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Posts Tagged ‘Pinterest’

Social Media: Understanding Pinterest consumers

March 13th, 2015

“The only reason any brand exists in the first place is because it helps people do something in their lives,”  Kevin Knight, Head of Agency and Brand Strategy, Pinterest said.

In his session at The Digital Marketing Conference — Adobe Summit, Kevin spoke about what makes Pinterest unique to marketers and brands in the social media sphere.

Mainly, unlike other social sites, it’s kind of a loner.

Not in the standing alone in the corner at the school dance kind of a way, but in a “Best All Around” superlative kind of way: independent, and not only party-planning the dance, but countless other activities and interests as well.

“They’re using it for themselves,” Kevin said, adding that many users don’t follow a lot of people, because they using the platform to fulfill their own needs, not to impress anyone else.

 

What is a Pin?

“Art and copy, as old as advertising itself,” Kevin said.

What is a Pin

 

Who is on Pinterest?

  • 70M+ monthly users in the U.S.
  • 40% of women in the U.S. are on Pinterest
  • 75% of usage is on a mobile device
  • One-third of millennials are on Pinterest

*Based on comScore Sept 2014, desktop and mobile, U.S. users, and internal Pinterest data

Those 70 million monthly users utilize Pinterest to discover, save and then do, Kevin said. Over 30 billion pins ave been categorized by people into more than 750 million boards, and this is a highly personal interaction to them.

Pinners are sharing their interests, hobbies, hopes and goals, creating the narrative of their future through pinning actions.

Read more…

Social Media: Leveraging visual marketing on Instagram and Pinterest

August 1st, 2014

At this year’s Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS, sat down to discuss the growth and value of visual social media with Jason Miles, Co-founder, Liberty Jane Clothing, and Aime Schwartz, Digital Marketing Manager, King Arthur Flour.

Aime shared the importance of identifying what makes Instagram different from your Facebook and Twitter efforts. The goal is to showcase your value to multiple audiences through images, and think about reasons why people should engage with you and your brand.

Showcasing your value means being transparent, and with images, you can convey trust much better than just with words. (Want to learn more about trust through transparency? Watch a replay of Michael Norton, Associate Professor, Harvard Business School, speak at Web Optimization Summit 2014.)

In social media, we’ve all heard that adding an image to a post will drive more traffic, and together, Aime and Jason presented ways to leverage images on social media, regardless of the product or service.

“The research shows that even on Facebook, pictures get more engagement than normal posts,” Jason said.

 

For example, one way to be creative with the photography, Jason suggested, is by using the 80/20 rule – the happy balance between uploading meaningful posts alongside your product images.

As you think about where to start with Instagram and Pinterest, make sure you conquer one platform before expanding and jumping onto all of them. Also, don’t forget to provide plenty of social sharing options on your website to allow users ample opportunities to gravitate toward their preference.

Read more…

Social Media Marketing: Michaels Stores increases Pinterest board followers by 86% with contest

March 21st, 2013

With a new upscale product line, Michaels Stores decided to look toward harnessing the considerable power of its 150,000 followers on Pinterest, where the marketing team fosters “tremendous engagement,” according to Robert Freeman, Director, Digital & Social Marketing, Michaels.

This was the challenge for Michaels – to use those followers to build awareness on the platform for its new upscale line of frames, the “Platinum Collection from Studio Décor,” as well as driving engagement within their Pinterest audience.

 

Michaels decided to capitalize on its social media audience by launching a contest on Pinterest to users in both the United States and Canada – the “Pin It to Win It” campaign.

Freeman said Michaels chose Pinterest as the platform for launching this contest because it made sense on three levels:

  1. The new frame collection seemed like the right type of product to bring to this audience because, “First, Michaels has seen = Pinterest users are looking for project inspiration and are highly engaged with inspirational content on Pinterest,” he said.
  2. Michaels found Pinterest users enjoy engaging in promotions, especially those that are compelling and easy to enter.
  3. Pinterest provided an environment in which Michaels could showcase its products “both contextually and visually, to increase interest in the product,” he concluded.

With simplicity as one of the main objectives for the campaign, there were only a few key steps for users to participate in the contest.

The prize chosen were two $500 gift cards to Michaels to “to build your own display wall!” and the process for entering was threefold:

  • Follow Michaels Stores on Pinterest
  • Fill out a form asking for name, email address and postal code
  • Pin the image of “our new Studio Décor Platinum Collection”

 

After filling out the form, users then have the option to join Michaels email list before clicking submit. They are then taken directly to log into their Pinterest, or if already logged in, the pinning page, where they can select the board they wish to pin the Platinum Collection onto.

The pin already includes a pre-written comment reading:

“I just saw Michaels new Studio Décor Platinum Collection frames and wall décor and entered their Pin It to Win It sweepstakes for my chance to win a $500 USD Michaels gift card. Click this pin and follow the instructions to enter yourself!”

After pinning the contest, the user then also has the opportunity to share via Facebook or Twitter as well. Once they have pinned, they are redirected straight to Michaels “Framed” Pinterest board, where they can peruse the Platinum Collection as well as other related content. Michaels’ 79 other boards filled with merchandise are also easily accessible from that point.

  Read more…

Mining Gold through Email Integration: 3 lessons from MarketingSherpa Email Awards 2013 winners

February 19th, 2013

On the first day of MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2013 in Las Vegas, I’ll be interviewing the Best-in-Show winner of MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Awards 2013, sponsored by Responsys. In this session, our winner, The National Football League, will discuss its fantastic NFL.com newsletter campaign.

However, there were several outstanding, winning campaigns from this year’s awards deserving of recognition as well.

Note: If you want to see the entire collection of winning entries, download the free Email Awards 2013 Special Report. There’s no squeeze page – just download, learn and share.

As the lead editor on this year’s Email Awards, I found it interesting that, of the myriad submissions we received, email integration played a part in many, if not all, of our winning campaigns.

In fact, as we’ll likely learn from our upcoming Summit sessions, one of the reasons email has been such a venerable channel throughout the years is because of the creative, strategic ways marketers have evolved the tactic to include elements of social media, PPC and website integration.

So, before we head west to the glitter of Las Vegas, let’s pull a few nuggets from these campaigns, seeing what you can learn from other Email Awards 2013 winners’ use of effective integration to find pure gold.

 

Lesson #1: Facebook contests don’t all have to look alike

Ritos GmbH, a consumer electronics company, submitted the OSRAM Innovation Store “Light ‘n’ Style” contest for Email Awards 2013. It was the one entrant in its category that bridged the gap between creativity and results, as it successfully tied together three key factors of an efficient, integrated email campaign:

  • Personalized emails as a support to the contest
  • A fan-gating tab on Facebook
  • A unique contest mechanism that created a viral response

The fan-gating tab on Facebook ensured only persons who were already fans of the OSRAM Innovation Store on Facebook could enter the contest. Contact with all participants was maintained throughout the contest through highly personalized emails.

The emails were personalized through use of the recipient’s name, an image of their favorite lighting product and the product’s current place in the real-time voting. The unusual contest mechanism also made the campaign go viral.

In the end, this creativity paid off handsomely, with the campaign achieving high rates of customer interaction, significantly increased social sharing and a tremendous boost (39%) in newsletter opt-ins – a “side effect” that wasn’t even a focus of the initial campaign.

  • 1,583 people participated in the contest, more than 10% of the existing newsletter mailing list.
  • 1,761,614 people were reached through Facebook ads and made aware of the new products – 119 times more than the size of the newsletter mailing list.
  • Facebook page increased its fan base by 18%.

Additionally, 582% more people posted on the Facebook page during the campaign run, while email open rates about the contest were between 55% and 70%.

Read more…

B2B Social Media: How one marketer is utilizing Pinterest

May 10th, 2012

Bluewolf is a professional services company that provides consulting on enterprise agility. A campaign designed to promote its employee knowledge through social media with a gamification element to encourage participation — “B2B Social Media: Gamification effort increases Web traffic 100%, employee collaboration 57%” — was featured in last week’s B2B newsletter.

Bluewolf’s very innovative usage of Pinterest did not fit into the case study, so I wanted to use this blog post to show what you can learn from its efforts.

Pinterest is one of the hottest social channels right now. Here are two data points from a Shareaholic.com study and information that Pinterest is publicly sharing:

  • Pinterest’s user base is only 7% of Twitter’s, but the platform sends more total referral traffic than Twitter
  • With a mere 1% of Facebook’s user count, Pinterest sends 13% of the traffic that Facebook does

At the moment, consumer marketers are making more use of this platform than B2B marketers. However, Bluewolf offers a great blueprint on how B2B marketers can take advantage of Pinterest.

Bluewolf’s main Pinterest page shows the variety of boards the company is sharing on the platform.

Corinne Sklar, VP of Marketing, Bluewolf, says the company found a natural home with Pinterest because the platform is very visual and is also suited to sharing content, two areas where Bluewolf’s marketing is very invested. She adds that Pinterest also encourages viral sharing of that content. Read more…

Social Media Marketing: An early look at how marketers can use Pinterest

March 2nd, 2012

There are many valuable social media platforms for marketing: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ being the most well-known and popular. But, arguably the hottest and most talked about platform right now is Pinterest.

From its website: “Pinterest is an online pinboard. Organize and share things you love.” At least a little bit confusing from a marketer’s standpoint, right?

 

Click to enlarge

 

I recently had the chance to speak with two self-described Pinterest “power users,” who also happen to be marketers with some ideas on how practitioners should approach the social platform.

Jessica Best, Community Director, emfluence, a digital marketing services company, and Tiffany Monhollon, Senior Manager of Content Marketing, ReachLocal , an online marketing company, provided their insight on Pinterest.

  Read more…