Pinterest

Pinterest Launches Business Pages to Attract More Brands

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Kellie Englehardt in blog 2 Comments

Pinterest has grown substantially since it started almost three years ago, with nearly 40 million users. According to SAP and NetBase, Pinterest is the fastest growing social site ever. Over the past year thousands of businesses have started using the site, finding that it can be a powerful way to engage with customers, while having the potential to bring in new customers. The picture-sharing social networking site recently launched Pinterest for Business to better cater to the brands using it.

Businesses already using Pinterest can convert their account following a few simple steps. The major difference between having a personal account instead of a verified business account at the moment is the terms of service agreement. In the future, additional functions for business users like analytics may be added according to Cat Lee, a product manager for Pinterest.

A guide of best practices for businesses on Pinterest has been created and includes suggestions for creating inspiring boards with images people will want to share. Highlighting specials, celebrating seasons and holidays, and writing thoughtful descriptions are among a few of the ideas offered to help gain traction.

“Whether it’s Anthropologie sharing awesome clothes, Whole Foods sharing tasty recipes, the Smithsonian sharing fascinating collections, or Amazon making products easy to pin, many of us have been inspired on Pinterest by businesses,” Lee wrote on Pinterest’s blog.

Brands sharing recipes, fashion ideas, travel information and crafts tend to do particularly well with pin sharing and driving traffic to their website. Allrecipes, Etsy, Jetsetter, Organized Interiors and Petplan are a few organizations Pinterest has highlighted with case studies showing how brands are using the popular networking site.

“We look forward to seeing businesses continue inspiring their audience with amazing content,” Lee wrote.

With social media sites like Pinterest showing no signs of slowing down, having a strong social media marketing campaign is becoming more important than ever. PRMarketing.com offers a variety of highly individualized strategies to help brands stand out online using social media.

New Social Media for Men: Gentlemint

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Allison Ulrich in blog 2 Comments

Mashable stated recently that some studies have shown women are more active social media consumers than men, except on Google+. The new social media network named Gentlemint, is changing that claim. This social media network is designed specifically for “manly men.” The new site is similar to Pinterest, but without the cakes, dresses, and mushy love pins. Glen Stansberry, the founder of Gentlemint, told The Art of Manliness Trunk that he “thought the idea of Pinterest was pretty cool, but wanted a community that was more man-friendly.”

A mustache theme has been integrated for the logo and to add a humorous flare. Stansberry wanted the logo to have the Teddy Roosevelt look. The site has already taken off and has sparked plenty of interest as an up-and-coming social media network. The site already has 634 active users on Facebook and 404 tweets. With all the buzz surrounding this new site, it has the potential to be just as likeable as Pinterest.

Just like Pinterest, Gentlemint provides plenty of brand development and social media marketing strategy opportunities. It’s a great outlet for companies whose main target market is men. Brands such as Gillette Razors, Old Spice, AXE, and Cabela’s can easily find themselves promoting their product to resonate with the manly men within. Some suggestions for building your brand on Pinterest can be easily applicable to Gentlemint as well, read more about brand development on these types of sites here.

Does that mean Gentlemint is reserved for males only? TimeNewsFeed may have said “This community runs on pure testosterone,” and a person might assume that females would not be able to post pins or participate, but that is not the case.

“It really has less to do with being a male or female, or kittens or bacon, and more to do with encouraging users to add stuff around that theme,” Stansberry also told Mashable.

So there you have it. Men and women are both welcome to the new “testosterone” site, but keep the theme or pin it elsewhere.

7 Ways to Build Your Brand on Pinterest

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Kellie Englehardt in blog 7 Comments

In second grade, show and tell was easily my favorite part of the school day. I couldn’t wait to share my latest find or tell a story to my classmates. Pinterest is the latest big social network to hit the scene and it’s a lot like show and tell. It’s all about sharing your favorite things through visual content in an online social networking format.

The invitation-only beta site is quickly making its way into the top social media circles. According to the latest Experian Hitwise report, the site now has 40 times the total number of visits it had six months ago, finding its way into the top social networking sites and forums. Businesses are usually advised to interact with customers via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even LinkedIn. But they should also consider using Pinterest for brand development.

The site is particularly popular among women between the ages of 25 to 44. It’s estimated that this group of key household purchasing decision makers comprises 59 percent of the sites readership. Businesses are just starting to take notice of the many advantages of Pinterest. According to a recent Mashable article, top brands on the site include Whole Foods, Martha Stewart, Bergdorf Goodman, and the Today Show.

What makes Pinterest unique is it’s visually driven approach, letting site users group favorite items by pictures into categories and share them with others. The majority of the sites images at this time are food, fashion, crafts, and home décor, but the possibilities are limitless.

Here are seven easy tips you can follow to get your brand up in order to make an impact on “pinners.”

2. Create your own brand wish list that includes product pricing. Encourage users to add them to their wish list of gifts they are hoping for. The beauty of Pinterest is the potential it has, and is gaining, as a social shopping site. Pinterest allows consumers to easily share pins with Facebook friends and Twitter followers, helping point customers back to Pinterest and your website.

3. Hold a “Pin It to Win It” contest to draw customers to your boards. Contest details and the winners lists are usually shared on Facebook, your website, and/or blog. Rules should include that entries have hashtags and/or @mentions to help make it an even more viral campaign. Winners of the contest are generally chosen based on how many likes, comments, or repins are received.

4. Let contributors add to your board for even further interaction. Pinterest settings allow you to leave boards open and let others contribute to it. For example, Whole Foods effectively uses this brand development strategy with a gardening board that encourages tips and ideas from pinners.

5. Inspiration boards are a great way to brainstorm new product ideas or show a consistent branding theme. Last year the Kate Spade brand theme was “Year of Color” and this year it’s a “Year of Pattern.” The brand’s boards thoughtfully reflect this, without being overly self promotional.

6. Your company could also use Pinterest to curate a board of press clippings about your business or areas that might be of particular interest to your customers and followers.

7. The key is to keep it simple and don’t just promote your own products. Pin other’s content, follow back when they follow you, and comment on pins when it makes sense. It’s a lot like “retweeting” on Twitter.

Follow these few steps and a new legion of Pinteresting brand ambassadors will be born.

Need an Pinterest invite? Send me an e-mail.

Using Pinterest for SEO and Marketing

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Alyssa Vincent in blog 1 Comment

Pinterest is the latest craze and social media platform that allows users to organize content they find on the Internet via “virtual pinboard.” A virtual pinboard is made up of a series of “pins” that users create from images. Users are also able to browse other user’s pins, re-pin their content, and follow pinboards they find interesting. Sounds simple enough, right?

The Benefits of Pinterest

Pinterest, however, is so much more than that. It’s an amazing search engine optimization and social media marketing strategy—if you know how to use it. Pinterest is set up in such a unique way that its content is essentially millions of pictures that link users from Pinterest to your own website, a term which is known as “backlinks.” Not only does this drive traffic to your website or blog, but it also increases your ranking in search engine results. You can even double-dip backlinks to your page if the user checks the “post to my Facebook/Twitter” button as they are pinning your content to their board. Pretty cool, huh?

Pinterest can also assist in market research by allowing you to search for trends and create collaborative boards for your customers to pin things that they would like to see in your store. It’s also a great place to recruit new customers by utilizing the word of mouth aspect of marketing…only now it’s “word of re-pin.”

However, in order to take advantage of Pinterest’s marketing potential, you must first make your content interesting enough for people to want to pin it on their pinboards. Pinterest is content marketing at its finest.

Make Pinterest Work for You

The first thing you need to know is that it is essential to use eye-catching images on your website and blog. This aspect is crucial for two reasons. The first being Pinterest is primarily made up of pictures and users can’t pin anything if there aren’t any images. The second reason is you need to find a way to stand out among the millions of photos on Pinterest.

The easiest way to get your content on Pinterest is to create a Pinterest account for yourself and start pinning your own content to your boards, and hope that other users re-pin them. Don’t overdo it though; too much self-promotion on Pinterest is frowned upon.

Another simple way to get your content on Pinterest is to ask your followers to pin your content if they find it interesting. Just asking your followers to get engaged in your posts can do wonders.

If you really want to make it easier for your followers to pin your content to their boards, create a “pin it” button directly on your webpage. Not only does this button make it easier for users to pin your content on their boards, but it also reminds them to pin it to their board if they like it.

Finally, in order to be successful on Pinterest you’re going to have to get creative. Pinterest’s users are primarily made up of women right now—and therefore some topics are not going to be as popular as others.

Electronics, cars, and sports are currently the least pinned-about topics right now. Crafts, fashion, home décor, and recipes are pinned the most –especially if they are geared toward a holiday. If your company falls into one of the unpopular categories, you’re going to have to work harder for those backlinks. For example, if your business makes or sells computers, don’t encourage users to pin pictures of your product onto their board. Instead, create a blog post featuring a way to upcycle a computer and make jewelry out of the internal parts. This will generate interest among users and earn you those coveted backlinks.

Pinterest is Limitless

The marketing possibilities of Pinterest are endless and this is just scraping the surface of utilizing Pinterest in your SEO and marketing strategy. Experiment and find out what works for you. If you find other strategies in using Pinterest for marketing, I’d be very interested in hearing what they are!

Infographic Promotion – Going Beyond Digg & StumbleUpon

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Greg Shuey in blog, Content Marketing 2 Comments

The sole purpose for an infographic is to attract natural backlinks… period! This comes in the form of either graphic embeds or by webmasters linking to your graphic in a blog post or on a web page somewhere.

Getting Diggs, Stumbles, Tweets, and Facebook Likes, is all good and can help send some pretty decent social signals to the engines that your content is quality, but in my honest opinion, even if you manage to attract a lot of the social signals mentioned above without attracting any backlinks, your infographic has flopped.

In this post I want to discuss a few ways that I have found effective in generating a lot of backlinks for my clients and for my personal sites when I produce and promote an infographic. I want to start out by discussing blogger outreach.

Blogger Outreach

Until recently, I believe blogger outreach has been pushed to the back burner when it comes to infographic promotion. Search marketers have been of the mindset that if they get enough Diggs, Stumbles, Tweets, and Facebook Likes, that can generate enough visibility to attract links and embeds without having to reach out to bloggers. This is flawed thinking and needs to be done away with immediately. Through proper blogger outreach, you can increase your success rate and generate way more backlinks than just focusing on promotion via social media channels. So let’s dive into how to begin the blogger outreach process.

Competitive Analysis

I like to start with some basic competitive analysis. The idea of creating and promoting infographics is nothing new. The chance of someone in your niche having created and promoted a graphic is pretty high and with a few search queries you can typically dig these graphics up and begin your analysis.

Backlink Analysis

Once you find a graphic in your niche, you should jump over into Open Site Explorer (OSE) and analyze the backlinks that the graphic attracted. When doing your analysis, the settings in OSE should be as follows:

Show – all links (I don’t care if they are followed or nofollowed. Nofollowed links help diversify your backlink portfolio)
Links From – only external
Pages To – this page
And you can display your links grouped or ungrouped. It doesn’t really matter when doing your analysis.

Once you filter down your results, you now have a great list of sites linking to the graphic in the same niche that you can reach out to and see if they would be interested in embedding or linking to your graphic as well.

Google Image Search

After building the list of linking domains in OSE, I like to find the URL of the actual infographic and do an image search for the URL. This will drum up many of the websites that are actually embedding the graphic, not just linking directly to the graphic or blog post where the graphic lives.

You should then take all of these sites and add them to your list from OSE, dedupe, and begin your outreach.

Tumblr

Tumblr is an untapped resource when it comes to infographic promotion. For those who don’t know Tumblr is the hottest free blogging platform on the web right now. Tumblr is different from other free blogging platforms because of their “reblogging” feature that makes it super easy to find content related to yours and with the click of a button, share it out to your blog. If you publish a sweet graphic that is non promotional and tag it properly, your chance of getting a ton of reblogs is pretty good and it just might snowball from there.

You can leverage Tumblr by setting up your own Tumblr blog to post your graphic and others in the same niche (less self promotion adding other graphics as well), doing some outreach to bloggers on Tumblr who publish infographics, or both (I recommend both).

Pinterest is an interesting community that I’ve been playing with lately. I’ve only been tinkering with it a short time, but have seen phenomenal results in getting graphics spread throughout the community. For those who don’t know, Pinterest is a virtual pinboard that allows you to organize and share images you find useful or interesting online.

Just like how Tumblr has a “reblog” feature, Pinterest has a “repin” feature that allows others to repin an interesting image they find in the community on their pinboard. Each time someone repins a graphic, it links to the web page where the graphic lives. Ingenious!!! The trick with this is to make friends who may have interest in the data found in the graphics you are pinning. If not, your chances of getting repins is much smaller.

So there you have it, three ways to help promote your infographics outside of Digg and StumbleUpon. Yes, it takes some time and effort, but the return on time invested is enormous.

About Greg Shuey

Greg Shuey is the Vice President of Client Services for SEO.com who offers professional SEO services. He oversees SEO strategy and fulfillment for all SEO.com clientele. He blogs regularly at SEO.com and occasionally blogs for SearchEngineJournal.com, YOUmoz, and SearchMarketingWeekly.com. You can also find him on Twitter and Google+.