Social media marketing tips for small businesses

Using social media to promote your offering and engage with consumers are not only relatively easy, but also fun and for the most part inexpensive.

Small businesses in general have limited resources (including marketing resources) and compared to other marketing tactics, you can accomplish a lot with social media.

Why is social media a great marketing tool for small businesses?

If social media is used strategically, it can offer direct engagement with your target audience. Social media will not only raise awareness for your brand, but it can also drive targeted traffic to your website.

In order to generate results with social media, you need to have a strong strategy in place. It’s easy to get started with all the platforms available, but to see a return on investment you need to understand each platform and create a social media marketing strategy for your business.

How can you effectively use social media?

Firstly, you need to understand and define your audience, and what their needs are. All your social media platforms should work together to help achieve your business’ bigger marketing goals. One of these marketing goals normally is to get people to visit your business’ online base – your website. Your social media platforms should ideally drive people to your website where they can read your blog posts, subscribe to your newsletter or buy your products or services. If you have marketing budget available, consider paid advertising on social media platforms to help reach marketing goals.

Another useful tip to increase brand awareness is to incorporate social sharing buttons on your blog posts. This will make it easy for people to share your content. Make sure you have valuable content and then make it easy for people to share.

To further ensure success, you should invest your time only in the platforms where your target market is spending their time. Even more so if you lack marketing resources. Start off small and grow your social media strategy gradually.

As part of your social media strategy, you should create a content strategy that will determine what you will post, where you will post it and when you will post it. Your content strategy can be as simple as a Word document. At Twenty3Media we like to plan content ahead and create updates a week in advance. This gives us enough time to proofread the content a couple of times, and send it to the client for final approval. A tip from our side: Always proofread your content, you will be surprised to see how many little errors can sneak in. When people are engaging and interacting with you on your social media profiles, respond to comments, mentions and feedback. If you receive negative feedback or comments, respond and try your best to turn the situation around.

Lastly, track and analyse your performance. It’s no use doing all the work if your audience is not responding positively. Make sure you identify which tactics are working and which aren’t. Based on your findings, make tweaks and implement changes and continue to monitor your efforts. Do you have any social media marketing questions? Ask us in the comments!

 

How Facebook’s algorithm changes influence your page

Facebook has always been clear about the fact that they aim to give their users the most interesting possible experience every time they visit the platform.

With Facebook’s recent algorithm changes, to get your content noticed has become a lot more complicated – especially for page managers.

The way you use Facebook largely determines what is shown in your News Feed. One should remember that there are more than a billion people use Facebook each month and a lot of content is being shared. Since the launch of Facebook Ads and Pages, the amount of content on Facebook is astounding. This means that chances are greater for users’ News Feeds to get crowded. There are over 18 million pages on Facebook, many of which are actively looking for ways to show up in people’s News Feed in order to increase brand awareness.

With all of this content on Facebook, the typical user has about 1500 stories that could show up in their News Feed.

Facebook’s algorithm has changed a few times over the years, as it should. Many people don’t understand why these changes were implemented, but then again they don’t know the statistics influencing the decisions being made. Nobody wants to see over a 1000 stories in their News Feed every time they visit the platform.

Let’s look at some of the aspects in which Facebook’s algorithm has changed and what it means.

Facebook’s algorithm change

Affinity, Weight and Decay

  • Affinity: How close is the relationship between the user and the source?
  • Weight: What type of action was taken on the content?
  • Decay: How recent is the content?

These factors will determine whether or not content is shown in a specific user’s News Feed.

Relationship Settings

With these settings users can choose how much content they see of their friends and the pages they like. You can easily hide updates from people by selecting the ‘unfollow’ option. You won’t unfriend the user, but their updates won’t show up in your News Feed.

Post Types

The News Feed algorithm takes into account the type of posts each user tends to like. If, for example, you interact more with photo posts, then you will see more photo posts in your News Feed.

Hide Post

Users now have the ability to hide posts or mark them as spam. The Facebook algorithm will try to decide what the probability is of the user hiding the next similar post. You will probably have to hide a few similar posts to see a change in what is showing up in your News Feed, but eventually Facebook will get the message.

The change in Facebook’s algorithm pose new challenges for brands and marketers hoping to get attention on Facebook. It’s more important than ever to post quality, engaging content.

Here are a few ways to still get the attention you seek on Facebook:

  • Create and publish a variety of interesting content. Ideally you should post more than once per day. To find out when is the best time to post updates, you can look at your fan page’s Insights.
  • Content should ideally attract shares, comments, likes and clicks – in other words fans need to engage with your content.
  • In order to create engagement you need to understand your Facebook fans, and what they want to get from your page.
  • As a general rule – use high quality, relevant images for your posts.

It’s imperative for page managers to have a content strategy in place. Know what you want to post about and when you’re going to post what. Based on the amount of likes and comments you can determine what type of content is more popular. Use this data and adapt your content strategy for Facebook.

How did Facebook’s algorithm updates affect your fan page? We’d love to hear from you – chat to us in the comments.

 

What are the top social networking sites?

Social media is one of the best platforms today for marketing and business branding as it offers a direct connection with your target audience.

Investing in social media is something businesses can no longer ignore, especially since its direct impact is visible through lead generation, targeted traffic and revenue – all of which are quantifiable. Moreover, with most businesses looking at ways to maximize their marketing ROI, it is also the most cost-effective if the content creation and profile management is done in-house.

Here is a quick guide that lists the top social networking sites along with the advantages, so you can make an informed choice to get the most out of social media marketing for your business.

Social media networks for business

Facebook

With 1.23 billion users, of which 945 million accesses Facebook via their mobile phones, Facebook is the #1 network where brands connect and engage with their audience and share content. This is the most active network online and brands on Facebook interact with their fans via status updates, promotions, special deals and contests, in addition to targeted ad campaigns.

Twitter

650 million users and 58 million new tweets per day makes Twitter the next most active social network, enabling brands to participate in and initiate conversations with both users and other brands. A majority of Twitter users access the social network via their mobile phones and the 140 character updates promote clear and short messages. Twitter allows keyword-based search to track conversations, which on its own can offer valuable insights.

Google+

Google+ has about 550 million active users and distinguishes between company pages and individual profiles. This social network is great for building brands, community building, engaging with your audience and improving search engine rankings.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the network for businesses to connect with potential employees and vice versa. LinkedIn has about 280 million users and is also a hub for professional networking. It is the leading network for focused social media marketing.

Pinterest

70 million active users make Pinterest a social network where users share and re-share visual content, inspiration and ideas. This social network is ideal for brands in fashion, DIY, food, travel and design and anything visual-driven. Online businesses benefit from Pinterest as the potential for spontaneous online shopping is high.

Instagram

Instagram is owned by Facebook and has 150 million users with a young user demographic. Ideal for visuals-driven businesses in the lifestyle, food and fashion industry enabling them share visual content in image and video format.

YouTube

With 900 000 000 unique visits every month, Google-owned YouTube is great for brands that have video content, share demonstrations and their expertise on specific topics.

With all the different options available, one challenge that many businesses face is the lack of resources and manpower to devote to effectively managing their social media presence in order to show return on investment.

The key to success is to select the most relevant social networks that will work for your business. There is no one size fits all strategy. What matters is statistics, audience insights and the knowledge of how you can leverage each network to reach your business goals.

How to run a competition on Instagram

Running competitions on Instagram can help build brand awareness, increase your number of followers and can potentially lead to more sales if the competition strategy is executed correctly. That being said, it is important to plan contests and competitions and have clear goals in mind. Here are a few tips to help you plan and run a successful Instagram competition.

Start off with making a list of the marketing goals you want to achieve. Do you purely want to increase the number of followers you have on Instagram? Your goals will in part determine what type of competition you’re going to run. Here are a few examples:

  • Like to win – entrants need to like a specific photo to enter
  • Follow to win – entrants need to follow your account to enter the competition
  • Comment to win – entrants need to comment on a specific post to enter
  • Regram to win – entrants will regram your post to enter the competition
  • Post a photo to win – entrants need to post a photo and make use of a specific hash tag in order to enter the competition

Make it easy for people to enter your Instagram competition. If you require entrants to go through a lot of steps, make sure your prize is worth the effort.

If one of your goals is to increase brand awareness, get entrants to post a specific caption to their photo. The caption should include your brand’s Instagram handle and the competition’s hash tag. Your competition’s hash tag needs to be something unique so that it can easily be searched on Instagram. Make sure that the hash tag is not already in use by doing a quick search on Instagram.

Once you have sorted out the planning aspect of the competition, you’ll need to kick off and promote the competition through your other marketing channels. Post about the Instagram competition on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and your website or blog.

Have you seen any interesting Instagram competitions or have more tips to add? Let me know in the comments.

Create engagement between your brand and fans / followers

The proliferation of social media sites has opened up tremendous opportunities for businesses to engage with their target market. In addition to the traditional communication channels, a brand can now use social media marketing to increase its reach and build strong relationships with its market through online interactions.

However, to enjoy a true measure of success, brands must do three things:

  • Be where their target market is by choosing the right social media platform
  • Engage their audience with relevant and interesting content
  • Keep up the two-way interaction, answering questions, responding to feedback (both positive and negative) with a customer engagement strategy

The first step is to identify the right social media platform based on the one the target market’s presence. From the ever-growing list, the prominent ones are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest.

Consider the following when making your choice:

  • Who is your target market and which social media networks are they using?
  • What are your social media marketing goals?  Examples are lead generation, boosting website traffic, interaction with customers
  • Do you have the manpower to manage your social media profiles or will you outsource it?
  • What is your budget?

For example, if your business’ target audience is largely active mobile app users on iPhones and Androids, you might think of using Instagram to engage your audience. If your goal is to network with other businesses, then LinkedIn helps you widen your contact base and connect with thought leaders.

Engaging with your audience using the right strategy pays off high dividends in the form of extensive reach, exposure, more leads, lower promotional costs and high return on your marketing investment. Here are some effective techniques:

Quality content with variety  
Content marketing plays an important role in social media engagement. Quality content that is both engaging and shareable is the secret. This includes text, images, video and audio content to keep it interesting. Content updates do not always have to be business related. Social media is a great platform to show the human side of your business by posting behind-the-scenes images and information with a good dose of humor.

Being responsive
The essence of engagement is interaction and this means being responsive to fans and followers, answering questions and handling complaints. Social media offers a creative avenue to leverage it for better customer service.

Being unique
Create special offers and deals that stand out from the competition. Give fans a reason to engage with your brand.  Reward them for connecting. Run contests. Invite comments. Highlight users who engage regularly. Ask questions and reward innovative answers. Make it fun. Offer useful tips.

Make it easy to engage
Let your audience find it easy to connect with you by prominently displaying your contact information and social media connect buttons.

The secret is to offer fans what they want to keep them engaged. Find out when your audience is most active and engage with them to ensure the maximum shares and views. Research your target audience well to create attractive calls to action that motivate them to share with others. Social media, for sustained results, requires ongoing effort and patience. Keep experimenting and don’t forget to use analytics to measure your impact and ROI.

Should you incorporate Instagram in your social media strategy?

Is Instagram worthwhile including in your social media strategy? This is a question I’ve heard many marketing managers ask. Take a look at the stats: With over 100 million monthly active users, 40 million photos per day, 8500 likes per second and 1000 comments per second, Instagram is definitely not a platform to be ignored. The popular photo sharing app ranks among the top social networks today.  Even as millions of users upload photos and share them via this app, business are rapidly realizing and leveraging the massive potential offered by Instagram.  Brands can no longer resist the attraction of engaging with their audience using this highly visual medium.

Initially, Instagram was used as a medium to share photos with fans but over the last couple of years, it has become a platform of choice for businesses to engage with their fans and increase their reach using images and short text messages. The unique feature of Instagram is its ability to take advantage of the fact that users trust their friends’ and other consumers’ opinion about brands.  Since users are clicking photos of brands and sharing them online all the time, brands must make sure they are available right where their market can see them, engage with them and build relationships.

Connecting with the audience

How can they connect with their audience? Here are some examples of how some well-known brands have successfully used Instagram:

  • When automobile company Ford launched the Ford Fiesta it created the #Fiestagram campaign on Instagram in the form of a photo contest to reach its target market. In a span of seven weeks, more than 16000 photos were posted and shared, generating a tremendous amount of interest on Facebook and Twitter across which the photos were shared, amplifying their reach.
  • Top brand Nike launched a 24-hour event to celebrate reaching the 1 million followers mark and to push the sales of its #Airmax shoes. The brand invited users to create their own shoe designs based on the photos on the microsite created especially for the campaign. Users shared their photos and the site found a colour scheme to match the background in the picture, enabling the user share the shoe across social media platforms. The shoe was available for sale on the mobile site.

Combined with the power of Facebook and Twitter, Instagram has become an essential component in the marketing strategy. To ensure the effective use of Instagram, here are some tips:

  • Instagram is a great content marketing tool. The first step is to share unique yet memorable branded content that inspires the audience to interact and share. Planning ahead by creating an editorial calendar to schedule content helps maintain the frequency of publishing based on the type of business. Posting often is a good idea to keep the brand on top of the audience’s mind, keeping them engaged.
  • One of the critical things about using Instagram effectively is the use of hashtags relevant to the content and brand. In the examples earlier, Ford used the hashtag #Fiestagram while Nike used #Airmax for instant recall. When users find a hashtag appealing, they have the power to use it and boost the brand
  • Interacting with users is an excellent way to build relationships, especially when users are saying positive things. Asking questions, answering questions helps co-create content and success stories. Many brands share and feature actual user feedback across their channels.
  • Brands must not shy away from responding to negative feedback about the brand.
  • Some great content ideas include photos of products in the pipeline, photos of the office with the staff at work, using user generated images, screenshots of a brochure or white paper and other marketing material, using humorous images related with the brand, discounts and promo codes.
  • Photo contests are one of the most popularly used strategies for creating user engagement on Instagram.

As with any marketing effort, Instagram’s results must also be monitored for return on investment. While measuring traffic to the business website from the links in the photos, if most of the traffic comes from Facebook, it might mean focusing on Facebook and creating a suitable strategy for optimum results.

It is true what they say about a picture being worth a thousand words and this is amply proved by Instagram. While it is easy to get started, marketing via Instagram requires planning and a clear editorial strategy to see the expected results.

Are you thinking of adding Instagram to your marketing strategy? If you are already using Instagram, do share your experience in the comments!

Using LinkedIn and Quora for business to business marketing

Clearly, businesses need a strong social media presence. This holds true especially for business to business (or B2B) marketing where the focus is on lead generation and the return on investment must be generated within specific time frames.

Although there is an almost unlimited number of social sites today, including the major ones like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that promote interaction with businesses, customers and prospects, there are two social networks that are in the limelight today for B2B marketing. These are Quora and LinkedIn. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Quora for B2B marketing

Quora is a social Question & Answer platform. It has become very popular over the last couple of years with B2B marketers as it draws an elite audience of CEOs, entrepreneurs, top executives and high profile bloggers who participate in the Q&A. B2B marketers are using the site for crowd sourcing and research. Membership is free and the site currently has 1 400 000 registered members as of February 2011. Members can ask questions and follow topics of interest and Quora is a reliable resource for business owners who can ask questions and receive answers from the right people.

Some tips to use Quora for B2B marketing, besides helping with link building, SEO and connecting with customers are:

Market research

Quora’s top user profile spans industry leaders. For a business this includes its competitors who might be talking about their new projects and audience who is offering feedback on what it wants or what it does not like. By just staying tuned, businesses can get valuable information for building their own marketing strategy or new product development.

Building connections and partnerships

Quora offers a great opportunity for businesses to put conversations about their brand in the spotlight while getting their employees involved. Because of its high profile users, Quora helps connect with decision makers and this could create new business opportunities and partnerships.

Online reputation management tool

By running a quick search of their name, businesses can tune in to what is being said about their brands. Brands that receive a lot of mentions are likely to have their own Quora category which means more visibility to prospective clients.

Recognition as an expert

For new businesses, Quora is a great platform for getting established as a knowledgeable expert in the relevant niche by providing answers to questions and thereby building the brand and its following.

A knowledgebase for employee training

Quora is a mini-encyclopedia that contains answers to a plethora of questions on a variety of topics. This can be curated and used as a free training tool for employees to stay updated with the latest trends. This in turn helps in product development or expansion as it keeps the business abreast of what the market wants.

Using Quora involves a high level of engagement and initiative to attract business leads.

How to use LinkedIn for B2B marketing

LinkedIn is in a class apart for B2B marketing as it is focused on business professionals. There are currently 150 million members and every Fortune 500 business is represented on LinkedIn providing businesses with a captive audience full of decision makers who are approachable. LinkedIn can be used as an effective lead generation tool. Here are some tips for B2B marketers to take advantage of this professional networking site:

  • Well-designed profile page and company page that are continuously updated to stay current. This includes listing present employees, recommendations, awards, products and services with links that are clickable to the relevant pages of the business’ website.
  • Building meaningful relationships using LinkedIn’s Group Search feature and engaging with connections made, contributing to conversations in a meaningful way and helping to solve problems.
  • Like Quora, LinkedIn is also effective to establish oneself as an expert and a valuable, trustworthy resource that attracts customers.
  • Interacting with known people and expanding the business’ network and building useful contacts
  • Ensuring prospects can find the business’ website and other social media profiles easily by integrating them with the LinkedIn profile page so that it becomes easier to stay connected and discuss business across the World Wide Web.
  • Since LinkedIn is an information goldmine, this can be used to research and understand customers and the competition through their status updates and profile pages.
  • Amplify content by sharing it on LinkedIn through the status update. This can be a new blog post, a whitepaper or a thought leadership snippet while linking back to the business’ website.

A high level of engagement on Quora and LinkedIn can help B2B marketers to generate qualified leads and grow their business. As with all social media, the “soft sell” works best as a “hard sell” approach can scare contacts away.

Do you use Quora and LinkedIn as part of your B2B marketing strategy?

Business to business social media marketing

Social media marketing relates to a business’ activities across social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, discussion boards and video sites. The aim is to reach and connect with its target market, conveying its message via the appropriate format so that it results in visibility and traffic. Some of the main goals of social media marketing include:

  • Building relationships with the market
  • Increasing awareness
  • Uncovering new customers
  • Generating leads and sales
  • Improving customer retention
  • Enhancing brand loyalty
  • Building a community around the business

Both Business to Customer (B2C) and Business to Business (B2B) businesses use social media marketing effectively to achieve their marketing goals, yet there are certain basic differences in the way B2C and B2B implement this. Here is a quick look at the main differences.

The Return on Investment

A critical aspect of any marketing activity, ROI for B2B can be different from B2C. While B2B social media marketing focuses on generating leads, B2C can focus on branding, engagement and so forth. The ROI for B2B is therefore more easily measured than for B2C and their methods of connecting with their audience are different.

The way the business positions itself

Social media marketing is not about direct selling. Because of this, B2B companies position themselves as thought leaders, so that they can provide the valuable information. To do this, the business involves itself in issues related to its industry or talks about an event. It makes recommendations to its audience. The goal is to position itself as an expert that its market can look up to and trust.

Choice of social media sites

Most B2C businesses choose Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. B2B businesses choose LinkedIn as their main social site to engage with other businesses. This enables them directly with decision makers of the businesses they target.

Based on the above, it is clear that with B2B, social media marketing is about the relevance of the community rather than its size. Two hundred engaged prospects on Twitter is easier to track and monitor rather than thousands of followers who are not really connected or interested in what you have to say. Measurability matters in B2B social media marketing and based on this, goals are set with parameters to track the campaign.

Examples of B2B social media successes

American Express’ OPEN Forum and Facebook campaigns are very popular. Through the OPEN Forum and ongoing campaigns on its Facebook page, AmEx provides support to its business customers. Recently, AmEx’s “Big Break” campaign ran a contest for SMEs announcing that five winners would receive an all-expense paid trip to Facebook’s headquarters to discuss a makeover for their business in addition to $20,000 to help them with their current social media strategy.

Business Week, the weekly US business magazine built a networking site called Business Exchange to enable it engage with its readers and expand its online communication. This quickly became successful and grew to over 40,000 users who currently contribute over one million article links.

Cisco, the world leader in networking actively engages in social media and runs regular campaign to complement its ongoing engagement strategy. A new router was recently launched exclusively on social media channels, helping them save $100,000 in the process. Their “Future of Shopping” video on borderless networks has more than 6 million views.

Some tips for B2B marketers to use social media marketing effectively are:

  • Focus on listening,  interaction and knowledge sharing
  • Avoid the hard sell approach
  • Take the time to develop relationships by investing time and effort
  • Form a clear strategy and stay committed to implementing it
  • Build a network of influencers who will share your content and extend your reach
  • Ensure that social media profiles are optimised and up to date and linked to the business’ website, blog and other social media accounts
  • Monitor your brand to know what is being said
  • Maintain synergy between various social media activities and cross-link between them

B2B businesses can use social media to establish their credibility by building a strong social presence. This is done by creating well designed social media profiles that prospective customers and vendors alike can access.  Consistent and well-planned social media activity presents the business as one that is competent, adding personality.  B2B social media marketing allows the business’ professionals to share their expertise via social media sites, helping them build strong business relationships with a personal touch. Using social media to engage with each other within the organization can be a great way to keep employee morale high, increasing productivity and retaining employees.

How to use Pinterest in your marketing strategy

To quote Wikipedia, “Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies and more. Users can browse other pinboards for inspiration, ‘repin’ images to their own collections and / or ‘like’ photos”

Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks in the world and presents businesses with a unique opportunity to leverage it for marketing. Businesses that wish to use Pinterest as a marketing tool must first identify their market, then engage their customers, offer information and finally, present them with value. Viewed from the search engine optimisation angle, each pin on Pinterest can be seen as a back link, which is something all websites work hard to build. The key is to use keywords in the descriptions and board titles. As with any marketing tool, Pinterest activity must be tracked and analysed to assess what works.

Here are some case studies of businesses that are using Pinterest successfully to promote their brand and their products.

The Kotex campaign

Implemented in Israel, the Kotex brand identified fifty influential women based on what they were pinning on Pinterest. Each woman was sent a customised online gift pack. When she pinned the gift, she received a real gift pack via mail. Tracking revealed that each woman who was sent the gift posted about the gift, not just on Pinterest, but also on other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and exploded the reach of the 50 gifts into over 2 200 interactions. It also resulted in close to 694 850 impressions, an incredible return for 50 gift packs.  The brand creatively leveraged Pinterest to attract high engagement based on the simple premise that free gifts are always appreciated and talked about.

The Pinterest Lottery from British Midland International

British Midland International held a contest called “Pinterest Lottery” where randomly chosen fans won trips.  Numbered posters with logos from five destinations were posted on the brand’s Pinterest boards and users were invited to repin at least six images. By the end of the week, British Midland selected a number and the users who repinned images with that number were eligible to win two free round trips to any British Midland International destinations.

Lands’ End Canvas’ “Pin it to Win it”

Apparel brand Lands’ End Canvas’ promotion called Lands’ End Canvas Pin It to Win It” invited fans to pin items from their website to their specific pin boards for a chance to win the items they pinned.

After a business launches its profile on Pinterest, the next step is to create highly engaging promotions, inspiring its fans to follow their profiles and pin items from their web pages.  This keeps the brand’s target audience connected, interacting with the brand and building brand loyalty. Here are some tips to achieve this:

  • Pinterest has over 1.5 million unique visitors every day and 80% of these users are women.  This is a highly prospective market for brands focused on women’s interests.
  • Make a plan to post pictures consistently, since pins at the top of the feed get the maximum views and repins / shares.
  • Cross promote via other channels by adding a follow on Pinterest button and connecting your Pinterest account to your other social media profiles and promoting it on Facebook, Blogs, Twitter and Google Plus.
  • Regular interaction by following users, commenting on their pins, repining and liking them is a must, so that they can follow you back.
  • Post product images, ideas and tips and encourage fans to pin their views and ideas to keep them engaged.

Pinterest can help brands build unique relationships with their target market and help them promote themselves through social media. Are you using Pinterest for business?

How to market your business with Pinterest

market your business with pinterest

Image source

Pinterest is currently among the top five social networking sites that has grabbed the attention of internet users in a big way. It can be described as an online pinboard where users “pin” images and videos that appeal to them on theme-based pinboards. It is similar to a social bookmarking tool but visually much more attractive. Here are some quick statistics about Pinterest:

  • Gets more page views than Etsy, the popular craft site
  • Has grown 2000% since June 2011
  • 59% of Pinterest’s users are women in the age group of 25 to 40
  • 58% of Pinterest’s unique visitors are women
  • Has a highly engaged audience of 3.3 million users and 421 million page views

Pinterest is currently in its beta version and by invitation only. Here are some ways in which your business can leverage Pinterest.

Create a profile for your business on Pinterest

Under settings, complete the about, website and other details on your profile. Connect your other social media profiles and enable “visible in search” so that visitors to your boards can connect and engage with your brand.

Generate website traffic

Pin images with titles and descriptions that link back to your website. Add a “Pin it” button to your own website or blog inviting readers and visitors to engage. You can pin the photos from your blog so that when visitors click your pin, it will drive traffic to your web page or blog. This is easy to do and effectively markets your website or blog.

Generate exposure for your business

Besides driving traffic with Pinterest, you can also promote your products and services by posting their images on your pinboard. This attracts exposure for your brand with the likelihood of customer acquisition. Pin images with links to your product catalogue so that prospective clients can follow these to your website. This is also a great way to advertise your business to millions of prospects on a daily basis.  They in turn, can comment on your images and repin them to their boards, widening your reach.

Customer engagement and interaction

Today, businesses must find innovative ways to reach their target audience engage them and interact with them. Pinterest is an excellent method to promote brand loyalty by soliciting customer feedback on your business and its products.

Contests and special deals

Pinterest is a great platform to hold contests and offer discounts on your products to your Pinterest followers and develop long term customer relationships, actively engaging with them, offering them incentives to appreciate their loyalty.

Other ways to use Pinterest for your business are:

  • As an online brochure or catalogue with prices
  • For event announcements
  • New product launch and exclusive rebate announcements
  • Market research as you can track what your followers are pinning
  • Creating a testimonial board to connect with customers

As a highly visual medium Pinterest is an effective, free marketing tool that you can use to promote your business and acquire customers. You can also pin images via an iPhone app, which means access to the mobile market. Make sure to tag and categorise all images so that your content can be suitably amplified.

Although Pinterest may not be ideal for all brands right now, it is a great way to build relationships with your market. What are your thoughts on Pinterest?