Casey Higgins is an electronic marketing content specialist at the Virginia Tourism Corporation. Pinterest is a popular social media platform, with over 80 million registered users and 4 billion photos uploaded. Pinners are more likely to make purchases and spend more than users arriving from other social networks. When creating posts, marketers should be reasonable, use a calendar to schedule posts, only schedule in advance if necessary, create long-form content, and aim for "perfect posts" that will appeal to Pinterest's typical users who are mostly women aged 25-44, with many having children.
2. For Marketers: “Making your way in the world
today takes everything you’ve got.”
For Consumers: “You wanna be where you can see
our troubles are all the same. You wanna go where
everybody knows your name.”
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1. Be Reasonable
2. Calendar
3. Don’t Schedule, Unless …
4. Go Long
5. “The Perfect Post”
9.
10. 80% are women
50% have children
55% are aged 25 to 44
Pinners are 10% more likely to make a purchase than
users arriving to a Web site from another social media
platform.
Pinners spend 10% more than users arriving from
other social networks (including Facebook).
11. Mobile Devices Only
Integrates with Facebook,
Twitter and Tumblr
More Than …
80 Million Registered Users
4 Billion Photos Uploaded
5 Million Photos Uploaded/Day
Where can we, as marketers go to give it all we’ve got (mostly for free), and where can consumers go to see that their own troubles are like everyone else’s and be known by name?
Facebook – As of October 4, 2012 – 1 billion users actively using Facebook each month - http://newsroom.fb.com/News/One-Billion-People-on-Facebook-1c9.aspx Twitter – As of February 2012 – 500 million registered users - http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/500-million-registered-users_b18842 Instagram – As of July 26, 2012 – 80 million users have shared more than 4 billion photos - http://blog.instagram.com/post/28067043504/the-instagram-community-hits-80-million-users Pinterest – As of February 2012 – 20 million Google+ - As of September 17, 2012 – 400 million total users - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57514241-93/google-signs-up-400-million-users-with-100-million-active/ Identify your audience and meet them where they are. Yours may not be on all of these platforms; choose the one that best fits your need.
Basically, one can boil down the various social media platforms in this way. Image credit: http://www.coreysmith.ws/blog/social-media-explained-bacon
Erik Qualman is the author of Socialnomics.
Anatomy of a Post: there is an order to doing it right Photo Content URL Using @ to tag a page
Be Reasonable: Have reasonable expectations for performance of posts. Facebook’s algorithm makes you earn a spot in someone’s newsfeed, which means it may take a wahile for you to surface organically. Calendar: Plan but leave room. Depending on your audience size, you may want to only post 5/week or you might post as often as 3/day. The key is to not “cannabalize” the previous post. A post is considered “alive” as long as you still see activity. Be relevant and timely – don’t overlook holidays. According to Facebook, posts that acknowledged Independence Day on July 4 th generated 90% more engagement than all posts published that day. https://www.facebook.com/business/fmc/guides/bestpractices Don’t Schedule Unless: Facebook penalizes third party schedulers like HootSuite; they have their own built-in scheduler. The Facebook algorithm can tell if you’re posting from somewhere other than Facebook and they de-value the post, which keeps it from appearing as much as it could have. Might be convenient for you, but it’s actually working against you. Additional Rule of Thumb: Don’t schedule a post and then not be logged in to monitor comments. Go Long: Posts with complete, original (long) URLs see 3x more engagement than those with shortened URLs (i.e. bit.ly). It’s a trust issue for users. WHAT IS ENGAGEMENT? Likes, Comments and Shares, but there are quite a few formulas out there to tell you how to make sense of the numbers. Using this formula, the Gadsby Tavern post realized .13% engagement. Other major brands with this formula applied: Samsung Mobile USA: .176% McDonald’s: .180% Walt Disney World: .220% Disney: .255% Audi: .652% (out-performing Mercedes-Benz with .290%) Facebook Average Post Engagement Rate: http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/688-infographic-social-media-marketing-is-not-just-about-1-metric The Perfect Post: Users interact most with a short post (think Twitter’s 140 characters) + a great image. About Images: Don’t use thumbnails . Horizontals should be about 850 pixels wide x 400 pixels high . Attribute the image to the photographer if you don’t own it. Why do images work? Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm likes them: Posts with an album, photo or video generate 180%, 120% and 100% more engagement, respectively. https://www.facebook.com/business/fmc/guides/bestpractices 6. Choose Your Words: The right words solicit engagement. Action Verbs: Comment, Take, Submit, Like, Tell Us, Share “ Soft-Sells” for Sweepstakes: Win, Winning, Winner … Rather Than: Contest, Promotion, Sweepstakes, Coupon 7. Ask Questions: A question placed at the end of the post receives, on average, 15% more engagement. http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/improve-facebook-engagement/ 8. Let Them Do The Work: Try “caption this,” multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank types of posts to also increase engagement. According to Facebook, these requests for engagement generate about 90% more engagement than an average text post. https://www.facebook.com/business/fmc/guides/bestpractices 9. Show Off: Highlighting showcases your great images and those that are shared with you. Pinning to the top ensures that YOUR POST will always be the first one seen, rather than something someone else posted on your page. 10. And Then Show Me The …: In the end, it’s about the numbers, yes? What are you being expected to report – engagement? Number of likes, shares, comments, page fans? But before even that, what are you trying to do? What’s the ultimate goal? Success needs to be measured against YOUR goals. *Drive referrals *build awareness *customer service
Why should you pay attention to Pinterest? Just look at the categories. Architecture, Art, Film, Food & Drink, History, Holidays, Kids, Outdoors, Photography, Products, Sports and WEDDINGS – all apply to us, especially TRAVEL. People create bucket lists – don’t we want to be a bucket list item? 80% of pins are actually re-pins. The source of the image always follows the image. Should someone click on the image for more info, you get web traffic. http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/15/pinterest-users/
In February the stats revealed that Pinterest generates more traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIN combined. http://mashable.com/2012/02/01/pinterest-traffic-study/ As of March, Pinterest crept ahead of Twitter for referral traffic. http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/08/pinterest-now-generates-more-referral-traffic-than-twitter-study/ In July, it took out StumbleUpon, Bing and Google referral (not organic; includes searches through Google Groups or static pages on Google sites – not to include YouTube and Google+ which were accounted for in February). http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/09/pinterest-now-beating-google-referral-traffic-plus-bing-twitter-stumbleupon/ Pinterest’s estimated user base is 20 million, given the referral data available. Pinterest does not provide user numbers due to third-party resources. http://socialmediaandthebigw.com/?p=988 Demographic and purchasing stats: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33078/10-Pinterest-Infographics-Visual-Explanations-for-a-Visual-Social-Network.aspx Why does this matter to Virginia travel and tourism partners? The Pinterest demographic is exactly the same as the Virginia is for Lovers target demographic. Affluent mothers.
Usage Stats: http://instagram.com/press/ (as of 10/22/12) Launched 2010 Camera app for Apple and Android devices Click, filter and share seamlessly Keep your photos there or push them to Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr Profile – image, description, website Shoot an image, choose to filter or not. Add a caption, choose to map the location or not. Share it just to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr … or not. Two examples of Instagram pulled into Facebook Example of Instagram sent out to Twitter – use of hashtags