Social media marketing managers are still buzzing about the phenomenon that is Pinterest. It was during that month of January that Pinterest exploded from a casual social network into a powerful new way to distribute information, with more than 10 million registered users. Retailers quickly saw Pinterest as a way to inspire shoppers and drive traffic, but many brands have found it difficult to track, monitor, or understand how Pinterest activity affects their bottom lines.

The ‘Visual’ Community

When our team first started to research the inner workings of Pinterest’s users and community of followers, we immediately thought the group was saturated with women. Conversely, as soon as we started measuring Pinterest’s reach, our hypothesis had quickly dissolved. The secret behind this community is not what is popular within the context of a few followers; it’s actually about the collective as a whole.

Much like Facebook, Twitter and the many other social networks we are currently a part of, images of puppies, kittens and cute kids quickly take on viral capabilities. Yes it’s true that throwing up a picture of the latest male celebrity asking for a ‘Strawberry Banana Smoothie’ (we won’t name names here) will get thousands of repins. The  most important piece of advice we give to our clients is that the users of Pinterest are looking to share and repin creative ideas and advice.

When it comes to going viral, making the popular page is an absolute necessity in the effectiveness of your content. Asking how to do this? We’ve given 5 steps below on how to get get your engaging content out to the Pinterest community.

1. For this step it’s pretty simple, just find an idea of a cool concept or creation that you think would go over well in the Pinterest community. The possibilities are endless; however, make sure the idea is something that you’ve never seen before.
2. Now that you’ve come up with a viral idea, figure out exactly what you want to share. This means what links, description, messaging back to your site, other social media page, blog, etc. Keep in mind if this idea goes viral, every other piece of information that’s included will go with it, so choose wisely and cautiously.
3. Now it’s time to create! It is important to remember to keep the main message of your Pinterest piece as visible as possible as it will be the first thing viewed by the users of Pinterest.
4. Measure twice and cut once. Size matters in the Pinterest world. As long as your content is longer than 2,500 pixels it will be unreadable by the Pinterest users. Anything smaller and Pinterest will magnify the image so that it’s readable on the site (meaning there’s no reason to click through to your page). This forces them to click on your submission, through to your page to view the content. If it’s something that’s worth reading and creative, this is a necessity. If it’s longer than 5,000 pixels, then create a simple 300 x 300 pixel button outlining your graphic. The reason for this is because the “like” and “repin” buttons are at the top of the submission. If they have to scroll too far town to view the entire piece, chances are they aren’t going to scroll up to click on those buttons. For me the ideal image is 600×3000 pixels.
5. Next, send the piece out to Pinerest. Be aware that Pinterest gives very little attention to their URL associated with your content. As long as your piece is remotely similar to the site and looks like it fits it will be just find with Pinterest.

Popular 'Pinning' Categories

Being Popular Among Pinners

Like every other social network out there in cyberspace, there is a certain art on how to become popular on Pinterest.

To gain momentum, we recommend to our clients looking into certain category pages to help get on the ‘popular’ page. Unlike websites within Google, you do not need an established or aged account to get the most attention, but there are some elements that will block your attempts. It is important to remember that every piece of content is placed onto the top of the category pages with the exception of the following guidelines:

• You’ve submitted within the past hour
• You’ve hosted your content on Imgur

Timing Is A lot (but not everything)

As with every social networking strategy, what time of day and which day you send out information is a very integral part of how well a piece of information gets distributed. Pinterest is no different as their users tend to be more active during different points of the day. The goal as a content creator is to get your content onto the site when it is least competitive yet most effective. With Pinterest this time tends to be between 6 – 8 a.m. – 5 – 7 p.m. EST. The reason for this is because the majority of users are either waking up or getting off work to check their Pinterest boards. Since this is the case, you want to submit your content at least one hour beforehand to ensure that it will be visible to the most people at the right time.

Watch What Happens…

After your content has been submitted to Pinterest and gone viral, it is important that you check the popular boards routinely to see if your content has been rehosted on any different sites or blogs. As the creators of the content you are entitled to every visitor that it receives. While it might seem tedious and time consuming, this is essentially thousands of visitors that your brand may be missing out on if you do not follow through.

Pinterest is another dubious social network that seems like it’s here for the ‘long haul’ and if it’s not in your marketing plans yet, it very well should be. Many social media analysts are predicting that Pinterest will double in size and traffic potential through the summer and into the fall. Don’t be one of those companies kicking themselves in a few months because you didn’t get in on the trend. Contact Triangle Direct Media today and discuss with our social media team how we can incorporate Pinterest into your social media marketing strategy.

Many marketing directors and small business owners that are a part of our social media campaigns are looking for the ‘big’ answer which is, “how can I figure out my return on investment (ROI) of my social media campaigns?”

In many of our SEO campaigns, we’ve looked at viewer’s measurement online. We are focusing now on one of the most difficult areas to track, which are of course, social media campaigns.

Start Fresh

Conventionally, businesses use ROI as part of their planning process. The question is simple, “Is this an idea is worth doing?” To find the answer, businesses try to measure the cost of the investment against the anticipated result.

However, when it comes to social media, some businesses approached ROI the wrong way. Social media shouldn’t just be the #1 goal in any business. It should be considered as a part of an overall business plan to reach a certain objective (i.e. promoting a certain product or improving customer relations). There’s an enormous difference between: “We need a Facebook page” and “We need to learn more about our customers through our Facebook page.”

When businesses try to gauge a certain strategy, they should ask themselves 5 questions to help them decide on what to move forward with:

1. How many people are talking about your product, service or topic?
2. Which ways are people are talking about your information (positive / negative / neutral)?
3. How many social media sites (or off-page sources) are working with your conversation?
4. How much reach does the followers or fans talking about your campaign have?
5. With what you are talking about, how much of the conversation is 100% focused on your business?

Once the answers have been compiled, look at the results before diving into a huge campaign or promotion. It might just surprise you that what you thought might work as a way to market your business online, might just not be recognized positively (or at all) on your social media channels.

Give Me a Number!

Many different sites (like Klout, Radian6, etc.) measure general popularity, but it’s difficult to get accurate details and they can easily be manipulated to produce higher ‘scores’.

There are ways to calculate the monetary value of your fans. You can figure out how much more an engaged fan is worth to you – such as whether he or she is more likely to spend twice as much as a casual fan – and compare that to your social-media costs to see whether it was worth recruiting them. But putting a value on your engaged fan in the first place can require surveys or other investments.

Many business owners need to look at social media strategy as an overall long-term goal made up of smaller campaigns and promotions thoughtfully pulled together with focused strategies from the beginning. By realizing the many campaigns that make up their overall social media strategy (and a lot of patience!) they will truly see their ROI climb over the course of 6 -12 months.

That being said — some tech watchers say 2011 was the year of social media, and 2012 will be the year of social metrics. If so, we’ve reached the year of the ‘true beginning’.

CollegeHumor.com has a funny video on the new advancements with Bing.com and how it is revolutionizing search for consumers!

Actually Bing does have some nice usability features and is quite an improvement over it’s predecessor, Live.com. Will be interesting to see if MSFT’s advertising and branding campaigns can keep Bing more top-of-mind for searchers in an attempt to swipe some marketshare from Google & Yahoo! Surprising that they have not added in a sound component when you “Bing!” — like a bell at a front desk.

A recent study conducted by Forbes called the “2009 Advertising Effectivness Survey” has proclaimed that both Viral Marketing and Search Engine Optimization will experience the fastest growth and highest percentage spend increase in company budgets throughout 2009.  The study surveyed more than 100 key CMO’s and Marketing Executives who hold roles in advertising, marketing and media.

Key findings from the report include:

In the coming six months, respondents expect that ad networks will see the biggest declines in allocation of marketing spend; viral marketing and SEO will likely see the biggest increases.

$1MM+ respondents are significantly more likely than total respondents to point to viral marketing (54% vs. 42%), SEO (50% vs. 40%) and pay-per-impression ads on digital publications (36% vs. 26%) as areas where investment is expected to increase over the next six months.

As a leader in innovative SEO, viral marketing and social media marketing services, TDM is well prepared to work with clients seeking to leverage and exploit the benefits of these highly-efficient online marketing channels.  Feel free to contact us for a free new media marketing consultation and to learn how your company can take its online marketing to new levels of success!