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Others Pinterest Marketing Social Media Tips

Why You Should Bother Building A Visual Identity on Pinterest!

Are you aware that, according to the 2018 Social Media Statistics, there 200 million monthly active users and 100 billion of Pins being created?The chances of your Pins being seen and clicked is low particularly if you don’t have enough followers, you’re not part of any board groups, and you don’t optimize your Pins for search.

The importance of having a consistent visual branding on Pinterest is in order for your target audience to instantly recognize you in a pile of visuals.

Let me give you a good example.

Aside from using it for work or marketing, I love going to Pinterest to find the usual stuff like outfit ideas, easy-to-do recipes, travel tips, and, of course, quotes.

Here’s an example of what my home page looks like as I am writing this piece:

 

why you should build a visual identity on Pinterest wordporn

Now for you, this may seem like bunch of visuals and you probably can’t even tell who made them. However, for me, there’s one visual (oops make that two) that stands out the most – the one inside the red square.

I can straight away tell that this picture quote is from Word Porn because of three reasons:

 

  1. They always use the same font which is a typewriter font.
  2. They always use the same background which is white.
  3. Their name is always included in the visual.

 

Suppose one day, they stop creating their quotes using one of these three, I think I won’t be able to recognize them. They’ll just be another random quote I see on Pinterest. Now, this is the main point and definition of branding: to make your entire self or company stand out from the others. As defined by Business Dictionary, branding means…

 

Branding

 

Visual Brand Consistency Examples on Pinterest

There are some visuals on Pinterest that whenever I see them, their name instantly pops into my head – with or without logo. You can take inspiration from these ones.

 

  1. Lauren Hooker – Elle & Company

Lauren Hooker

 

Just look at how creative entrepreneur, Lauren Hooker, does her Pinterest game. Not only can you see the similarities of the Pin images she makes, she also used them to create cohesiveness by using them as board image covers.

 

Board Image Covers

 

Lauren is consistent using:

 

  • The same font – a sans serif font
  • The same template which has a small rectangular shape at the bottom

 

If you’ll go to Lauren’s Pinterest page, you’ll see how she uses different colors. Nonetheless, I can recognize that the images are from her because the colors she use are soft and pastel like.

 

  1. My Five Acres

My Five Acres

 

Just like Instagram, Pinterest has a lot of users sharing content about travel and pictures of beautiful places. It’s no brainer, we love seeing photos of different places and country.

With all of the beautiful travel photos and tips I see, My Five Acres stands out the most for me because of how they do their visuals.

My Five Acre

My Five Acres is consistent using:

 

  • The same template (square around the top and small rectangular shape at the bottom)
  • The same type of orange for the shapes
  • Their logo inside the small rectangular at the bottom

 

  1. Polyvore

Polyvore

Ah yes, outfit ideas. One of the reasons why I and most women go to Pinterest is to look for what to wear to a certain event or what should we pair with our newly bought black jeans. There are plenty of style ideas but there’s one page that stands out the most to me, Polyvore. It’s basically how they do their visuals.

If you’re habitually looking for fashion ideas on Pinterest, I know you’ll agree with me.

Polyvore

Polyvore  is consistent using:

 

  • The same template – white background and black text in the middle
  • The same fonts – a combination of serif and sans serif fonts

 

  1. Social Media Examiner

Social Media Examiner

 

If there’s one thing I see on my homepage every single time that would be marketing tips. I’m pretty sure all of them are helpful but Social Media Examiner’s visuals, with no fail, are the most noticeable to me which I end up clicking.

 

Social Media Examiner

Social Media Examiner is consistent placing:

 

  • Their URL at the bottom
  • An icon or object at the top that is related to the topic

They may use different colors but you’ll see all of them are kind of vibrant to the eyes. You’ll also notice that they use different fonts.

 

 

  1. PureWow

PureWow

Again, one of the reasons why I and other women go to Pinterest is because there are lots of cooking tips and recipes.

There may be tons of helpful food ideas appearing right before my eyes but PureWow perfectly captured my attention with their Pin images.

why you should build a visual identity on Pinterest Purewow

PureWow is consistent using:

 

  • The same template – white background, showing six pictures, and black text at the top.
  • The same font – a serif font

 

How To Be Visually Consistent on Pinterest

 

  1. Use the ideal image size

banner dimension

The go-to Pin image size is 735 pixels in width and 1128 pixels in height.

But, of course, you are free to creatively use any size you want just like what Polyvore and PureWow do with their Pin blog post recipe images which are longer than usual.

Whatever size you want to use, simply be consistent about it.

 

  1. Use at least 2 branding elements in your visuals

According to visual brand strategist, Orana Velarde, there are four visual brand assets you should be using if you’re dead serious about building a visual brand identity: logo, colors, fonts, and visuals.

 

Visual Brand Access

When you’re making picture quotes or blog covers for Pinterest, use two or all four of your visual assets like clockwork – just like the examples I mentioned earlier.

What if you’re not the only one in your team creating Pin images? How do you keep yourself and the others on the same page?

Fortunately, there’s an exact tool for this. Visme’s Brand Kit allows everyone in your team to have an access to all the visual assets and templates your brand is using.

Visual Brand Identity Tool in Visme

There you have it. Everything you need to know about building a visual identity on Pinterest. Well, almost. Let me know if I missed something.

Either way, I hope I got my point across.

 

AUTHOR BIO:

Belle Balace is a Growth Specialist at Visme, an online visual tool where you can create engaging visuals in less time.
Categories
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 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?

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. (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
PInterest News

How Social Media Strategy Benefits From Pinterest

Benefits of incorporating pinterest to your social media strategy
Benefits of incorporating pinterest to your social media strategy

Pinterest is no longer viewed as a niche player in social media marketing. The image sharing site has experienced exponential growth and an increased user base as well, thereby cementing its position as a social media behemoth in the online arena.

Adding Pinterest to your social media strategy will not only drive additional traffic to your site, but also will improve brand image and reputation. Using creative Pinterest campaigns, you can build a solid online presence and win the hearts of your target customers. The fact that Pinterest users purchase items in greater quantity and spend more money than any other social network makes it a must-have tool to include in your arsenal of social media marketing.

We have listed 3 major benefits of incorporating Pinterest to your social media marketing strategy.

1. Improve Social Signals – More Organic views

Google and various other search engines factor social signals into their rankings. Pinterest pins provide a great opportunity for online businesses to boost and improve social signals. Improved social signals have a positive impact on the website’s ranking. When online users share your pins, the social signals go up. Search engines including Google recognize improved social signals as increased popularity of the website linked to the Pinterest page. This results in improving the ranking of the website.

Apart from the social signals, Pinterest also provides an opportunity for businesses to create a presence on different major platforms without having to invest time or money. Pinterest’s image oriented presentation provides a window to let cross platform networking do the heavy lifting. If your content appeals to certain swathes of public, then you’d find that your content finds its own way to more people and more views (and hopefully more sales)

2. Generate Additional Backlinks

Backlinks are gold mines for websites. The amount and quality of backlinks have a major impact on search engine rankings. A large number of backlinks included in a high authority website greatly improve the ranking of the website. Incorporating Pinterest in your social media strategy will not only help promote products and services but will also generate additional backlinks for the site.

Search engines index content posted on the Pinterest page. Every link contained in the pins is recognized by the search engines as valid backlinks of the site. Moreover, every repin of the content containing the link counts as additional links leading to improved search engine rankings.

3. Build Online Connection

Pinterest greatly helps in building online connections. Since millions of online users use Pinterest, adding this social media network to your online marketing strategy can greatly boost your online connections. When you build your boards correctly, you will be able to create a structure that results in increased user engagement. Increased user engagement will, in turn, lead to greater effectiveness of your online social media campaigns bringing greater ROI and profits.

But the main question is how does Pinterest make money for your online business? Pinterest does this by helping you gain additional followers and by extending the reach of your Pinterest posts. ViralWoot is a Pinterest tool that can help you achieve this goal.

By using this tool, not only do you gain additional followers but you can even schedule pins in advance, create pin alerts, manage different Pinterest accounts, promote pins and find out the performance of individual posts and Pinterest boards. Register for a free trial today if you want to find out how this Pinterest tool can help you create a strong presence on Pinterest and gain maximum traffic towards your site.

 

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