand advocates, addressing customer concerns and fixing problems empowers participation. It's easier to put out a fire than it is to ignore it.

People want to interact and create relationships with brands online. Catering to those fans via product giveaways, social interaction and real replies separate the companies that get it from the ones still in the dark.

"The consumer is boss, so we have to match that," explains Andrew Backs, P&G's manager for global business development. "Look for solutions to unlock the consumer voice."
2. Be Authentic

You can't fake it online, says Sid Shuman, who runs social media for Sony Playstation. "They can smell that a mile away."

The same die-hard brand advocates championing your product will be the first to call out shady behavior or content that doesn't reflect brand culture. When in doubt, ask your community for help when it comes to content. Shuman suggests crowdsourcing content for in-house interview and articles. Because they live and breathe the brand, fans "come up with better questions that we could any day," he says.
3. Keep Content Premium

Hitting "publish" is social suicide if the material isn't quality. Take advantage of Wordpress,Tumblr and social media to craft strong messages. Know the rules and follow them: Every network requires a specific approach and language (tweets are written differently than Facebookposts).

Stick to a calendar for posting, and focus on making followers feel part of the brand's family. Using platforms solely as selling tools quickly alienates customers. Hire professionals—and fight the urge to turn sites into content farms or automate feeds.

Peter Yared, CBS Interactive's CTO/CIO suggests using your sites to curate and amplify positive content about your company. "Find the interesting content that’s being posted and use it to bring value to your audience."
4. Integrate Real-Time Apps

Incorporate social into every aspect of what you do, says Jordan Kretchmer, Livefyre's founder and chief executive. Kretchmer's company reports 88% of businesses using Twitter feeds, comments, ratings and reviews on homepages increases user engagement. Forty-two percent boosted their average time on site.

It may sound painfully simple, but adding these tools are the equivalent of a restaurant showing off a top health code letter grade. It empowers consumers to interact and share content. Plus, constant updating improves search engine visibility much more than static pages.
5. Experiment

Nothing risked is nothing gained, especially when it comes to social. Fail and see what works. Test tone, style and new monetizing tools, such as native advertising, which serves sponsored content, tweets and Facebook stories. eMarketer reports 73% of U.S publishers now offer some form of native advertising. But be careful: This hot topic still often fails to hook users, as do most click-bait attempts.

Did we miss something? Engage with us and share your tips in the comments below.