Inspirational (and Interesting) Pins

An important part of an online marketing strategy is growing your brand and highlighting its personality. With Pinterest, every piece of content you pin to your brand’s boards builds on what your community already knows about you. One of the best ways to highlight your brand’s personality is through the use of photos, such as behind-the-scenes pictures that show your community what’s involved in developing your products and services. By showing this ‘human’ side of your business, it appeals to your community, and goes a long way towards creating brand advocates. For example, if your business is a restaurant, you could pin a picture of your daily special (even in the kitchen while being made),  and link it back to your site. Make the image as visually engaging as possible.

Winning by Pinning

Running contests on social networks is one of the best ways to drive engagement that your business requires to drive targeted traffic to your site and other channels. When creating contests on any social network, you must define your marketing goals, and get creative. In the case of Pinterest, which is all about pinning images, you could run a photo submission contest and ask people to vote or comment on the best photo (engaging users). It’s important to note that any contest you run doesn’t go against Pinterest’s site policy. It should also work toward nurturing your community- not selling your products and services.

TIP: See how your company’s content is being pinned by swapping your domain name into this URL: http://pinterest.com/source/YOURWEBSITE.COM/

Pin to Collect Intelligence

It can be difficult for small businesses to determine what the initial reaction will be to a new product or service that they’re planning to offer. Social networks like Pinterest are a great way to determine this initial reaction by allowing your business to release a new offering to an already loyal fan base. For example, post photos of a new product or service, and use the Pinterest commenting platform to gather intelligence and determine if the product is ready for prime time.

Users can also pin videos and other multimedia content to their pinboards, and your business should  also use other media (aside from just photos).  As more small businesses join Pinterest, expect to see more ways to use this relatively new social network to help grow online communities.

Are you using Pinterest and, if so, what are you doing to engage with your community on your Pinboard? Share your comments below.

Facebook pages are changing again this month, and your marketing strategy will need to change as well. These changes affect anyone with a Facebook page. Here is an overview of how these changes affect your page, and how you can use them to your advantage.

1. Cover Photo & Profile Image

One of the obvious changes is that cover photo- you will no longer have the photo strip across the top. Instead, you are allowed 1 large image to showcase your business. The actual dimensions are 850 pixels x 315 pixels, but you can use any image as long as it’s at least 399 pixels across. You’re then allowed to drag it around to adjust accordingly.

It’s important to note the restrictions for this image- you cannot have any calls to action in this cover photo. Forget about telling people to like your page, or sign up for your special offer- Facebook’s rules say no (read the full details here ). This means you must get creative about drawing attention to your business without being able to use some of the methods we’ve got used to in creating profile images.

The profile picture itself (the one shown next to your name everywhere) has been changed to 180 x 180 pixels. The best use of this picture would be your logo.

2. Default Landing Tab Gone

One of the major changes that you’ll have to work around is the default landing tab being removed. Apps are still available, and any custom tabs or apps you have added haven’t disappeared. You can showcase 12 apps, only 4 of which will appear in the top row. Out of these 4, you cannot change the position of the ‘Photos’ app, so you really only have control over 3 of the apps that appear in the top row.

To move the apps around, click the down arrow next to the top row of apps. This displays all of your apps. Then, click the pencil icon in the upper right corner of the app. Now select which app you want to swap positions with.

If you’ve checked out the Facebook forums lately, a lot of people are upset about the removal of the default landing tab. However, the new app buttons allow you to change the photo and name to create a call to action, as shown below.

To change the app photo, display all of your apps as mentioned above, click the pencil icon, and scroll down to ‘Edit Settings’. Here you can add a custom image (111 pixels x 74 pixels).

3. Highlighted & Pinned Posts

With emphasis on the way people are telling stories on Facebook, they’ve decided to make the pictures and videos that you post larger. You can also highlight a story (by clicking the star icon in the upper right corner of a post) which makes it span across the timeline, as seen here:

You can also pin a story to the top of your Timeline for 1 week. You can do this by clicking the pencil icon in the upper right corner of the post, then select ‘Pin to top’.

4. Company Milestones

You can make your Timeline more interesting by adding company Milestones. Use milestones to tell people about big events in the history of your company or brand. To do this, just click on the line that runs down the middle of your Timeline and select ‘Milestone’. Then you can add the relevant information.

Fan posts are now in a separate area, so your company’s Timeline is more focused on your story. The goal here is to make your Timeline as visually engaging as you can.

What do you think about Facebook’s new Timeline for pages? How will you use Timeline to share your company’s stories?

UPDATE: Here is Facebook’s official video which shows you how to customize your page:

Facebook’s own marketing crew have put together a helpful video tutorial site that explains the new features of Timeline for Pages. Check it out over at www.learnfacebookpages.com.

NOTE: This change will roll out to all Pages by March 30, 2012. In the mean time, when you go to edit your page, you will see a message indicating you can preview what your timeline will look like.

In fact, using a profile to represent a business is against Facebooks TOS (terms of service) and can result in your profile being banned. Here are some other key differences:

• Business pages allow other users to become fans, but access to the individuals profile page is limited.
• Business pages do not allow you to invite friends. Pages do not have ‘friends’, they have ‘fans’.
• Business pages allow you to update your status, which fans see in their news feed.
• Business pages also allow pictures, videos, discussion board, wall posts, groups, apps, and other interactive bits.

Here’s the relevant part of Facebook’s official policy  on profiles and pages:

Facebook profiles are meant to represent a single individual. Organizations of any type are not permitted to maintain an account under the name of their organization. We have created Facebook Pages to allow organizations to have a presence on Facebook. These Pages are distinct presences, separate from user profiles, and optimized for an organization’s needs to communicate, distribute information/content, engage their fans, and capture new audiences virally through their fan’s recommendations to their friends. Facebook Pages are designed to be a media rich, valuable presence for any artist, business or brand.

If you create a profile for your business, your account may be disabled for violating our Terms of Use. If you have questions about how to best leverage your Facebook Page, please check out our Insider’s Guide or FAQ.

Now that you know the difference between pages and profiles, go ahead and create your Facebook page now. Or, if you want a professionally designed Facebook business page with a custom lead capture app set up for you, click here to learn more about our Social Media Marketing solutions.

Email greetings are nice, but not everyone will read them, and they are far too impersonal. Physically mailing a card with your real signature- and ideally a hand-written note- will have a much greater impact.

Remember, the purpose of these cards is not to be an advertisement for your business. As such, they shouldn’t be plastered with huge logos, sales messages, and pre-printed signatures! This is a gift to the receiver- thanking them for their patronage of our business throughout the year.

Another great reason to send holiday cards is that it gives you the opportunity to keep business relationships alive on a personal level. This should include people you may not have dealt with this past year- especially if they aren’t local, and your chances of casually crossing paths again are slim.

There is great value in sending out holiday cards to clients. Be sure to set aside some time in late November or early December to hand write cards (at least your signature) to all the people who contributed to the success of your business, past and present.

1: Work On Local Search

Google search results now display local results mixed among the organic results. Even if your business is online-only, this affects you because Google Places listings may be included in personalized results.
Be sure to get reviews and citations, submit to relevant yellow pages directories, and learn some basic local search ranking factors.

2: Clean Up Your Email List

Look through your email list for duplicate subscribers, old addresses that bounce, and anyone who recently requested removal. Get rid of them. Then test your opt-in form. Seriously- make sure subscribers are actually being added, and not seeing a 404 “page cannot be found” error.

3: Build Your Email List

Your list is your biggest asset. It’s never too late to do some pre-holiday email list building. Here are some ideas:

• Tell website visitors about the special Black Friday offers you’ll be sending out after Thanksgiving. Use a strong call to action to get them to sign up.
• Offer a free or discounted product/ service now (lead magnet) in exchange for their info.
• Promote your lead lead magnet on outgoing order confirmation emails when someone purchases something.

Do everything you can to grow that list!

4: Fix Up Your Facebook Page

Take a good look at your Facebook page. Be sure to update it, and clean up any spammy posts. Add up a ‘shop’ tab that shows images of your products with links back to your site, too.
On your website, put a link back to Facebook, with a clear call to action. “For special offers, follow us on Facebook” will work.
If you don’t already have a Facebook page, set it up now!!!

5: Start Updating Your Site

If you don’t already, start making daily updates to your site’s content. Write on your blog. Post updates on Facebook and any other relevant social networks.
Update your home page whenever possible. Onsite updates help you rank better, and encourage visitors to return more often whereas offsite updates will build your following, so that you have a bigger audience to sell to.

6: Make Sure Analytics Is Working

Whether your site kicks ass this year or it fails, you’ll want to know why. If, however, some doofus erased the analytics tracking code from all pages of your site, you’re screwed. Check it now, not when you’re up all hours of the day busy filling orders.

7: Submit Your XML Sitemap

Submit your updated XML sitemaps to Google and Bing. While these maps may not improve rankings, they’ll help ensure that search engines are aware of all of your products and pages. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

Hopefully this list will help your prepare your internet marketing and avoid unnecessary stress this holiday season. However, if you’re sitting in front of your screen thinking “What the hell is a XML analytics Facebook SEO?!” please contact one of our Lead Conversion specialists by clicking here. We’d be happy to help you make sense of it all!