Author: Alex

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Pinterest Tips

Guerrilla Marketing Tips for Pinterest

Guerrilla marketing tips
Guerrilla Marketing Tips For Pinterest

So without going into lengthy and useless words and phrases, we are going to draft out essential marketing tips which can ACTUALLY do wonders for your business.

Pinning & Integrate

Make sure that your account is set up properly and that it is branded with your logo, also remember to create boards that would interest your target customers, especially the ones in your industry. It is extremely important to integrate Pinterest with other social media platforms.

There are a few perks to cross linking your different social networks. First off, linking your you social networks will keep your customers abreast of your progress and your brand identity. Moreover, you can (and must) pique your customer’s interests. Share a cool little montage featuring your products on YouTube or a use-based post on Facebook.

Simple. Effective. And minimal (do not overdo it!). 

Participation is Key

Make it a rule to comment, and interact. That would mean, liking other pins and tagging other pinners by mentioning their names. A simple ‘Thank you’ can take you a long way in terms of customer goodwill.

Customer engagement could be increased by running contests, extracting user-generated content or jumping into customer forums and groups. All of these 3 options have their own pros and can significantly improve your Pinterest views and results.

Beware the Copyright!

It is vital that you are not pinning images that have copyright. If you do, then make sure you have permission and always remember to mention your source. Pinning copyrighted images without mentioning the source can get you into legal troubles.

Generate Interesting Pins

Being an entirely visual medium, Pinterest requires a constant input of high-quality images. Add images of your products, related to your products, images highlighting your products. Then add some images of your product’s habitat ie How the product would look in a real (customer-oriented) setting. Create an assortment of appealing images.

This would help you create an organized, enticing collective of your boards and pins, which in turn would pull your audience to your boards, hopefully amounting to a purchase.

As for ‘Interesting‘, you need to post images that connect with your audience, reflects their interests and map the current trends. Posting images that are aesthetically pleasing and relate to your customer’s wants (research, fellas!) will pull your audience to you boards ans eventually your website.

Create and Curate

It is better to curate other users’ quality images rather than just re-churning your images. Collaborative sharing of their quality images and photos can be mutually beneficial. This is where you can leverage Pinterest’s repin feature to collect pins related to your product.

Curate separate boards that outline your brand identity and motif. Avail a possible opportunity to co-brand your product with other services. The possibilities are endless. Just remember to use quality images for your pins.

Optimize Search Engines

Google keeps a track of fresh content and monitors social signals. By optimizing your pins with hashtags, links, categories and keywords, you can get yourself into Google’s good books, that is, on top of a search result. It is imperative to pin images and content directly from your website. Pinterest can bring back a lot of hits to your website- if you connect it properly.

Apart from a regular search, you need to optimize Pinterest SEO to feature in Pinterest search results. Here a few quick tips to ace Pinterest SEO –

  • Optimize your profile – Pick a right username, the one that reflects your product or activity.
  • Optimize your boards – Curate your boards. Pick images to reflect the content present in your Pinterest boards. Choose a succinct title as well.
  • Use Keywords  – Perform some extended research for keywords associated with your brand. You can try Viralwoot’s Pinterest analytics to select niche keywords to potentially feature in several thousands of search results.

Evaluate Your Traffic

This is the best and most basic way to find out what works, and what doesn’t work for your website. It is also wise to monitor what your competitors and other brands are doing. You can learn a lot from your competition.

For updated on information on using this platform, take a look at our updated guide to Pinterest.

Categories
PInterest News

How to Increase Your Web Traffic Through Pinterest

Increase your web traffic through Pinterest
Increase your web traffic through Pinterest
Increase your web traffic through Pinterest

Pinterest is a social media behemoth that drives more online traffic than Reddit, Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn. This statistic was evident in 2012 when there were around 11.2 million Pinterest users. These days it boasts of over 100 million active users with several brands, small businesses and Pinterest enthusiasts in its user base.

Thus the potential of Pinterest in driving web traffic is quite apparent, especially for small scale businesses and Pinterest sellers.

Do you want to tap into the power of the visual discovery tool to increase your web traffic? Do you want to know how to use Pinterest to promote your business? Do you want to make your website more visible online and target the right customers at the right time using Pinterest?

If you too are like most business owners who want to make their online business a success, you must have answered “Yes” to all the questions above. But the question is how do you do it? That is the essence of the pitch we are making with this post.

We have compiled 3 actionable methods that you can implement to drive maximum online traffic from Pinterest.

1. Create a Board for Your Blog Posts

Consider creating a niche Pinterest board for your blog posts. This will extend the reach of your blogs to millions of Pinterest users. You must make the title of the Pinterest board the same as the blog page title. For example, if you have a clothing store, and you write blogs about designer clothes, you should name the Pinterest blog board similar to the website blog name such as “Best Style Clothing” or “Fashion World”.

Also, remember that when pinning your blog posts, you must:

  • Write a brief summary of the article – This would entail the necessary details related to the product/service;
  • Add a great image that represents your blog post – A graphic imagery will help pull people towards the post, considerably better than some bland letters;
  • Add a link directly to the blog article – Well you’d need to direct the blog to your site for a quick sign up or a trial.

You can reuse your blog post images as the pin. As long as the image conveys the idea of the post, you can use it as a pin image. An image that does not match the blog post can appear to be meaningless.

2. Add Your Website URL to your Pinterest Profile

Another way to drive traffic to your site using Pinterest is to add the website URL to your Pinterest profile. It will probably be the first thing that people will notice when they visit your Pinterest site. The link you include in the brand profile page will divert traffic to your site as people click on the link to learn more information about your products or services.

3. Add a Call to Action in Your Pins

Finally, you can add a call to action in your pin descriptions to drive maximum online traffic. A call to action in the image description like “Check out this page now”, or “Visit the site to find out more” would help generate traffic for your site as online users will be compelled to click on the link.

Adding a CTA exacts an action out of the customer. Even a simple CTA can make a customer feel more involved in the product pitch.

Pinterest, without any doubt, is a perfect online marketing platform for online businesses. With more businesses getting on the platform, it is incredibly important for you to . The more followers you have on Pinterest, the greater will be the reach and effectiveness of your online posts. You must know how to get more Pinterest followers to capitalize the most from the social media channel.

ViralWoot is a great online resource that you can use to increase the number of Pinterest followers on your account. Viralwoot enables you to promote, schedule, analyze and manage your Pinterest activities within a few minutes.

You can register for a free trial today to witness the utility of Viralwoot and see your website traffic grow in a short period of time.

Categories
Pinterest Tips

7 Steps to Improve Your Pinterest Visibility

7 Steps to Improve Your Pinterest Visibility

We have outlined seven Pinterest tactics gathered from successful social media practitioners guaranteed to raise your Pinterest visibility.

#1: Price Tags

godiva earrings pin

Ensure that your products are labeled with their price information. More often than not, product cost occupies top priority for mental note-taking amongst the customers. Since pins are more easily and conveniently shared by users, driving traffic to your site might as well bring you customers ready to purchase.

Apart from that, Pinterest offers a thematic product display in a very convenient and organized manner. Therefore, this catalog with a price tag on each product can help you direct sales from Pinterest.

Of course, provide a holistic mix of creativity, inspiration and product details so your brand does not get labeled instantly to be purely sales oriented.

(Tip from Ekaterina Walter, co-founder and CMO of Branderati and bestselling author of the Power of Visual Storytelling)

#2: Pin It for Later

one red lipstick

You can help your readers bookmark your articles quickly and easily through your “Pin it for later” link for later reading.

All you have to do is include not just a link to the blog post but also your “Pin it for later” link on your Google+ post. This works best if added at the end of the write-up or the bottom of the Google+ post.

(Tip from Brian Honigman who is a social media enthusiast, a freelance writer, and a marketing consultant.)

#3: Mixing Pinterest with Emails

michaels on pinterest

What better way to keep your readers posted but to include a screenshot or link of your Pinterest account in their email inbox? This is definitely an easy and direct way to connect your reader to all your Pinterest boards and products. Adding “Pin this” to your post will open more positive responses now that your pins are more within reach.

(Tip is from Jason Miles who is Liberty Jane Clothing co-founder and CEO and author of no less than the #1 bestselling book about Pinterest marketing– Pinterest Power.)

#4: Most Popular Group Boards

pingroupie

Entering group boards is another fool-proof way of guaranteeing repins, followers and traffic and this can be done with PinGroupie which is a hassle-free tool in finding boards that would best help you.

On PinGroupie’s home page, fill out the search fields then choose a specific category that is aligned with your Pinterest categories. Then sort according to which parameter you wish to filter. What is highly recommended is to sort according to the number of repins because this helps in ascertaining the traffic to the board. Once all of the above are done, click “Filter” and the group boards will be sorted accordingly.

(Tip is from the author of White Paper Marketing and founder of Social Marketing Writing, Mitt Ray.)

#5: Promote

gap on pinterest

Cross-promoting your account profile can be done via other social media platforms. Try to be up to date and capitalize on a newly created board or pin, the latest trend or a holiday.

You can keep your followers and subscribers posted by tweeting about Pinterest at least two times a week and posting on Facebook at least once every two weeks. Or you may also just add a free Pinterest app on your Facebook account. Profile widgets and “pin it” buttons embedded on your images also do the trick.

(Tip is from HelloSociety’s Social Media Manager, Zoe Waldron.)

#6: Blog Boards

grandimage pinboard

Blog boards allow your followers to be informed every time you post a new blog on your board. Using relevant keywords can help you get featured in the search results.

Once you’ve created a post, pin it to your board and include some brief information. Add a link to the post itself and a high-quality image to attract more audience.

(Tip is from Anna Francis is the Content Manager at My Social Agency.)

#7: Pin Alerts to track Pinners

pinalerts

Tracking people who pin items from your competitor’s website can actually be an opportunity for you to find new leads. Pinalerts helps you find the pinners by setting alarms when a certain items are pinned from a specific domain.

From here, you can do your reviewing of a pinner’s followers, boards and number of pins. Remember, the higher the number, the more active the pinner. And that’s the lead you want to follow. By the way, we created a guide on using Pinterest, for those who are getting started.

(Tip is from the founder of RazorSocial, Ian Cleary.)

Categories
Etsy Marketing Marketing Small Business

How to get more traffic to your Etsy store?

How to get more traffic to your Etsy store?

How to get more traffic to your Etsy store?

A common question and a confusing one at that!

Getting traffic to an Etsy store is surprisingly tricky and is often unyielding. This is because it is difficult to gauge the customer sentiment and gain a sustainable traction at the beginning of the Etsy journey.

With that aspect in mind, we’ve prepared a little cocktail of certain steps and methods that a frustrated Etsy seller could follow to get some definitive traffic to their Etsy stores.

So, without further ado, let’s look at some of the best way(s) to get quality traffic to an Etsy store –

Cross channel promotions

Cross channel promotions involve advertisement, organic promotions and marketing on different channels. Feature your products on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and Youtube – creating a comprehensive outlook for your products.
Moreover, using a cross channel promotion strategy can help you gauge any interested users on the distinct platforms and make considerably higher sales.

Here are a few to-dos when working on Cross platform promotions –

  1. YouTube: Place your product in a conducive environment. Possibly one that complements the product and highlights its needs and working. For example – You could showcase a Blender in a kitchen. How it so easy to use it and how it’s so gorgeous and worth the customer’s time.
    Or, presenting a curtain in a posh house and how buying it would decorate the customer’s living room. Create a montage that’ll entice the audience. Tell a story if you feel it aligns with your product marketing.
  2. Pinterest: Pinning images of the products, with the prices. Create boards, join groups and pitch your product in a subtle manner. Do not make a hard sell.
  3. Instagram: Another image centric platform. Use it to display your images in a holistic manner. Adhering to the trends and the desires of the audience. Your image quality and personality matters the most. So, pick a customer persona and pitch them your product. You can also showcase a person using the product in their own habitat.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is basically getting hold of an Influencer (a person to whom people listen to, atleast when it comes to a service/product) and asking them to pitch your product to their followers.

It may be a little conceited but Influencer marketing helps your product gain a spotlight (for a short period of time). This can help boost customer confidence in your product and let you bask in the glory of increasing sales while you work on your store.

Oh and a radical, highly-followed influencer will cost more. So try and strike a balance between the expense and the expectations.

Etsy optimization: Keywords, Search, SEO

Kind of a No brainer. You need to pitch your customers (prospects really as they haven’t purchased your products yet). To pitch in a manner that isn’t blunt nor too vulgar, you must write the right copy, post the right clicks and target the right audience (can’t be targeting bikers for Hello Kitty aprons, unless you want to create a new market segment).

Etsy offers quite a lot of tools for Etsy sellers to increase their sales. Get a hang of these tools and create your own niche. Once you do that, you can expand your product line and pitch more products to your customers.

So, this aspect covers the Etsy quotient of pulling traffic. As a pre-cursor to Etsy marketing, store optimization also helps you to select your target audience, know your competition and mainly strategizing your approach to the market. Simple enough? Okay. Forward march!

Co-branding

An astonishingly under rated and grossly misused component of Marketing (on Etsy, on Social media or on the TV!). Co-branding offers logically limitless avenues of growth and sales to the market collaborators.

First – What is Co-branding?

It is the conjoined pitch of two products that complement each other. Think of Nike shoes going with a can of Redbull. Fascinating, right? Co-branding helps both the parties pitch each other’s customers and create a whole new marketing component.

Thus co-branding helps to exploit the market and any unreachable crevices in it. Mutually beneficial arrangement – like lichen!

[Tweet “Co-branding can help you find new markets, boost awareness and raise sales without greater efforts. “]

One more thing: The co-branded products mustn’t be competitors. This’ll blow up the entire premise of Co-branding.

Utility marketing

Pitch something useful. Please? Utility marketing moulds itself around the customer’s requirements and needs. Something really useful to your customers. That’s why it is essential to research your customer segment.

Unless of course if you are selling sweetened water. That’s a whole new field. (a subtle jab!)

Utility marketing also convenes a rather simple message – Find an intersection between your customer’s personality, needs and desires. This won’t necessarily boost your Etsy sales instantaneously, but forge a strong foundation for your brand. Apart from this, Utility marketing also helps in –

  • Building brand loyalty: You do not come off as a frivolous brand with bad products. Using utility marketing you can drive the customer sentiment in your favor.
  • You do not make a direct sales pitch: You interact and inform your customers about the product line concerned. This shapes your brand as a reliable resource of information and a possible seller. Oh and it also helps you get discovered in the market.
  • Establishes your brand identity: Makes your brand name relatable to the product line in question.

There! We’ve presented you a small list of things you can do to boost traffic to your Etsy stores. This list is absolutely not exhaustive and will change from the insights gained from customer and market analysis. We will strongly recommend you to tinker with your Etsy marketing. Keep a few ideas consistent and experiment with your presentation and methodology. Once you do that, it’ll be fairly easier for you to understand your customers.

You’ll begin to be an expert in the subject and obviously reach your future sales goals at warp speed!

Categories
Instagram tips Marketing Others Social Media Tips

Outreach and Marketing Using Instagram Direct

It has been 3 years since the much-awaited feature ‘Instagram Direct’ was released for use. This handy feature, allows a user to share a picture, video, profile or location with an individual or a group of people (maximum 15). It is estimated that nearly 100 million people use this service every month, nearly a fifth of the number of total users per month.

outreach and marketing using instagram direct

This feature offers functionalities similar to those offered by Social Media newcomer Snapchat. The good news for marketers, though, is that it can ease life substantially by providing another platform to improve your outreach and disseminate information.

Ahead, I have presented some tips and tricks to help you employ Instagram Direct for your marketing jobs and needs. A few advantages of using Instagram Direct are

These points make the Instagram Direct feature a very attractive and effective tool for any marketer.

Let’s get into some more ways in which you, as a marketer, can use this feature to the best of its abilities.

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner!

Ah! Who doesn’t love a contest! A chance to win and feature on a social channel in front of several people. Oh the adulation! It is basic human instinct and slight greed that makes a competition so attractive and popular. A marketer’s job is to give the customer what he wants, and adhering to that policy, contests should be held regularly.

One of the biggest advantages of holding a contest is the outreach and exposure your brand can get. Customers subconsciously remember the brand organizing the contest they enter, especially if they win. It is a win-win situation for both the marketers and the customers.

Word of mouth subsequently spreads the brand name even more and makes the advertising job of the brand or product much easier. Instagram Direct is the perfect medium for connecting with your customers, individually or in a group.

Let me give you an example of how you can connect with your customers and engage them in your contests using Instagram Direct. You can send an image of a product to a select few and ask the user to think of a tagline for that product. The best 10 taglines will get that product for free!

contest

Alternatively, you can hold public contests, in which say, the first 10 commenters for a picture each day, will get entry into a lucky draw. If you are able to, ask customers to post pictures which include your product and special hashtags. The best pictures will be judged its owner will be awarded a prize. You can even use the photos further for a marketing campaign or just to show customer involvement on your Instagram page.

For Your Eyes Only

Customers love it when exclusive products are released. Limited edition products sell almost instantly and satiate the customer’s hunger for new products. Everyone wants something unique. This makes our work easier. Just make sure that when you release such products, you advertise them judiciously since over-advertisement decreases their appeal.

Instagram Direct is perfect for such purposes. You can use it to contact an individual or a small group of people, maximum of 15. Give users a sense of exclusivity and make them feel special. Sneak peeks to the latest product might be just the thing you might be missing.

Before launching the product in the market, send a sneak-peek to around 100 customers. These customers will feel valued and special. Word of mouth has been known to be the best form of spreading information and guarantees a high conversion rate. Organic recommendations lead to many more sales and brand reach, without the hard work.

Choose the users carefully and send them just a sneak peek, make sure that they will be interested to know more. Don’t mention too many details about the product, which can bore a user. Send an attractive image with a catchy tagline and a link to the product page. Your users will surely want to know more.

Word of mouth is probably the biggest weapon you have in your arsenal. Your product will spread like wildfire if you have targeted the right users. When sending a sneak peek always provide a link to the product page in case a user wants to know more.

Listen To Your Customers

The attribute provides a user-friendly dais for identifying your network on a personal level and creating conversations about the brand, owing to the comments that are visible to everyone included in the direct message. You can always take a list of users to choose between two products that are featured in a picture or as for their feedback on the product line.

When a customer gives feedback asked by you in an exclusive way, it provides him/her a sense of appreciation and a sense of value which is a priceless asset for any brand.

customer service

Going through user profiles can also be beneficial. Search for hashtags related to your products or brand and spot users who have bought a product recently. You can thank them or communicate with them directly using Instagram Direct. This will really make the user feel special, improving your reputation as a brand.

Treat Your Loyal Followers

The most important aspect of marketing is to make the customer feel loved and serviced. Your brand updates and offers must be presented to your customers and loyal followers first

A simple way of identifying the low hanging fruit, or spotting the followers who have supported you regularly, is by using the popular website simply measured.

simply measured

This website offers great features related to the analytics of your social media accounts. It tells you about the followers who post your content, like your content or comment on your content regularly. It gives you a good idea of your most loyal followers and also provides additional information such as what time you should post your pictures and which location has the most active users.

Use these metrics to identify your die-hard followers and then communicate with them through Instagram Direct. Offer coupons and special offers to show your gratitude and thank the follower.

Small steps like these can be extremely beneficial in the future and ensure that your followers and fans feel loved and appreciated.

Check Out The Competition

A useful resource for understanding what your customers want is your competitor’s page. Browse through your competitor’s posts and search for users who are active and communicative. Also, judge the popularity of posts and determine what works.

Instagram Direct also allows you to send messages to users who are not following you. Try approaching new users via Instagram Direct and offer them an alternative to your competition.

More users, especially active ones, guarantee more engagement, activity and eventually sales.

Where You At?!

Location services on Instagram have totally changed the landscape. Sharing locations on Instagram is gaining more popularity day by day and has increased the effectiveness of posts.

location

A good example of how you can use locations to gather more interest and increase your exposure.

Images with locations receive more engagement than those without locations. This is because a person relates to a location more easily than he or she relates to a hashtag or a product.

location important

Users can search for images close to their geographic location and can add locations to any image. Adding a location gives your image another dimension of appeal to involve your audience.

So adding locations to Direct messages can also be very effective and efficient in involving your audience.

Use the tips mentioned above to make full use of Instagram Direct. This feature has a lot of potential, especially for marketers, and if you’re not already using it, you could be missing out on possibly 100s of followers. Just make sure not to over-message and annoy your audience.

The biggest advantage of using Instagram Direct is that it allows you to communicate with an individual user and also allows you to connect with a group of users and start a discussion.

Get with the times and start using Instagram Direct.