How to Optimize Your Pins for the Pinterest Smart Feed by Peg Fitzpatrick

Have you heard about the Pinterest smart feed and how it impacts your exposure?

Are you wondering what it means for your pins?

With its new smart feed, Pinterest enhanced key features, which means you need to do things differently to make your pins stand out.

In this article I’ll explain the Pinterest smart feed and how to use Pinterest’s changes to your advantage.

Find out how to optimize for Pinterest’s smart feed.

What’s Pinterest’s Smart Feed?

Pinterest’s smart feed is a complex new algorithm based on the following elements: quality of your pin, quality of the source (blog or website) that the pin leads to and a rating assigned by Pinterest.
Pin Quality: The highest-quality pins get moved to the top of the queue and stay there as long as the pin receives quality interaction (repins). It’s sort of like what Facebook does with popular posts in your news feed.

Source Quality: The quality of the source is determined by how often people pin and repin content from a website or blog. To get higher rankings, pin your best content. Also, check the source of each pin you repin to make sure that it leads to a reputable website with good content. (Spammers will change the links in the source to something other than indicated in the pin image.)

Check the source of everything before you repin to make sure it matches the content.

Pinterest Rating: Pinterest puts pins through a blender of criteria called the smart feed content generator. It chooses what they feel is best for the smart feed, based on the current pin and the performance of other pins from that source.

Pins are placed best first, not newest first, into the smart feed. Pinterest no longer puts pins in your feed based on the time they are pinned. For example, users will no longer see 10 Mason jar pins in a row from a pinner who went on a Pinterest binge to fill up a certain board.

According to Pinterest’s blog, the “best pins” are high-quality images that are clear and relevant; have minimal text and no borders; and include great, helpful pin descriptions.

Here are five things you can do to stand out in Pinterest’s smart feed.

#1: Design Beautiful Pins

Pinterest is the ultimate wish list. People pin and repin things they like and want. So think of your Pinterest boards as your visual portfolios, and make your pins as appealing as possible.

This pin by Trey Ratcliffe is an example of the vertical crop on an image that appeals to pinners. Trey recognized this early in his Pinterest usage and began cropping his professional photos to suit the style of Pinterest. His 4.6 million followers love his photos.

Optimize image sizes on your blog for pinning on Pinterest.

Here are a few tips for how to make outstanding Pinterest images.

• Create tall, vertical images. The preferred image aspect ratio is 2:3 to 1:3.5. The minimum width of a pin is 600 pixels and the maximum is 735 pixels. (I use 735 pixels x 1102 pixels.)
• Use high-resolution, professional-quality photos.
• Don’t overwhelm your image with text. Incorporate the text into the image.
• Make sure your text is easy to read on mobile.
• Tone down your logo. Rely on rich pins to brand your content and provide more information.

Create a branded image for pins that work in tandem with your website or blog. That way, all of your images are recognizable and have your URL on them.

#2: Craft Thoughtful Descriptions

Write descriptions with user-friendly language, and include keywords in the text. Beware: don’t stuff in keywords in that aren’t of value to the pin. Make sure the information is helpful, minimal and appeals to pinners. Plus, avoid overly salesy text.

Include helpful information in your pin descriptions.

This recipe rich pin uses simple text and provides in-depth information right on the pin.

People are on Pinterest to learn and get inspired. Provide answers and ideas in your pin text. It gives people a good reason to repin and click through to your website.

#3: Repin High-Quality Pins

Seek out quality pins to repin and analyze your own pins using a tool like Tailwind.
The Tailwind app offers enhanced analytics and detailed information on Pinterest pins and boards to help you discover what content is working. It helps you plan balanced content to spread throughout the week.

Tailwind analytics help you find viral pins, related pins and top pins to help with your Pinterest planning.

Use Pinterest consistently and find pins that add value to stay on top of the smart feed, since both of those factors play into the algorithm.

#4: Be Helpful

Make sure your pins link to a useful and relevant website.
This pin has all of the essential ingredients of a great pin: great image, not too much text on the image and a fantastic description.

Use text on your pinned images to give them context.

At a glance, you can tell this pin has helpful information.

Smart feed notices source quality, so be sure your pins (and destinations) are helpful and all content you repin adds value.

#5: Optimize Your Blog for Pinterest

Add the Pin It button and widgets to your blog to make it easier for your readers to pin. The more often your blog content is repinned, the better your pins will perform in the smart feed.

Here’s how to make your blog Pinterest-friendly.

 Create an optimized, pinnable image for every post.

• Add the Pinterest Follow button to your website.
• Install the Pin It button for easy pinning.
• Use rich pins on your blog to add more meta data to your pins.
• Add Pinterest board widgets or pin widgets for easy repinning.
• Use the Pinterest Pin widget to embed pins into your blog content to engage your blog with your Pinterest content.

The widget builder is easy to use.

Smart Feed Fixes

If your Pinterest activity has slowed since the smart feed update, consider doing the following things to boost your Pinterest power.
1. Revisit old pins and update them with better descriptions so they’re more likely to resurface into the smart feed.
2. Add better descriptions to your Pinterest boards to make sure that you have solid, searchable text.
3. Be more active on Pinterest and pin on a regular basis.
4. Share your pins from Pinterest to other social media platforms and invite your networks to follow you on Pinterest.
5. Apply for promoted pins with your business account.

Conclusion
Pinterest has changed their discovery engine in an effort to provide an even more beautiful experience for pinners with their smart feed.

If you pin high-quality content on a consistent basis and use all of the tools that Pinterest provides, you’ll find yourself in a prominent place in the smart feed and get repinned over and over again.
Pinterest is a wonderful platform for marketing your business. Make the smart feed work for you.

Courtesy of  http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com 

inShare478

How to Optimize Google Search Results for Pictures as Well as Words by Ann Smarty

Back in 2007, Google introduced "Universal" search results which combined results from general (text), news, video, image and book search results. It's also called "blended" search because it "blends" all types of web results together.

Ever since, diversifying your content marketing strategy to include more formats and media types has become increasingly important. A few years later, monitoring and expanding your business visual context became even more essential when Google tweaked its image algorithm for it to become more varied and blended image search results with most "navigational*" query search results. (Navigational queries are those entered with the intent of finding a particular website or webpage. More often than not, these are proper names, such as brands, celebrity names, cities, etc).

Related: 5 Ways Google Is Changing SEO

Go ahead and try searching for [ann smarty], for example, and you'll see what I mean: #3 position is taken by image search results relating to my name. That's how important images are for my personal brand!

With blended search results, controlling your brand media (video and image) context has become more important. Let's see how we can improve our visual brand visibility.

Visual variety

Ever since Google introduced "Search by image" ("Reverse image search") feature and thus marked the beginning of the high-precise visual recognition technology, the search giant has been paying more attention to the visual variety of its image search results.

In many cases, Google will even try to display original images sacrificing on relevance: If Google can't find a new-looking image of you or your business, it will show something vaguely related which can often pose a threat to your brand integrity.

That being said, the more original images of your (personal) brand you publicize online, the better. This includes providing original images when doing an expert interview for a blog and publishing your images on your public social media accounts.

The more images of yourself or your business you publicize online, the more control you gain over your visual search results (which make it to your general search results as well!)

Basic search engine optimization (to make it easier for search engines to figure out it's you) is still essential as well: Make sure your images have your name in the file names and (if you can control that) in the alt text of the embedded files.

Related: Video SEO Can Change Your Business

Hosting variety

From tests, it looks like Google is also looking for original sources (domains) in addition to visual variety. Neil Ferree shares his own success story with dominating image search results that proves that point to some extent:

"If you search Google for the long tail How to Manage Your Social Media Presence and select Images you will see I've got eight images that render above the fold. Some of these images point to my SlideShare Deck, some to my WordPress Website and a few to my Scoop.it topic page."

That being said, extend your visual marketing efforts to as many channels as you can handle without sacrificing on quality. My own personal branding visual strategy can be summed up as follows:

• Host your images on your own website (Think about your "About page", blog sidebar, etc.) Whenever I mention hosting images on your blog, I always note that if you are going to do so, make sure your hosting is reliable. Images (especially if you or your readers are going to hot-link them from other sites) can bring any server down. Keep an eye on monthly hosting stats report from Sitegeek to make sure your hosting company is doing well.
• Get very consistent with your social media profile pic: This is the only place where variety may hurt you. To make sure your friends are able to recognize you from social media network to social media network, keep your avatars the same throughout all the communities you are participating in.
• Share more images of yourself and your team on your business pages, Pinterest account, Instagram (the more, the better). This will both drive more interest to your brand and diversify your brand visual context.
• Create a set of professional images you are going to use in expert interviews. Here are some great ways to find blogs to be interviewed on.

Courtesy of http://www.entrepreneur.com

2014 Social Media Predictions -- Hold On, It's Going to Get Bumpy! by Kim Garst

With 2013 in the books, I have to admit my thoughts have been racing towards what's in store for businesses in 2014. We have seen such phenomenal changes this year in the way businesses are using social media, largely due to factors like the increase in mobile and video usage, and the mainstream adoption of content marketing.

So what changes can we expect to see in social media in the next 12 months? What trends do businesses and brands need to pay attention to in order to keep up?

Here are my top 5 social media predictions for 2014!

1. It's About Show, Not Tell: Visual-Based Content Will Dominate

Given what we have seen so far in 2013, there is no doubt that the popularity and use of visual-based content on social media is going to continue to increase in 2014.

We know that posts that contain images or videos outperform those without when it comes to likes, shares, comments, and retweets. Failing to incorporate image-based media into your social media content strategy will mean losing out on huge amounts of potential engagement!
Just take a look at what we know from this year:

• Photos on Facebook receive 53 percent more likes than posts without.
• Tweets with images receive 18 percent more clicks than those without, 89 percent more favorites, and 150 percent more retweets.

Businesses will need to be creative in terms of incorporating images and videos into existing content, and coming up with fresh new ways of incorporating visual-based content into all aspects of their social strategy.

2. Instagram and Snapchat are Going to be Major Players And Businesses Will Use Them to Reach Their Audiences In Unique Ways

Some interesting current statistics for you about these platforms:

• In 2013, Instagram was the fast growing network with 150 million users and 40 million photos being uploaded each day.
• 71 percent of top brands are now on Instagram.
• Entanglement metrics on Instagram (likes and comments) have jumped 350 percent since last year.
• As of writing, Snapchat is the 4th most popular free iPhone app on the iTunes Charts.
• Snapchat is the 9th most popular iPhone app in terms of usage.

If you are not yet familiar with Snapchat (only 18.6 percent of iPhone users currently use the SnapChat app), here's a brief description: Snapchat is an app that can be used to send photos or videos that are only available to be viewed for a set amount of time (generally 1-10 seconds). Once time is up, the image or video is hidden from users and deleted from Snapchat's servers.

One of the most interesting uses of both SnapChat and Instagram that we should be keeping an eye on is for reaching consumers via coupons. While quite a few businesses are already taking advantage of Instagram for offering coupons, deals and discounts, it will be interesting to see what comes of Snapchat's 'exploding coupons'. These coupons will only be available to users for several seconds, giving a whole new meaning to the concept of 'flash sales'!

3. A Mobile Strategy Becomes Compulsory

With reports of mobile overtaking desktop usage somewhere between 2014/2015, businesses who want to keep up need to get serious about integrating mobile into all aspects of their business. Simply having a mobile-friendly website will not be enough.
Businesses will need to consider:

• How their website is accessible via mobile: responsive design, mobile-version, or app.
• How their overall marketing strategy works with mobile: With 84 percent of smartphone shoppers using their phones while in stores, businesses need to figure out how to integrate the virtual and 'real life' experiences of their customers (coupons, product reviews, mobile checkout systems, etc.).
• How their content strategy works with mobile: Offering short, actionable pieces of content to mobile-users, determining when their target market is accessing content via mobile (see infographic below), using segmentation to offer the right type of content to the right people, etc.

4. More Brands are Going to Get Serious About Social

While an estimated 93 percent of marketers already use social media for business, brands are going to need to take their social media marketing strategies to the next level. Smart businesses will increasingly realize that it's not enough to just have a presence on the major social networks. Getting serious about social means integrating it into every aspect of the business, not just marketing: from product development, to operations, to customer service and retention.

Company-wide support of social will become increasingly necessary to make sure social media tasks are carried out consistently, and in a way that aligns with overall business goals and values.
As digital analyst Brian Solis points out, "While creating a social brand is a necessary endeavor, building a social business is an investment..." While social brands are businesses that use social media as part of their marketing strategy, a truly social business is one that has integrated all aspects of their business with social.

A social business aligns every level of their business with social: in their systems, processes, and planning. A social business goes beyond using social media to simply communicate with customers, and involves every department and employee in their social media strategy.

5. Google Plus FINALLY Hits the Tipping Point

Google Plus just turned 2 years old. I read a report that pegs Google Plus's current active monthly users at 300 million people (up from 190 million in May). This clearly trounces Twitter's 230 million and makes Facebook the next logical target, but will it pass Facebook in 2014? No, but it will hit what I am calling the "tipping point" late in the year and be a solid threat to Facebook's dominance in 2015.

This is going to sound crazy, I know that, but to win long-term people must "love" Google Plus. I know it's a subjective emotion, but there certainly seems to be a strong connection between the success of a social media site and people's emotional connection to it. People "love" Facebook. People "love" Pinterest and Instagram. Right now people do not feel that connection with Google Plus. As subjective evidence, I asked 140+ small business owners, entrepreneurs and social media enthusiasts in my DIY Social Media Inner Circle secret Facebook group what they thought about Google Plus and not a single person said they "loved" or felt an emotional connection to the site, but they will!

If you follow me at all, you know I am a big Google Plus fan and have been from the beginning. I love the functionality, communities, "hangouts" and the fact that everyone can see all of my content on their business pages. One real game changer for Google Plus this next year will be the continued integration of social media content into its search ranking algorithm and the realization by more and more businesses that being active on Google Plus is cheaper than paying your SEO consultant. Also, Google is reportedly testing on-site advertising, the staple of Facebook's monetization strategy. These two alone will not win the battle though. The real reason Google Plus will win big in 2014 is because people will finally accept it as a great place to form connections, meet friends and share experiences in completely cool and captivating ways.

What predictions do you think are missing from the list above? What major changes do you see happening in the social media world this next year?




Courtesy of TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc

6 Social Media Marketing Strategies to Drastically Improve Your Efforts in 2014 by Margot da Cunha

Did you know social media is the number one daily activity among Americans, topping time spent on email and Google?

According to Fast Company, 93% of marketers use social media to promote their business.
Social media is BIG and only getting bigger. If you are not marketing on it, you are likely missing a large chunk of your target consumers.

As a product of the Mark Zuckerberg generation, it is easy to understand why people are so obsessed with social media; for marketers, the potential to grow their business via these networks is endless. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ – these are some of the prime networks every company, big or small, young or established, needs to have an active presence on. It is now inexcusable for any business that wants to thrive to not be tweeting!

And now we are being exposed to more and more social advertisements. As I complete my morning ritual of sipping coffee and scrolling through my Instagram feed, I now notice sponsored ads appearing in between filtered pictures of scenery and food. It is impossible to visit one’s Facebook news feed without popping into a few compelling ads along the way. And I’m not going to lie, I’ve fallen victim to several of these ads, and been captured and clicked through to their site, sometimes even converting – shameful, I know.

But before diving into paid ads it is important to build out your social channels with rockstar content, quality customer service, and eye-catching visuals. Once you optimize your social channels for success, you will not only gain loyal brand promoters, but you will begin capturing leads and converting visitors into customers.

For those of you who have let your social channels develop cobwebs and cockroaches over the past year, here are six social media strategies to take control of your social channels and give them a much needed facelift in the New Year.

Social Media Marketing Strategy #1: Create a Game Plan & Stick to It

If you have no execution strategy, your content is likely going to fall through the cracks. Set a limit on how many tweets you have to publish per day. This number can be adjusted as needed, but having a number you have to hit, even something as small as four tweets per day, gives you a benchmark and a goal at the very least.

TIP: Investigate how often your competitors are posting and conduct industry research to see the ideal amount of content to publish per day on each channel. You want to be active, but not overly active.

Compile all content in an easy-to-read editorial calendar. Google Excel Docs is a good place to start. Set up a weekly, shareable publishing calendar, then separate by social channel, and provide columns for co-workers within your content team to provide their feedback before posting. Plan ahead, but continue making additions as necessary, for example if a great PR hit is published cover this in a timely manner even it was not on your original posting schedule.

Look into social media management platforms, like Hootsuite, Buffer, and TweetDeck, to help schedule posts ahead of time, monitor and manage your social feeds, and access performance analytics.

Social Media Marketing Strategy #2: Treat each channel as an individual entity

Each social channel needs to be treated as a separate entity. There can be content that is spread across all channels – for example if your business was recently acquired by a global company, this is likely news you want to share across the board, but you should adjust your strategy depending on the audience for that channel.

For example, LinkedIn tends to have a more business-focused audience looking for in-depth, educational content, compared to Instagram, which is likely to have an audience looking for engaging visual content. Pay attention to your follower demographic on each channel to publish content that appeals to them.

Social Media Marketing Strategy #3: Go above & beyond in customer service

If a visitor tweets at your handle or posts on your Facebook page and never receives a response, trust is lost. Due to your lack of communication, the dissatisfied potential lead is now turning to your competitors to seek answers to their questions. On the other hand, when you deliver a thoughtful response in a timely manner that visitor is flattered and intrigued by your brand. It’s humanizing to take the time respond to a personal inquiry, and it builds your authority.

Alexa, a friend of mine who formerly resided in NYC, commented on a picture on Instagram posted by her favorite city dive bar. The social media manager quickly responded by offering her a free T-shirt for the positive feedback. A few weeks, when later Alexa drove six hours from Boston to collect her free shirt (and visit a few friends), the bartender realized, “Wow! Social media does work!” She has in turn become a free promoter for the bar, and encourages her large network that still resides in New York to check out her former go-to spot – essentially free PR for this small, neighborhood bar. And this is one minuscule example – if you haven’t heard the Morton’s Steakhouse story about delivering a joking tweeter a free steak at the airport, I suggest you use this as a prime example of BOMB customer service that led to a ridiculous amount of free press.
Negative feedback needs to be addressed as well, preferably with patience and respect. But think of your social channels as an opportunity to display how awesome you treat your customers.
Take these four steps to boost the happiness of your Twitterbirds:

• Assign a first responder to post and monitor each channel your brand has a profile on.
• Create a troubleshooting library of common bugs or complaints that arise, and how to handle these issues. This will ensure the issue is addressed properly and in a timely manner. (NOTE: If the issue needs further investigation or requires confidential information, have the user email support, send a private message, or call your help line.)
• Be creative – use giveaways, personality, and a sense of humor to engage followers and convert them into free brand promoters.
• DO NOT IGNORE any comment posted to your account on social, whether stellar or critical. No need to create brand detractors!

Social Media Marketing Strategy #4: Embrace mishaps

We are humans, so mistakes are unavoidable. This is especially true when it comes to the fast-paced world of social media. Rather than flat out ignoring these hiccups, embrace them. I am not saying that when a comma is missed in a tweet you should announce this small grammar error, but DO NOT delete the tweet. It has already been published, and followers are more likely to notice if you are continuously re-posting. For larger mistakes, like a product error or multiple overcharges to customer credit cards, you’ll want to proactively respond in an apologetic, actionable manner, and send out content from your social accounts apologizing and addressing how the error is being handled so customers are aware.

But what happens if a BIG, truly embarrassing mistake is made? Personally, I love how Pamela Vaughan, a HubSpot employee, handled her baby bump mishap. Pamela accidently posted a picture of her growing pregnant belly to HubSpot’s company Twitter account, which has close to 350,000 followers. Instead of crawling into a hole of embarrassment, Pamela embraced her faux-pas and created this awesome blog post. The post has received a lot of love, with several shares and comments mostly showing respect for HubSpot’s human element – a key that makes them one of the most loved marketing companies out there.

Social Media Marketing Strategy #5: Track & Talk!

Tracking is often perceived as tedious and time-consuming. It can be, but it only needs to take a few hours each month. Set aside time to review metrics that are important to your business on a monthly basis (preferably the first day of the month). Here are some stats to focus on: number of posts, follower growth, clicks to your site/products, pageviews, post likes or shares, impressions, etc. Look at each channel separately, and compare to your largest competitors to get a sense on how you’re matching up (or how you’re CRUSHING them!).

If you’re crunched for time and analytics is not your thing, invest in software to help track data. A lot can be tracked using free tools like bit.ly, Google Analytics, and Hootsuite. Diving in to see which content received the most clicks, shares, etc. will show you what to repurpose in the future. Look for common themes in your analysis, for example if advice posts with numbers in the title perform wonderfully on Facebook then up these on that platform.

Share your results and set monthly strategy meetings with your different marketing forces within your company to plan for the future. Working collaboratively and taking a step back to brainstorm and reevaluate your strategy can drastically improve your social efforts. Also leverage other departments within your business. Various teams like client services and sales might have stellar ideas for social since they are the people who communicate with prospects and customers on a daily basis.

Social Media Marketing Strategy #6: Stay active on Google+

Many of you may be raising an eyebrow, but Google+, often viewed as the Facebook wannabe, is not going away anytime soon. In fact, it’s only becoming more and more important for businesses to actively engage and grow their circles on this platform. When you search on Google you will notice that Google+ is everywhere. If your business is actively posting on Google+, you will receive essentially free ad space when users search for you on Google.

Notice when I do a search for Salesforce not only does their Google+ follower number display, but there’s a call-to-action to follow their brand, as well as recent posts on their Google+ page, on the right side of the SERP.

According to a Moz.com survey, leading marketers believe the number of Google +1’s plays the second largest part in determining search engine rankings. This isn’t proven to be true, but clearly marketers are seeing that Google+ is affecting the visibility of their content on Google.
Google+ is also integrated with YouTube, so users are unable to comment on the platform without being opted into Google+. Essentially Google is making having a Google+ account pretty much essential.

Courtesy of  WordStream, Inc

Here’s How to Choose the Right Promotion App for Your Facebook Page by Mike Gingerich

You’re on Facebook because you want engagement, right?

But you don’t want engagement purely for the sake of engagement.

You want it because an engaged Facebook community translates into more leads, more customers & more sales for your business.

Put simply, more engagement means more sales:

Research data reported by Vocus notes that 79% of Facebook fans are more likely to purchase from a brand they have liked.  Thus, pursuing more fans and deeper engagement with existing fans is a valuable priority!

But how do you get more engagement on your Facebook page?

Lots of ways. You can:

• create highly shareable content
• post more images and videos
• post succinctly at key times
• etc. etc.

And you can also run promotions. But you need to choose the promotion type that fits best with your goals.

Certain promotion types work better for certain goals and certain industries.
Below I’ll outline a number of promotion types and offer tips on how to select the right one for your Facebook Page.

Each type can draw fans to your page and incentivize them to explore and engage with it. And each type is a Facebook approved tab app that complies with Facebook’s promotion policy.

4 Promotion Types for Fan Pages

1. SWEEPSTAKES

A sweepstakes is a chance-based, easy-entry promotion that fans enter by completing a simple form with their name & e-mail. Winners are drawn randomly after a set date.
As with most Facebook promo apps, a sweepstakes can be a “Like-gated” so fans have to Like the Page in order to access the entry form.

Pros of using a Sweepstakes:

• Low barrier to entry (simple form completion)
• Works for a wide variety of industries
• Pages can capture key user information – important for future email/location marketing

 

If you run a sweepstakes, you can limit each fan to a single entry or allow fans to enter repeatedly.
I recommend allowing fans to enter daily because it ensures the most continued engagement — it incentivizes the fan to return to the page day after day.

Sweepstakes promotions can work for a wide variety of businesses — including B2B and B2C.

They help

• draw fans to the page to enter
• boost viral sharing – if the app has a sharing mechanism that increases entries

2. DEALS & COUPONS

A deal or offer is another promotion type with a low barrier to entry.
Here’s how it works:

1. Facebook page asks the fan to do something
2. when fan completes task, he is given access to the deal

For example: “Like our Page to access this 40% off Coupon”

Other examples (and app offerings) include (1) sharing a post on your Facebook news feed or (2) sharing a post on a friend’s timeline to access the deal.

Like sweepstakes, deals are useful because:

1. fans respond to them
2. it accomplishes a task helpful to the company (e.g. more Page Likes)

Pros of using a Deal app:

• Low barrier to entry (simple task completion)
• Expands reach to additional social networks — which can help the Page reach a wider audience or other type of audience than currently reached on Facebook
• Works for a wide variety of industries
• Pages get something of value in return – such as further exposure, a Like, or a e-mail address for their list

Facebook Deal Example

3. CONTESTS

A contest is different than a sweepstakes or a deal in that it requires more effort & skill from the fan to enter.

For example, the fan has to take a photo that meets certain requirements to enter.
Instead of a random drawing to determine the winner, contests select a winner via:

• voting by the public
• judging by a select group

While photo contests are the most common type of contest on Facebook, there are other types too, like videos, essays or photo captions.

Pros for using a Facebook Contest:

• More opportunity for engagement

Contest entrants engage via their entries, of course. But more importantly, new users and potential fans come to your page & engage by way of viewing and voting on entries — which can add up to some serious reach, exposure, & interaction on your page.

Another option for a contest is to consider a two-stage process.  This adds the benefit of a initial round of voting and then the need to return to view and vote again in the final round.

• Entrants are motivated to share with Friends

Entrants want more votes — so they extend the reach of the contest to their network of friends by asking for their votes.

This social sharing by entrants to their friends both (1) increases the contest’s reach and (2) functions as a positive referral mechanism.  The entrant’s invitation to friends to vote adds trust & credibility to the Page — and to its products & services.

• Better qualifying of entrants

Making entrants meet a certain criteria for entry acts as a sifting mechanism.  It adds a barrier for those who just enter any promotion because it’s easy & they might win, regardless of whether they’re interested in your business.

Depending on your contest’s entry guidelines, this process can serve to qualify or pre-screen entrants as potential customers.

• Access to user generated content

If your promotional rules make it clear that contest entry materials can be used by your company in the future, the contest can be an excellent method of getting user-generated content relevant to your brand — and useable in future social marketing.

Note: Contests may not work for industries or businesses that don’t lend themselves to this type of engagement.  For instance, it might be a stretch for a medical practitioner to run a photo contest due to privacy concerns or relevance.

4. MULTI-NETWORK SOCIAL PROMOS

A multi-network social promotion is a promotion that involves Facebook and at least one other social media platform — such as Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram.

Similar to a deal, the fans are asked to accomplish a task and upon completion they are then given access to the deal offer.  The difference is that the task is centered around doing something on a different social platform such as Pinterest or Instagram.

In this case the fan comes to the Facebook page and the promotion is outlined.  The fan then accomplishes the task — such as adding a image to Instagram with a certain hashtag or using a integrated pin tool to pin a image to Pinterest.

Some apps allow images to be pulled in from the other social network to appear on the page tab.  Otherwise the image can simply stay on the other social network.

Either way the fan has engaged with your Facebook page and simultaneously extended information about your brand to another social network.

Pros for using a Multi-Network Social Promo:

• Extends brand to more social locations - This type of promotion can work great for a company whose audience is active on more than one social network — or for a company seeking to continue gaining Facebook traction but also expand visibility on Pinterest, for example.
• Image Driven - Images are powerful in social media and a multi-network social promo using images can capture the attention of viewers and invite sharing & comments — all of which boost visibility & drive referral traffic.
• Suitable for a wide variety of businesses - A multi-network social promotion can work for apparel firms to credit unions, venues to radio stations and more.

 

BONUS TIPS FOR RUNNING SUCCESSFUL PROMOTIONS:

• Keep the entry form simple — too many fields will cause fewer entries.
• Make the prize relevant to your company! – an iPad is not relevant if you own a craft store.
• Ensure the prize value equates to your product – $30 Gift Card for $600 watches is not a motivating deal!
• Keep the contest moving! – don’t run a month-long contest.  The attention span of a Facebook fans is short. They won’t keep track of an entry and vote daily for 30 days.  5-7 days is a better span or perhaps 10 days if it’s a 2 stage (initial and finalist rounds) contest.
• Set voting to 1x per day for Contests — this encourages entrants to get voters to come back each day — a perfect situation for your page!
• Know your target audience!  — is your target using Pinterest or Instagram already?  If so, a multi-network social promotion could work well.
• Ensure the process is seamless – make sure the promotion is doing the work for you and giving the user the best possible experience.  Apps integrating OAuth for login or other integrated means to access the service directly (without the “open a new browser window” issues) are critical.  Fans should be able to arrive, understand, and complete in short order.

Promotions for Facebook pages offer the power to draw fans in, boost page engagement, and accomplish tangible marketing goals — like increasing e-mail list numbers.  Deals in the form of coupons and discount codes will always be an attractive means to help increase traffic to a page and encourage visitors to begin a fan relationship with the page.

While not an end in themselves, contests & offers can be part of a larger marketing strategy and a key piece of helping a business grow their social community.

Courtesy of  http://www.postplanner.com

Need help with Managing YOUR Social Media Campaign?
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4 Metrics to Measure Your Pinterest Marketing Success by Yo Noguchi

Pinterest is without a doubt one of the most powerful social media marketing tools for small businesses. According to comScore, Pinterest users spend more money and purchase more items than users on the other top social media sites. For these reasons alone, small businesses can’t afford to not have an active presence on Pinterest.

Until recently, it was difficult for Pinterest users to measure their success on the social media site. However, in early March, the site launched free analytics to all Pinterest users with a verified account.

This is huge news as it enables businesses to easily track in detail their growth and reach on Pinterest on a month-to-month basis. By visiting the analytics dashboard on your Pinterest account, you can learn all you need to know to successfully use Pinterest for your social media marketing.

Pinterest Metrics:
1. The daily average of the number of pins from your website as well as the average number of people who pin. Having access to this information and knowing what your customer base positively responds to can make a significant impact on your business’s content marketing strategy.

2. The daily average number of times that you business’s pins appear in Pinterest’s main feed. Not only will this help you to gauge the popularity of your pins, but will allow you to gain a better gauge of your reach on the social media site.

3. The daily average number of people that were exposed to your pins on Pinterest. While they may not have decided to repin you image, knowing this statistic helps you assess your reach on the site.

4. The average number of people that were directed to your website from clicking on a Pinterest pin. This information will help you to determine if the increase in your online visitors is attributed to your social media marketing efforts.
Hubspot shares this helpful formula for tracking your Pinterest reach and growth on a monthly basis.

Pinterest M/M Growth= (This Month’s Followers – Last Month’s Followers)/Last Month’s Followers

While there is still some valuable information left on the table, Pinterest’s introduction of analytics makes it much more user friendly for businesses to utilize the site for social media marketing purposes.

When you know what works and have data points to prove it, it’s much easier to get the most out of Pinterest. While tracking follower engagement on Pinterest isn’t as easy as it is on Facebook or Twitter, there are some very useful tools provided for free online to optimize your Pinterest experience.

Courtsey of http://www.business2community.com

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Using Pinterest in Your Marketing Strategy by Carolyn Cohn

You have heard enough about Pinterest to understand that it is a powerful marketing tool that will help you to bring your business to the next level. Pinterest attracts more traffic to your website and gets you noticed.

Confusion about Pinterest

Because Pinterest is a graphics-based social media site, there is confusion about its true capabilities. It is not actually only for recipes, crafts and products. It was like that at the beginning of time but it has branched out into so much more at this point. It has expanded to reach out to bloggers, consultants, local businesses, writers, coaches, etc. Pinterest is useful in so many ways for so many people. If you, as a marketer, have put so much time and effort into making Pinterest work for your business, you want to make sure that all of your hard work pays off in the end. You need to figure out the best way to interact with other people so that you can start to build meaningful, mutually beneficial relationships that make a positive contribution to your business’s continued success.

Using Pinterest to your advantage

Many people have content that is not driven by images. If that is the case, you might be wondering how you can really take advantage of a social media channel like Pinterest. The answer is that you can create boards on topics of your choosing and then you can enhance them with graphics and videos (pins). You can decide to follow as many boards at once as you want. You want to provide as much appropriate content as you possibly can to attract other people. It is important to make sure that you post valuable content on all of your boards.

There are several different boards that you my want to consider for your business.

• Highlight your clients: It is critical that you communicate to your clients how important they are to you. You can build a board to show them just how important they are and how much you appreciate their business. It is an effective way to enhance your relationships with them and to really feature their brands.

• Share valuable videos: Even though you probably think of still images when you think about Pinterest, videos work very well also. You can build a board full of videos, which will really allow you to engage other people very effectively. You can post a wide variety of videos on Pinterest, including testimonials, instructional YouTube videos, and many others.

• Feature worthwhile books: People love when you share valuable information that adds to their knowledge base. It is important that you educate your audience in many different ways, if possible. The more valuable information you share with your audience, the stronger your position will be as a subject matter expert. You will eventually be in a position where the next time they need what you sell, you will be the person they call.

• Give tips: Your valuable tips can easily be repinned by your audience. Your audience will welcome new pieces of information that they can apply successful to their own businesses. The more you share, the more they will want from you.

• Give them your resources: If you have a connection that works well for you and your business, share it with your audience members. If your resources work for other people, they won’t forget you.

• Feature your colleagues: It is a great idea to share your colleagues (if you find them valuable) with your other colleagues. Connecting people is always a good idea. That enables them to build their circles and you get credit for connecting them.

• Let people know what is coming up: People are always grateful when you inform them about events that they didn’t know about otherwise. Make sure that you tell them about events that are appropriate for them and ones that will really interest them.

• Share quotes and humorous quips: Short pearls of wisdom and humorous ideas will long be remembered. People always find them interesting and memorable.

Conclusion

Pinterest is a wonderful and powerful social media tool. It is very important to understand how to use it for your business so that it helps you to market your brand and your offerings so that other people really notice and take an interest in you and what you represent. You need to understand that Pinterest is a valuable part of your online social media marketing strategy. Pinterest is an effective tool to tell your story so jump in an let people know who you are.

Courtesy of http://www.business2community.com

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Optimize Content For Social Media Marketing by Tom Shurville

The way that marketers are approaching promotion of their products is changing. The nature of peoples’ online time has changed too, and as a result marketers are looking to social media sites to get their message across in different ways.

Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest are just a few of the social media sites that lend themselves well to use by marketers to get their products under the noses of internet users. Optimizing content for each of these sites can make the difference between a runaway hit and a complete waste of time.

Twitter

Twitter, for folks who haven’t used it, is a micro-blogging site that focuses on short messages of 140 characters or less. It has become an art form in its own right, and regular tweeters pride themselves on carefully crafting short and punchy messages they can share with their followers to get across views that are to the point.

One of the main ways in which Twitter is used by its many devotees is to share interesting content with followers in the form of links to other sites posted in the form of a tweet.

Funny photographs, interesting articles and entertaining videos can spread like wildfire on the site as users pick them up from others and share them onwards to their own followers. Signing up for a service such as Twitpic, which integrates seamlessly with Twitter to show images as part of tweets, gives marketers the opportunity to share content that users can pick up, enjoy and share to increase awareness of a product or brand.

Facebook

Facebook has become a ubiquitous part of most people’s online experience and as such presents marketers with a valuable opportunity. For many, Facebook is the front page of the internet and the first place they look when they log in, meaning that marketers have an ideal opportunity to get exposure provided they can get the right kind of content to be shared.

Users of Facebook often engage in discussions and debates in comment threads on each other’s posts and status updates. This can be a great opportunity for marketers to get conversations going and find out what their users think of their company and their products. Making videos and pictures on websites with quick links to post to Facebook allows people to share what they see on their profiles and gives the opportunity to track links and shares.

Pinterest

Unlike Twitter and Facebook, Pinterest is not the most social of social networks. Rather than inviting discussion, Pinterest instead focuses on the visual and gives users the chance to find things they like the look of and collect them all in one place.

The biggest opportunity with Pinterest is in having pictures of a product shared with a link back to the company’s website. Pinterest have also included a feature where quoting a price in the description will add a price tag to the photograph to make it easy for users to see what they could be getting and how much it would cost.

In order to get the most out of Pinterest, the most important thing marketers need to do is to ensure a plentiful supply of attractive, high-quality photographs of products. Sharing these on Pinterest and tagging them with common or popular search terms will increase the chances of users

 
Conclusion
The use of social media as a means for communicating marketing messages is growing. In order to take advantage of the desire of individuals to share interesting and worthwhile content with their peers, marketers need to ensure that they’re making their marketing messages engaging and compatible with the various social media outlets to get the best out of the social networking opportunities available.
 

By: Bloggertone LLC.--Tom Shurville – Managing Director of Distinctly Digital shares his latest insights on the current hot topics and trends in the search marketing world. Google+http://distinctly.co  

 

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