Post to multiple social networks quickly using one simple tool

Are you overwhelmed with the notion of all these social networks that you are supposed to share your blog articles on? Your boss says "our new corporate mission statement indicates we need to post to multiple social networks in order to stay competitive in the current business landscape". Whatever. It can be daunting. Especially if you are just getting started which means you don't really know which social networks are going to be the important ones for you to post. Some experts advise that you just focus on the top couple of really big social networks such as Facebook business pages, Twitter, and LinkedIn. However, if you are not willing to take that schtick for an answer, and you want to post your blog articles on multiple social networks, there is a free application that can help you manage all of this, Shareaholic.
Tweet

Shareaholic is a plugin that is available for several different browsers. Once you publish your article on your blog, you'll be able to click on the Shareaholic icon in your browser and individually post a link to the article on all the different social networks you choose. This is a one-at-a-time exercise, but Shareholic will still speed things up for you. See the screenshot below that shows the Sharaholic icon and a list of social properties displayed within a browser window.

• Go to shareaholic.com and download the proper browser plugin
• You can configure which social channels you want to use at  shareaholic.com/account/services (image below)
• Visit the url of the blog article that you want to share
• Click the Sharaholic icon on your browser
• In the dropdown, click the first social network (for example, Facebook)
• A separate popup window will open. It might ask you to allow Shareaholic to access your social account.
• Fill in the fields on the popup window and submit
• Your update will be posted to your social network
• Click the Shareaholic icon again and move on to the next social network in your list

Quirks, general mayhem, and the good stuff

Facebook
Note that a few of the social networks behave in a quirky manner, particularly if you are trying to post to your business account, instead of to your personal account. For example, with Facebook, it makes you first connect Shareaholic to Facebook using your personal account, but you can then post to your Facebook business page IF you use the little selector thingey shown below. After you click "Post to Profile", you'll be able to select a Facebook business page to post to.

To post to a Facebook business page, click "Post to Profile"

LinkedIn
With LinkedIn, don't just post to your updates, instead, also post to your LinkedIn Groups as well. Shareaholic makes this easy by clicking the "Post to Groups" box, and then typing in the names of your groups.

For LinkedIn, click "Post to Groups"

Short Links made easy
When I'm using Shareaholic to post our blog articles to multiple social networks, I prefer to be able to track all the links that people click on across all of those networks. The way I do that is by always using bitly as the creator for all my short-links. Shareaholic makes that easy too. Once you click the Shareaholic icon, the dropdown will display your bitly shortlink. In the screenshot below, see the bitly url at the bottom of the list of social channels? I click the Copy icon and I now have the bitly short link that I am after. I use that as the url for every social network post I make.

Social sharing chicklet links onto your blog
One extra-happy-bonus feature of Shareaholic is that you can get a set of those social share chicklet button thingamajiggers to go on your blog posts. They look like the below. Shareaholic even has an integration to Blogger, Wordpress, and Tumblr blogs so you can easily add them to those platforms. Or you can add them to your regular website. Choose from three designs and different sizes. Once installed, they simply "work." You don't have to do anything else to them. You'll see them at the bottom of all our blog articles.

Highlight more of your site's content with Shareaholic Recommendations!
Shareaholic's head of marketing, Janet Aronica, points out that "adding Shareaholic Recommendations to your blog increases pageviews and time on site by recommending your site's own content at the bottom of each article you publish." Shareaholic's recommendation engine will create a display of a few images (plus text) that encourage readers to click through and read other articles around your site. Shareaholic will crawl your site and find all the pages, and recommend which ones the visitor should read next. This requires a bit of fancy-pants html work on your part, unless you use a Wordpress blog, which means you can use the Shareaholic Wordpress plugin. You Wordpress people are so special. We bow to your mightiness. Post these recommendations at the bottom of each blog article.

Shareaholic Recommendations - set these to appear at the bottom of your blog articles

Kerphlooey
Sometimes the Shareaholic service is just down! (or it's that something goes wrong with your browser). "Down", taken from the ancient Greek, meaning it's kerplunkt, kerphlooey, dead, "not working in an optimal manner", and the like. So, you might click on the Shareaholic icon in your browser and nothing happens. Or, you click on it, select the social network, and no pop up happens. Nice. But, it's not like you're paying for the service so no sense crying over spilled social beans. Spilled coffee beans, yes. Spilled social beans, no. Although, Loraine in the cube next to me accidentally inhaled a coffee bean once.....


Although Shareaholic isn't perfect, and doesn't offer any auto-scheduling or other fancy hoo-ha, it's still an effective time saver when posting to multiple social networks.

Read next: Your email open rate may not mean what you think

Can You Use Pinterest for Business to Business Marketing?

Business to business social marketing with Pinterest

For those interested in applying social networking into their business to business marketing, there are certain networks which can benefit your efforts. 

It does, of course, depend completely on how you use the tools that are provided. Pinterest is a very visually appealing network which works very well for presenting your business in various aspects. Though not every business relies on the visual presentation of their product, especially when it comes to those that focus on providing services, Pinterest can still market your efforts by appealing to your audience’s demands.

What are the uses of Pinterest? A visual site with limited room for speech, Pinterest is actually perfect for social marketing. Here you are able to spread your image easily since it is an open network, much like Twitter. It’s available to anyone and everyone, even those who don’t have an account. It is great for gaining public exposure. In addition, cross-networking is a big part of Pinterest. Don’t neglect to link with the prominent social networks like Facebook and Twitter. 

What ways can you employ Pinterest to do serve your benefit?

It’s true that Pinterest most commonly appeal to private individuals. The pictures and visuals seem to have more influence on present clients and potentials. But it is important to remember that there are plenty of other businesses utilizing the social site to promote their own efforts. When it comes to business to business needs, consider Pinterest as a big fish-filled pond. There are potential catches of all sizes and types. You simply have to know what type of bait to use to make your Pinterest page appeal to the right audience. 

So, consider what it is that you provide to your clientele. Your target zone is going to have to be focused, perhaps providing an essential service that businesses prominently use. But, the real question is how you can deliver that through Pinterest. As a visually appealing site with little room for commentary, it can be difficult to appeal to someone who is currently working on promoting their own business. 

Pinterest utilizes the “follow” technique, which works for anyone trying to meet someone new or build a social circle. When you follow a site, you broaden your imagery. What they post is linked to your Pinterest site. This gives you the opportunity to leave comments on pins and discuss. Conversations are the beginning of business, and this is the perfect way to initiate a relationship. 

Work on distributing your image and what it is that you do. Implement pins that display what it is that your business does. Provide info-graphs about your services and what you can provide. Because pictures are the primary focus of Pinterest, this is the perfect chance to sum up what you can do in a simple photograph. They are still pictures, but can easily get the message across through words, statistics, and charts. Expand your application of photography. 

Do keep in mind that while you’re trying to appeal to certain businesses, the whole world is your market. Be ready to work with anything you catch, because you never know when it might lead to a bigger fish. 

Appealing in general

The first practice of Pinterest focuses on word-of-mouth marketing. Pinterest allows you to make people talk about you. You can easily spread your image, but only by appealing to the visual aspect. Create imagery that captures attention- even if they aren’t looking for you. 

To do this, you’ll need to present yourself across a broad range of audiences. You’ll want to touch a subject in everyone’s desire. This can be done through the various boards that the site provides. Focus on appealing with who you are and what you represent. Use individual boards with appealing photos to target a general audience. Include such scenarios as: What do you like? What plans do you have? 

Use Pinterest as an information board. Unite your business employees to add to boards such as goals and ambitions. Unite with clients and associates. Remember that if someone follows you, follow them right back. Don’t be shy, socialize. Comment and respond to comments. Repin things you like because that’s what it’s all about. And most importantly, build a link to your websites through your photos and script. This is a big part of Pinterest so don’t neglect it.

Pinterest can be a useful social networking tool when used in the correct context. With the right application, you can make sure that you create a social network that benefits your particular business needs, even though your target audience is another business. 

32 White Hat Ways to Build Inbound Links - Expanded

This article expands on Hubspot's "32 White Hat Ways to Build Inbound Links" written by Corey Northcutt by adding a few more ideas to what Corey discussed. Oh, and, if you don't mind, please tweet a few snippets from this blog post. If you do that, we may then be able to afford to buy Loraine in the cube next to me a new ficus tree since she killed yet another one .....sorry, long story. : )

Building inbound links to your blog or website is the most important way to bring more visitors to your site and to influence search engines to rank your page higher.  If you can add inbound links without trying to pull the wool over Google's eyes, then Google will reward instead of penalize you.

Get your blog on

In this section of Corey's article, he outlined several ways to use your blog. I would add the following:

Use Tweetable quotes in your blog content to get readers to tweet
In your blog posts, put tweetable snippets with a Twitter share button displayed on them. Your readers are looking for tweetable content. If you provide short, simple content for them, they'll be much more motivated to send out that Tweet. Don't take up the full 140 characters though.  Leave room for them to put in their own hashtag or re-tweet text.


Link to other blogs and your own blog, from within your blog articles
Linking to other people's blogs will encourage those blog owners to repay you the favor by linking back to you. But, don't forget to link to your own blog articles as well. This type of interlinking will encourage readers to click through and read more articles on your blog. This decreases the abandonment rate on your blog.  The abandonment rate can be considered by search engines who rank your page. If users stay on your blog website for longer, it makes your blog look all shiny and sparkley and stuff. Google loves shiny, sparkley things.

Write guest blog posts
Write a guest post blog on someone else's website. Your content will be posted on someone else's blog which means their readers will become familiar with you and visit your site. Sign up to be a guest blogger on myblogguest.com. It's a great place to find a guest blogger and to list yourself as one too.

Invite another blogger to write a guest post on your site
If the author has a decent social following of her/his own, you can expect that she will use social media to promote the article which also drives traffic to your site. This is a great concept, but don't overuse it. You should author your own blog and then have a few guest posts from time to time. You can apply to guest post on this blog here.

Create content beyond your blog

In this section Corey encourages you to invest in more than just blog content. I would add that from within your ebook, you should create hyperlinks to your own blog content, post short, and add tweetable quotes in the ebook to encourage readers to tweet the content.

Create an infographic and post it on Pinterest 
Infographics are insanely popular. Click on the image on the left for an example.
When you create one, post it on your blog page and then on Pinterest. The link on the pinterest page should point back to the blog article url which will serve to further drive traffic to your article. Place social share links on the infographic and supply the html code for others to be able to post the infographic on their own websites. Don't forget to write text on the Pinterest page that uses your keywords. This will help in your search rankings.

Tweet your infographics with [INFOGRAPHIC] in your tweet 
Once posted on your blog or Pinterest page, tweet the infographic and include [INFOGRAPHIC] in your tweet. People recognize this and will click through to view.

Create custom graphics for your blog image
For your blog posts, first pick out a good image using Creative Commons that has no usage restrictions. Again, if you don't use an image on your blog, Google will pout about it because all-text is not sparkley and shiny whereas text with an image is all pretty-like. Then, using the image, create a graphic and place text on it that will entice viewers to visit the link like the one below. The image should be posted to your Pinterest board.  Since viewers of Pinterest will also see the sparkley text prominently on the image, they will click the image. The link on the pinterest page should point back to the blog article url which will serve to further drive traffic to your article. And, while you're at it, you should add your logo to the bottom of the image you've created. That way, if people repin your image to their Pinterest boards, your logo will always be present.

Create a meme image and post it on your blog article and Pinterest page
Meme images are those funny images you see moving around the internet. They too are all sparkley and shiny, and make people giggle. You can highjack some of these images for your own use. See below for an example of one that was posted to a blog article about how to double your Gmail inbox placement rates. And here is the same image posted on our Pinterest board. The link on the Pinterest post points back to the blog article. A free tool to help you find and build your meme image is memegenerator.net. There you can pick from hundreds of meme images and write your own text on them.

You can follow Corey Northcutt on Twitter at @northcuttSEO

Pinterest and Your Business

Some questions to consider before taking your brand to Pinterest:

1.What are some of the best ways you've seen small businesses use Pinterest?
2. Do we know if Pinners are purchasing?
3. What are some best practices.

Best Pinterest Practices for Businesses

1. Include your website, facebook page, twitter on your Pinterest profile
2. Watermark all photos
3. Put contact info on all photos
4. Highlight Your Team
5. Think Lifestyle; Not Product

Learn more about Maria Elena Duron and how she can help you use Pinterest and other social media sites to promote your personal brand or small business. For more information, you can visit Buzz2Bucks.

How retailers can use social to drive customer loyalty and make more money

Brick and mortar retailers (and online retailers) do a rather poor job in using social to help grow their own businesses. Several years ago, when you first started your retail store selling dried lima-beans, or used lawn-mower blades, or defunct Suzanne Summers flab-o-blaster-cisers or whatever it is that you sell, none of this social-schmocial stuff mattered.  Times have changed!  And so should your approach to building customer relationships.  Here are some quick ideas that you should incorporate into the retail experience you are providing for your customers.

For Brick and Mortar stores - ideas to grow your social

• Use in-store signage to promote your email newsletter, SMS messages, Facebook community, Twitter feed, and Pinterest page.  And while you're at it, promote your website.
• At the point of sale, ask your customers for their email address.  "If you give us your email, we'll send you special discounts on volume lima bean purchases!"
• Offer to send the customers their purchase receipt via email. This means you'll get their email address.  This isn't permission for you to start sending them your newsletter, but when you email their receipt to them, you can promote your email list signup form, SMS program, Facebook community, Twitter feed, and Pinterest boards.
• On your paper receipts, promote all these channels.  Print it right there on the receipt.  Offer a special incentive if they join or sign up for one.
• Monitor your social channels and answer questions / comments from customers early and often.  And, thank those that commented or tweeted.

For Online stores - ideas to grow your social

• Send shopping cart abandonment emails.  Today, only 22% of online retailers are doing this.  These can be very effective.
• Send a personalized email after purchase to thank the customer and invite them to your social channels.  Too many retailers send a thank you email, but it's not personalized.
• Monitor your social channels and answer questions early and often

ExactTarget did a great study on these topics

And since you have a retail store, check out how a tiny tavern sold thousands of tshirts bearing their logo.  The greatest free advertising your store will ever get.

Word of Mouth Marketing Through Pinterest

Word of mouth marketing through Pinterest

Pinterest is now the official number 3 US social network, and it seems to still be rising in the number of brands that are planning to use it. Described as a virtual pin board meant to share and organize the things you love, the social network started in 2010 and has become one of the biggest players in the e-commerce world. Its number of users has reached 145% since the beginning of 2012, better than that of Twitter or even Facebook.

ComStore states that online shoppers are 10% more likely to buy if they are referred from Pinterest, making word of mouth marketing one of the best things this network has. Therefore, these shoppers not only spend more, but they also do it on more items and more often than in other social sites.

How is Pinterest useful for your business?

If you are a small business owner or you just want to know how Pinterest can be useful to you, here are some things you should know.

As with most social media networks, one of the things you might do is a campaign. The crucial aspect of any campaign is the analysis, seeing what the results are, what has been good and what can be improved or changed. In order to help you with measuring your results, Pinterest offers some free reporting tools. If you usually would have to pay a great deal of money for these kinds of reports, the free tools available on Pinterest are now doing the job for you, and they're doing it for free.

Here are three of the most useful tools available on Pinterest:

PinReach - also known as PinClout, this tool brings analytics and insights in order to help monitor trends and help you see how successful your Pinterest page is. This tool provides an overall influence score, as well as easy-to-read tables and charts, displaying most popular boards and pins. You can see the top 5 pins and compare them staked up against each other. Details about the most far reaching boards' performance are available. You can also see the number of your pins, re-pins, followers, comments and likes for each one of them, and the page's overall score, otherwise called the total PinReach. Practically, you can see at a glance all your activity, how viral (spread through word of mouth marketing) your pins are, how many people are actually reading, liking, pinning and re-pinning your pins, the boards created, and the ones you are contributing to. It's also easy to learn generally about the Pinterest community, seeing other members that are doing well and learning from their experiences.

Pinerly - this is an analytic tool, promising to make it easy to keep track of likes, click-throughs and re-pins your pins have. This is available for any campaign created on Pinterest. Practically it enables you to see how effective your campaign is, whether your content and efforts are rewarded, and it allows you to optimize your content if and where it is necessary. Each pin used on this website creates a campaign that you can afterword breakdown and analyze with four metrics: likes, pins, re-pins and reach. The tool is particularly useful if you want to know how many times people are making a click through to your link, and is not available with any other Pinterest services. Furthermore, you may receive suggestions of users to follow, or pins to re-pin based on your interests and boards.

Although pretty new and still in testing, this tool is planning to offer more services, like more drilled down analytics and scheduling pins in advance, making it easier for brands to pin at specific moments, when followers are most active.

PinPuff - this calculates the influence you have on Pinterest, providing you with your activity, reach, and viral scores (word of mouth marketing). You can also see a detailed breakdown of the evolution of your top 20 boards. The calculation of your referral traffic and pins is calculated in 3 ways: cost per click, Pin Worth (Gen), Pin Worth (Ecom). The first refers to the measurement of each outward click or traffic referral on your pin. The second one refers to the worthiness of a pin with a non-sales landing page. Finally, the last one represents the worth of a pin that has a landing page wherein a user can purchase something.

Conclusion

Pinterest has had an amazing evolution lately, developing new strategies and offering great tools for you to be able to get your business known online, making it cheaper and available for anyone to have great marketing campaigns. The tools stated above are just some examples of how much social media has evolved, and how important word of mouth marketing is in today's e-commerce world.

5 steps to create your first Pinterest board

5 Steps to create your first Pinterest board and take over the world

Are you a simpleton?  Do you read a lot of "Dummies Guide to...." books?  If so, you've come to the right place.  So, your wife told you to "set up a Pinterest board to help drive traffic" to your small business (eg- restaurant, fishing supply store, online junk seller, used tire salesman, pharmacy, or whatever).  But you don't know what Pinterest is, why your wife is on such a rant about it, or how your business could use Pinterest.  And after all you'd rather be applying suntan lotion whilst sipping iced cafe-o-laite.  And anyway, even if you knew how to set up a Pinterest account, you wouldn't know what to do with it.

Let's quit all the pouting and general caterwauling you're doing and set up your Pinterest account and your first "board":


Request an invite to Pinterest.
I have to request an invite?!  What they hay?  Yes, at this point Pinterest still requires an invitation to join.  The invitation must be embossed on 100% linen card stock.  The engraving must be done in 24k gold leaf in 8 pica font.  And, to get an invite in the first place, you must first prove that the engine oil in your car is Valvoline,... no, make that Quaker State.  Anyway, just request the invite and it won't be long before you get an invite.

Create your first "board"
A board is a hard thing made out of wood. Hitting your head on it hurts. But, it's also a place to stick images onto.  Now that you've received your coveted invite to join those of us who are elitist Pinterest pinheads, and your friends are all jealous, you need to create your first board. Before you do so, read this article because it will tell you why you'd want a Pinterest board, and what you are trying to do by creating one.  Within Pinterest, click Add > Add a Board. You'll get a popup that looks like this:

Type in a clever board title, choose a category, and then click Create.

Add pins (images) to your board
There are a couple of methods to add pins to your board.  You can use the Add+ button at the top of the Pinterest page and you'll get the same popup shown above. Then just click "Add a Pin".  But, to use this method, you need to have the image stored on your local computer.  Instead, it's easier and more flexible to install the Pinterest "Pin It" browser plugin so that you can pin images that you have on your website or elsewhere, from right inside your browser. To get to this magical button, you'll have to travel to the land where gnomes and fairies live.  Or, just go to "About>Pin It button" on the Pinterest.com website.  You'll then see this popup:

What the above image means by "Add this link to your bookmarks bar" is that it wants you to save that url as a bookmark in your browser (on your Bookmarks Bar). When you click the "Pin It" button, you'll see this dialog popup:

So, just literally drag the button onto the top of your browser where your bookmarks bar is located.
To use the Pin It button to add a pin to your board
When you are on a webpage where you see an image you'd like to pin on your board, click the Pin It button on your browser bar.  It will present you with a page of all the images on that webpage similar to the below (on this particular webpage there were two images; one with some text in it, and the other of Elaine Benes dancing, which is awesome).

Select which image on the page you want to pin and then you'll see this dialog:

Add a few details
Here you'll have a way to select which board you want to pin the image to, and what text to add to the pin. The text you add is important!  Search engines will see this text.  You should consider using text that relates to your website.  Once your image is pinned, you can Edit it to change the link (the default setting is that your image will link back to the page you pinned it from).

After you've pinned several images to your board, you should look around Pinterest and find similar boards.  Repin some of those images to your board and comment or "Like" other images.  The more you participate in the community, the more people will find your board and repin your pins.  And the more people that visit your board, the more traffic you'll get to your website, and the closer you'll become to world domination, the demise of your arch nemesis, and independent wealth beyond your wildest dreams.

PS- if you don't like the way Elaine dances, I can't help you.  It's awesome.  Come to think of it, get off my blog, you're not allowed here anymore.  You come back, 1 year.

The boring-business guide to using Pinterest to drive traffic

If your business is as boring as watching paint dry on a painting depicting grass growing in a drought, then you need to read this article

Is your business as boring as paint drying?

I'm still not surprised that a business owner isn't yet familiar with Pinterest.  What is Pinterest?  It's the #3 social network in the world, that's what it is!  It's the underdog.  It's the Cinderella story.  It's the bronze medal winner at the Olympics.  It's the (something else that I can't think of right now).  Anyway, the thing that makes it different from the Facebook and Google+'s of the world is that Pinterest is a visual social network.  It is based completely off of images instead of just text-based posts.  So why should you read the rest of this article?  It's all about showing you how to get more customers.  Can Pinterest help you do that?  Well, that depends on whether or not your business is exciting and visual-based or boring and not visual-based.  If your business is not visual based, we'll show you how to use Pinterest anyway.

What is meant by a visual business?  
Well, are you a home builder, hairstylist, architect, photographer, wedding planner, or restaurateur?  If so, you have a visual business meaning you can use images from your business to promote your business.  However, if you are an accountant, software programmer, actuarial, ice maker, keypunch operator, lawyer, or cement manufacturer then you're business is not so visual (yawn).  However, that doesn't mean that you can't use Pinterest.  In fact, you can use it to a high degree. And don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking those businesses.  In fact, I've had to use them all in the past.  Well, except the actuarial.  No one needs one of those....

An example of a visual-based business using Pinterest 

Lets say you are a homebuilder or a contractor who does remodeling projects.  Since you create something, hopefully something beautiful, you can use images of your projects to showcase your business.  People will see your "board" and share your images with others.  The images on your board will also serve to link back to your website thus driving traffic to your site and elevating you as an expert in your field.  Here's what to do- create one Pinterest board that showcases the great work you've done.  Show the broken-down shacks, I mean the beautiful homes you've built, the remodeled kitchens you've created, the dusty attics you've transformed into beautiful master baths, and the mud pits you've turned into stunning outdoor patios.

Then create another Pinterest board to display great home remodeling ideas. These aren't things that you've done, these are beautiful images that showcase great ideas for homes that inspire people.  Beautiful kitchens, new types of countertops, great looking bamboo-wood floors, and funky bathroom sinks that don't seem to make functional sense. Anyway, these things are meant to inspire people.  To move them. 

How would a non-visual business benefit from Pinterest?

If you are one of those businesses that is as boring as watching paint dry on a painting depicting grass growing in a drought, then Pinterest can still help!  One thing businesses like this can do is to help give potential clients a sense of who you and your employees are.  What types of things do you like to do?  Who are you when you are on vacation? What are you passionate about? The idea here is to communicate a sense of relationship to people that don't yet know you or your business.  

Other ideas to boost your small business
Other ideas would be for you to showcase what social causes motivate you and your staff.  Are you involved in your community?  Do you help out with the annual community fund-raiser in which money is raised to purchase double-espresso machiato latte machines for all the homeless in your area? (And if you do, that's awesome). Use things like this to create a Pinterest board that shows images of these events, or that shows images that relate to the subject matter.  For example, as an email marketing software company (boring), we have a Pinterest board showcasing coffee!  Yes, coffee.  We love coffee, we love to relax a little bit, and we have a quirky attitude.  But, we are also very moved by the Fair Trade program that aims to protect coffee growers. We care that the coffee we buy hasn't contributed to someone else's poverty. Having a board like this shows people a little bit about who we are.  It shows that we are people that care (and we do). Just conveying that sentiment to our potential clients creates a sense of connection between us. Getting the picture now?  

The overall point of using Pinterest is to drive traffic to your website or to get people talking about your brand.  In a future post, I'll talk about the how-to of Pinterest.  How to create a board, what text to include with your pinned images, and how to not get busted for copyright infringement for using someone else's images thereby having to spend this year in prison : ).  

Want to read more ideas?

28 Creative Pinboard Ideas From Real Brands on Pinterest


What Pinterest board do you think conveys a sense of who the company behind it is?  Tell us in the comment section below.

Are Pinners Purchasing?

The popularity of Pinterest has led many brands to utilize it for promoting their products and services. Though Pinterest hasn’t been on the scene for very long, it has quickly signed up millions of users, and is now the third most popular social networking site, just behind Facebook and Google. Though many people are devoting their time to the virtual pinboard, the question that most marketers want answered is: “Are pinners purchasing?”

Many websites and brands are seeing an increase in traffic from their Pinterest account, but the main question remains, does this traffic result in sales? In a study conducted by Vision Critical and Emily Carr University that involved 500 Pinterest users from the US, Canada, Australia and UK, they discovered a pretty high correlation between pinning and purchasing. It seems one out of five Pinterest users has pinned an item or product that they purchased eventually.

This is definitely a big discovery for brands. As a small business owner, you can’t ignore the reach of Pinterest, since it can potentially drive revenue. If you want to have a successful social marketing campaign, you need to utilize most of the tools at your disposal.

In another study by Shopify, they discovered that Pinterest users even spend more on average compared to their Facebook counterparts. Pinterest has become the third largest referral source to Shopify’s partner sites, with Facebook and Twitter continuing to lead. And Pinterest users also tend to shop more – they spend an average of $80 per order, which is double that of what they spend on Facebook.

Though Facebook continues to be the giant among social networking sites mainly due to the fact that it has the most number of users, Pinterest’s unique image-based site definitely offers a lot of potential for social marketing. Rakuten, an e-commerce giant based in Japan, recently made a $100 million investment on Pinterest. It plans to use the site together with the Rakuten ID, which is already being used by 75 percent of Japan’s population online, or roughly around 80 million people. This puts the value of Pinterest at $1.5 billion.

Though purchases may not be frequent and constant, still, brands can’t ignore the power that Pinterest holds nowadays. A significant number of people are raving about the site, using it to showcase the things they love, and sharing these things with their followers. Since this can translate to sales, it would be disadvantages for your small business to ignore Pinterest.

Even though pinners are purchasing, however, it’s important that you use Pinterest properly in order to increase the traffic to your site as well as increase sales. You can create pinboards of all the products you’re selling, but too much self-promotion can end up backfiring on you. So it’s important that you strike a balance between promoting your products and services, and sharing what you love on the site.

Mix and match what you post. Showcase your products with other things that complement them. Find unique ways to showcase the services you’re offering. If you sell make up for example, don’t just post pin pictures of your products – you can add make up tutorials, pictures of made up people that you like, and comparisons of what make up is best for day and for night.

Even if you’re someone who offers services, not products, you can make Pinterest work for you. As a lawyer, for example, you can showcase your advocacies through pictures. You can even show a bit of humor, since this lets people see you in a more personal way.

But of course, the real challenge is getting people to buy from you. Sure, it’s easy for people to follow your Pinterest account, join your contests, comment on your pinboards, like and share them on other social networking sites, and so on. But these things don’t always translate into sales.

Also, there remains the question: Are pinners purchasing what they pin, or are they pinning what they already decided to purchase? What comes first… the pin, or the plan to purchase? This is an interesting question to answer since it gives you an insight on what the users are doing. Does the pin come before the plan to purchase? Or the plan to purchase comes first before the pin?

If the pin comes first, then this can be really advantageous to brands. This means that people are pinning what they love, then they can’t resist purchasing. On the other hand, if the plan to purchase comes first, then it means that Pinterest may not exactly have anything to do with why the user is buying the product or service.

Truly, there is still a lot of uncharted territories with regards to Pinterest. As brands begin to learn what works on Pinterest or not, they can really come to engage their followers and increase their sales in the end.

Now We Can Measure Pinterest

Pinterest is fast becoming one of the most popular social networking sites in the world. It currently ranks third with regards to the number of users, with Facebook and Twitter the first and second, respectively.

Due to Pinterest’s increasing popularity, more and more brands – business and personal ones – are signing up and using the site for social marketing. After all, brands need to be where the people are, so that they can spread the word about their brand as well as engage and connect with people.

Since Pinterest is still a pretty new platform, many brands are wondering how to measure the success of their marketing campaign within the site. Unlike other popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, where there are already various ways to measure the ROI or success of your marketing campaign using the sites, the best way to measure the success of your Pinterest campaign remains elusive.

So how do you know if your Pinterest campaign is getting the results you want? How do you measure success? Is it enough to count the number of followers you have? Is it enough to see people liking and repinning your content? Can you already say that your campaign is successful?

Even if you answered yes to those questions, how can you be certain? As a small business owner, you have to ensure that you devote your time in the most lucrative way possible, so if you aren’t sure of the results of your Pinterest campaign, should you continue to devote time and resources to it?

Maybe not.

But don’t lose hope. Now there is something interesting that has come up to help you with this problem. A monitoring and analytics platform for sites involved in social curation, such as Pinterest, recently launched – and they’ve already signed up more than 150 brands and agencies.

Curalate is entering the scene at a perfect time – with the growing popularity of socially curated sites, brands really need to have the ability to measure the success of their social marketing campaign, otherwise, what’s the point of using the site, right?

What exactly does Curalate do?

Right now, it is the only available tool in the market that helps give brands a complete picture of how successful their campaign is in socially curated sites such as Pinterest. It uses a sophisticated mixture of proprietary image-recognition techniques and analytics to make you see how effective you are in engaging your audience. You gain insight on how your brand is influenced by your activities as well as your fans. Curalate is currently the only platform that is able to measure both first and third party actions – and this really gives it an edge over other platforms.

As a small business owner, you really want to make sense of social curation. You want to benefit from it, and that’s exactly what Curalate brings you – a way to monitor, measure, and help you grow your presence in socially curated sites.

Other social monitoring tools are effective when it comes to monitoring texts, but not when it comes to visuals. This is why Curalate really stands out – it helps you make sense of today’s visual platforms.

Within the site, you can easily review and respond to mentions of your brand. This helps you connect and engage better with your audience. What Curalate does is that it finds and consolidates all the conversations about you in one place, so it’s easy for you to reply to these mentions.

Curalate also helps you discover your fans and learn who your brand advocates are. These people are the ones who promote your brand and who can influence others to like your brand, so it’s very important that you learn who they are.

Another benefit the site offers is that it helps you identify what types of content are popular with users, so that you can plan your campaign effectively. After all, with socially curated sites, visual content is the most important.

It even gives you insights on your competition – Curalate gives you reports on how your curation efforts weight against those of your competitors. This is an excellent way to determine if you need to step up your campaign in order for your small business to succeed.

The best part is, Curalate shows you the complete picture, so you know which content is driving the most traffic to your site or store. This really helps you discover which area you need to focus on in order to promote your brand effectively.

Social curation is all the rage today, which is why brands need to have the ability to measure brand engagement as well as the success of their social marketing campaign. Curalate offers you that and more, so don’t hesitate and try their free trial now.

Pinterest When You're a Service Provider

Lately, everyone seems to be on Pinterest. It’s really becoming one of the most popular social networking sites, as more and more people sign up to create virtual pinboards, share them with their network, as well as check out all the lovely creations of other Pinterest users.

Since more and more people are using Pinterest, this definitely puts pressure on personal and small business brands to learn the platform and use it to their advantage. Nowadays, it’s all about word of mouth marketing, as well as connecting and engaging with your clients and customers. So brands need to be where the people are, and right now, Pinterest is where many people are spending their time on.

Many personal and small business brands who sell products are taking advantage of Pinterest by creating pinboards that feature the items they sell. They host contests, interact with their followers, and basically create buzz marketing for their brand.

But what if you’re a service provider? What if your personal or small business brand doesn’t sell products, but offers services? Should you still use Pinterest in your small business marketing mix?

Before you can decide on that, here are some things you should ask yourself:

     1. Are you willing to devote time on this?
     2. Are you willing to share more about yourself?
     3. Are you willing to become a more “visual” brand?

If you answered “yes” to these questions, then you should definitely consider using Pinterest to market your brand. But how exactly do you do this? Here are some tips:

Show off your personality visually

Most people aren’t one-dimensional creatures. You may be a lawyer, an accountant, or a doctor, but it doesn’t mean that that’s your only interest. You may also be a great cook, an avid reader, or a music enthusiast. And you can definitely share these interests of yours on Pinterest.

Before you can sell your brand on Pinterest, you need to connect with the users there, which is why it’s a good idea to show off your personality and the things you like in order to create a good following. Create boards that are creative, inspiring and beautiful. Show off the things you like and love. Then once you have a good number of followers, you can start creating boards that are related to the service you provide so you can promote what you do and drive traffic to your site.

But of course, you need to utilize Pinterest on its terms first before you branch out to what Pinterest can do for your brand.

Consider your target audience

Who is your target audience? What are they most interested in? These are two important things you need to ask yourself so you can effectively promote your brand on Pinterest. You want to create pinboards that your target audience will be interested in, so that they can be directed to your website and avail of your services.

For example, as a cardiologist, your clients are likely to be people who are very concerned about managing their weight and maintaining a healthy heart, so you can create boards that are dedicated to helping people maintain their ideal weight and be heart-healthy.  One board could be about heart-healthy foods, while another board could be about exercises that are good for people with heart disease.

By becoming a good resource for your target audience, you can effectively promote your brand and sell your services.

Be active

Truly, the best way to market yourself on Pinterest as a service provider is to be active on the site. You need to regularly create boards, comment and re-pin other people’s images, encourage people to like and re-pin what you’ve posted, and so on. If you aren’t willing to devote your time to maintaining your Pinterest page, then it’s far better to just utilize other social networking sites that may help you connect and interact with your audience better.

Just like any other social networking site, time and effort needs to be devoted to Pinterest in order to successfully use it to sell your service brand.

Personal and small business brands can definitely utilize Pinterest in order to promote awareness of their brand and create buzz. Though brands who sell products definitely have the advantage since their brands are more “visual,” as a service provider, you can still create interest in your brand by showing off your personality, considering your target audience, and maintaining an active account on the site.

So don’t be afraid of using Pinterest to market your brand. Show off the things you like and love, and you can create a good following that directs traffic to your website as well as the services you offer.

Pinterest and Your Small Business Service Brand

Pinterest is fast becoming one of the most popular social networking sites in the world. More and more brands are using it to effectively promote their products or services within the site. As a small business service brand, would it be worthwhile for you to sign up on Pinterest?

Well, it depends. Some small business service brands can be highly successful in promoting their brand on Pinterest, but there are others who may not garner the same success and may be better off promoting their brand elsewhere. So if you’re a brand who’s offering services, not products, should you consider social marketing on Pinterest or not? Here are some things you should think about:

     1. Do your services translate well visually?

There are certain small businesses that offer services that translate well visually. Photographers, for example, can effectively utilize Pinterest’s virtual pinboard by showcasing their best photos and shots. Wedding coordinators can create pinboards of the weddings they’ve organized, as well as other pictures that inspire them to organize wonderful weddings. These visual displays can help people learn more about your work and determine whether your services fit their requirements.

Lawyers, on the other hand, may not be able to promote their brand effectively on Pinterest. Sure they can create boards of the things they love and the things that inspire them, but it’s not going to let people know how effective they’re going to be in the courtroom.

So if the services you’re offering translate well visually, then definitely  consider promoting your brand on Pinterest.

     2. Is your target audience on Pinterest?

Majority of Pinterest users are women, so if your small business service brand caters to women more than men, then you should definitely consider adding the site to your marketing mix.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that if your services cater more to men, that you shouldn’t be on Pinterest. But you may have to think twice and consider other options so you can reach your target audience better.

     3. Are you willing to devote time on the site?

Just like other social networking sites, it’s important to devote time and effort to your page on the site, so that you build a good number of followers. You want to make things interesting for your audience, so you should regularly post, comment and reply to people, and make sure to follow, share and like other pinboards as well. You can’t build a following if you’re not going to update regularly and if you aren’t willing to devote time to interacting with your audience.

After you’ve considered these three things, here are some tips to help you market your small business service brand on Pinterest:

       • Too much self-promotion is a No-No

Too much self-promotion on Pinterest isn’t going to earn you points on it. Remember that it’s still primarily a social networking site, so it’s important that you make sure to share other things in addition to the services you’re offering.

What you can do is create interest in your services by sharing content that’s inspiring and based on a broader theme. This helps build a community around your brand, and doesn’t hint of over self-promotion.

       • Connect your Pinterest with your other social media accounts

To effectively convert buzz to bucks, you should definitely connect your Pinterest with your website, your blog, and your other social networking sites. This helps promote your page and drive traffic to your website. You want to direct people to the place where they can become your clients and avail of your services.

       • Be more personal

The best thing about Pinterest is the fact that you can show off who you are and what you love. Personalize your page – take the time to update the appearance of your Pinterest page so that it reflects who you are and what your brand is all about. And again, don’t be all about business – lighten up. Show people what inspires you and create boards that are funny and interesting. Social marketing is all about connecting with your audience, and the best way to connect with them is to show them the personal side of you.

Your small business service brand can definitely benefit from maintaining an account on Pinterest. So don’t be too quick on dismissing this popular medium. Pinterest is fast becoming an excellent platform for marketing small businesses.

Best Practices in Using Pinterest Contests

Pinterest is fast becoming one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. According to reports, it is now the third most popular social networking site, with Facebook and Twitter ranking as first and second. This virtual pinboard is truly making waves in the online world as more and more people have been signing up. It currently boasts 11 million registered users, and many of these people are logging onto the site everyday and creating the most beautiful pinboards.

Whether you’re a business or personal brand, you should definitely pay attention to Pinterest. It’s an excellent way to engage and interact with others as you create beautiful collections and share the things that you love and that inspire you. Through creating lovely pinboards that other people enjoy, you can create a buzz that encourages a good following and can promote brand awareness.

One of the best ways to create brand buzz in Pinterest is by hosting a contest. Most people enjoy contests as they are fun and challenging, and it’s always nice to win a prize. So if you want to promote your brand in Pinterest, creating a fun contest is a good idea.

So what are the best practices in using Pinterest contests? Here are some great ideas you should consider:

     1. Create the Best Pinboard Contest

One of the most challenging and creative contests you can host on Pinterest is one that asks people to create the best pinboards. You can require them to create pinboards that include pictures of your products, as well as other items that relate or look well with the products you’re offering. Then ask them to post it on their pinboard and tag you so that their followers can see the pinboard they’ve created. This really helps in creating buzz around your brand. You can judge the winner of the contest yourself, or you can judge the winner by the number of likes and repins the pinboard has.

     2. Most Repins and Likes Contest

With this contest, you can ask your audience to repin their favorite products from your collection and then ask them to solicit votes through repins and likes. The winner of this contest is the board with the most likes and repins.

Though this is a fun contest, it can also seem a bit like spam as the people who enter your contest solicit votes using different social networking sites. But it can be very effective in promoting brand awareness as people share their boards to their network of friends.

     3. Utilize other social media platforms

You can incorporate other social networking sites to your Pinterest contest to help promote better brand awareness. Facebook and Twitter are excellent social media platforms that you can require the contestants to use. This way, even their followers who are active in other sites will be able to learn about your brand and may even start following you as well.

Some good ideas for doing this include: asking contestants to share their pinboards that they’ve created about your brand in their Facebook wall, asking them to Tweet links to their pinboard, or asking them to blog about the pinboard they’ve created.

     4. Raffling off the winner

You can also simply ask your audience to create a pinboard of your brand, share it on their Pinterest pages, and then post the link to your wall. People can only enter once, and then you draw a random winner from the list of entries. The downside of this type of contest is that it is not very engaging, but at least it gives everyone a fair chance of winning the contest.

Pinterest contests are truly an excellent way to promote brand awareness, generate great content for your feed, and get links back to your pages and site. Remember though to review the Pinterest’s user guide to ensure that you are not violating any rules by hosting your contest.

If you want to host a contest but are not sure where to start, you can also observe some of the ongoing contests at Pinterests and learn what works and what doesn’t. Watch and observe how other brands create buzz using Pinterest contests.

Truly, there’s still a world of things you can do on Pinterest to help you promote brand awareness and create brand buzz. So why not host a Pinterest contest that lets people show off their creativity and enjoy as well? The reward you offer is just a little bit of an incentive that can help you gain a slew of new followers that can translate to potential customers and clients.

The 5 Things a Brand Can Gain From Pinterest

Pinterest is a social media platform that is gaining popularity amongst businesses. It’s a simple and easy to use tool for businesses to reach out to customers and spread brand awareness. The concept of the site is more on visual communication. Users can post images they like, whether they took them themselves or they find them online, by pinning them on their “Boards.” Boards represent a user’s category of interest like Lifestyle, Books to Get, Places to go, and any topic that a user is interested in.

Sharing and pinning images are easy because of the “Pin It” bookmarklet tool, allowing users to instantly save and post an image they see on the web. Their iPhone app also makes it convenient for users to upload and post images on their account.

The site’s growing popularity among businesses is attributable to its ability to drive traffic to a website. You can market your brand on Pinterest by posting pictures of your products and services then add a link to your website or blog. According to HitWise, Pinterest is becoming one of the top 5 referrers for apparel retailers. When customers see an image they want, they want to know more about it so they click on the image. This directs them to a brand’s website, learning more about the business. Personal brands or services can also gain and take advantage of Pinterest and here are 5 ways you can do it:

Promoting a lifestyle or culture – Share your interests through images and let your images speak about your brand. If your brand is about traveling, share images of places you’ve been to. If you have a blog site, link that image to your blog if you have already written something about that place. Soon you will be attracting others that share your passion for traveling and they will visit your site when they want to know more about the places you’ve been to or how you plan your trips. Through Pinterest, your images can be shared to others and so will your blog.

As a focus group – When you post an image, users can “Repin” your images and share them on their network. Users can also comment on your images. You can post a creative image of your brand or services, and when users comment on it, you can ask them what they think about it. You can use their comments to get an idea of how other consumers think about your business.

As crowdsource – when you post images about your business, users will start commenting. As consumers, we like to share our insights about products and services that we’ve tried or got our attention. You can gather insights and ideas from other users – it’s exciting to see how another’s “perspective” can help you view your brand, services, and even problems from a much different angle and advantage.  This will help you make improvements in case the ideas you get are doable.

Run contests – as consumers, we like contests. We like getting free things or discounts because, after all, the best things in life are free. Your brand or business can run contests using the site. There are many ways to do it. Let’s say you are running a contest to give away free massages. You can ask users to comment on the image and why they deserve the free massages. As a way to promote your personal brand, you can give away free accommodations or discounts to users who Repin 5 to 10 images that you traveled to that they find interesting and why. Be creative and attract other users to interact with you through the site. Keep them interested.

Inspire your team – If you have a team that works for your business, you can share images of anything you can find on the web that can inspires them. Make learning interesting by using the site. Instead of sending them links to inspirational articles, images, and videos, post the image or video on your site. Link inspirational articles through an image relating to the article. This will make your team inspired to learn because of the fun and creative approach of learning through the things they see.

Your business brand and each team member's personal brand have lots of good visual play time on Pinterest.  Just remember to answer the question, "How does this fit in my marketing and communication strategy?" before you make your first board, and this platform can be a powerful tool in your brand toolbox.

The 5 Laws of Pinning

Pinterest is a social media site that is gaining attention and gaining it fast. The site has been around for two years now, but only started gaining a lot of users these past few months. It is said to be the fastest growing social media site today. And because our customers are getting on it, let’s take a look at some of the advantages that the new site can offer to our personal brand or our small business.

Pinterest is a place where you can share images and videos. You can post images and videos that interest you and share them with your followers. On the business and marketing side of it, you can take advantage of the site to share your business through visuals, build a network, and drive traffic to your blog site. Since it is more of a visual place, you can get creative ideas. You can read about what others think about your posts or simply about what others think about a certain product through their comments. The site really has a lot of potential and if you want to get a feel for it, you can visit the site.

If you have decided to take your personal brand or small business to Pinterest, here are five laws to help you keep your focus and gain the best results for your business:

Manage your time – there is no doubt that this site is addicting and it is important that you manage your time properly when you are on it. The concept of pinning images can be really addicting. You see an image that catches your interest and instantly you re-pin it on one of your boards. Sometimes you might lose track of time and your goals. So make sure that you go in there and concentrate on what needs to be done. If you already have a strategy for how you are going to use the site for your business, that's well and good. Use that as a guide to increase your productivity and minimize distractions.

Use it to drive traffic to your posts – the only way to catch an audiences’ attention is through the visuals that you post. You never know who might end up clicking your posts. So what you can do is add a link on the image or video that you are posting so that when they click on it, they are taken to your blog site. If your post has an image, pin that image on Pinterest. If you made a video that gives tips about products and services, you can post the video on Pinterest as well. It’s a place where you can market your blog site.

Make your profile visible – one of our business goals is to attract customers, and you can do this by making sure that your profile is not hidden from search engines. Also, there are ways you can make your site visible. Make use of keywords when writing your profile description. Use keywords when describing an image that you posted. And also you can add your business URL to your “About Me” page. It’s not going to be an active link but you’ll still hit something by putting it up there. If your brand is listed on a Google Places business page, use that as a landing page especially, when you have great reviews there.

Build relationships – the site offers a place for you to build relationships and expand your network. People are pinning and repinning at a high speed so take advantage of that. Your content can be easily shared on this site. Also, if you like something, comment on it. Build relationships with others by sharing your ideas as well.

Be careful with what you post – Pinterest has no privacy settings so it’s best to be careful with what you post. If your account is strictly for business, it may be best to avoid posting family photos or images of anything personal as these can be easily shared with others. Also, avoid copyright infringement. Showcase your professionalism by giving credit where credit is due.

Pinterest is a great and fun place where you can market your business. Just  remember to answer these questions first before getting absorbed.

1.  Who will hear your message?

2.  Does it fit your strategy and plan?

3.  How will you measure if it’s successful?