Is your LinkedIn set up correctly? This checklist reviews the items you should be sure to consider as you are creating your LinkedIn profile.
The Instagram Caption Cheat Sheet covers our tips for effectively writing your business Instagram captions.
The Facebook Live Cheatsheet covers what you need to know to effectively run a Facebook Live.
The Blog Sharing Checklist goes through the steps for you to take to share your blog across social media and your newsletter most efficiently.
Did you know? Pinterest is the 3rd most popular social network and it has become a huge search engine! People turn to Pinterest on the daily to: shop, find information, ideas, educate themselves, organize themselves and so much more. Once you get to know Pinterest and all that it can provide for you, the love affair begins 😉
To make sure your brand’s content hits the ground running, there are some basics you need to have in place, especially when it comes to graphics. Pinterest is a highly visual platform. Understanding the best graphics to use on the site is key to making your account perform its best.
We want to make sure you and your brand look your best on Pinterest, so, we put together this helpful 2018 Pinterest Image Size guide. Download it, print it out, and keep it handy so you can have these image sizes available at-a-glance! Download the guide HERE.
Part of being successful on Pinterest requires your ability to be found! That’s where hashtags (#) come into play. Once you have an understanding of how to utilize hashtags, you will notice an increase in your Pinterest traffic.
Hashtag Know How!
Here are 3 strategies you can use to get your hashtag game in place for your brand
STRATEGY #1:
Know the number of hashtags you can use one 1 pin. A recommended rule of thumb is to use no more than 20 hashtags per pin.
STRATEGY #2:
Always use hashtags on the pins you post. When people search hashtags in the search bar, Pinterest will compile the latest pins chronologically, placing the newest pins at the top of the list. That’s where you want your pins to live.
STRATEGY #3:
Organize a list of hashtags for your brand. Categorize you hashtags into 3 buckets:
- Branded Hashtags: a list of hashtags that only relate to and describe your brand
- Trending Hashtags: a list of trending (popular) hashtags on the topics you post about (these hashtags will frequently change based on the topic and current trends you are posting about)
- Content Related: a list of content related hashtags to use in order to describe the post you are pinning
Best Practices When Selecting Hashtags:
- Avoid using very broad hashtags, be more specific and try to think like your audience. What hashtags would they use to find your pin?
- Don’t be afraid to use hashtag phrases if they help to define your audience even better. For example, we may use a hashtag phrase like #SocialMediaTraining as a hashtag to reach our audience.
- Do some research! When adding a hashtag to a pin on Pinterest, Pinterest will populate a list of suggested hashtags. Next the hashtag, you will see how many pins are using the hashtag you are considering. If the number is HUGE, your pin may get lost in the shuffle. Try to determine how you can make your pin more niche with a more specific hashtag or hashtag phrase.
When working with Pinterest, our best advice is for you to get started, have fun, and experiment with different ideas, strategies, and tactics. Happy pinning!
Pinterest is growing so much and is really used for a search engine rather than a social media platform. People go to Pinterest to find ideas, products, inspiration and much more! So, why shouldn’t they be able to find your business as well? In this video below you will learn how to create a business account on Pinterest OR switch your personal profile to a business account.
Here are a few key points you want to remember while creating your account:
* Use keywords in your board titles and descriptions
* Use #Hashtags in your Pin descriptions
* Create boards your target audience would be looking for
* Verify your website
* Add the Pinterest icon to your toolbar
Enjoy!
We are going to be talking about Pinterest for digital marketing for your business. Now is such a great tool for businesses to use for their marketing because it allows for your business to gain a broader audience without necessarily having to always wear to grow your network. Pinterest works much more like a search engine in this capacity rather than a social media Network.
What is Pinterest?
First and foremost, what is Pinterest? Is an Application that utilizes images to help people find things online more easily. So you can think of it almost like a visual search engine. Imagine if you did a Google Search and rather than having websites come up in text and phrases, the websites all appeared as images. This is Pinterest. Now with Pinterest, users are prompted to search for items of interest and organize them in elements called boards. Board is a collection of that all relate to a certain topic. As a business you are able to Showcase elements from your own website as well as related pins from other people’s website so that your followers and the people who come across your account can more easily find information regarding the topic of your expertise without having to search around for related website and phrases.
The download for this week is to help you organize the boards on your own business Pinterest account so that they relate to items that your target market will be finding online. The link for this is at the bottom of the blog.
Now you might be thinking that Pinterest is only for a DIY, crafts, and Home Improvement projects, but in reality, it is for so much more! We have found that everything from business services and tips to graphic design and accounting for businesses have garnered lots of great feedback and traffic to our client’s websites. In fact once a pin goes viral, you can find that you consistently get leads that come from one blog post image on your website month after month.
We haven’t really discussed in detail the use of lead capture forms on your website, but Pinterest is a great traffic source if you have a lead capture form and free giveaway on your website as a way to attract new people to your email list.
When you utilize Pinterest it is important to make sure that your pins correlate with a Content that you find on your website and that your pins and board description include the keywords that you need to be found just as you would a search engine.
How do Search Engines Work (How Google Ranks Pages)
How search engines work is through matching the search user’s intent would be words that appear on a specific page on your website. If the search user intent and the keyword phrases that are used match the content that is found on your website you are more likely to appear in organic listing.
The same is true for Pinterest. As you are creating every single pin from your website you need to make sure that you are thinking about words and phrases that somebody might be using on Pinterest.
How to Organize Your Business Pinterest Account
We’ve recommend following these steps to ensure that your Pinterest account Boards are set up for success.
First step is to create boards that align with the interest of your target market on Pinterest. You want to make sure that these boards closely relate to your own business so that you can include a combination of pins from your own website as well as from other resources online.
When you create your boards, think about the different aspects of your business. For us, for example, we can pin about:
- Blogging,
- Business Tips,
- Productivity,
- Email Marketing,
- Web Design,
- Branding,
- Social Media, etc.
Each of the boards we will want to pin very specific pins to that align with the board theme.
From here, you will want to make sure your Boards have descriptions that align with what a user will find pinned, as well as a list of the keywords that will help someone find the board.
Then it is time to get pinning! Don’t only pin from your own website, you also want to search for popular pins on Pinterest to Repin to your boards. It is best if these are popular pins because they will then help boost your own engagement and reach on Pinterest. Best of all, when your boards are well organized and the descriptions include keywords, your boards may even show up in Google Organic results, too!
We’ll be sharing more tips about including Pinnable images on your website and blog, but as a quick refresher, these should be tall images (735px x 1104px to 2061px).
I’ve put together a guide for you to create your own outline for your boards on Pinterest. Within this guide, think about the keywords you would expect someone to use to find this board (you’ll want to include these keywords in both the Pin Descriptions and in the Board Description), the Topics you want to include in the board (for example I group all social media together rather than having a board for each network), and your goals for the board with how frequently you hope to pin to the board so you can keep consistent.
Is 2018 your year to tackle social media and create campaigns that your business benefits from it? If you answered YES!, this blog post is for you! We will review common mistakes businesses make as they craft social media campaigns, tips to use as you are defining your goals, and 5 measurable goals you can use to determine whether or not your social media campaigns are effective.
A Common Mistake Businesses Make…
Jumping into social media without identifying goals or measuring successes is a common mistake many businesses make and it leads to a very frustrating social media experience. Many who jump into social media for business without a goal or without a plan tend to throw up their hands and give up stating that they threw away their money and social media just doesn’t work! Don’t let this happen to you! Read on…In this article, we will explore 5 of the most common goals people measure when using social media.
“What gets measured, it what gets done”
Measurement is the key to anything you do! If you can measure your social media progress and outcome, you will know the strategies and tactics to put in place
Here are some tips and things to think about before setting goals for your social media campaigns:
- Make sure your social media campaign goals are in line with your overall business goals
- Select different goals for different social platforms – not all platforms will yield the same results
- Select goals that make sense for the social media platform you are using
- Choose goals that are measurable
- Track your progress
What Should Your Goals Be For Social Media?
5 sound goals you should set and strive and how to measure them are listed below:
- Brand Awareness – Brand awareness can be measured in terms of:
- Fan followers. Create a stair-step approach when it comes to tracking brand awareness. A common goal to start with is to gain your first 100 followers and build from there.
- Reach – how many people did your message reach (a popular Facebook statistic)
- Mentions – how many times is your brand tagged or talked about in other social media posts
- Shares – how many times were your posts shared
- Website Traffic – Make sure your web designer has installed Google Analytics on your website. This will help you track how much traffic is coming from social media platforms and channels. Monitor the progress on a consistent basis and set goals based on the traffic trends you see.
- Website Loyalty – How loyal are your customers? Do they review what you are talking about on social media and then click through to your website to get more? Google Analytics can help you measure repeat visitors.
- Brand Engagement – This is a popular social media result that many measure. Based on the comments, likes, and interactions your brand receives you will be able to understand how your brand is perceived, the level of brand loyalty your company has, and the community your brand is building.
- Conversions – How many people saw your social media posts and then converted into paying customers. Again, this will be measured by Google Analytics, letting you know how many sales were a result of your social media campaigns.
There are many more things you can measure through social media. It all depends on why you are there. It could be anything from “How many times did my phone ring?” to “How many people clicked through to my lead generation form?” Take the time to really think about why you want to be on social media. Once you determine why you want to be there, build your campaigns around the reason.
Need help tracking your results? Download our tracker by clicking HERE.
Setting your social media goals can be difficult. Often times we focus only on making money through social media, but this leaves so much less on the table. In fact, when we only consider making money through social media, we forget about all other aspects of a sales process, specifically lead nurturing and education.
This video covers some of the common social media goals that you can choose for your focus and how to turn them into SMART goals. I also go into which tracking tools you can use for measuring your results and, my most important piece of advice with social media… to have fun!
Are you tired of going through hundreds of websites each week to find content to share or write about? These two free tools will help you get your industry new at your fingertips!
Feedly
The content you need to accelerate your research, marketing, and sales.Feedly allows you to become a smart reader with less noise!
Google Alerts
Monitor the web for interesting new content. How often. As-it-happens. At most once a day. At most once a week. Sources. Automatic. News. Blogs. Web. Video. Books. Discussions. And much more!