Tag Archive for: Pinterest

Image Is Everything [Infographic]

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You’ve probably already heard about the importance of images on the web. They catch the eye, foster interest, and statistically make people spend more time on any text than they would without pictures.

It’s all true, visual media is consistently present in your life, and the amount of websites and social media platforms centering on visual media are becoming more and more popular. In a society where almost everyone has a smartphone with a respectable quality camera, pictures are only going to become more ubiquitous.

Veer, a service for images, illustrations, and fonts, made an infographic to try to convey the importance of images online today. The graphic covers the history of internet graphics, and the popularity of image-based social media such as Flickr, Pinterest, and Instagram. They also have an animated version of the infographic here.

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Create Your Social Media Presence with These Fundamentals

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To maximize your business’s potential, you need an online presence. But in order to be successful with your endeavors into social media, there’s a foundation that must be layed. Here are four fundamentals, or building blocks, to get you started on creating your social media presence.

1. Set Goals, Make a Plan

Without a plan and clear goals in mind, you are already doomed to fail. Afterall, if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there? Or, more importantly, when you veer off course.

Think about how you will define success and how you plan to achieve it. Consider why you are using social media and how you’d like it to benefit your business. Also, put yourself in your desired audience’s shoes and try to discover what they’d like to see out of your profile.

The Digital Relativity blog has more on setting goals.

2. Tools

By tools, I mean the social media platform of your choosing. This goes right along with making a plan because before jumping in, you should be researching various platforms to make sure you are using the most effective one for your business.

If your target demographic doesn’t include women 18-30, maybe you can skip making a Pinterest account.

If you want to concentrate more on articles and written content, you may not need to spend time on Instagram, YouTube or Tumblr.

Not that you can’t manage more than one social media platform at once, but you’ll likely be most effective with your time if you narrow down your choice as much as possible so your message is most powerful and received by your desired audience.

3. Be a Credible Source

Once you’ve landed on the right site for you, become a source of constant, consistent, credible content. Not only should you create your own, but you can also share content from other sources. You can even share competitors content and add a little extra commentary to set yourself apart.

The idea is to send the message that your business is the expert in your field. Ideally, when people think of topics that pertain to your business, they’ll think of you.

4. Build an Audience

What good is any of this if no one is around to see what you’ve done? Certainly, being on the right social media platform is a great start. Boxcar Marketing has some tips for building an audience on specific platforms.

Having great content is also key to making sure you have users continually viewing your profile.

Once everything is in place, target influential users that boast a large following and send them your content in hopes that they’ll share it. This isn’t necessarily someone you personally think is influential, but rather someone your users will respect and likely be paying attention to already.

Also, be active on your profile and on other user’s profiles. If you receive comments on content you’ve shared, comment back and start an intelligent discussion. If you see interesting content shared by someone else, drop in your two-cents, which again helps you become a trusted expert in your field. Interaction will bring potential customers back more than sterile content.

Above all, be professional, be courteous and be relevant. Don’t stray off course from your business. This isn’t a profile where you share your views or you interests. This profile is for the users that need your service. Give them what they want.

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Use Pinterest to Increase Your Blog’s Views

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Pinterest has become a monster in the past year, with user growth up nearly 4400%. No, there’s not a typo in that figure. Obviously, it’s time for you to take advantage of this raging trend and use Pinterest to expand your audience. Mitt Ray, of Social Media Examiner, has four tips you can use.

1. Pin Content

To get traffic from Pinterest, you need to be part of the Pinterest community. Establish boards that routinely pin great content. Some of it should be yours, but some of it should be from elswhere. Establish yourself as the go-to board for your particular area of expertise.

2. Tall Images

Because of the way Pinterest displays their pinned images, taller images get more real estate and have a better chance of getting noticed and being repinned. Rather than just stretching out an image, think about combining multiple relevant images to reach your tall goal.

3. Must Have Images

No one can pin your content if it doesn’t have at least one image that’s a minimum of 110 x 100 pixels. So, it should go without saying that each of your blog posts should have an accompanying picture.

4. Default Images

Your blog should also have a default image, which is an image that appears in the header, footer or sidebar. It appears on every page of your site and, although it isn’t associated with a specific post, it can be used to pin a post.

Make the image relevant to your site’s general topic. This way, you can be sure that every post can get pinned and people will start to associate your image with your site and your brand.

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Who’s Using Social Media Sites, Anyway?

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The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project recently released it’s findings from a phone survey of about 1-thousand US adults. As Matt McGee reports for Marketing Land, the survey aimed to discover who exactly is using various social networking sites. Some of the findings you may have already assumed, such as, Pinterest is dominated by women and those with good, higher paying careers are using LinkedIn. All of the information is valuable, however, so you can tailor messages on specific sites to the demographics that are most often found there.

Facebook

66-percent of Internet users are on Facebook, which is by far the highest percentage of users. Users are fairly evenly distributed between men and women, education level and annual income. The biggest advantage Facebook features is the captivation of older Internet users. 56-percent of those age 50-64 have an account, which makes Facebook the clear top choice for marketing to the older crowd, despite the fact that younger users also flock their.

Twitter

Though Twitter does not hold a large market share of Internet users overall, it is almost entirely populated by well-educated men and women under 50. The annual income data is well dispersed across the spectrum, which sets Twitter apart from LinkedIn.

LinkedIn

As I mentioned earlier, LinkedIn is generally used by successful professionals over the age of 30. Its clientele is made up of 36-percent of Internet users with college degrees and 34-percent of Internet users with an annual salary over $75-thousand. With the exception of Facebook, which posted large percentages in every category thanks to their sheer number of users, LinkedIn is by far the leader in those two categories.

Pinterest

19-percent of female Internet users have a Pinterest account and that number is almost certainly still growing. Though their ages tend to skew younger than 65, you can reach nearly every female group through Pinterest.

Instagram and Tumblr

These image based sites returned data that is remarkably similar. Their users are mostly young, 30 or below, with at least some college experience. Oddly, Instagram features a large number of well-off users, 16-percent of those with a salary above $75 thousand. Tumblr is more evenly dispersed and, if anything, tends to attract those with a salary below $50-thousand per year.

 

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