Social Media Snapshot: Pinterest for Business

According to Pinterest.com...."Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes." Users share visual images from the web by "pinning" them on to a series of virtual PinBoards.

It's All About Visual Connections!

So How to Get Started?
FIRST: Our first suggestion is to RESEARCH what your ideal client is pinning. Search the keywords and categories on the Pinterest Dashboard. Create your business boards with your ideal client in mind.
* Provide answers to their questions
* Feed their inspirations.
* Solve their problems.


SECOND: Setup your first boards by choosing topics or categories that reflect your business values, culture, interests, products and services. Tip: Be creative with your board names!

THIRD: Pin ethically. Read the fine print and pay attention to copyrights. When re-pinning, check to see if the pin is linked to a legitimate website. If it hasn't report it or leave a comment suggesting for the original pinner to update the source.

We Suggest a Watermark...
When pinning original content to Pinterest - we suggest you add a watermark of your logo or website to the image to preserve integrity. This way, the image will always stay connected to your website and continuously promote your brand.

Add Prices & Links when Appropriate...
If you are pinning images of your products, add the price into your pin description. Pinterest will add a price banner automatically! You can also add live links to your descriptions which will continue to add brand identity to your pins.

Follow & Engage!
Start pinning across a range of boards but also spend some time following and engaging with other users and boards. By doing so and repinning their content, you will gradually build your own community.

Watch what others are doing...
Again, Pinterest is a very new social platform but there are some brands that are already doing very well. Search around and see what others are doing and how users are responding. Brands like Oprah, McDonalds and Mashable are going strong.

Plan and Execute
Create a plan what and when you want to pin and then track how things go. You may have to try several strategies to find the one that works best for your brand. Click here to read 6 Pinterest Tips from Power Users from Mashable.

Conclusion
Be prepared for learning and change when it comes to Pinterest. It's such a new social media platform that we guarantee you - they're not even close to offering services that they will offer 6 months from now. Be willing to spend the time doing research and creating original content and be prepared to learn something new everyday. It just got Pinterest-ing!

Social Media Snapshot: Twitter for Business

According to Twitter.com...."It took Twitter three years, two months and one day to reach our first billion Tweets. Today, there are over a billion Tweets sent every three days. These Tweets represent conversations related to almost any topic imaginable."

That's a lot of people talking!

So How will this help you?
• The conversations happening on Twitter offer businesses a wealth of information about current and potential customers.
• You can quickly and easily see what people are saying about your brand, your product, your competitors and industry in a few clicks. It's like having the world's largest focus group at your fingertips!
• It's REAL-TIME interaction - you can watch it happen or you can jump in there and get your brand involved in the marketplace...at NO COST!

What you NEED to KNOW...
There are a couple of things you should familiarize yourself with to safely navigate the Twitter universe...

140 CHARACTERS - its a magic number...and it's the maximum length for all tweets (aka messages)

MENTION - Precede a Twitter username with an @ symbol and they will be notified that you have mentioned them in your tweet. (Example: "We love our new client @susanjones")

RETWEET - When you want to share a tweet - click the retweet button below it to send it out to your followers. Again, people are notified when you retweet which helps establish camaraderie.

MESSAGE - Think of this as something similar to email. Privately tweet a message to a user with a DM or direct message.

HASHTAG - Hashtags (like Mentions with the @ symbol) involve a # symbol before a word or phrase (no spaces). Think of a hashtag as the them of your tweet. Users can click on a hashtag to find other tweets with the SAME hashtag. (Example: " Now offering an #extendedsale of 50% off")

Twitter is on the GO!
You might have noticed a lot of people walking around with these things called smart phones...no? Well mobile technology is a MAJOR craze that is changing how people connect with businesses. This means you NEED to be accessible in the mobile universe. One of the easiest ways is TWITTER!

• Twitter's mobile aplications make it easy for people to connect and read your tweets from their smart phone, tablet or blackberry.
• People can subscribe to INSTANTLY receive your tweets to their phone - very cool!
• Tweet from ANYWHERE - this means you can get your information out without sitting at your desk computer.

Need a Widget?
Twitter offers follow buttons and widgets that allow for live streaming of tweets right on your website. Once you place them on your site - you don't have to do a thing! Visitors will see what is happening right from your site on your twitter feed. This is great if you want to tweet during a live event or sale.

Promote your Tweets, Trends or Yourself
Twitter offers several options for advertising on Twitter. This is recent option for businesses so we recommend getting more familiar with Twitter advertising directly. Click here to check out their site.

Conclusion
If you're still not convinced that Twitter is a viable social media platform for your business - we have one final point to make. Twitter is all about REAL-TIME information which is something that search engines (Like Google, Bing, Yahoo & more) really LOVE! This means search engines will prioritize results from a website like Twitter over normal websites. Don't you want a piece of that action?

Qlixite will setup and manage your Twitter account for you