Social Media Can Do Your Work

When used correctly, social media can be an amazing tool for all types of businesses; but still, there are those ‘old-fashioned’ entrepreneurs out there who can’t trust Facebook, Twitter and the likes to grow their existing customer base.

 

According to the Pew Internet Study, the number of Facebook users in the US over 65 has reached 35% while in 2013, 43% of Americans of 65 years or older were using at least one social networking site like Istagram, Pinterest, Twitter or Tumblr, compared to 26% in 2010 or a mere 1% in 2008.

On Twitter, the 55-64 year age bracket has grown by 79% since year-end 2012, being its fastest growing demographic, while the corresponding numbers for Facebook and Google+ for the 45-54 year age group have leaped over 46 and 56%, respectively.

So why are there still businesses that insist to ignore those fast growing demographics? And why do they fail to target them when they know that these are actually the ones that have money to spend on their products?

Social media is not that complicated!

Here are a few more reasons which might convince you that using social media for business might actually not be such a bad idea:

Brand and Positioning
Strong online presence can only make your product stronger! By knowing your customer base, you’ll definitely be able to build a loyal following base on social media networks. And by doing this, you can only grow bigger and bigger day by day, strengthening your online and offline market presence.

Brand and WOM
Use word of mouth to pave your way into the digital world. When you know your product, you also know your marketing; and when you do your marketing right, people will be happy to talk about it on social media. Getting and monitoring feedback is key; it can actually help you improve your product and the way you do business.

Be Brave, Communicate!
Open communication on social media can be an invaluable business tool, if used correctly! Just think of the amount of information exchanged publicly between you and your current or potential customers! If your communication is genuine, you should only expect the same from your audience.

Dummy Run
You don’t have to be an expert to check upon your metrics or website analytics; don’t be afraid to start using Facebook Insights, which can help you measure your Facebook marketing and engagement efforts, or Google Analytics, which can give you significant information on your site traffic and where that comes from. See for yourself what is driving your ‘Likes’, check which status updates worked and which didn’t, and how your followers responded to that important update!

Bespoke Content
When you own a small local business, or your product ‘works only’ on a specific area, wouldn’t you prefer to be able to offer your services only to those that might actually be interested in or be able to use them? Twitter and Facebook provide the option to localise content and geotarget your posts – why offering an active ‘walk-in’ promotion to your followers outside your area? Just keep it local and relevant, and it will work!

Managing social media for your business definitely requires an integrated approach, and calls for a significant amount of time and effort in building brand awareness through pins and boards, posts, groups, podcasts, tweets and so on. Success of your social media strategy is solely based on your unique presence and your charming and engaging manner.

What do you think? Are you willing to give social media another chance?

4 Effective Social Media Marketing Methods for Valentine's Day

Restaurants, retail stores and specialty boutiques know that Valentine's Day is a profitable time of year. In fact, IBIS World reported the average person spends approximately $134.08 on Valentine's Day festivities. The largest portion of that spending came from eating out, with more than $9 billion spent, followed by candy at $2.8 billion. Is your business ready? Get prepared for the retail festivities by ensuring you have a secure marketing plan that includes social media.

Remember: Each social network has its own etiquette, culture and style, so it's important to match your message to the medium. Follow these guidelines:

Facebook
Facebook pages make it easy to build user engagement for your brand by running giveaways, offering samples and posting polls. Hubspot reported on one company that leveraged their Facebook page for Valentine's Day in a clever and highly effective way: MegaRed tied together a free sample program to Valentine's Day by allowing Facebook users to request a heart supplement sample for the people they loved. MegaRed mailed both the user and their loved one a sample, and went a step further by tying the amount of samples they distributed to a charitable donation. In this example, the company took advantage of the holiday's theme and added a creative twist that tied in well with their brand.

Twitter
Salesforce Marketing Cloud found that 74 percent of Valentine's Day chatter on social networks was positive. Keep your Twitter messages positive and succinct, giving value to your followers by tweeting about Valentine's Day specials, top-selling Valentine's Day gifts or by providing an intimate look at how your company is celebrating the day around the office. Use Vine or Instagram alongside your Twitter campaign to help your message get across better than 140 characters alone can. Quick Vine videos of people receiving Valentine's Day gifts, and Instagrams of creative gift packaging help supplement your tweets.

Sharable Content
Looking to go viral this February 14th? Sharable content opportunities abound for this holiday, whether you're sharing posts on your Google+ page or publishing them on your company blog. Engage your readers about their Valentine's Day plans, offering to give out a prize to the most romantic or most unusual replies. Want to get a conversation started? Ask your readers what their funniest Valentine's Day experience was. Use hashtags to further promote your content and keep the conversations organised.

Pinterest
Promote a DIY or exclusive Valentine's Day recipe by creating boards for the special day that relate to your business. If you're a gourmet food store, for example, create a board with the most romantic dinner recipes, taste-alike restaurant recipes and perfect wine pairings. Sell craft supplies? Post a selection of interesting and easy Valentine's Day crafting projects to make the day special for the entire family. Add in gift guides for couples, kids and more, and keep relevant tie-ins to Valentine's Day throughout your boards.

How to Use Pinterest to Drive Sales

Chances are, you're already well aware of Pinterest's popularity as a social networking platform. Since its launch in 2010, the site has amassed over 70 million users, who rely on the site to collect everything from recipes to style tips in beautiful, pictorial form. Still, popular or not, that age old social media question is still worth posting: is there any way for businesses to actually profit from the platform?

 

The answer is yes, yes, 100 times Harry & Sally restaurant scene yes. For starters, Pinterest users are simply more engaged than Facebook and Twitter users. In fact, several case studies have shown that Pinterest users specifically flock to the site to keep up with trends, get inspiration for what to buy, keep up with brands they like, get special offers, and keep track of things they like. These, of course, are all behaviors that transfer naturally into buying and brand loyalty. While this is somewhat of a draw for sites like Facebook and Twitter, marketers have to be far more careful on those sites to fit into the more social landscape. How much you can market on any given platform, after all, depends on how willing and ready consumers are to receive your message in that arena. On Pinterest, they're primed.

Not surprisingly, this has big implications for marketers and businesses, which can effectively use the platform to engage followers, offer coupons, and drive traffic between its Pinterest presence and online stores. What's more, the same benefits are available for big businesses as they are for small-time craftpreneurs looking to drive traffic to an Etsy store or another third party platform.

So, how can you use Pinterest to drive sales? Let’s take a look.

1. Create an Ecosystem of Boards
The great thing about Pinterest is that it allows you to have a diverse presence on the platform, rather than a single feed. By creating multiple boards, you’ll be giving both your marketing team and your followers several different frameworks within which they can engage more creatively with your brand. (And engagement, in the long term, drives sales through brand awareness and loyalty). Boards will of course vary based on the kind of business you're promoting, but a few good ideas include:

• Lifestyle boards for different themes. This can really run the gamut. All Recipes, for example, has one board for healthy recipes, one for slow cooker recipes, and so forth. A clothing company might have one for A-Line fall skirts, or back to the office wear. The possibilities are really endless.
• Event boards. As spring fashion week unfolded, Elle followers could follow developing fashion trends as the brand pinned the latest fashions from its front row seat. An event board like this will make your followers feel like they're in the know, even from far away.
• Coupon boards. Coupon boards are the most direct way to drive sales through Pinterest. They're easy to create, too. Just design a coupon image like you would for any other campaign, post it to your coupon board with all relevant details, and have it link back to a page on your site where the coupon can be redeemed. Alternatively, just add a code to be entered at checkout.
• Contest boards. Travel companies have proven particularly adept at Pinterest contests, inviting followers to follow their boards and pin photos from their favourite dream destinations around the world in return for free hotel stays or airfare. However, contests can take many different forms, with the added benefit of being inherently shareable on other social media networks thanks to the visual nature of the form. Just be safe, to brush up on current contest regulations before launch, as the site has recently placed more restrictions.
• Sneak peeks. In today's social media landscape, customers expect their brands to feel personable and accessible. A Pinterest board that gives customers a sneak peek into how your product is made or even what life is like around the office is a great way to do just that.
• Customer boards. Last but not least, why not have a board dedicated solely to customer pins? This could be photos of customers using your products in creative ways, ideas for new products, or anything else that feels relevant to what you do.

 

2. Take Excellent Photos
Naturally, an image-heavy platform is only as good as the images you post to it. This means taking clear, high resolution shots in good lighting without any shadows or busy background. In fact, a recent study posted on Wired.com found in its analysis of this popular Paula Deen Pinterest photo found that good photos: avoid human faces, focusing only on the product; use multiple solid colours, most especially red; go for about 50% colour saturation; and are portrait rather than landscape style. Images that followed these criteria were shared at much higher levels than those that weren't.

Additionally, it's important to pack as much information into the image as possible without detracting from the aesthetics. This is best when done through visual cues, like showing the products or materials used or showing how the product can be applied in the real world. When that can't be achieved, a minimum of text can still be effective if artfully integrated.

3. Optimise Your Pinterest Presence
SEO is just as important on your Pinterest page as it is elsewhere, as there's not much use in having a Pinterest presence if no one can actually find you. To optimise your presence, make sure to integrate the same keywords you use across your social media and webpages into product descriptions and on your about page. It's also good practice to include links back to your other sites in your about page as well so that customers can easily follow you on whatever platforms they find most engaging. Of course, links are even more important in product descriptions, so followers can easily buy the product you're promoting.

4. Use Rich Pins
One of the newest offerings from the platform, rich pins are an incredibly effective way to give your followers a much deeper understanding of the products you feature on your Pinterest page, as well as ways that they can buy that product or become more deeply involved in your brand. The first kind of rich pin is called a product pin, which allows you to include a price for the product below the image, which changes as the price does. This is obviously the most directly connected to driving sales. However, you won't want to miss: place pins, which integrate a map and contact information onto your page; article pins, which help followers easily save your content marketing blogposts or any articles written about you; and recipe pins, which are obviously great for any company with a need for a recipe board, as they make it easier for followers to actually put together the recipes provided.

5. Promote Your Pins
Another great new feature on Pinterest is price alerts. With this feature, consumers will receive alerts every time the price of a product they've pinned changes. That can be a big motivator, especially when you've got sales going, but it's entirely dependent on the consumer having actually pinned something in the first place. All of the strategies we've discussed so far will work towards those ends, but there are a few other things you can do specifically to drive pinning.

• Pay for a promoted pin. This has yet to roll out, but when it does, the concept is presumed to be much like promoted tweets, with your promoted pin appearing higher and more prominently in search results. Of course, you'll want to save these for special moments, like when you really want people to know about a contest.
• Cross-promote. It's never a good idea to showcase your products in just one place. On your website, make sure to add a Pinterest button to every product listing or bit of content marketing. Likewise, don't be afraid to post links to your pins on your other social media sites, so that all of your followers across platforms know what you've got going on.
• Talk to your pinners. Pinterest users are engaged and motivated to buy (80% make a decision within three weeks of pinning). But that doesn't mean they can't do without a little nudging, especially within that critical period. Don't be afraid to reach out to pinners to thank them for sharing, or to offer them an incentive for pinning more or for buying sooner. Just like on other social media sites, pinners like companies that are responsive and that seem down to earth.
• Collaborate with other pinners. This is an especially effective technique for small businesses and solopreneurs, who can benefit from pinning and showcasing each other's stuff. Doing so means exposing your work to twice the audience, and more exposure means more pins and more customers.

The Takeaway
No matter how you slice it, Pinterest is a powerhouse when it comes to driving online sales. What kind of board will you make first? Let us know in the comments below.

Relationships with your audience on Social Media

Are you an online social networking freak? If yes, it’s not too surprising. People's inclination towards social sites is on the increase, which means it's never been easier for businesses with a social media presence to attract and interact with their social savvy customers. Social media is a tool that has revolutionised the way in which businesses provide information, promote their services and engage with their target audience.

Most businesses start out their social media strategies by simply posting their latest updates/features on their Facebook page or Twitter account. They usually post regularly but without any idea of how best to tailor it to suit their audience. This can be a waste of content as without an end goal in mind, the social media strategy has no direction.

The solution to this stumbling block is to be more interactive and engaging with your audience. A good question to ask is 'how can we be more captivating to this particular audience?' People will not find you interesting if all you are doing is trying to sell yourself. It's a good idea to constantly evaluate your social media strategy and to tweak it appropriately.

People love to read interesting information, yes! But they also love it when a businesses listen to their needs and opinions. So begin with asking them questions and take note of the positive and negative responses.

Another good idea is to encourage voting polls on a certain topic which requires feedback from the audience. Also small giveaways can work, whether it be in the form of a simple ebook or a sample of the product you sell. This way user’s trust is gained by the brand. And there are a lot of other ways to increase interaction such as building relations with influencers via twitter. Remember, don’t respond to criticism or messages with the same standardised custom message, make it personal!

Once you have secured enough faith in your customer’s mind about your brand, then you can surface with your content strategies as now you have perceived the taste and interests of your target audiences. The moral of the story is you should share only 20% of the information/assets about your services on social media and the rest should be fun, interactive posts that suit your customers interests.

This kind of relationship keeps the users content and assured.

Social Media Marketing what to look out for in 2014

Social media has become a massive part of our day to day lives. It is also a key tool when it comes to marketing your business and its products or services. Businesses across the world big and small have been taking advantage of social media to engage with their customers. We are going to to take a look at some of our predictions for 2014.

Image: http://bryandigital.wordpress.com

The Micro-Video Takeover

The revolution has already started with the increase in popularity of social networks such as Vine, Instagram and Snapchat. In a fast moving world the 3 minute video has been killed off by 6 seconds of fireworks. The rise of these networks has led to more real time video sharing, where people are creating and sharing direct from their smartphone meaning you could be anywhere doing anything and able to share a video. These 6 second wonders are sure to change the startegy of most videos going on social media now.

Pictures means success

Brands that have used images to share content have huge success with some brands saying that Pinterest and Instagram have actually increased revenue by 5%. This will continue in 2014 and can only get bigger with the likes of Pinterest becoming very important power players rather than being a female dominated network. This is already proving true with Pinterest being the fastest growing network but it also provides greater traffic as well than anywhere else.

Google+ will come into its own

Google+ has always been seen to be chasing the pack but 2014 could be the year that people start to see the full potential of Google+. Google+ currently has the 2nd highest monthly users and that can only increase, on top of this it also has a bigger ownership in terms of of search power. As more and more people begin to use Google's products users will find that they are using Google+ more as integrates all interactions in one place across all Google products. Google authorship will also become a major part of its rise as it will play a huge part in Google's new ranking algorithm.

Social Media is a must if you want to survive

While social media is a big marketing tool at the moment in 2014 it is going to become essential for every business not to just have but be using to engage and promote their brand with customers. Many are seeing how the positive influence of social media is increasing traffic, creating more leads and gains in revenue. Businesses will realise that they will need some knowledge to make sure they take advantage of social media so training or management of a business social media accounts will be needed.

3 Ways to Become a More Visual Social Butterfly

More and more, it seems like people don’t use the internet to read. They use the internet to see. Whether they’re clicking through photos on their friend’s Facebook wall, pinning recipes they want to try, or watching cats do hilarious things on YouTube, users want visuals. And not just any visuals, they’re drawn to images that pop, images that make an emotional impact, images that are useful. It explains the popularity of sites like Pinterest and Instagram and apps like SnapChat. People just love sharing images.

But how do brands fit into this? According to Digital Insights, who compiled an impressive number of social media statistics for the year 2013, surprisingly well. According to a survey, 46% of web users turn to social media before making a purchase. While they’re on those networks, it is the visual information that stands out. Socially Sorted, who published an infographic on the subject of the increasingly visual social landscape, explains that users are more likely to engage with brands who post pictures more than any other type of media. In addition, photos on Facebook get 53% more likes than any other kind of content.

Okay, you’re convinced. Now how can your business become more visual? Keep reading for some great advice!

Less Words, More Images

Next time you’re about to post to your social media account, stop and think for a moment. Would this post be better-expressed or more successful with a beautiful image alongside it? The answer will be yes 99% of the time. Show, don’t tell.

But how do you come up with these images? If you don’t have a professional photographer or designer on board, try purchasing stock photos or using Creative Commons images. If those won’t do and you’re not a great photographer, slap a filter or some words over it and no one will be any the wiser!

Be the Source of Creative New Content

Did you know that 80% of all pins on Pinterest are re-pins? That means that 80% of the images on Pinterest are just re-shared images that somebody else pinned to the site originally! And although Facebook’s image sharing works in a different way, the number of content creators is still relatively small compared to the number of content sharers.

Take advantage of this by being the source of interesting content that people want to share. Quotes, memes, and videos share well on Facebook, and quotes, infographics, and tutorial-style images do well on Pinterest. Depending on where you want to grow your audience, keep in mind what does best on each platform. A highly-detailed image explaining pricing for web design might be extremely successful on Pinterest, where long and tall images have the advantage, but cropped and squeezed onto a Facebook feed it won’t do as well.

Crowdsource Visual Content

Some of the most successful social contests involve user-submitted images. In this type of contest, your fans and followers create an original image according to your guidelines and submit it to you. At the same time they share it with their own friends and followers. Their followers see it and may choose to participate as well, expanding the reach of your contest. Even after the contest is over and the prize has been awarded, you have a unique gallery of creative images that followers might enjoy.

To see an example of this, look no further than Colonel Meow’s “Cat Fro” photo album. Since he is one of the most widely-followed cats on Facebook, fans seeking their moment of fame were quick to stick their cat on top of their head, snap a photo, and start submitting images. Even though the collection is no longer being added to, the album is still full of cat afro photos to see and share.

Hopefully these three tips will help you become more visual on social media. Just remember, don’t tell when you can show, create instead of curating at least some of the time, and take advantage of crowdsourcing when possible.

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

Social Media For Businesss - 5 Tips to Help Make Your Business More Social

Social Media is a great way to help your business increase its audience and gain new followers, helping to drive traffic to your existing website. Here are 5 tips to help your business in its use of social media….

Image - www.xlntelecom.com

1. Encourage sharing and audience involvement

• In order to create greater awareness about your brand you should encourage your audience to engage with the comments that you post.
• For instance, on Facebook you should post comments that encourage liking or sharing, in order to give the post more weight on the Facebook algorithm and push up its appearance on the newsfeed. Keeping posts short and including more photos will encourage people to like and share the post – and therefore creates a greater level of audience involvement.
• Another way to encourage audience involvement is through an element of competition. Get them to share images, retweet or re-pin your posts and reward the best post with a prize. This will generate an increase in followers and make the audience feel like they have a greater involvement in the brand.
• When you ask your fans to interact with your content, they will be more likely to do it, especially if they get something in return.

Image - www.blog.roxy.com

2. Make use of visual content

• If your business features great products and beautiful imagery, your brand should make the most out of its visual content through using social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest, which focus on the images that are posted. Visualization techniques are an important way for brands to make themselves stand out in the face of high competition, as audiences are drawn in by well laid out images of the products that are being sold.
• Pinterest has now made it easier for brands to use their site, combining the high quality images with the opportunity to learn more about the post through Rich Pins. This means you can get a link to the product details, such as the price and availability immediately and this will make it easier for the audience to make a purchase if they see something they like.

3. Interact with your visitors

• Acknowledge mentions by your fans, and respond to them. If you have asked them to engage in your site, make sure you show them you appreciate their involvement even if it is only through a simple ‘like’. This will hopefully keep them involved and more likely to post again in the future.
• Through creating a two-way conversation and sustaining it, it will help to build a great online community, this will help to introduce new fans to the page through loyal fans inviting their friends to like a page or through sharing the content with them. A loyal community can therefore be invaluable in expanding a current fanbase.
• This loyalty can be rewarded at certain times of the year through sharing offer codes and discounts online – drawing in both old and new fans again.

Infographic - http://marketmesuite.com

4. Keep your profiles regularly updated

• Keeping your profile current and updated with the latest developments of your company is essential for appealing to an audience who are already interested in your brand. They will quickly lose interest if they find out that the site hasn't been updated or that nothing has been posted in a while from one of the social media platforms.
• Therefore, it is essential that you keep every social media site updated regularly, otherwise it will lose its following.
• For instance, on Facebook the algorithm for the News Feed organises what you see according to a number of factors, one of which is time delay. The longer it takes for you to keep updating your profile, the less often you will appear on the page.
• Use an application like Hootsuite as a way to schedule posts. This could be useful as on Twitter you could schedule tweets if you have too many to handle at once, or if you are out of town for a few days you can schedule tweets so that they appear on your profile at the time you want. This can prevent overwhelming your audience with too much content all at once.

5. Share content at the optimal time

• Different social networks have different peak times for posting, so you should take advantage of these times in order to maximize views by the audience and increase the likelihood of them engaging with you.
• If you post at the optimum times of the day the audience will be more receptive to the post and will help the use of social media to be successful. There is no point posting content if no one will ever see it because it is being posted in the middle of the night or during the middle of a busy working day.This will help with the points above through helping in the audience engagement.

Infographic - http://marketmesuite.com

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?

Image – www.techhive.com

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?

Pinterest Introduces New Article Pinning Feature

Pinterest is already being used as a great tool to discover and collect articles in the form of an online scrapbook, with more than 5 million articles being pinned every day. Pinterest has recently decided to expand on this use, creating a new look for article pins, which allows them to have more information – including the headline, author, story description and link all on the pin. This allows articles to be pinned, saved and organised more efficiently.

Image - Pinterest blog

This follows a similar move which Pinterest introduced back in May with its ‘Rich pins’. This development allowed pins to feature a greater amount of detail on them, particularly useful for pins that feature recipes, films or products purchasable online as they could enrich the pins with updated details like ingredients, movie reviews or the availability of goods and prices. This was a valuable move making Pinterest more useful for business and not just for personal use. The article pinning feature will also help aid Pinterest for business because it provides "a great way for writers and publications to reach new and existing audiences" according to Sarah Bush, the newly appointed UK country manager for Pinterest. These latest developments therefore seem to suggest that Pinterest is trying to make its platform more useful to business users as well as to those who use the site for personal reasons.

The new feature for pinning articles better will help to make the pinned articles look more relevant at a first glance. Pinterest users will now be able to see the headline, author, story description and link when they come across an article that has been pinned on the site. The Pinterest blog has also commented that this feature will soon be rolling out to mobile phone users as well as those on computers. In addition to showing similarities to the new ‘Rich pins’ which Pinterest introduced, it is also shows a likeness to Twitter’s introduction of “expanded Tweets” which they introduced last year. This offers a similar feature, showing an article preview with a headline, image thumbnail and article introduction.

The new feature also helps people to take a ‘pin now, read later’ approach, as they can save articles which they have come across online and choose to read them at a later date when it is more convenient to them. This allows users to create their own reading room on Pinterest by adding the Pin It button to their own browser so that they can start creating a collection of articles that they want to read. The Pinterest reading room also helps you to find interesting new content to read as there are a number of high-profile names who are already using the feature. For instance, Arianna Huffington who has an article board to give an insight into what she is reading at the moment.

 

This new feature can be particularly useful for publishers who are trying to reach a target audience composed mainly of women, as women are the most common user of the site, making up around 72% of the total users. Pinterest has already proved to be a major referral source of traffic and a study by Yieldbot, has found that Pinterest dominated referral traffic across leading publisher websites, representing 85.2% of referral traffic compared to just 8.3% for Facebook.

A number of sites have already signed up for the service including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Mashable and the Guardian to name a few. For now, it looks like Pinterest Article pins will be a successful new addition to the site, adding a new dimension to the website which has until now been known mainly for its visual content.

What do you think?

Do you think that the addition of Pinterest article pins will benefit the site and increase its use?

Pinterest for Business – a valuable marketing tool

Pinterest has often been underrated in its power to be used as a tool for companies hoping to expand their digital marketing. With an audience of over 70 million users, and as the fastest growing social media platform in the world, there is huge potential for businesses to capitalise on the opportunity to visually advertise their products.

Who does it benefit?

Businesses who focus on highly visual advertising, such as interior designers, clothing companies, restaurants and many others can benefit in particular from the ability to create a Pinterest site. With 72% of Pinterest’s audience being women, it can be an exceedingly valuable tool for targeting a specific demographic and allows you to interact with your customers in ways that other social media platforms can’t – it can act as an impressive visual showcase of your products driving traffic to your own website and increasing sales. If your business is highly visual, then there is a lot of potential to advertise through this form of social media, with 60% of major brands having their own Pinterest accounts. Smaller businesses should also be encouraged to take up this approach in their marketing strategy as it provides a ready-made audience and Pinterest itself provides educational materials specifically for businesses to learn how to market themselves through the business site.

Marketing your brand through visual images can be an overwhelmingly positive method of advertising products, and is often very effective. In January 2012, Pinterest drove greater traffic to websites than LinkedIn, Google Plus, Reddit, and Youtube combined, showing the potential power it can have as part of a marketing campaign.

There are a number of new Pinterest apps and tools which businesses can use to make the most out of their accounts:

1) WiseStamp:
A beneficial tool for businesses that enables them to show their most recent pins in their emails. Very useful for Pinterest for businesses as it can be added to existing newsletters, encouraging existing customers to become a follower of the company’s Pinterest pinboards.

2) Pinterest’s open board:
A great way to interact with your customers and make them feel involved in your brand. If your company offers an open board allowing customers to pin photos of themselves, family members and friends enjoying and using your products, it will create a positive image and entice others into trying your products.

3) Pinterest Contests:
A good way to advertise your brand on Pinterest is to run competitions offering prizes to those who repin your images or post to your open boards. This will help to increase the audience of your brand creating new followers and driving and increasing amount of traffic to your site. It also helps to connect with your existing follower base.

4) Rich pins:
Rich pins makes it much easier for people to act when they find something that they like on Pinterest – which can only benefit your brand as it makes it easy for Pinterest users to buy your products. Rich pins include automatically updated details like prices, availability, movie reviews and ingredients.

5) Pinpuff:
Download the Pinterest app Pinpuff to find out exactly how much of an impression you are making on the Pinterest community. This app will measure a user’s reach and influence and assigns a monetary value to each user, giving you a clearer idea of how profitable your boards might be.

6) Pinstamatic:
Pinstamatic is an interesting Pinterest app that helps you to create more creative and original boards to draw in customers, and helps you to stand out from other customers marketing on Pinterest. For instance, it allows you to add quotations and sticky notes to your board and allows you to share music, location maps and more. This allows you to add to the visual content on your Pinterest page with text, audio, locations and websites, enhancing the utility of your Pinterest page and attracting users for greater periods of time.

What do you think?

Do you think Pinterest is a valuable marketing tool for businesses?