April 24th, 2013

Google+ For Marketing Professionals – 4 Things You Should Be Doing

Ok, so you’re heard all of the buzz: Google+ isn’t going anywhere – make your company visible on there ASAP and develop a content strategy already! This is great advice – Google dominates search on the Internet and is going to do everything it can to promote its own service. But ROI aside, Google+ offers a wealth of tools that every marketing professional can take advantage of.

1. Right Now – It’s ALL Marketing Professionals Posting on Google+

Don’t think any of the sites you care about are using Google+ yet? Think again! In fact, that’s another piece of Google+’s awesomeness – your family members and friends aren’t here yet, but the marketing community is. Avoid the baby pictures, and focus on the useful stuff!

I’m still angry over Google’s announcement to kill Google Reader, but Google+ is why they did it. As a replacement for my Reader, I simply set up a few circles on my Google+ Page and started following some folks in my interest groups. I pop in there at any time and click on my ‘SEO’ circle, or my ‘Sports’ circle, and check out the latest from the authors and websites I care about.

In addition, their ‘Explore’ feature throws down the best, most shared content about the topics I’m interested in – so I don’t miss anything important.

Want a list of marketing and SEO insiders to follow – just ask me at +Matt Riggleman

2. Google+ Authorship is a Search Visibility Enhancer and a Resume Builder

Google is the best at organizing and classifying information, and their new authorship tag opens a new frontier for this. They literally patented the technology  for organizing information by particular thought leaders across the Internet and in turn, using that to influence search results. With properly implemented authorship tags, and the associated markup in your Google+ profile, you can create a map to all of the content, on all of the websites, you’ve contributed to. Imagine the day when you can go to a job interview and tell them to search for your authorship tag for a list of your copy references. As a side benefit – it makes it easier to brand individuals within your business: simply another direction to help turn the conversion needle. And it’s cumulative: as you gain more notoriety, authority and visibility, the Google patent indicates it may prioritize your listings. Just remember, when you guest post – request the authorship markup!

3. GoToMeeting Without the Cost

Great, economically optimized businesses are always looking for ways to trim costs. Well remember that collaboration, teleconference, or meeting software you’ve been paying for since the early 2000s? Dump it in favor of Google+’s free Hangouts feature. Hangouts allow you to share and collaborate on items from Google Drive, share your screen, and video chat. The only caveat is the fact that each participant has to be a Google+ member. Why not turn that into an advantage? Throw all meeting participants in a unique circle for follow-up later. At the least, use it to collaborate among your own staff.

4. Because, Like You, Every Business is Waiting for Google+ Engagement

I loved this post by David Mihm on ‘Barnacle Reviews‘. To put it simply – you can act as your business’s page and leave reviews on other Google+ Pages. I know what you’re thinking: no one is using this thing – what’s the point of placing a review? But in this case, that’s exactly the point! In offices across the country, you have one lonely content manager looking for a sign of life on the company Google+ page – now, more then ever, you can stand out in a crowd simply by placing a solid review! Receive great service from the restaurant next to your office? Jump on their Google+ page as your business and drop a quick line – it’s quick, simple, and they’ll love you for it. Relationships are the new SEO – what better place to start your strategy than within Google’s own Brainchild?

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me on Google+ at +MattRiggleman. Thanks!

Published by Matt Riggleman on April 24th, 2013 in Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Technology

January 22nd, 2013

Facebook Introduces Graph Search – Should Google be Scared?

 

So I came across an article that sparked my attention. It was titled “Facebook Just Declared War on Google, Meet Your New Search Engine”. Enticing right? So I decided to read it, and wow, what a deceptive title. So I’d like to clear up the confusion that this article instilled in me.

What is Graph Search

Facebook is not the new Google. Yes, Facebook has improved its’ search engine function to better search FACEBOOK called the Graph Search. This search bar is still in the beta testing phase. To put it simply, Facebook has made it easier to search among your friends and pull items related to your search term that your friends have deemed “worthy”. This form of search is further personalizing your search results via Facebook search bar.

 

Google personalizes search by pulling your location and customizing your results based on that location. Say you want to search for restaurants; Google gives you restaurants located in your area. If I’m in PA, and Google pulls up a restaurant in Florida, it does nothing for me. What Facebook is doing is taking it a step further and pulling in relevant interests from your social world, i.e. Facebook friends, likes, comments, etc. This type of search is returning results to you based on what matters to your friends and the groups you belong to.

 

The Snafu’s of Graph Search

There are some drawbacks to this type of search. For starters, say your want to try a new Italian restaurant and you type in the Facebook graph search “Italian Restaurant”. It will pull any restaurants that your friends have checked in at or mentioned on Facebook. My initial snag on this concept is the fact that this type of search will not necessarily pull the best Italian restaurants in the area, or the one with the highest reviews. It will only provide you with the restaurants your friends have mentioned or checked in at. A bit biased, don’t you think?

 

My second hesitation is that my friends aren’t necessarily the best judges of the best Italian restaurants in the area. To me, this provides a very skewed host of information for search terms. Facebook is a place to connect with people you know. Just because you know someone doesn’t mean you agree with or care about his or her tastes.

 

Lastly, one of the most controversial aspects of this new type of search is privacy, or more accurately, the lack there of. Since Facebook will be searching in Facebook, your friends can potentially pull anything from your profile.

 

To Sum It Up

We all know that Google is attempting to make search more personalized, however they still want to deliver the best results for their users. Relying solely on social metrics to pull search results is silly. In my mind, Google has nothing to worry about.  Best of luck to Facebook’s new search tool, but my heart lies with Google.

 

What do you think about the new Facebook Graph Search? Let us know your thoughts!

Published by Sarah Stoltzfus on January 22nd, 2013 in Social Media Marketing

December 20th, 2012

How to Report on the Value of Social Media

Since the surge of social media in the past year, it has become an essential element in marketing for businesses. I’ve seen a lot of posts lately saying that social media doesn’t generate a return on investment. I would like to combat those naysayers.

So, you set up Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and hoards of other social media profiles for your business; now the burning question is, am I gaining any value for all the time and effort spent Tweeting and sharing?

Considering that social media focuses on whether your followers engage on your profile or not, it is a little trickier to track and report. Even with the number of visits to your site from social channels, how do you know if your visitors are actually converting? And what percentages of those conversions were from social media? Well, you’ve come to the right place to find out!

 

Social Reporting in Google Analytics

Considering Google rules the world, I’ll begin with the Google Analytics social report. Now if you don’t have Google Analytics for your business, you are way behind the times and need far more help than this post will provide you. That being said, those of you that do have Analytics, read on.

Under the social tab you will be able to view from each social network how many visitors visited your site, the number of conversions, which pages they are visiting and the flow of site navigation that they are following.  All of these metrics can be used to find out if the people directed to your site via social networks, are actually converting and producing revenue for your business.

I would begin looking at the network referrals section. This will break down each social network and how many visits are coming from them. You can also see how many pages they viewed and how long they were on your site. This can help determine if the visitors coming from social networks are serious visitors and if the content you are posting is engaging enough to make them want to explore your site further.

 

 

 

 

 

Next I would move to the conversions tab, which will break down how many site conversions can be credited to social. The revenue that you are making per conversion is also listed in this section. If you are concerned with the “numbers” of social, i.e. how much money is social bringing to my business; look at the conversions coming from social and the revenue being generated by those conversions. The social tool in analytics is a valuable one, so use it!

As great as revenue and conversions data is, social media is more about engagement and brand awareness.  One of your followers might see a really cool post you put up on Facebook, and then one month later when they are looking to buy a blue widget, they think “Hey, didn’t that company that posted that cool video sell blue widgets? I’m going to check them out.” Which leads me into my next social reporting tool.

 

Facebook Insights

Facebook came out with a fantastic tool for businesses called Facebook insights, and if you are a business and you have Facebook, I would recommend you set it up. Insights assists you in reporting on the engagement of your Facebook fans. Bottom line, if people aren’t engaging on your profile, it’s doing your business no good.

 

On the admin panel, go to the Insights section and click “See All”.

 

This will break down when you posted, the amount of people you reached and the number of people that engaged with that particular content. To break it down even further, Facebook gives you a detailed list paired with metrics of all of your posts.  But wait, I’m not done yet, take a look at the Likes tab and this breaks down metrics by demographic and location.  This applies to “Reach Tab” and “Talking About This” tabs as well. Fancy stuff huh?

To create a nice compact report for your client, you can export all of this information into an excel file with a custom date range. One other report format that I would like to mention is the Raven Social report. I’m not going to delve into this too much since Raven pulls the data from the sources that I have already touched on, however it does create a nice visual report in PDF format that compiles all of the above information.

 

The Long and the Short of It

Isn’t this exciting stuff guys?! Not only can you track the conversions and visits to your site from your social networks, but you can see exactly what content your followers are engaging with and how many people you are reaching! So to all the negative Nancy’s that are convinced you cannot measure the value of social media, I’m calling your bluff and telling you exactly how you can! So if you haven’t already, jump on the bandwagon and start tweeting and sharing and make sure to monitor how your profiles are performing for you!

 

 

Published by Sarah Stoltzfus on December 20th, 2012 in Business, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

December 18th, 2012

Facebook Jumps Into Local Search With New Mobile Update

Facebook is the latest to jump in the local search game with the upcoming release of an update to its’ “Nearby” feature on the iOS and Android mobile apps.  The Nearby feature is similar to FourSquare, where users check-in to their favorite businesses or places.  Facebook’s Nearby function works by displaying where your friends have checked-in at your nearby location.  The update to the feature will perform the same function but will also display nearby businesses and places of interest ranked by various factors.  Users of the Nearby feature will be able to search or browse for nearby locations by either name or a specific category.

Businesses or locations will be shown by a number of different factors:  Likes, New 5 Star Rating System, Check-Ins and Recommendations.  Your social network on Facebook will determine the outcome of the search results based on your interests, activities, Likes, friends and other interactions.  If your social network filter can not determine nearby businesses or places, Facebook will determine the best results for your local search by evaluating the engagement of the business or place you are searching for.

Ratings will be determined by a five point scale system available anytime after a user has checked-in to the location to prevent fraudulent ratings.  Users are not required to rate a location when nearby the location, they can do so at anytime and anywhere after they have checked-in.

The help section in Facebook provides tips on how to update your page with the proper information to ensure your Facebook page will be found in the new local feature.  Similar to local listings in Google, Bing and Yahoo, include the correct, essential and ever important NAP (name, address, phone) as well as other additional information such as hours and details about your business.  Also, choose a correct category for your business to be easily found by users searching for your business.  Like your local listings, encourage customers and visitors to check-in, like, rate and recommend your business.  Below are two links to Facebook’s help section detailing on how to properly update your Facebook page:

Editing Your Facebook Page

Editing Your Facebook Page’s Category

The major advantages of a Facebook page over the local listings of Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yelp will be:

• Super easy & user friendly user interface
• Endless information businesses will be able to share with their audience
• Interact with their audience directly and instantaneously with comments and messages
• Update your Facebook page on the go with your mobile device

 

Facebook will be relying on its’ own database of pages to provide the search results for their users.  With that said, if you don’t have a Facebook page, you won’t show up.  If a business hasn’t already created a Facebook page, now would be the time to create it no matter how small they are or they simply won’t show up on local results.  This should be a must for ANY business big or small in order to be found in their Nearby feature.  It has been lately reported by Google that there are as many as 600 million monthly active mobile users.

Published by Ray Carboni on December 18th, 2012 in Search Marketing & Optimization, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Technology

November 29th, 2012

Wishful Thinking For Yahoo & Facebook?

Earlier this month before Thanksgiving rumors that the CEO’s from both Facebook and Yahoo had a meeting of how the two companies can combine services to provide a powerful social heavy search engine to combat against search powerhouse Google.  With Facebook’s massive amount of data from its’ users, Yahoo is trying to team up with Facebook to get a piece of the search engine market share by creating a new search engine with heavy social media influence integration.  An agreement and relationship between the two would allow Yahoo to use the gigantic amount of user-generated data and brand influence power Facebook has.

The meeting between Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer doesn’t come much as a surprise since Facebook and Bing currently has a relationship.  Bing has integrated personal Facebook activity paired with Bing’s search engine interface.  Bing’s integration of Facebook into its’ search engine results offers suggestions of your search by using recommendations, likes and similar interests of your friends to show results you may be interested in and also allows you the ability to share your search results from Bing on Facebook.

Until their contract ends in 2019, Bing is currently obligated to provide the backend support for Yahoo’s search engine technology.  Bing hasn’t been able to take on or take any noticeable slice out of Google’s market share of search, which may explain why the relationship between the two may be on the fritz.  Microsoft’s inability to launch a serious competitive challenge against Google may be the reason for the Yahoo and Facebook alliance.

But will the alliance between the two giants be able to launch a serious competitive attack on Google?  The answer simply is no.  Neither Facebook nor Yahoo has the search engine technology, foundation, information, data and talent to take on Google.  Yeah, Facebook is a powerful juggernaut, has ridiculous amounts of data and influential brand power but their weight of experience is in social…not search.  Search engine is a different monster than social, and Google already has a strong foothold and head start with their search engine algorithm.  You can have all the data in the world, but if you don’t have the talent of programmers, visionaries and analytical researchers with search engine experience to take that data and create a super search engine with both search and social integration, its’ not going anywhere and it’s not going to put a dent into Google’s market share of search.

What does Yahoo need to do in order to try to compete with Google?  Yahoo needs to stop trying to patch up the old and broken system it still uses today.  It is obviously not working and no matter how many times you try to patch it up, there are still going to be leaks and problems until it eventually collapses in on itself.  Yahoo needs to take greater advantage of Bing’s search engine technology.  Bing currently has more innovative talent, better search technology and a user-friendlier search engine experience than Yahoo.  With Microsoft’s deep pockets and resources, it would be a wiser investment in recruiting plenty of talent of programmers and innovators in the search engine world.

Published by Ray Carboni on November 29th, 2012 in General Information, Search Marketing & Optimization, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

October 5th, 2012

Give Your Social Media Campaign A Boost!

If you’re a smaller company, finding and reaching your exact target market can be sometimes difficult and then getting to know their thoughts, viewpoints, characteristics and behaviors can also be a struggle if you’re working with a limited marketing budget.  Well, in this day and age, you have the gift of social media to help you get to know and better serve your audience.

 

As part of your bigger marketing picture, social media helps you improve your online presence by increasing brand awareness and showing potential and current customers what products or services your company offers. Social media also helps you, as a company, to be seen as an “expert” in your industry. By sharing, posting, tweeting, pinning and +1-ing, you’re engaging with your customers and offering them advice, striking up conversations, asking questions, solving problems and so much more. They get to know your business on a personal level and as a customer yourself, it would be interesting to learn about a company’s history, employees, services and experience before you would buy anything they’re offering.

 

 

As influential as social media is, many businesses don’t give it its fair share of the marketing strategy. If you’re considering creating a new social media plan for your business, here are a few tips to help you along and to give your campaign the momentum it may need.

 

Industry Events

 

Check out Industry events near you, as this is a great way to meet potential customers face-to-face, engage with fellow businesses, etc. Trade shows are especially great for demonstrating your product or service and spreading brand awareness. Invite everyone you meet at these events to find your business socially. “Like us on Facebook to stay in contact with us.”

 

Influence Blogs, Forums, Twitter

 

Share you knowledge as an industry expert by curating content for your own and industry-related blogs. Do some research on industry trends or respond to customers’ questions you may find in forums by writing a blog post to further elaborate on a topic. Then use social media to heavy promote your blog posts. You can also ask fellow industry experts to share the knowledge with their social followers if you’re providing something truly of value.

 

Public Relations

 

Some good old PR will help you improve your business on social media.  Think “offline” for a moment and contact local newspapers, reporters, editors or print media, radio stations, etc. and offer them newsworthy tidbits of information they can run with. For example, if you’re supporting a charity to raise money for a good cause, let them know and tell them to encourage people to help with the fundraising event on social media. A client of ours recently helped a charity by donating $1 for every Facebook “Like” they received.  Get creative with your campaigns and get the “offline” folks to engage “online.”

 

The most basic form of PR and still one of the most effective is issuing a Press Release. There are numerous PR news sites to submit press releases to and once you’ve done so, your news will spread across many news sites across the nation. Within your press release, encourage readers to visit or follow you on social media.

 

RSS Feed & Newsletters

 

Allow your loyal customers to stay up to date with what’s going on at your company by having them subscribe to an RSS feed. In addition to your RSS, send out a monthly newsletter to your current customers to improve your company’s retention rate. Within your e-blast or newsletter, encourage readers to continue reading more about the topics within the letter on your social media pages.  As a result, you know your newsletter is going straight to their inbox and you’re giving them the opportunity to easily access all of your social pages if they haven’t done so already.

 

Customer Testimonials

 

What’s the one thing everyone likes to do…talk about themselves and their experiences! Give your customers the chance to spread the word about your company by giving them the spotlight. Social media is great for this as it’s easy for the to create videos, write a review, take a survey, etc. Also, should you happen to get a negative review, you then have the opportunity to address it and resolve any issues. Customers appreciate it when a company responds to a problem a fellow customer had or an underlying issue with the product or service. It allows them to get to know your business on a personal level. And of course, the more positive testimonials your business has, the more people you draw in. At the end of the day, people like to read or hear about other peoples’ experiences, especially if it is that of a friend or relative. Therefore, let your customers do the work for you!

 

Well, there you have it! 5 tips you can start using to boost your social media campaign. If you’d like to learn more, read the latest article on how to achieve a Savvy Social Media Campaign on SEO News or hire the best social media marketing firm near you!

Published by Mike Canarelli on October 5th, 2012 in Business, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

July 13th, 2012

Increase Brand Engagement on Twitter

Social Media is a fickle beast and using it effectively for your brand can be difficult to pin point. So here are a couple tips for better brand engagement when it comes to using Twitter for your business.

1. 1.    Tweet 1-4 times per hour.

The more you tweet, the less engaging your tweets can appear to followers.

1. 2.    Keep it short and sweet.

Keep your tweets under 100 characters. This helps with engagement (I mean who really wants to read a tweet that is a paragraph and a half long) and also allows for retweets where the individual can add their own comments and thoughts.

1. 3.    Weekends are prime time.

Want the best click through rate for your tweets, well then it looks like you will need to be tweeting on the weekends. Studies have shown that brands see better engagement on Saturdays and Sundays.

1. 4.    Sorry boss, I was just uhhh, tweeting!

Ever hear that after you eat lunch you feel a little less energized? During that post lunch period is the best time to tweet! Post your tweets during the busiest hours of the day, 1pm-3pm midweek.

1. 5.    Add a link.

Want your tweets retweeted? Add a link that people will want to retweet, its reported that if you post a link people are more likely to retweet it by 86%!

1. 6.    Ask and you shall receive.

If you want someone to retweet your post, simply ask for it. “Retweet” will get you 23 times higher retweet than if you hadn’t asked at all.

1. 7.    #dontoverdoit

Easy on the hashtags guys! You will see more involvement with tweets that only contain one or two hashtags. However, add any more than a couple hashtags and you are looking at a negative response to your tweets.

Tools of the Trade

Ok so you have now optimized your tweets and when to post them, now what? In my experience no one likes doing the work without seeing the reward, so track your data and always be on the look out for new followers! There are some pretty cool tools out there to help you track your Twitter existence and gain more followers.

TweetStats

The first tool you should check out is TweetStats. This program provides graphs of information on how often you tweet, when you tweet, and how responsive you are at replying to others. TweetStats is great for helping you understand how your business tweets. You can even check out how your followers tweet to help better target your market.

TweetDeck

The second Twitter tool to look into is TweetDeck. It’s great for letting you know what’s going on with your Twitter account. TweetDeck keeps you up to date on your followers and helps monitor all things happening on Twitter. This program also lets you schedule tweets so you can post anytime, anywhere.

Followerwonk

Lastly you should look at Followerwonk. It is a great tool for finding people in your industry that are interested in your brand. With Followerwonk you can sort followers by different metrics and find people using certain keywords and phrases.

Here I wanted to search from people that mention internet marketing in their bio section and Followerwonk pulls up all Twitter profiles that mention this term:

 

So there you go! Now you can optimize Twitter to have more brand engagement and then track how well your Twitter account is doing!

Published by Sarah Stoltzfus on July 13th, 2012 in Business, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

May 10th, 2012

Offerpop; the social media campaign tool

There are various different marketing campaign tools on the market that allow you to run social media events, contests, giveaways, etc., but there aren’t many that allow you to customize your campaign to the extent that Offerpop does. Built in to the platform, Offerpop offers instant landing pages

This web-based marketing platform presents the opportunity to fully engage and interact with the consumer allowing brands to create effective marketing campaigns. Upon registering on their website, you will receive a fourteen day free trial to run the campaign of your choice. This includes; tug of war, sign up, referral, photo contest, fan faves, exclusive, and many more for Facebook and various other campaigns for Twitter. The best part about Offerpop, is it’s extremely easy to use!

After logging in, you will be brought to your dashboard, which lists all of the possible campaigns available for Facebook and Twitter. From there you simply choose the type of social media campaign you’re interested in running and enter in the necessary information, select fields for a sign up form, and bada-boom. Launch your social media campaign, engage with your consumers, and watch your statistics grow.

What sets Offerpop away from its competitors, is the wide variety of campaigns, extremely user-friendly dashboard, and their competitive pricing.

Published by Nick Canarelli on May 10th, 2012 in Social Media, Social Media Marketing

April 26th, 2012

The New Facebook Timeline: If You Can’t Beat Em’, Join Em’

As I am sure you are already aware, Facebook has once again forced us into a new version of the reining social media network. Thanks Mark Zuckerberg for influencing me to spend more time updating my Facebook timeline than trying to promote world peace. Facebook’s profile has now been replaced with the new layout called Facebook Timeline. Frankly, I was not thrilled about this change because I did not feel like going through the mundane task of updating my Facebook, however I have come to embrace this new concept. This new layout provides its users with a timeline of their Facebook history, from photos, events, apps, etc. arranged in the order in which they happened. Essentially making Facebook “stalking” much easier to manage.

 

And so it goes that with any new change, there is always hesitancy and the big question “how will this impact our business?” Well other than the fact that social media companies now need to put in the extra effort to update these changes for their clients, this new timeline proves to be advantageous for business users.

With change, come new opportunities. The new Facebook timeline gives businesses the chance to capitalize on their marketing campaigns and customize their timeline accordingly. My major hang up of this new timeline concept was what the heck I was going to use as my “cover photo”. So I chose a picture I had taken of a flower (I know, I know, so cliché). However cliché my photo might be, this cover photo in conjunction with the profile photo provides the opportunity for businesses to really advertise their brand and logo. As a billboard would show off the main product and point of the advertisement, so should your businesses cover photo. Make sure the photo grabs your follower’s attention and showcases what you are all about!

 

Captain Morgan has melded their logo into their cover photo to make one cohesive piece that clearly represents the product they are marketing for.

 

Another advantage to this new layout is it enables businesses to highlight the milestones of their business in an easy to view timeline. Photos now appear larger on the timeline, essentially overshadowing the text info. This can yield huge reward for businesses with catchy photos, because lets face it, people would rather look at a picture to sum something up than read a paragraph.  So promote away via your most market worthy photos!

 

Designer, Kate Spade, has also capitalized on showcasing their brand in the cover photo along with their tail tale logo.

Now to touch on posting, status updates and more goodies. The timeline displays the top 4 most used apps front and center beside the “about me” section. So choose the apps most important and essential to your customers, however the photos app will always appear first. One of the new features of Facebook, is the ability to post a story to your timeline. This story can be “starred” and made to either stay at the top of your page or it can be displayed along the width of your page, essentially making it pretty darn hard to miss. This is something businesses should take advantage of if they want their followers to acknowledge a new event or product.

 

So now you can sleep at night knowing your business is not in jeopardy from the new Facebook timeline. It’s here to stay (well at least for the next 6 months until they figure out a new way to frustrate us all over again) so embrace it and use it to your businesses advantage!

 

Published by Sarah Stoltzfus on April 26th, 2012 in Business, Did You Know, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

March 8th, 2012

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Links

As a newcomer not only to Web Talent, but also to the SEO world, I have been delving into the many facets of link building and search marketing. With all of its publicity, it was very hard not to be sucked into the social media world and how it is incorporated into the marketing realm. Social media proves to be the most persuasive of strategies when looking at how to reach your target audience. However, keeping up with the social media “flavor of the week” is never-ending.

One social media site in particular has been stealing headlines and traffic. Pinterest is a new form of social bookmarking modernizing how websites are bookmarked using pictures. Users can “pin” their favorite products, pictures, pets, etc. to different categories or thematic “boards” for others to follow. Photos can be “pinned” and “repined” and shared with all of your followers.

With all the hype surrounding Pinterest, it was only a matter of time before this social media platform was integrated into SEO strategies. As reported in a February article on Search Engine Watch, in January 2012, Pinterest accounted for more traffic than LinkedIn, Google+, Reddit and YouTube combined! So it is only natural that businesses should be looking into ways to utilize this site.

Pinterest has several advantages for businesses and their online presence. Since users only “repin” pictures of things that interest them, your target market finds you! Businesses can “pin” all of their favorite company infographics and pictures to this site with a link in the picture back to their site. The best part…these links are followable! Branch out and follow people and they are likely to follow you and look at the content you have pinned to your board.

Be forewarned, this new craze is highly addictive. I can testify first hand because I too, along with 11 million other users, have joined Pinterest and cannot seem to stop pinning my favorite things! As a social media marketing company, it is only natural that Web Talent recently jumped on the bandwagon and joined Pinterest and we are quickly exploring all it has to offer.

Published by Sarah Stoltzfus on March 8th, 2012 in Social Media, Social Media Marketing