Twitter Checklist

The Twitter Checklist covers the top things you need to remember as you are setting up your Twitter account for business.

Download PDF Here



Pinterest Strategy and Goal Setting Workbook

The Pinterest Strategy and Goal Setting workbook walks you through how to create your Pinterest boards and posting strategy as well as how to establish your goals on the network.

Download PDF Here



What’s all the hoopla about hashtags?  When it comes to social media, hashtags are a BIG deal!  They are the key or more appropriately, the “link” to helping your target market find you.  

How “#” Hashtags Work:

If you click on any given # in a social media post or enter it into a social media search bar, instantaneously, you will receive all of the most recent posts and content that have been “tagged” with the hashtag word or phrase you clicked on or entered.  For example, if you are using Instagram and you type in the search bar: #SocialMediaRocks you will see there are over 1,200 posts you can read that are all about the topic “Social Media Rocks.” This same practice can be used on all the major social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.  Fun Fact: Twitter is considered to be the “birthplace” of hashtags. Due to the way Twitter operates and the enormous amount of “Tweets” that are posted every second, hashtags are critical in order to keep up to date and track the content available surrounding a certain topic, trend, conversation, event, or issue.

How Should You Use #s For Your Business?

This is a common question we get asked…a lot!  The good news is, we have answers for you! We recommend you break down your hashtags into 3 major categories.  Those categories are:

  1. Branded Hashtags – certain words or phrases that specifically describe your brand.  Stumped on what you would use for branded hashtags? See if you can guess the brand behind these hashtags:  #ShareACoke, #ShamrockShake, #MacchiatoMondays
  2. Industry Hashtags – use hashtags to describe the industry you are in.
  3. Trending Hashtags – use hashtags that are trending as long as they are relatable to your business or the content of your posts

Hashtag Research

Finding industry hashtags and trending hashtags requires some work but we have some resources to help you.  Below is a list of resources to help you find the perfect hashtags for your posts:

  • Be a stalker – this is the one time it’s ok to stalk people on the internet.  Find out what industry influencers are using as hashtags in their posts. Chances are if an industry influencer is using the hashtag, it’s trending!
  • Hashtagify.me – is a great tool to see what is trending in your niche and to get hashtag suggestions
  • Hashtags.org – use this tool to find trending hashtags
  • RiteTag.com – this tool will provide suggestions and tell you which social platform the hashtag will perform its best on

The best way to optimize your hashtags is to really understand your business, who your business attracts and how to speak your tribe’s language.  Once you figure that out, you can design and craft the perfect hashtag words and phrases to attract them.

Hashtag Best Practices & Tips:

  • Create 3 types of hashtags for your business (branded, industry, and trending)
  • When using hashtag phrases, use capitals to separate words, example:  #SocialMediaRocks
  • Avoid including #hastags in the #middle of #sentences as it #makes your #content #difficult and #unpleasant to #read
  • Instagram will accept up to 30 hashtags per post, post these in the comment section below your post content
  • When posting hashtags on Instagram, avoid using the same hashtags over and over again as it will hurt your rank.  The Instagram algorithm treats repetitive hashtags has spammy practices (a.k.a. “shadow banning)
  • Always include content in your post.  Refrain from just posting a string of hashtags.  Your followers won’t appreciate it and they will begin to unfollow you

Download our hashtag organizer by clicking HERE

Happy Hashtagging!

What’s so special about your Pinterest business account, you ask??? Well, first of all, you can get access to some AWESOME analytics! The Pinterest analytics show so many things, from how many daily viewers you are getting to impressions, engagement, most popular posts and more! They give you so much data, that this is a great tool to really find out who your target market really is. Is this video we will just go over how to check your analytics and what each area really means.

pinterest strategy and goals

Pinterest, just like any other network, requires care, commitment, and attention to detail when it comes to implementing your strategy and measuring your results. In today’s blog and this week’s Growth Prompt, we are building your Pinterest Strategy and Setting Goals for measuring your success.

Earlier in the month we’ve explored the in’s and out’s of what Pinterest is, as well as, how to create images, manage your boards, etc, but today we are taking that deeper dive into the strategies to use to optimize Pinterest for your business.

In addition to the information provided in this blog post, be sure to download this week’s growth prompt HERE. This PDF includes space for you to create your Pinterest Strategy and to Establish your Goals on Pinterest.

Download Growth Prompt.

Part 1: Creating your Pinterest Strategy

Step 1: Be Consistent.

On Pinterest in particular, it is of utmost importance to be consistent with your pinning. Why? Pinterest will show your followers a collection of recent and popular pins when they sign onto Pinterest. Imagine that none of your pins appear for days and then all of a sudden 10 branded images pop up at once.

First, the person isn’t going to know who you are and second, they are going to feel like you are spamming their Pinterest feed.

Rather than only signing on one time per month, instead we recommend trying to have a consistent flow of pins to your boards that consist of both your pins and those of other people.

To build Consistency into your Pinterest Strategy, you want to make sure that you have a clear understanding of:

  • When you can pin (ie, can you only commit to pinning on your computer at 10pm while watching Netflix or can you carve out time during the day)?
  • If you would benefit from a 3rd party application to pin and repin on your behalf?

3rd Party Apps to Help Manage Pinterest

Yes! These apps do exist and there are 2 in particular I recommend utilizing.

Tailwind:

The first, Tailwind*, has a robust pin-scheduling tool for your own pins and allows your to set schedules to pull from other pins, as well. Tailwind also includes Tribes, which are groups of people who have agreed to share each others pins on a specific topic.

Boardbooster:

Personally, I utilize Boardbooster* for my Pinterest management. With Boardbooster, you create Secret Boards and pin images to these boards rather than your public boards. In boardbooster, you then create a schedule for how many pins you would like to move from the secret board to your public board and what time of day you want these pins to be published. Boardbooster also has a looping function to repin old pins from your boards at a set schedule.

One downside of Boardbooster is that you can’t really visualize the order of publishing your pins, so let’s say you make 3 images for a blog post, when you pin them to your secret board, you also need to pin other images.

I love boardbooster, however, because I can spend one movie just pinning other images to my secret boards and not worry about Pinterest for a month.

Step 2: Create Multiple Pins for your Blogs.

Rather than just creating one pinnable image for your blog post, change the design and wording slightly so you have 3-4 images for each blog post. This especially works well if your blogs are 1000+ words long as you can create a pin for each topic you cover.

To manage this, I recommend creating a few layouts and templates in Canva that you can just swap out words and images. Then, as mentioned before, rather than pinning all the images at once, add them to your secret boards (if you use Boardbooster) with other images between and try to space out their publishing dates (or at least times).

You’ll also want to make sure the images are rotated into a board specifically for your brand and website. I recommend calling this board “From the XYZ Blog” or “Company Name Pins” – just something that makes it very clear that these pins are only from your website. Put this board at the top of your Pinterest boards as a featured board and you are good to go!

So, how do you incorporate multiple pins in a blog post without being overwhelming? Get your hands dirty with HTML and you’ll be good to go! 🙂

I recommend the following process for adding multiple pins to your blog post:

  1. Create images and name them with your blog topic then upload the images all at once to the end of your blog post.
  2. When you upload the images, add individual ‘alt tags’ to them with the following formula: BLOG/PIN TOPIC, keyword 1, keyword 2, #firsthashtag, #secondhashtag, keyword phrase 3, #thirdhashtag
  3. Drag and drop or copy and paste images to where they fit in the content (for example, if you have one topic at the start of the blog and it flows into another topic, you may want to include one pin that includes language from each of these sections rather than using the same language on every pin.
  4. With the remaining images that are at the end of the blog, you will now want to HIDE them!
  5. Just into the HTML for the blog post (in WordPress this is the Text tab above the content editor) and scroll down in the text editor to the end of the post. You should see the html code for the images here. This looks like: <img src=”URL” alt=”info you added to the alt tags”/>
  6. Directly before the first image you want to hide, add the text: <div style=”display:none;”>
  7. At the very end of the post after the last image you want to hide, add: </div>
  8. Click save and you are all set!

Step 3: Incorporate Pins from other Websites.

The last core piece of your Pinterest strategy is to include the Pins of other accounts and to pin images directly from other websites.

When you pin from other accounts, be sure you are looking to find popular RICH pins that include keywords in their descriptions and are frequently repinned. Typically, when you search for a topic, these pins will appear first in the search results.

Why do you want to only repin rich pins? These are often shared more frequently and if your account is posting pins that are shared frequently, you will tend to show up more frequently in Pin search results.

You also want to pin images directly from different websites because then you have the added benefit of having your profile link appear alongside the pin rather than only appearing when someone clicks to expand the pin!

Part 2: Setting your Pinterest Goals

There typically are two main goals businesses set for Pinterest. The first is much easier to accomplish than the second, but both simply require that you are consistently active on Pinterest.

 Goal 1: Gaining Name Recognition and Exposure.

Gaining name recognition and exposure is a great goal for Pinterest and is actually fairly easy to accomplish!

With my Pinterest account, I was able to grow from 100 followers to 60,000 pin views in a matter of 3 months. How? I wrote blogs and used Boardbooster to consistently pin new images, my images, and repin for me while I worked on other aspects of the business.

You can do this too, if you follow the strategy steps outlined above.

 Goal 2: Growing Traffic to Website.

Though to reach the first goal of gaining exposure doesn’t necessarily require you to blog, growing the traffic to your site ABSOLUTELY requires that you blog for your business! This makes attaining this goal a little more difficult as you need to build time in your schedule to blog and create pinnable images.

Once you create your schedule for writing blogs and the images, then, as long as you are using keywords in your descriptions, sharing the pin to group boards, and testing out different pin designs, you can be fairly certain people will click through to your site.

Final Thoughts: Freebies

So, as I wrap up, there is also the important notion to remember about what to do once people get to your site!

I always recommend including Content Upgrades in your content as a way to capture the names and email addresses of those who click through the site. This means in addition to creating the blog post and images, also creating a download and a form to add even more information to your post. Once someone signs up to download the form, you ‘own’ their email address and can send them weekly tips and news to continue helping them on their educational journey in your industry!

We’ll be doing an entire section on the ins and outs of Content Upgrades (Freebies) and Welcome Series, so stay tuned!

 

Infographics are a HUGE part of Pinterest and those who love Pinterest absolutely adore infographics.  Infographics are an easy way to consume and learn new information.  A good infographic can take you step by step through a message with lots of visual content and a minimal amount of text.

In this video tutorial, you will learn how to quickly and easily design infographics by using Canva.