by winstonbromley | Dec 29, 2011 | Facebook, Pinterest, Social Media, Social Media Tools
There are always new Social Media platforms that come out it seems every week with a new take on the medium. The one that caught my eye about 2 months ago is called Pinterest. Pinterest.com is one of the new Social Media platforms that has come out, that truly has an interesting take on bringing people together and collaborating.
Essentially what Pinterest does is allow you to share and organize images and videos into your Profile that is organized by Categories or “Boards” that you can define. Each time you add an image or video, it’s called a Pin. Think of it as a Scrapbooking, VisionBoard or Social Images board, if you will.
But if you are not into Scrapbooking (and I am not), Pinterest is much more that – so don’t discount it. It will be worth it.
An image is worth a thousand words so Pinterest is set to be very valuable.
With Pinterest, as you setup your Boards and “pin” images or video straight from items you are browsing normally, followers and people searching for similar items can become involved in your Boards by “re-pinning” your images to their boards, or if you allow, have users pin to your Boards. “Pinning” is super simple and is done by simply clicking on the “PIN” bookmark that are you asked to add to your Browser, while you are on the page you have images you would like to showcase. Once you click “PIN IT”, you get to choose the image you would like to add to your Board, leave a note on it and categorize the image. The process takes less than 30 seconds (longer if you have a lot to say on it)
As always, and as a business coach who teaches Social Media to Businesses, I am sure you are asking, “But why should I look into Pinterest”?
Well, the answer is simple: By being open to others working on your Boards or even just sharing your Boards, you can promote your Business effectively and have others share your products/services/images if done correctly.
Pinterest.com doesn’t like (and it is looked down on) overly branding of the pages or only pushing your product. They don’t consider this a good fit for their platform.
But there is always ways to fit in the system AND get the promotional / social value from over 4 million users.
For example, let’s say you are a designer who creates great clothes every season. You use the usual 5 social networks and people discuss your items. However your uploaded images don’t have as much presence on these sites (such as Facebook) as you would want. On Pinterest, you created a Board called “Spring 2012 Clothing Line” and then upload or Pin your images from your online store or website right to your Pinterest Account. What this does is take your specific images that you easily “pin” from a website you are on, and it allows you to comment on each one so others can discuss and share AND (and this is big) links each image back to your website so that people can end up on your site to find out more about your great clothing and even buy them.
As a business, another example for you to think about, would be for to create a Board for your Staff to pin items to as part of a meeting or ideas OR use the Pinterest Boards as a way to mastermind a solution to your problems by asking other to contribute to the solution
The social benefits of Pinterest, I believe, are very good for any business owner to promote what they do, in a non-salesy way, and allow the 4+ million users (at the time of this blog) to share in the visual interests you have.
If you want to drop by my account, visit: http://pinterest.com/winstonbromley/
If you want to be invited (as Pinterest is set to INVITE ONLY right now), email me at winston@artbox.ca with the Subject “Pinterest”.
by winstonbromley | Sep 10, 2011 | Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, Social Media Management, Social Media Tools
I started out in Social Media by joining LinkedIn. LinkedIn made sense at the time when I joined as it was a smart way to promote yourself to prospective business people and of course, meet up with your co-workers. It was not the powerhouse it is today but it was very smart idea at the time.
I have to say when I joined Twitter a few years later (because EVERYONE I knew told me to join…. and I caved), I was not impressed. Within about 3 days of being on there, all I saw were posts about going to lunch, what a great jog or run they had in the morning, and other daily items. I remember clearly thinking to myself, “What am I doing here?”.. I am here to tell you it can be much more that That… but more on that in a bit…
The same initial reaction happened with Facebook. All the people I knew were playing games on Facebook, buying virtual gifts, nudging me to respond and posting comments about their daily lives. It felt like I got dropped into a party and was the odd-man out.
Then I got to thinking…. There has to be more to this than just daily life activity postings? There must be a practical use for Social Media in Business.
Being a web designer and programmer, with some successful online products at the time, I realized that if I could use Social Media in a business sense, then it would be a great tool to reach a lot of people all at once and leverage other people’s connections to increase my Business profits.
Well it worked, and I started to see results for myself, and more importantly, for my clients (I was their Social Media Manager – although that wasn’t a real job title at that time ;).)
Well, fast forward to September 2011 and Social Media is the Buzz word of the last two years or so. Almost every Entrepreneur and Business owner I meet are talking about Social media and wanting to apply it in their business. This makes really me happy to see.
A good percentage of them either 1. Know that they need to use Social Media now in their business but don’t know where to begin or what to do OR 2. They are using it in their businesses however aren’t seeing any results from it, which my Business helps them out with if needed.
As one business owner to another business owner, I wanted to share with you 5 reasons that Social Media is ideal for your Business, products and Services.. and yes, you need to get started now, if you have not already begun.
Also, it is definitely not too late to be profitable using Social Media.
Here are my 5 reasons:
- Leverage your Social Reach and Impact: By using Social Media, it allows you to attract and target potential customers that may never have known you and your Business existed, for a fraction of the price you can pay with costly and less-and-less effective traditional advertising. It also allows you to connect with your existing customers in a fun yet professional fashion with rewards, promo codes and timely information.
- Develop and Build your Social Proof: Using social media for your Business allows your Customers/Followers/Friends/Connections/(insert the social media platform of choice) in Social Media to build your business up with comments, tweets, recommendations, links to your website that other people will see, which build credibility for what you are offering. People are using Social media now to get reviews on products. We tend to buy and use a product or service much quicker with a referral or word of mouth, because of the Social proof of others talking about it. I know that I buy a lot that way and I would suspect you would to..
- Every Possible Demographics for your Business is in here: There are over 750 Million users on Facebook (33% of that number is women in the age group of 35-65!), over 12 Million Small Business owners on LinkedIn, Google+ grew to 25 million users in just 1 month time and Twitter continues to grow. What is powerful about these stats is that I am sure there are portions of each major social media engine’s demographic that is your ideal client. So why not figure out which ones to “target”, attract and engage them while at the same time, leading them to becoming a customer.
- You control the message: With Social Media, you can control the message. If something goes wrong, you can fix it pretty fast with Social media (United Airlines didn’t get this right until a musician and 1 Million Views on Youtube did it for them) . This also allows you to create messages that you can write and post everyday if you wish. You are not stuck with an 1 year paid ad in the Yellow pages, or a large Billboard that costs money to re-do. Social media is meant to be flexible. If you want to throw out a special offer to your lists or mention a new service, you can do it for low to no-cost to you.
- Build Loyal Communities: Social Media truly builds a community of people that have similar likes and interests. You can find people who love to Scuba dive or people who like knitting. Being part of these groups by leveraging your Social Media brand, you can become part of their conversations and be a solution to their needs. People follow or connect with their interests and if that interest happens to be your ideal client, you should be there to help them along to make a decision.
To end off, in Social Media, you do not “hard sell” anything. What I am referring to is helping people make an informed decision by seeing that you are the best choice for your Service or Product, complimented by your social media strategies, that just so happen to move them in that direction…..
until the next post.
Winston Bromley
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