As a girl currently planning her wedding, I spend a lot of time on Pinterest. As a girl working in Digital Marketing, I notice a lot of big no-no’s when it comes to professional pinning.
Here are the 5 mistakes I see brands making most often on Pinterest: make sure your brand isn’t guilty!
1) Using lackluster images
Pinterest is visual by nature. Pick the most engaging image you can, and embellish with colorful text and descriptions.
2) Under-utilizing keywords
Optimize your boards by assigning them to a category and writing a description. Use detailed keywords to make sure the right people can find your pins, but don’t over-analyze it – users can tell when a company is pushing a product and are immediately turned off. Keep it casual, the way you would talk to a friend – you’ll be better off.
3) Limiting your posts
I often see brands sticking to just one genre – that’s what boards are for! Just because you’re a food company doesn’t mean you only have to pin recipes – broaden your horizons to any and all topics that you think your target audience might be interested in. Have a landscaping company? Pin home design and cleaning tips too. Own a yoga studio? Have boards for inspirational quotes and fashion. As long as your topics are categorized by boards, your users will be able to pick and choose which ones apply most to them.
4) Not Networking
Don’t be scared of the competition. Find bloggers or other companies that you admire (and your followers might too), and band together. By posting each other’s content, you’ll increase your visibility. I’ve even signed up for giveaways sponsored by a group of companies – they required me to follow 5+ Pinterest accounts before I could enter the contest. And some of those people ended up being my best inspiration! You’ll get more traffic, and your users will thank you.
Facebook gets a facelift! During a press conference today, March 7, Facebook’s CEO- Mark Zuckerberg- announced new changes to the Facebook news feed that will be rolling out today. Facebook hopes these changes will make news feeds more personal for each user. Zuckerberg stated, ”We want to give the world the best personalized newspaper that we can.”
The revamped news feed will feature larger photos and videos displayed on users’ news feeds. Photo captions will also be embedded within the images, rather than being displayed separately like we see now. Also, new changes are going to make it much easier for users to connect with each other. Links will be shared more easily, check-ins will be more integrated, and pages will be organized into categories (photos, music, friends, games, etc.). Facebook users will now receive more relevant content based on their page subscriptions and articles linking back to companies, organizations, and people they “like.”
Overall, the new design is focused around the mobile world, and creates a site that will be compatible and usable across all platforms. We can’t wait to see how the update looks in person!
There has been a rumor going around that Facebook has made changes to all business pages that will preventing that business’s posts from being seen by all of their fans, even those who have already liked the business page. You may have seen some pages posting updates similar to:
“Facebook is now charging to see all of our posts. To see all of our updates, please go to our page and click where it says, “Liked” and select “Show in News Feed.”
Is this rumor true? Yes and No. Let me explain.
Limited views in your fans’ news feeds
If you manage a Facebook Page for your business, you may have noticed that your reach has dropped over the past couple months. This is not from any recent change (as any fan that already likes your page will have the “Show in News Feed” area already checked off), but this is because of a Facebook algorithm that they have been running for quite some time called “Edgerank.” The Edgerank algorithm calculates a variety of factors, including each specific fan’s past interaction with your page, the popularity of each specific update, type of update (link, photo, text, etc), and many more factors that normal human beings like us will never know of. Based off a variety of factors, your page will be displayed in the news feed to a certain percentage of your fan base, and not every fan that has liked your page.
As many of you already know, the Instagram Photo Sharing app has taken the world by storm over the past two years. Boasting 30+ million users even without an Android app (which was now just recently released), Instagram has been getting everyone’s attention. This includes Facebook, who just purchased the company for right around $1 Billion.
With Instagram having been named Apple’s App of the year for 2011, then acquired by Facebook (there may be some big integration plans in the future), and the new addition of the Android app that is continuing to massively boost their user base, it’s important to understand how to utilize the app in intelligent and creative ways to help boost your brand’s relationship with its consumers. Take a look at these 4 tips that can help get your brand on the way to building a strong Instagram community!
1. Post engaging content & know your audience
Instagram revolves around one main concept, and one thing that makes it such a huge success: the pictures! People love looking at different photos, and it requires minimal effort to analyze an image (as opposed to reading a body of text). With over 250 million photos posted a day, it’s important that when posting images to Instagram you are selecting ones that are visually stunning, original, and most importantly ones that your consumer base can relate to in some shape or form. When using Instagram you want your users to react to your image (whether they like or comment on your image) to help spread your photo and build your Instagram network. Red Bull does a great job of posting relevant and engaging content on their feed frequently.
I have had a certain product break on me four times in the past three months. Each time I didn’t complain, just filled out the warranty, sent the product in and got a new one. Now the fourth time the product broke, I decided to take to social media because, quite frankly, I felt people should know about this and along with that, I really did want to see how they would respond if I posted negatively on their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
I started by posting a long message on the brand’s Facebook wall, explaining all of the brand’s faults and how ridiculous of a situation I had been put through with their product. I posted this around 9:00 A.M. with hopes that they would respond quickly (negatively or positively) so I could either make a Facebook scene or in fact escalate this situation to someone at the company who could help me quickly. After posting on their Facebook wall, I took to Twitter and posted a couple of tweets on how bad their product is and the predicament I was in with the product breaking four times on me. I made sure to use @ mentions and keep a period in front so everyone who doesn’t follow both the brand and I could see it.
The following is how the brand handled the situation and what they did wrong/right:
The Good:
The brand crafted a great Facebook response, being extremely apologetic, actually stating the failure rate of the product (only 4.6 out of 100 these products fail at all, but yet I had 4 break in three months) and directing me to email them instead of continuing the conversation on Facebook (smart tactic).
Now that the new Facebook Timeline has officially rolled out to all personal profiles, guess what’s up next? That’s right, brand Pages are now the next on the list for a Timeline makeover!
The new Timeline for brands has officially rolled out today (Wednesday, February, 29th 2012), and some of the big brands like Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Livestrong are already taking advantage of the new features of the Timeline. With that said, there’s no need to rush right in and hit the publish button. Facebook isn’t making the Timeline for your brand page mandatory until March 30th, 2012, and with the new preview functionality for Page admins you can fully adjust your brand Timeline before you push it live.
Let me fill you in on some of the new features of the brand Timeline, and some steps you can take to launch your new brand Page on the right foot.
Say Goodbye to your Welcome Tab, and Hello to the “Sticky” Feature.
Before the new Timeline, brand Pages would develop custom tabs that the user would land on when they first visit the page (Before they like it).
Well, with the new Timeline, the welcome tab is now obsolete. It’s O.K., don’t freak out just yet! All tabs are still active on the page (but relocated), and the new Timeline for pages have a brand new “Sticky Feature”, which I believe is even more effective than the old welcome tab.
The Sticky feature allows you to select a piece of content to display on the top of your page feed for 7 days, giving you the opportunity to feature any marketing message you would like in that area. You can direct people to one of your tabs, showcase an event, new product, or basically anything your little heart can think of.
Pinterest is the fastest ever growing social media website. It was the fastest site ever to surpass the 10 million user mark. Of those users, 80% are women and 55% of those women are aged 25-44. Pinterest users are spending on average 14+ minutes a day and 98 minutes a month on the site, which is only lower than Facebook and Tumblr (ComScore). These are the numbers.
Does your brand’s target audience fit into the above mentioned demographic? If it does, you should definitely consider opening a Pinterest account. Women are flocking to Pinterest and using it to create recipe books, inspiration boards, plan trips, search for clothes, plan their weddings, and find and share fitness tips.
Getting Your Brand On Pinterest
When setting up your brand on Pinterest, you will want to make it personalized. Create your own inspirational pin boards that don’t include your products, but can go along with your theme. Show the consumers that you’re more than just a brand and that you get inspiration from elsewhere. Pinterest is not about self promotion, it is about sharing what you love or are interested in.
Now, you’re a business, so its important to present your products on Pinterest in a light that users will repin. Use creative photos of your products, recipes, documents, etc. Don’t just use stock images that are boring, Pinterest is meant to help in the creative process so Be Creative! You will want to consistently be posting (we recommend 50% brand, 50% community outreach). Don’t just post once a week, post every day. “Like” other people’s pins; it’s a community, so be active. The more you post quality items on Pinterest, the more likely your items will be repinned.
As a girl currently planning her wedding, I spend a lot of time on Pinterest. As a girl working in Digital Marketing, I notice a lot of big no-no’s when it comes to professional pinning.
