Pinterest – Kimberlee Raymond

Pinterest is certainly one of the most time consuming social networks. I know I totally get lost looking up DIY projects and creating boards of mini decor for my fictional house. Pinterest was a big hit during the recession, as one may not have been able to afford the house of their dreams but they sure could have it all on Pinterest. Maybe after the economy started to turn around people started buying all their dream items stored away on their Pinterest?

That’s one of many benefits for brands on Pinterest: linking pins to the product pages for items, which drives traffic to websites. I know in my personal use of pinterest for brands in the workplace I’ve seen clients garner as much as 55% of their web traffic directly from Pinterest. It’s actually crazy when you think about it that such a silly thing as a fictional wedding board someone creates could be what gets a bride to hire your company to plan that wedding.

Another benefit for brands are hashtags or descriptions under pins on Pinterest. Those keywords can help your items show up in searches. I know I’ve started going to straight to pinterest especially to look for cute gift ideas or decorating ideas. If I have a particular color scheme or person I am shopping for it’s very easy to search and find relevant pins.

Speaking of shopping, Pinterest now has a great tool for e-commerce sites called “price drop.” Now when you pin something, perhaps a lamp you fancied but didn’t actually buy because it was a little pricey, Pinterest will alert you when it is actually in your budget. You’ll get a conveient email sent to your inbox telling you that it’s now on sale. In a product-based company this gives you a fantastic advantage because it drives customers to your site multiple times and gives them a call to action to purchase products.

As a brand your Pinterest page gives you a way to take customers inside your company. Personalizing boards with creative names and photos you can help give customers a better idea of the inspiration behind your brand. And then when they pin one of your products or images it typically stays on their board for eternity, so your brand repeatedly gets free marketing. Additionally all their followers see that pin as well, so that’s more impressions for you.

Happy Pinning 🙂

Thanks to a coworker I recently learned that I’ve been using my web browser wrong for most of my life. I used to hop around Safari, Firefox, and Chrome all the time but I’ve come to realize that Chrome is a much more efficient browser. Here are some basic ways to customize your browser and all are reasons you should start using Chrome.

1. User Accounts: You can be signed into multiple accounts and manage them all in different windows. Each time you select a new user it opens in a different window. From there you can enter a window with all the extensions (covered next) that you need for that particular account. If I have a client that specifically follows Sc-Fi Shows and posts content for there, for example, I can quickly scan sites I have bookmarked in folders and post to that client’s social networks which are all accessible at once through extensions.

2. Chrome Web Store: The possibilities are endless, pretty much anything you can imagine you can create a shortcut to in this store. I specifically use the Pinterest, Tumblr, Tweedeck, Twitter, Yahoo! , and Gmail extensions most frequently. Since I am already signed in as that specific client or user in all of the accounts it will publish the content I want on the correct social media accounts. It’s a no-brainer for a social media manager to be using this!

3. Folders: So you probably already know about bookmarks and folders but just to remind you …using folders is an easy way to quickly scan sites you normally check. I always scan fashion blogs in the morning and then pin or post on tumblr my favorite articles using my chrome extensions for both so I never have to leave the page. In a half hour I can quickly scan dozens of sites and post all my social networks my favorite items. It’s a no-brainer for efficiency.