Pinterest Marketing Archives

6 Tips to Help Brands Use Pinterest Effectively

July 28, 2014/by Corey Padveen

When brands use Pinterest, they need to think about how the network can help them achieve business goals. These tips will certainly come in handy.

Pinterest can be a hugely valuable asset to any brand, but in order to see brands use Pinterest effectively, there are a few tips and guidelines that should be followed. The personal and subjective nature of Pinterest makes it such that simply posting content to a few owned boards will result in slow growth and a lack of user engagement (and, subsequently, referral traffic).

These six tips can help brands use Pinterest more effectively and start driving growth and achieving network-specific objectives in a much shorter timeframe. Implement some of these best practices and watch as Pinterest starts to work for you!

Reserve Pinterest Sessions

Creating and implementing an editorial calendar might work for some networks, like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, but Pinterest is all about the experience. Simply posting an image or two according to a schedule isn’t going to work in the long-run.

Instead, devote some time each day (even a 15-minute session is better than nothing) to playing around with Pinterest, sharing content and engaging with other users. These sessions will yield much greater results because of the nature of the network.

Repin, Repin, Repin

On any network, people love seeing their content generate engagement. The same holds true for Pinterest. Search keywords relevant to your boards and start repinning content that you find interesting and that your audience will find relevant.

This practice will accomplish two things: first, it will increase the volume of your pins with the curated content, which is great for your existing audience, and second, it will increase your exposure on Pinterest and lead to a greater reach and greater audience growth.

Leave Comments

Just as you should repin interesting content, you should engage further and start commenting on user uploads to increase engagement and reach. Comments can go a long way. Again, they will help you boost your visibility with key audiences (assuming you are commenting on posts that are relevant to your account’s theme).

Comments will also go a step further to show that you are in fact engaging with your audience and not simply sharing content in the hopes of leveraging Pinterest’s referral traffic power.

Maintain a Theme

If there is one thing that doesn’t look good for a brand, it is when their Pinterest profile is all over the place. Though Pinterest is a network where you should be sharing content that inspires, a professional account will try to adhere to at least a semblance of a theme.

This is not to say that you should not have fun with your Pinterest account – you certainly should. By in sharing content, make sure that it relates to your brand or your brand’s personality in some way. Keep the personal pins to your personal account, and leverage Pinterest s=to showcase your professional creativity, and content that interests and relates to your brand and audience.

Invite and Join

One great thing about Pinterest is the ability to invite users to pin to your boards and accept invitations to pin to others’ boards. This is a feature that should certainly be taken advantage of whenever it presents itself.

If you have a board that begins generating a lot of interest, begin inviting fans of the board to share their pins. It will greatly increase both the content shared to your board as well as the exposure of the board and, subsequently, your brand. Additionally, sharing your content to others’ boards will help increase your account exposure and drive new traffic to your boards and possibly website (assuming your pins link back).

Link Your Pins

This is a commonly referred to best practice, and there is a reason for it. Above the backlinking capabilities of Pinterest are referenced. These are only possible if you are embedding your pins with links, and pinning images directly from your website and blog posts.

When an image is pinned to Pinterest directly from your webpage or blog post, it automatically features a link. When you share images directly to a board, however, you will need to add the link in yourself. Don’t forget about this, because it makes the network all the more valuable when it comes to driving site traffic.

Conclusion

Pinterest is a powerful network and virtually any brand can find a way to take advantage of it. These best practices will certainly help brands use Pinterest more effectively. If you’re planning on getting started with Pinterest, be sure to include these activities in your strategy.

What else have you seen work on Pinterest? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Demographics of the Top Pinterest Influencers [INFOGRAPHIC]

March 5, 2014/by Corey Padveen

What are the key demographics of the top Pinterest influencers?

Influence is a powerful phenomenon in any industry, and that is particularly true on social media. The folks at HelloSociety have done some research to determine exactly what the demographic composition is of the top 100 Pinterest influencers.

Not surprisingly, they concluded that the majority of these tastemakers are women in major American markets with a higher education (much like the largest demographic of active Pinterest users). What is interesting, however, is that these Pinterest influencers are regularly active on the network, sharing several pieces of content per day and generating a ton of engagement.

Have a look and see if there are any surprises that catch your eye! Tell us about them in the comments below or on Twitter!

3 New Features on Pinterest

November 20, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Here are some of the great new features on Pinterest that marketers should be aware of!

Pinterest has been very busy lately! Between Twitter’s IPO and Snapchat’s $3 Billion ‘No, Thank You’, many people have overlooked some of the great new features on Pinterest that are making the network more attractive to businesses.

Earlier this year, it was all about the new Pinterest Analytics feature and the ability to monitor your account’s activity. Now, it is much more about the superficial benefits that everyone can see.

Promoted Pins

This has been a long time coming. From the moment Pinterest introduced business accounts, it was only a matter of time before the Pinterest version of ads were introduced.

Though the service is still in testing, it won’t be long before we start to see plenty of pins from businesses trying to reap the benefits of the platform. To find out more about how your brand can sign up for Promoted Pins, click here.

Related Pins

What better way to convince businesses to share as much relevant content to Pinterest than to create a feature showing related pins. This great new feature shows users pins that they might find interesting based on their activity on the network. You might see a pin from a board that you are not following, but that might be of interest to you. This is because the brains behind Pinterest are following your like and share patterns in order to further expand the network and the business it can drive.

Dedicated Pinterest Pages

Ever wonder what other people are finding particularly pinteresting? Well now you can! Brands with a great deal of activity on their boards (like Disney, Walmart, Zappos and more) are working with Pinterest to create designated boards to share only content that is trending with their audience as well as an extended network.

This feature is not yet available to all users, but rest assured that when it does become available, you are going to want to be as active as possible and generate plenty of re-pins, as they will add to your clout on the network.

So there you have it. A few great new features on Pinterest that we can expect to see increase in popularity and importance in the next little while.

Have you tried using any of these new features yet? Tell us about them in the comments below or on Twitter!

4 Social Media Campaigns to Test this Holiday Season

November 19, 2013/by Corey Padveen

As the holidays approach, you need to find a way to leverage social media campaigns to boost your presence in the market.

Every brand is vying for the attention of consumers as we approach the holiday season and year-end. So what can you do to stand out? This year, why not take advantage of the benefits offered by social media campaigns?

Below are four very simple and potentially lucrative ideas for social media campaigns that your company should invest in this holiday season. The holidays are all about bringing people together, and what better place to do that than on social media (with the exception of home, of course)!

Holiday Pin-To-Win

People love pin-to-win campaigns on Pinterest. They allow people to express themselves creatively and share their pinspiration with a large audience. If you have an active social audience and are part of a visual industry, consider hosting a pin-to-win campaign on Pinterest!

There are a lot of easy ways to run these types of campaigns. You can either host the campaign yourself, or use a software provider like Woobox.

Facebook Holiday Offer

Have you ever created an offer on Facebook? For brands with a physical presence, offers can be of great value. If you add a theme to your offer – in this case, the holidays – it can be even more beneficial. People love the idea of specials and savings during the holidays. After all, the season is expensive enough as it is. If you show your fans and followers that you are giving them a way to save this year, they will certainly appreciate that.

With the right offer designed for your fans, you can certainly expect the returns on your investment in boosting that offer to a wider audience to be very high.

Promoted Holiday Tweets

If you have created a landing page for a holiday ebook, service or special, or simply want to attract new followers by appealing to their holiday spirit, then promoting specific tweets with a holiday motif will certainly give your Twitter marketing a boost.

Target specific users and interests on Twitter and share your content to increase clicks to your pages and conversions from a targeted audience.

Promote Holiday Pins

Have you seen or used the new promoted pin feature on Pinterest? Yes, the photo-sharing network has gone the way of Facebook and Twitter and begun allowing advertisers to promote their content. Just in time for the holidays!

Try promoting pins with embedded links to your website that follow a holiday motif. This can be your marketing experiment this holiday season.

These are just a few social media campaigns you can consider launching this year.

Can you think of other social media campaigns that might generate high returns during the holidays? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Scary Fun Facts About Social Business and Commerce

October 31, 2013/by Corey Padveen

It’s that time of year again, and we thought we would share some ‘scary’ fun facts about social business to keep with the spirit of Halloween!

Wait, how can something be scary and fun at the same time? Well, for businesses that are leveraging the possibilities that social business presents, these facts are a lot of fun. For those that have not yet invested in social initiatives, seeing that they are missing out on these facts about social business is very, very scary.

The Pinterest Witch Has Cast a Spell

A spell on female consumers, to be exact. On Pinterest, 47% of women say that they have made a purchase based on a recommendation they saw on the network. Considering that women make up a vast majority of Pinterest users, you can see why that might be an opportunity one would be terrified to miss.

People Are Trapped on Facebook

People are spending over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. Hours of time online is being devoted to one website. So the billions of other pages on the web need to compete for the attention of this Facebook user base. Rather than trying to direct their attention elsewhere, wouldn’t it just be easier to make your presence known within a community that is already active and highly engaged?

We Are Brainwashed By Cats

Over 6 billion hours of video are watched every month on YouTube alone! So whether you are creating videos for your audience or advertising in the video space, you know that there is at least one hour per person on Earth where you can be found on YouTube.

Shopping Zombies Hungry for Information (Kind of like Brains, I Guess)

Research shows that 40% of consumers compare prices on their mobile devices before making a purchasing decision. It also shows that 64% of consumers have made a purchase from a brand because of a digital experience (web site, social presence, email, etc.). Consumers are looking to the web for information and a positive user experience. If you do not have a presence there, you can rest assured that your chances of getting someone’s business decrease dramatically.

Scared yet? The importance of engaging with your audience and becoming a social business has never been greater. People are looking to each other and to brands in order to make purchasing decisions. If you are not a part of the conversation, you are not a part of the market. Now that’s scary stuff.

How are you conquering your fears and becoming a social enterprise? Find out how t2 can help you here.

We would love to know what facts you find interesting, and be sure to send us a picture of your costume on Twitter! Happy Halloween!

4 Content Types that Generate Engagement on Pinterest

September 4, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What types of content should you be sharing in order to generate engagement on Pinterest?

We have all heard of the tremendous benefits associated with Pinterest. Not only is it one of the fastest growing social networks around, but it is one of the leading sources of referral traffic for businesses that use it. That said, it is only those businesses that are generating engagement on Pinterest that are reaping these benefits.

If you are sharing content and no one is talking about it, you might miss out on all that Pinterest has to offer. Take a look at the tips below to find out what types of content produce the most engagement on Pinterest, and try and apply them to your own content strategy.

Personalized Content

People want to know what makes you tick. Whether you are a brand or an individual, you should be sharing content that expands your profile. Do not simply share business-related images and videos. Show people who you are and humanize your brand.

Take Victory Jewelry, for example. In addition to boards that showcase their pieces, they also have a board of mermaids, and pictures from the ocean. When people can see into your brand a little bit more, they will have a much easier time connecting with it.

Customized Content

Engagement on Pinterest is a two-way street – that’s for sure. You will want to get out there and share the content of others if you expect to have your own content shared. That said, people will also want to see some original content.

Original content is one of the easiest ways to share embedded links, as it doesn’t require the process of going into an image and changing anything. Custom content also shows people your creative side and, once again, can help humanize a brand.

Optimized Content

Laziness is very apparent on Pinterest. If you share images with no descriptions, no links, no tags or, if you are an ecommerce business, no prices, people can tell that you are no putting much effort into your Pinterest marketing.

Be sure to optimize your content in every way so that people can both see that you care and find you more easily! Don’t make the mistake of hurting your chances to get found with Pinterest!

Resourceful Content

Infographics, tutorials, instructions and other resourceful content is great for generating engagement on Pinterest. People are more inclined to comment, share or click on content that they find useful. Whenever you can, try and share content that people can use and not simply enjoy looking at (although that is very important, as well).

What other types of content do you think is useful for generating engagement on Pinterest? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Case Study: Greenpeace

August 15, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Greenpeace – among the more high-profile charities – recently took to Pinterest, and with some impressive results.

Charities and not-for-profits have been resorting to social media in a big way. This is in large part due to the fact that social media is a great way to share important information and quickly have it spread to interested communities.

Of the charities using social media, Greenpeace is among the more recognizable. Furthermore, the Greenpeace social media initiatives are not simple Facebook posts or tweets, there is a very calculated effort on the part of Greenpeace to use social media to their benefit.

Among the channels used by the Greenpeace social media marketing team is Pinterest. The popular photo-sharing network is not being used to simply share images, however. Campaigns are extended to the network and it is used to drive traffic to landing pages for specific campaigns and initiatives at the Greenpeace website.

The results have been outstanding for Greenpeace, with thousands of images on over 50 boards and over 7,000 followers, and there are three important lessons that social marketers can learn from the Greenpeace Pinterest strategy.

Plan Ahead

Never venture into a new network blind. Looking through the Greenpeace Pinterest page, it is clear that there is a well-defined strategy behind the initiative.

In order to find success on a network like Pinterest, you need to know what you plan on accomplishing and how you intend on achieving those goals. Though it is easy to use, a carefully laid out strategy is needed for Pinterest in order to generate your desired results.

Keep that in mind, as Greenpeace did, and you will find it much easier to succeed with the network.

Understand Your Audience

Though the boards on the Greenpeace Pinterest page focus on campaigns and initiatives, the images are carefully selected by the charity in order to generate interest and clicks. The focus of the images range anywhere from fashion and celebrities to nature and animals – all categories that are among the most-shared on the network.

It is important that you understand your audience on any social network in order to properly generate engagement with them. Pay attention to your demographics and understand network trends before incorporating them into your social media strategy.

Keep Your Goals in Mind

Pinterest is one of the leading social networks for referral traffic. Last year, it surpassed Twitter and its meteoric rise shows no signs of slowing. With that in mind, you always need to remember why you are using the network in the first place.

Click on nearly any image on Greenpeace’s boards and you will find yourself at the Greenpeace website. You may start to generate some traction, but if you lose focus of what you are doing and, more importantly, how you are doing it, that traction will quickly disappear.

Keep these pointers in mind next time you are using Pinterest for a campaign, and you will surely find success!

What else impresses you about the Greenpeace Pinterest initiative? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Case Study: Armani Exchange #DressedFor

July 25, 2013/by Corey Padveen

How did the Armani Exchange #DressedFor campaign generate buzz, engagement and a lot of publicity for the brand?

The Armani Exchange #DressedFor campaign was designed to reach out to consumers, influencers and bloggers and encourage them to use the #DressedFor hashtag on Instagram and leverage the power of the photo-sharing network.

Though the campaign was launched in November, 2012, data gathered using Fashionbi – the world leader in Digital Marketing Optimization for the fashion industry – has shown that the campaign continues to generate engagement, with over 340 Instagram users sharing images with the #DressedFor hashtag in June alone, seven months after the campaign was launched.

Fashionbi also found that more common hashtags such as #night and #summer were used in conjunction with the #DressedFor hashtag, which led to even greater exposure.

Finally, after the campaign was initiated, the marketing team behind #DressedFor reached out to influential bloggers and Instagram users in the fashion world in order to expand their reach even further.

So what can marketers take away from the Armani Exchange #DressedFor campaign?

Customize Your Campaign

It might have been easier to get people talking with hashtags like #summer, but there would be no way of knowing whether or not a conversation originated due to the exposure of the campaign.

By creating a custom hashtag that is instantly recognizable as the backbone of this campaign, Armani Exchange was able to monitor their reach while encouraging users to continue talking about topics they would normally discuss.

Be sure to include some form of customization in order to see the effects of your campaigns, and know where you are successful and where modifications might be needed.

Reach Out to Influencers

This campaign would not have had as much lasting success if it were not for the efforts by Armani Exchange to reach out to influential bloggers and Instagram users in the hopes of extending their reach further.

Influencers-turned-brand advocates are the key to longevity. There is only so much a brand can do on its own. If people are not talking, there is an expiration date on a given campaign. The reason why a campaign such as this can continue to generate conversation months after it was launched was due in large part to the help of industry influencers. (Find out more about influencers in this case study on Kotex.)

Engage Your Users

User-generated content is the second secret (along with influencer-engagement) to a brand’s long-term success on social media.

By reaching out to the community around the brand and giving them a chance to share their content and have it seen by the world, Armani Exchange increased the likelihood of success considerably.

People want to share their content, that is why social media is as popular as it is. Give them a chance to do so and you can rest assured that your brand’s reach and exposure will grow significantly faster than it would have without them.

Special thanks to Fashionbi for their assistance in gathering data and disseminating the information pulled on the Armani Exchange #DressedFor campaign. You can also view this article at the Fashionbi newspaper.

Have you put together any Instagram campaigns? Tell us about them in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Case Study: Sony

June 13, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Sony is not the first brand to come to mind when you think of Pinterest, but they managed to make themselves a powerful force on the network.

The logic was simple: everybody’s doing it, why don’t we? In 2011, Sony noticed the persuasion Pinterest had on purchasing mentality and decided to leverage the power of the network to increase traffic and, ideally, drive new sales.

Using a carefully coordinated strategy, Sony managed to garner 2,500 followers in the first six months of their activity on Pinterest, increase referral traffic from Pinterest to the Sony Store website by 800%, and collect more than 4 million brand impressions!

You can argue that Sony’s success came from their status as a brand on the market, but the reality is that Sony succeeded on Pinterest because of the course of action taken. The five lessons below detail what Sony did both before and after launching their Pinterest account and what marketers can learn from the strategy applied by Sony.

Do Some Research

While Sony had the added advantage of a brand that people were already talking about, it is important to do as much research as possible on your brand, competitors, industry leaders and, most importantly, your industry. Find out what people are already sharing and join an existing conversation instead of trying to start a new one. You might find it a lot easier to gain momentum.

Jump Right In

To truly succeed on social media – Pinterest or otherwise – you need to commit yourself and your team to the execution fully. Sony involved a huge part of their team when they started pinning. They did not want to ease their way into the community, they wanted to come in strong and get noticed. There are billions of conversations taking place and you need to find a way to get yourself noticed.

Mix It Up

After doing their research, Sony determined what topics were most relevant, most popular and most engaging, and created boards that fit into all of those categories. Do not limit yourself only to posts about your brand.

On the t2 Pinterest page, we share plenty of content about marketing, but we also share animal pictures, motivational quotes and healthy recipes! Be as broad as possible, because at the end of the day you want to reach as many people as you can. You never know where you might find new business!

Cross Promote Pinterest

Share your pins and promote your Pinterest page wherever you can. Sony posted their Pinterest account and their pins to other social networks, included links in email blasts and added links on their blog to drive new traffic to Pinterest. The more accessible your content is, the faster you will see eyes landing on it.

Pin It!

For Sony, the Pin It! button generated 10 times the number of clicks from the Sony Store than the Tweet This button. That means 10 times the number of links being generated on Pinterest than on Twitter and leading back to the store. Make your website Pinterest-friendly and your visitors will take care of the rest.

While we can’t all be Sony-sized brands, we can all develop strategies that lead to the same degree of success that Sony experienced. Whether your brand is big or small, your strategy is what will determine the value of your social media program.

What strategy do you incorporate into your Pinterest marketing? Has it worked? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Make Use of the New Features on Pinterest

May 28, 2013/by Corey Padveen

An announcement was made last week about new features on Pinterest, and there are plenty of ways marketers can take advantage of them.

Over the last few months, there have been several new features on Pinterest. The social network recognizes its own potential for business, and is doing what it can to exploit that. First, there were business accounts, then analytics and now we have a few new features on Pinterest that continue to add to the network’s value.

Additional Information

Pins now feature ways of adding more information. Whether it is detailed pricing, product information, ingredients or movies, there is a lot more involved in a pin now than there was before.

It is important to make use of everything you can when sharing content to Pinterest. Essentially, a board can be a catalog for your business’s services and products in visual form, and you want people to get all the information they can. Before these updates, you could simply embed a link to a landing page or your website into a pin, now you can make your pin the landing page, and that is a huge bump from where it was.

Make use of all the information you are allowed to share on your new pins. Showcasing everything you can will mean fewer steps involved in the buying process, and if it is easier for your buyer, your conversion rates will skyrocket.

Mobile Capabilities

9 mobile apps now have a “Pin It” button integrated into the product. This means that mobile users can now pin what they see from their phones. If you are sharing images with these networks, you will want to optimize them for Pinterest.

Mobile is of ever-increasing importance. People are interacting on mobile devices more and more every day, and if you are not using the new features on Pinterest to take advantage of that, then you are missing out – big time.

Essentially, Pinterest is trying to make a real use for the platform. Sure, sharing photos is great, but for a company that has raised several hundred million in capital, they are going to need to start generating a revenue somehow. Optimizing their platform for businesses is a great way to do it, and before they start charging for these excellent features, you should be taking advantage of them for free.

Do you plan on using the new features on Pinterest? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

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