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Cover Story Communications is a boutique public relations, social media and design agency specializing in the promotion of home and lifestyle products.

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The Cover Story blog is a place where our passions for the latest in home and lifestyle and media, social, and design trends mix and mingle. Join in for the party! 

 

Filtering by Tag: small business

How to Optimize and Grow Your Business on Pinterest

Danielle Elderkin

By @cristin_massey

Chances are if you have a business or blog you know that social media is the vehicle to get your name out into the digital universe. New updates and algorithms constantly changing make it overwhelming to maintain your social accounts, let alone ensuring they are optimized and helping to increase revenue, and with 72.8 million users on Pinterest alone, it’s crucial to be in the Pin game.

When developing your social media strategy, keep these tips in mind for fruitful results. 

Here are tips to ensure you're getting the most out of Pinterest.

Images

 

Make sure they are crisp. They don't have to be taken with a fancy camera, but great lighting will tremendously increase how crisp and clean an image looks. Pinterest is 100% visual, so you need to have great photos. Another tip is to create text on the photo for a call-to-action. Studies show that by including text, it increases the chance of people re-pinning your pin and visiting the linked site.

Have you ever noticed the orientation of photos on Pinterest? Use vertical photos. Yes, those long photos are more well received than a landscape oriented photo. You also need to make sure that you’re styling your images in a way that is reflective of your branding and something that your audience will respond to.

Don’t know what styling is? Scroll to the bottom and send us an email.


Are you a business?

 

No this isn't a trick question, many don't realize that their brands Pinterest account needs to be registered as a business account. If you already have an account and are not registered as a business, no need to worry. It's an easy fix to convert over to a business account.

This is vital for several reasons, one is that you will now be able to get analytics and take a closer look at what is really going on with your efforts specific to the platform. While you may have Google analytics for your website, this will give you a snapshot of what pins are performing well on Pinterest -- which means you can then pin more of those that are well received and take a closer look to site traffic from the platform.

You'll also take advantage of the increased traffic to your site. This is an often overlooked tool by many business owners. A common misconception is that if you're not an ecommerce business you don't need social media, but that is entirely wrong. Pinterest in particular is a vehicle to share your company story, reach new audiences and strengthen loyalty to your existing customers.

With the business account activated, take advantage of installing the Pin-it buttons on your web images. This allows anyone who is on your website to save an image from your site on their Pinterest account—thus increasing your exposure.

24/7

 

Pinterest is always open. What I mean is that there truly isn't a “best” time to pin across the board. Users are pinning 24/7. Just think about your personal habits. More than likely, you are pinning throughout the day, maybe while in line at the coffee shop, etc.

People are pinning left and right, so the key here is to not get overwhelmed with "best times" on this platform, but rather make sure you are pinning frequently and consistently.What is worthy of noting is times best suited for your personal brand's audience. Analytics will help to decipher when your audience is most active, ignore the influx of new stats on this and just pay attention to your brands analytics.

The standard amount of pins for a healthy business account is around 25-40 pins per day. If finding the time is what you are worried about, there are several management platforms that enable you to schedule your pins. It can be a serious time saver, but requires some planning and work on the front end.

Captions

 

Did you know there are captions on Pinterest? Of course there are, we have to know what an image is about, don't we? NEVER leave the caption of the photo blank or leave what other people have pinned (unless it relates to your company's product). This is surprisingly an opportunity that brands let pass them by.

Captions are important because everyone's favorite friend, Google, reads all your digital information for the best search results. This means that what you include in the captions or don’t include is making an impact on search results. So just include a descriptive, but simple, sentence about the image. 

Better search results ensure that you will stand out from the crowd, because, let’s be honest, who really looks at the fourth or fifth search result on the first page of Google? There are multiple pages that come up with search results -- don't end up on one of those following pages!

Wanna Get Rich?

 

I’m talking about Rich Pins. This is a very recent development with Pinterest and our clients couldn't have been more excited when we shared the details with them. Rich Pins are pins that include more detailed information about the pin. Currently 6 different types of rich pins exist. They are: app, movie, retail, recipe, travel, and reading.

Most business will likely want to utilize the “purchase” Rich Pins or perhaps a variety of Rich Pins depending on the goal. But what matters the most with Rich Pins is that they increase traffic to your site significantly. In terms of retail Rich Pins, they increase traffic to your site by including real time pricing and where to purchase. Users will even get updates if pricing changes.


Contributors

 

Another great way to increase your Pinterest following and traffic to your website is to invite contributors to pin to different Pinterest boards. You will need to have a strategy in place. It shouldn't just be your mom or Aunt Sue because they have time on their hands. You’ll need to make sure that the contributor aligns with your brand and they understand the platform well.

The upside of this situation is that it will increase how many pins are being pinned under the brands account, potentially saving you time. It also opens your brand up to an entirely new set of people that may not have been following you otherwise.

However, don’t get the new audience confused with demographics, while they go hand in hand, they aren't the same thing. While it is ideal to find new audiences that match your demographics, it’s not worth it to give effort to an audience that doesn't fit your demographic.

As long as you put the work in before you ask someone to be a contributor, this can be another successful tool to use Pinterest to grow your business.

 

Have more questions about social media? Send us an email to see how we can help. Make sure to sign up for our newsletter for weekly tips.

Image from workopolis.com

Image from workopolis.com






















 

 

8 Tips to Make the Most of Your Business's Facebook Page

Danielle Elderkin

According to recent statistics from a workshop we attended, thrown by Facebook, the average consumer checks Facebook fourteen times a day and 20% of the total time they spend on their phones is spent on FB. It’s crucial you make the most of each and every post.

1. Use Bit.ly links

Using a http://bit.ly link will do several things for you. It will shorten urls that you post so you won’t annoy your readers with too much text, save valuable character space and keep track of how many people are clicking to the content you are sharing. This is a great indicator of what content your audience enjoys and responds to.

For example, if you’re a swimming instructor, you could post a blog on How to Ease a Child’s Anxiety in the Pool. Check your bit.ly stats to see if that article got a good click rate. Now you know whether or not this is information your audience cares about. So maybe that means you adjust messaging on your website or sales pitch. It can tell you a lot about your audience

Remember social media is one of the most amazing tools to help you understand your audience, so use it to your advantage.

*Click here to learn how to shorten a link using bit.ly.

2. Keep it short

The ideal length of a Facebook post is between 40 – 80 characters. Posts including a question are best at 100-119. We know it’s hard to be this minimalistic, but research shows these are the best lengths to get engagement.

3. Ask a Question

Research shows that if you ask questions in your posts, you'll get more engagement and action from users.

4. What’s the Goal?

When creating a FB post, always think about what you want your clients and potential clients to do with the information you are sharing. It may seem obvious, but the function of FB is much different when used for your business. You don't want to just share information without a purpose. Think about what you like or dislike from the brands you follow on FB and use that to your advantage.

5. Call to Action

Now that you have a goal in mind for your post, what will the call to action be? A call to action is giving your audience instructions on what you’d like them to do with the information you are sharing. Call to action statements can be anything from “Buy Now” or “Call to Make Your Appointment Today” or “Sign up for our Newsletter.”

Include a call to action when it matches up with your goals from the post. More often than not, you will want to include a call to action.

6. Images

Always, ALWAYS include an image. If and when possible, it’s best to insert a square image. It will fill up the space better in the post. Look for sites like Canva for simple resizing or image creation.

7. Video

We all love videos online. So it should be no surprise that video is a great interactive way for your audience to experience your brand for the first time. Currently, video is blowing up, specifically on Facebook with over 4 BILLION video views per day . Plus, over 75% of those videos are viewed on a smartphone, not a laptop, tablet or desktop.

Yes, we said 4 billion views per day!

Here’s a great article from Entrepreneur to get started with videos.

8. Bragging Rights

If your company recently had some publicity and was featured in a newspaper, magazine, tv, or blog, share that with your audience. This could be one of the most valuable posts you share on FB because publicity makes your business legitimate in the opinion of the consumer. It’s a third party endorsement of your brand.

This makes your audience view your business as desirable. It reassures them that you really are as great as you claim to be because someone of legitimacy – who has exposed hundreds of brands a day – says so. That’s the power of PR and it’s worth sharing with your audience.

 

Need more help?

Do you need help getting your business on social media? Or maybe you need help managing and producing content for your business's Facebook page? Are you driving enough traffic to your website? Maybe you need some help getting more of those “bragging rights” from media exposure. Send us an email at info@coverstorycom.com and let’s chat about how we can help you create a strategic and effective Facebook marketing plan for your business.