Why Pinning is all the craze: Understanding Pinterest

By Helen Kruger (@Lanikruger)

There is little doubt that Pinterest http://pinterest.com/ is THE social media network of 2012. Suddenly it’s in every social media blog, is creeping into Facebook feeds and has been touted as the new social media addiction – all while brands are still trying to work out what it means for them.

Launched in March 2010 Pinterest is now the 3^rd most popular U.S. social networking site after Facebook and Twitter¹. It’s rise has been meteoric: 866% growth in unique visitors in the 6 months to Feb 2012, 50% growth in traffic from Jan to Feb 2012 and an average of 1.36 million users daily^2,3. And with a company goal to “…connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting…” it seems they intend to keep growing.

Unlike most start-ups Pinterest’s growth hasn’t come from a young male geek following; instead, its strength is in women. 68.2% of users are female, 50% have kids and 50% are aged between 25 and 44 years³. A staggering 97% of Pinterest’s Facebook fans are female³.

So what actually happens on there? The site is built on the belief that “…a favorite book, toy or recipe can reveal a common link between two people…” Acting as a virtual pin board it allows users to ‘pin’ and share images from the web they find useful, inspiring or interesting. And it is addictive! Browsing through other users’ ‘boards’ leads into a labyrinth of images, photos, ideas, recipes and products you can’t do without.

Reflecting its origins as a crafting and fashion site Pinterest’s top three categories are Home, Arts & Crafts and Style & Fashion. However it is the fourth category, Food & Drink, which is the one to watch. By far the most shared category it generates 50% more ‘repins’ than anything elseand is rated their main area of interest on the siteby 70% of users ^4,5,6.

Pinterest is seen as a source of inspiration and discovery, which means it delivers a very high conversion rate. It generates more referral traffic than LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube combined and almost a quarter of users have purchased something they have seen on someone else’s board^3,6.

But while there are exciting opportunities for brands that can align with users’ interests, Pinterest should be approached with moderation.

Some guidelines:

• Don’t treat your account like a sales catalogue. Set up boards on interests relating to your product but pin images of your products sparingly and, instead, add value with related topics. For example a winery may pin images of recipes to go with their Shiraz, or images of tourist attractions near their cellar door.
• When you do pin your products make sure you add a price banner. This is done by including a $ or £ followed by the number amount in the description.
• Make it look appealing! Pinterest is visual medium so if your boards and pins don’t look beautiful no one will look twice.
• Use the Pinterest Goodies on your website. The Follow Button invites people to follow your Pinterest account and the Pin-it Button invites people to pin images from your site. Codes for both can be found at http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/
• If you want to check whether people have pinned something from your website, or any other site, go to http://pinterest.com/source/yoursitename.com

Used innovatively Pinterest offers brands a uniquely powerful platform to engage customers. To show you just how powerful, we will leave you with the Kotex campaign – an impressive example of personalized marketing.

The Tools

How to Set-Up a Business Account⁷

In the social media space it is worth registering your brand name and claiming the real estate, even if you don’t intend to use it yet.

1. Pinterest is still invite-only so you need to either be invited by an existing user (the fastest way) or request an invite on the login page http://pinterest.com/. Let us know if you need an invitation so you can start pinning
2. Sign up is via Facebook or Twitter but as Pinterest won’t accept a Facebook page the only option for businesses is through their Twitter account.
3. In Settings enter an email/password login so future logins don’t have to be through the Twitter account.

Glossary of Pinterest Terms

• Pin: An image added to Pinterest. It can come from a website or an upload of your own images.
• RePin: Adding an image that is already on Pinterest onto your own board. The original pinner is credited as the source of the link and credit is retained no matter how often it is repinned.
• Board: A collection of Pins. Boards can be created for any topic and there is no limit to the number of pins they contain.
• Bookmarklet: Install the “Pin It” button on your bookmarks bar so you can pin directly from the web without going through Pinterest. http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/

A note on copyright: This aspect of Pinterest is still contentious. There are questions around whether a brand could fall foul of copyright law by pinning images that they do not own or reference properly. If you have any concerns it is best to seek legal advice before proceeding and where possible reference where you get your photos from if they are not your own.

If you love food and wine – join in the fun and follow Trish’s Food and Wine Boards - http://pinterest.com/trishbarry

References

1. The 2012 Digital Marketer: Benchmark and Trend Report, Experian Marketing Services

2. http://mashable.com/2012/03/20/why-is-pinterest-so-addictive/

3. http://www.modea.com/blog/pinterest-infographic

4. http://go-digital.net/blog/2012/02/top-most-shared-category-on-pinterest-is-food-and-drink/

5. http://info.rjmetrics.com/blog/bid/53831/New-Pinterest-Data-What-s-Everyone-Pinning-About

6. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/03/28/survey-21-of-users-on-pinterest-have-purchased-an-item-that-they-found-on-the-site/

7. http://www.pinterestinsider.com/2012/02/how-to-set-up-business-page-on.html

Further Reading

http://pinterest.com/about/

http://mashable.com/2012/03/12/pinterest-food-marketing/ 8 Best Practices for Food Brands on Pinterest

What’s all the buzz about Instagram about?

There’s been lots of hype this week over Facebook’s $1billion acquisition of the 2-year-old photo sharing application Instagram. Whether the price tag is justified, this is one app to look further into. It’s been the #1 downloaded app on the apple istore this week and been an instant hit on Google play.

Over 30 Million people have used Instagram and download on their Iphone since the application launched in January 2011. It’s my favourite Iphone app by a long shot, but I know that for many of you reading this post, Instagram may not be an app that you’ve used as part of your social media tool kit. The good news is that Instagram is also now available for Android users too, so there’s a much greater audience who can use and share.

What is Instagram?

Instagram allows you to share your photos in a simple stream with friends to see. You can also play with the filters of the images to create better image effects and share instantly to facebook/ twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, Foursquare, Posterous etc.

You can follow other users’ photo stream and once followed their stream will appear on your news feed. You can also browse through the “popular” section to find users with similar interests to look at.

It’s also a great tool for creating content for those who are not avid tweeters or facebook users. You can download instagram on the phone of your winemaker, chef or staff who have access to content that can be shared in a visual format. Connect up your social networks, given them some brief training on the messages you’re trying to convey and you have a rich stream of photo content to access.

It’s as simple as taking the photo, applying the relevant filters, putting a description and hash tags and then you can send to your social media networks. The integration of Instagram photos within a facebook feed is also a huge benefit – the photos display in a large format and much more of a feature than using twitpic on your facebook page.

Ways to get the most out of using the app

• Play with the filters – test out what different filters look like on your photos and work out which ones you prefer and which give the best visual effects.
• Add Hashtags to your posts – it’s a way of finding other like-minded people on Instagram, but be specific in your hash tags to make it easier to find.
• Follow people with similar interests
• Geotag your photos – Like using hashtags, geotagging provides another data point that can be used to categorize and display content.
• Pay attention to what works -occasionally looking at the popular photos gives you an idea about what people want to see and what is most popular.

Some other Instagram related tools/ sites you might not have known about.

There’s literally hundreds of Instagram related sites to help you manage and monitor your Instagram photos stream. Here’s just a few you may like to look into further.

• Searching for users or Hashtags – http://searchinstagram.com – Allows you to search for users, hash tags and display these images
• Viewing Instagram via the web and searching from your desktop (remember this was designed as a mobile platform) -http://extragr.am/ or http://web.stagram.com/
• Backing up Instagram Photos – Instatport helps you download to your desktop http://instaport.me/
• Photo Gallery – http://listagr.am – browse the life of your friends through a series of pictures on Instagram. It searches the Instagram user’s public photo archive from the URL of one photo and shows like Flickr’s photo stream.
• The analytics behind your Instagram Account – http://statigr.am/ – Allows you to look at some of the analytics of your account – who has commented, who follows you etc. There’s also a cool tool to allow you to create a facebook cover of your 50 last instagram photos.

 Why not follow me on Instagram?  Instagram.com/Trishbarry

The 9 things you MUST do to succeed online

This is a guest blog by Craig Wilson – doing great things with the NLYZR product that’s worth checking out to provide solutions for effective search engine results for your website. He’s a go to source for online information, so thought would be useful for him to share a few tips…

The advent of the web, search engines and social media networks has revolutionised marketing. While once we had to rely on outbound tactics like advertisements and direct mail, now we can utilise the more measurable and effective inbound marketing approach.

Here are the nine steps we use at Sticky for a successful inbound marketing plan:

1. Create content

Content is central to any good social media plan. You don’t attract traffic, comments, support or donations if you don’t have information or content as the lure.

Original content is material you might create in-house. It could be a news story, information piece, blog post, video or images. It doesn’t have to be lengthy material, in most cases shorter is better. But it does need to be regular material.

2. Post content

Your website should be the main location for posting content. Regular content drives regular traffic to that site. It creates return habits and subscriptions.

3. Optimise content

Every piece of content is another potential search result on Google, Bing and Yahoo. Optimizing each post, news item, image or video provides you with another opportunity to be found in relevant searches. By optimizing all your content for your target keywords you can substantially increase traffic. I believe so strongly in the importance of search engine optimization I launched a new business, www.nlyzr.com, dedicated to making it as easy as possible for small business owners.

4. Promote content

Once content is published and optimised on your chosen site, it’s time to promote it to your social networks. Word your message carefully. Use strong descriptions, emotive language and ask for action. The right wording can drive very strong responses. If you get a poor initial response, review the wording and try again.

5. Enable social sharing

Its crucial to make it as easy as possible for viewers to share your content with their followers and friends. Embed Twitter ReTweet and Facebook Share buttons on each post on the website. Consider other social network share options at the bottom of each post on your website (there are dozens of them) to make it easy for people to spread to their favourite networks.

6. Ask for action

If you don’t ask, you rarely receive. Depending on the nature of the content you are promoting you could ask for comments, feedback, to sign-up as supporters, to share your information or even (drum roll please) to purchase.

7. Monitor traffic and comments

Once content has been published and promoted you must ensure that you follow the ensuing activity, especially in the initial period when traffic will be highest. This is the time to engage with your audience and build the relationships.

8. Study results

Study the analytics of all your sites and social networks to see what works and what doesn’t. This will help inform future efforts. Your online efforts must have goals and these results are the way you measure them.

9. Repeat process

The most important thing is to be consistent and have a long-term view. Good inbound marketing has a cumulative effect and requires regular attention.

Repeat these steps frequently.

BIO:

Craig Wilson is founder of Sticky, a digital agency based in Newcastle, Australia and new Website Optimization System NLYZR.

Craig is a contributor to the collaborative series of world-wide marketing books The Age of Conversation 1, 2, 3, recent contributor to the Australian Govt’s National Cultural Policy and is often called on by media to comment on industry news.

Making the most of the Rose Revolution in bars, restaurants and retail

GET ON BOARD THE ROSE REVOLUTION – CELEBRATING DRY, PURPOSE MADE ROSE WINES

There’s a real movement happening to educate consumers about dry, purpose made Rose: The Rose Revolution! A great wine style, appropriate all year round but for those of us in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s a particularly exciting wine as we come into Summer.

There’s been lots of information circulated about how producers can come on board, but probably even more opportunities for bars, retailers and restaurants to come on board and grow your rose sales at a high margin.

HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED

There’s a range of activities planned to help spread the word about dry rose over the next few months. Kick off is 10 November with a global tweet up promoting dry, textural Rose wines. This is not just a one day event though, the momentum will continue until the end of April 2012 with a range of fun events being planned.

Some ideas on how you can make the most of the Rose Revolution in your venue:

• Organise a tasting or rose dinner on 10 Novemberto taste and tweet – join in all the fun and pour some great rose whilst watching the tweets with #roserev. A great way to get people along to your venue, put up a big screen, encourage people to come dressed in pink and get involved in the fun.
  • There will be free tastings held from 5-7pm at many venues and then Rose Soiree Parties and an Australia wide tweet up from 7.30pm AEST. If you’re holding a tasting and want to accept samples, let me know and i’ll add you to the list of addresses
  • Promote dry Rose by the Glass– talk to consumers about this style of wine – put on some by the glass specials.
  • Use geo-location programs like Four Square to set up a four square check in special for your venue using a glass of dry rose as an incentive
  • Host a Rose dinner or function – the versatility of dry rose lends itself to tapas plates, paella,  charcuterie plates, seafood – almost anything matches well with rose, particularly Spanish and Mediterranean styled foods.
  • List your event up on Meet up so we can drive consumers along to participate http://www.meetup.com/Rose-Wine-Revolution/events/32266682/
  • Serve flights of rose wine – rather than a standard glass, why not think about offering tasting selections of different dry roses to help consumers explore this style.
  • Take some photos and get social. The Rose Revolution facebook page has over 1200 fans and we’d encourage you to post your photos up on the page, or tweet about what you’re hosting using #roserv.

There’s a range of purpose made point of sale designed to help draw attention to the campaign in your venue – post cards, decals, banners, posters.  Have a look at some of the examples here. Our core supporters have all this information for you to use.

If you’re really serious about joining the Rose Revolution, you can also get your logo up on the Rose Revolution website as a core supporter for a nominal cost. Details here

If you’re holding a rose event or special, email Rose_revolution@debortoliwines.com.au and we’ll get the information posted up on the facebook page and website.

REVOLUTIONARY WINERIES

Have a look at who the core supporters are, talk to your wine reps about any special offers they might have and other ways to get involved.

Vive la Rose Revolution!

Looks aren’t everything: Why your website should still be the core of your online strategy

Originally published in WBM Wine Magazine – August 2011

A website should be one of the core assets at the centre of your brand’s communication mix. In fact, it’s imperative. However, gone are the days where a website is purely an online company ‘brochure’ outlining your products and services. Whilst these sites may look good initially, you won’t get you repeat visitors who are engaging and interacting with your brand. Online experts like Chris Brogan and Darren Rowse believe that a website should be the “hub” of any business’s marketing communications plan and be a ‘home base’ to which other platforms drive people to.

If you’re thinking about launching a new website here are a few tips to consider to ensure your website is effective and driving maximum returns for your business:

• Content is king – before you launch straight into the design you need to carefully consider your key messages and how you are going to create content that is compelling and useful to the end user. Coming up with a map of the content and a site map structure upfront is critical so you are clearly aware of what information needs to be incorporated. Too often businesses launch their websites as if it is a brochure and then never update it. Regular updates and information are imperative to ensure an on-going user experience. Allocating resources and time to continually update your website on a regular basis will reap results.
• Appropriate tone and language – it’s worth investing some money into the getting professional help to develop the content for your website once key messages have been identified. Professional copywriters can add a lot of value in getting your messages clear and to communicate your story. An outside perspective is often useful to ensure clarity.
• Take the time to write a brief – spending the time up front thinking about your objectives and writing a strong digital creative brief will give you a stronger and more effective outcome. This will help the designers to understand exactly what you want to achieve and benchmarks for them to provide the best solutions. Key questions to consider might be:
•   Do you want to have transactions on the website? What look and feel are you thinking of? Who is your key target market? What images need to be incorporated? What words are important for search engine optimisation? All these elements need to be part of an agency brief.

• It’s worth also looking around at competitor websites (both inside and outside of your business category) and giving your agency or designer some insight into what you like and dislike about these sites and why. The creative process can often be extremely subjective so it’s useful for designers to understand your style.
• A flashy design is not always best – Some of the best websites I’ve seen and interacted with recently are actually premium WordPress themes allowing you to keep content up to date and giving the brand a consistent look and feel but without the cost of a custom build. You don’t necessarily need to spend a lot of money on a website to always achieve a great outcome.
• The right web partner is fundamental to success - Consider whom you are working with and what your relationship is like, as these people will ultimately be the ones you need for support and update in the future. A cheap price doesn’t mean you will get the best of service, and furthermore an expensive price doesn’t mean you will get the best of quality. Spend the time understanding what the costs are, both upfront and ongoing.
• Integrate relevant plug-ins to keep consumers coming back – As much as we’d like to think people will regularly visit our website, you need to give consumers a reason to keep returning. This means incorporating a way for people to sign up – either via e-newsletter updates driving them back to your website for more information, RSS feeds and social media links. You might have the best looking website in the world but if no one is visiting it then it is worthless.
• Consider the old age battle of .HTML vs Flash.  These days there are plenty of alternative software programs that mimic flash are viewable in all browsers. Flash can’t be seen on lots of devices so whilst it may look good when shown to you on a PC, it’s not a great user experience when they can’t see your content from the Internet via a Smartphone or via ipads.
•  Domain name ownership – search for the domain name and think broader than your local market. Don’t just look for a .com.au domain name if you’re based in Australia – see who owns the global domain names and for a small investment it’s worth purchasing others and redirecting them to your own site so you control your domain in key markets.
• Have patience and be realistic – Make sure you establish objectives and conduct appropriate research before rushing in and getting a site built. Think long term and not just about your immediate needs as it will cost you more in the long run to keep adding to a site when you could have longer term functionality built upfront that can be turned on at a future date.
• Track and measure – free analytics tools like Google Analytics will allow you to measure how people are interacting with your site so you can optimise and refine.

Most importantly, continue to think about how you’ll use your website as part of your ongoing communications plan and provide relevant and timely information to the various stakeholders who are visiting it. This might man having a separate section for the trade or media with links where they can find useful information. Think outside the box and continue to challenge how you can engage your audience and create a memorable experience with your brand.

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