Boost your Website Traffic with Pinterest

February 27, 2012 2 Comments

Carmine Media on Pinterest

Carmine Media on Pinterest

If your business relies on driving traffic to your website to increase sales consider joining Pinterest. If you’re not familiar with Pinterest, it is a social network where users to share their interests by “pinning” images or videos to their own or friend’s boards. Remember how you decorated your locker in high school? Well now you can share those clippings on Pinterest and use them to drive traffic to your website. Of all the social networks this one is truly the easiest to get set up and running.

Getting started on Pinterest

  1. Go to Pinterest.com and request an invite. The response is usually fast, within one day or so.
  2. Add the “Pin it” button to your browser
  3. Start Pinning
Pin it button

Connect and Brand your Account

Currently Pinterest allows users to connect using either a Facebook or Twitter account. Note to businesses: the option to share your Pinterest activity is not available to Facebook pages, only personal profiles. When you set up your Pinterest account be sure to connect with your business Twitter account to allow easy sharing to your Twitter followers.

Brand your Pinterest account the same way you’ve branded your other social accounts. Under the settings tab add your website, a keyword rich description and your standard social profile picture.

Create and Build your Boards

Just as with any social network it is important to flesh out your content before actively seeking out followers. Explore the platform and pin images you like and those that represent the type of content your customers will find interesting. It probably goes without say, but make sure your images are visually appealing so users will want to share them. Go through your website using the “Pin it” button and organize your interesting images onto a board. This is where the platform becomes a powerful traffic driver to your site. Users will be able to click through that image from Pinterest right back to your website. Keep this in mind when adding future images to your site or blog. Make sure they are pinnable and interesting to Pinterest users!

Build your Pinterest Following

Start following users you hope will follow you back. Follow some of the Pinterest power users so you can see how they’re leveraging the network. Mashable, Etsy and Folk Magazine (debuted November 2011) are good resources for inspiration. You can see the beginnings of my boards at Carmine Media here.  Pin a few images every day for maximum exposure. The network is growing fast and you’ll be surprised by how quickly folks start repinning your images. Cross connect by adding a Pinterest follow button to your website so visits know you’re using the platform.

Become a Pinterest Thought Leader

By posting your own and curating other’s content you can become a subject matter expert on the topics most interesting to your customers. For example, if you’re a real estate broker, pin images of beautifully staged rooms so sellers can get ideas for home staging. If you’re a pet groomer, pin images of cute animals (there are plenty to be found) and show dogs being groomed. Make sure to add links to your image descriptions, use keyword rich text and know that Pinterest supports the use of hashtags. Remember too, as with any other social network there are rules of engagement known as Pin Etiquette . Make sure to check that out.

Happy Pinning!

The best way to get a handle on using Pinterest for business is to try it yourself. Sign up for a personal account, connect it to your Facebook page and start pinning images that inspire you. You’ll see quickly how all that activity can translate into buzz around your brand.

How are you using Pinterest for business? Share your thoughts, ideas, and any boards you love here with me.

Filed under Business, Marketing, social media Tagged with , , , , , ,

How to Build a Content Calendar | Social Media Management

January 18, 2012 Leave a comment

Many of my clients are concerned about the amount of time they will need to spend creating and searching for content to share with their communities. Writing original content through blog posts can be time consuming. Searching for and curating content to share is also a time investment, especially if done without a plan. My post on using listening tools for brand management and content curation will help organize your content curation. Now it’s time to add a content calendar to your strategy to plan what and when to post to your followers.

What is a Content Calendar?

A content calendar is an plan for publishing content to all your social media streams. The format is up to you. I prefer using a spreadsheet, but a Word document, Google calendar, or any other tool will work. If you’re sharing the calendar with other community managers a shared Google Document or calendar using any of these formats is a useful tool.

Your calendar should contain an overview of the topics, the dates, the content and links to relevant information. Include notes on social objects such as photos or videos as well.

Plan for Creating your Content Calendar

Calendars can be set up yearly (very ambitious) or weekly or monthly. If you decide to use a yearly calendar plan to update and change regularly as ideas and topics come up. Remember nothing is set in stone. At the very least, decide on what you plan to post this week to get started. Then as this planning becomes a habit, look farther into the future.

Deciding on Content

Start by looking at your business calendar. What events occur regularly that you want to incorporate into your strategy? Do you have monthly meetings, are there community events you want to promote, do you have a regular schedule of marketing activities? Add these to your calendar and plot out the dates. Remember to include holidays and special events.

Now search for relevant articles, social objects (videos, photos, infographics) and links to your own website to support the content. If you’re new to infographics, Visual.ly is a great place to start. If your strategy includes a blog post per week, this is where you decide on the general topic for those posts. A word or two, a link to an article and an idea for a supporting graphic should suffice at this point.

The Big Picture

Remember, a content calendar is a “big picture” document. Drill down for details as the dates approach. The most important thing to remember is, whatever you are sharing, keep it social and keep your audience in mind. What will add value to their day? What are they seeking?

Put in the effort up front on creating your calendar and you won’t be scrambling for content or neglecting your social spaces and your community down the line.

How do you decide what to share with your community?

Filed under Business, social media Tagged with , , , ,

Social Media Wish List for 2012

January 1, 2012 2 Comments

Wish List

Photo courtesy of Plindberg on Flickr

While 2011 was a banner year for social media growth in the business world, those of us in the profession are still struggling with measuring the results of our efforts. In the hopes that 2012 will bring us functional tools for analyzing all that data, here’s my early wish list for Santa in 2012. If you have a recommendation for a tool for any of the items mentioned on my list, feel free to comment and post your links. I welcome your suggestions! And Santa, I promise to be good all year.

Fan Interest Graphing

Facebook insights, for example, gives us information on our fan page demographics such as age, gender, where likes came from (external referrers) and such, there’s still no good way to see and graph the interests (likes) of our fans. Say for example, a majority of your fans are interested in skiing. Providing content on the topic could help keep them engaged and sharing. So far none of the free services I’ve found give us a way to access this data so it’s included here on my wish list.

Social Media Dashboard

While tools like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Social Mention and Google Alerts allow us to track and analyze Key Performance Indicators (KPI), I’d like a tool that allows me to aggregate all my social media accounts and posts on one dashboard and then share that dashboard with fans and followers. If you’re interested in tracking dashboards, Barry Hurd’s blog post on Social Media Dashboards give a good outline of the tools available now for tracking conversations. Here’s your chance to make a suggestion if you have a favorite tool for tracking, or for setting up a magazine-like page for all your streams.

Trending Data

I’d like a way to see what was trending in, say, New Orleans, for a date in the past. Twitter’s trending tools allow us to see what’s trending now, and what’s trending in a particular location, but not both location and date specific. At least, I’ve not yet found a good tool to do this. Any suggestions?

Ranking System by Industry

Even though there’s a lot of eye rolling when it comes to discussing metrics like Klout in the social media communities, it does offer some valuable insights. The problem lies in measuring everyone against everyone else, Justin Beiber included. I’d like to know how my clients measure against others in their industry. Since Klout uses the influence of your followers as part of the metric, B2B companies looking to engage with small, niche businesses will naturally have lower Klout scores than B2C companies able to engage highly influential followers. Again, if you have a suggestion feel free to let me know.

Social Media Workflow Tools

I know that Hootsuite allows for post coordination under its paid version, which I’ve not tried. I have heard good things about BufferApp.Com and it looks like collaboration tools are included in the free version. Scheduling posts to fan pages is part of the paid version. While the free dashboard Tweetdeck does allow scheduling to all accounts collaboration tools are absent. Any suggestions?

As the year progresses I’m sure my list will change as fast as the landscape of social media changes. As always, I welcome your comments and ideas here, on Twitter @suereynolds or on Facebook.

Happy New Year!

Filed under Business, Facebook, social media Tagged with , , , , ,

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