Five Steps to the Perfect Pin

Pinterest: It’s where people go to get inspired, to decide on a last-minute dinner or even to pick a cocktail to shake up that night. So why not add your brand to the mix? Content hits on Pinterest a little different than it does on the social media outlets. If you’re new to the Pinterest game, no problem. Check out these five easy tips and tricks to creating the perfect pin for your business.

1. Go Vertical: It’s time to ditch the horizontal, Facebook-friendly pictures and opt for vertical. Pins are organized into columns, so vertical images naturally take up more real estate. Make sure your brand or products are positioned well within the pin image.

2. Detail, detail, detail: Who posts on social without a description? That doesn’t stop at Pinterest. The description is where you want to insert relevant keywords.

3. Use Collages: Compelling images are must in a crowded space like Pinterest. Create a collaged pin that shows a few of your products instead of just one. Have three colors of one product? Show that. Pinners want to know what to expect before they click through, and the more interesting the photo, the more likely they'll click.

4. Text Overlay: Sometimes, an image needs a little help to get the point across. Enter text overlay. Adding helpful information onto your image gives a pinner all the more reason to save it.

5. Tasteful Branding: Lastly, you want to show off your brand, but in a decent and tasteful manner. Build awareness by using a simple watermark or your brand’s colors, so pinners know it’s coming from you.

And there you have it. You’re well on your way to becoming a Pinterest pro! What’s your favorite way to use Pinterest? Be sure to tell us in the comments below.

Promoted Pins - How to Advertise on Pinterest

I admit it...I was probably way too excited to try my first Promoted Pin, but then again when you're a social media dork, these things happen. Pinterest recently rolled out Promoted Pins, a similar product to Facebook's boosted posts or Twitter's promoted tweet. The premise is to extend the reach of your pinned content to relevant users on Pinterest.To set up the promoted pin go to https://ads.pinterest.com/ and log into your company's Pinterest account. You must tie a credit card to that account, so be sure to have an AMEX handy.

Once inside, Pinterest populates recent pins and you can select which one you want to promote. It didn't populate all my pins which was a tad annoying, but after scrolling through I found one that would work for my test. Pinterest does want you to promote original content that you own, which makes sense anyhow if the end goal is to get people to click back from the pin to your website.

Once you have a pin selected you can choose interests, geography (medium to large cities), device type and gender. At this time you can't select age.

You then set your maximum CPC, how long you want the campaign to run and your daily campaign budget. Since this was a test I ran it for two days with a maxiumum $5 daily budget and $1.50 CPC. I was out $10 at the very worst. Keep in mind, you only get charged when someone clicks on your pin to go to your website, so it is totally possible to run a campaign and not spend anything.

Since the spend was minimal I didn't see outrageous results, but I did see a definite spike in reach for the particular pin I promoted. I also found it interesting to see what keywords / interests drove the most views. Using that information you can create more pins and boards around keywords that did well.

Overall, setting up a Promoted Pin was just as easy as a Promoted Post on Facebook. Pinterest doesn't have the robust analytics that Facebook has but it is making strides. And at the end of the day, Promoted Pins are another indicator that all social will need to have paid "media" in the mix when you want to expand your reach.

Go on. Test it out. The platform is fairly intuitive and you can set up an ad buy for minimal cost. Let me know what you think.

Why Marketers Should Care About Pinterest's New Message Function

Pinterest has joined Instagram, Twitter and Facebook in the world of direct messaging. Users can now send direct messages to one another - share pins, boards and even group chat. Why should you as a marketer care?Contests: If you've ever tried to run a contest directly on Pinterest you've no doubt found some struggles trying to contact winners. Outside of tagging them and hoping they see the notification you didn't have a great way of getting in touch. Direct messaging solves this.

Customer Service: The new messaging service provides businesses with an opportunity to handle customer service (questions, complaints, ideas) in a more private manner.

Increased "Word of Mouth": It's now easier for users to recommend your product, recipe, design to their network of friends.

What other uses do you see for Pinterest Messaging?

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Do you really need Facebook ads? Yes.

Remember when Facebook ads used to be a nice to have? If you want to reach even a third of your fanbase those days are over. As Facebook decreases the organic reach of pages you can expect less than 10% of your fans to see your content. Here are a few strategies for tackling the ever decreasing organic reach. 

• Budget for ads. Simple enough. You need to carve out a certain amount of dollars to get the content that matters most in front of your fans. Whether that be specials sales or a new product. Consider boosting at least one post weekly to keep top of mind. The good news is you don't have to throw thousands of dollars behind a buy, depending on your audience size, sometimes $5 a post will do.

• Diversify. Sure Facebook-owned Instagram will probably follow suit in a year but in the meantime see what kind of organic exposure you can gain. Twitter has an ad product but as of now they aren't "editing" your stream the way Facebook does. That said the Twitter stream moves so quickly it self-edits in a way. Pinterest is testing ads and favoring those with a bit of development prowess - rich pins rule - but you don't have to advertise at this point in order to get seen.

• Create content your fans want to share. Even if a mere 5% of your fanbase is seeing it, if your content is good that 5% may share expanding your reach.

Why Pinning is Winning

Pinterest recently moved into the Number 3 spot for social networks, which means a newbie like Pinterest is actually doing better than a giant like Google+. Aside from the fact that it is one of the fastest growing websites to ever hit the interwebs, why should you care?

1. The studies are still rolling in, but Pinterest does an amazing job at driving traffic back to web sites. The whole point of Pinterest is to bookmark web sites, but bookmark them in a much more visually interesting way. Whereas Facebook tends to work inside its own eco-system and Twitter tends to link to more news sites and blogs, Pinterest is there to capture more of the lifestyle links. We aren't necessarily learning about the latest volcanic explosion as it happens, but we are able to see a really enticing recipe or cute new spring dress.

2. The visual world is becoming more important. We've seen that Facebook posts with images tend to perform better than text-only posts, but on Pinterest if you don't have a good visual, you really don't have much. Remember if you want people to be driven to your site, you have to host interesting visuals on your site. If you're a clothing store who is constantly updating new images and styles online you are set. For the rest of us, that's something to think about.

3. The big dogs are already jumping on board. Quite often you'll see these new networks that never go anywhere, but Pinterest was smart enough to leverage what is already working to gain a mass quantity of users quickly. (In order to create an account you are prompted to use your Twitter or Facebook log-in which then allows you to see which of your friends/followers are also on Pinterest). You'll also see that some companies, like Lowe's, have begun using the "P" logo on the bottom of their ads. It's fresh, it's new and it's very relevant to women in their 20s and 30s.

4. Facebook and Twitter have been very popular for a very long time, at least "long" in terms of the tech world. When you see a network explode in the way that Pinterest has, it is something to take notice. Inevitably, things are going to shift. I'm not saying Facebook is going away tomorrow by any means, but I do think Pinterest has made a big enough splash for you to think about the ways your business could leverage it.