10 Tips for Using Pinterest Well

10 Tips for Using Pinterest Well

As someone who has been avidly using Pinterest for about 6 months, I can honestly say it has greatly impacted my internet consumption, creativity and blog content (I pay a lot of attention to what you “pinners” are pinning from The Mom Creative – and I thank you!). I know many of you are on Pinterest, but probably a greater amount have only stuck your toe in the Pinterest waters or are thinking, “I don’t need ANOTHER thing online.” This post is for ALL of you. I hope these tips will help you start or improve your Pinterest experience.

1. Create very specific boards

This is very important. When you first get started on Pinterest, you will be tempted to have general boards. Don’t do this. What will happen is that you will start pinning all recipes to recipes and then before you know it you will have 300 recipes – from dips to desserts to crock pot beef stew. Segment as much as possible. Some examples

* Tips and tricks (for posts like this one!)

* One board per type of recipe (meals, crock pot, desserts, breakfast, sides and apps, parties, etc.)

* One board per holiday (Christmas, Valentines, Easter, Halloween, etc.)

* Sewing

* Project Life

* Memory Keeping (general scrapbook pages/scrapbook ideas)

* Printables

* Favorite books/books I want to read

* Inspirational words

* Photo inspiration

2. Create a completed pins board I have pinned about 2,000 items to Pinterest. That is a lot. I have found it very gratifying to create and use a completed pins board. Once I have made a recipe, done a craft project, etc. from Pinterest, I will repin the item to my completed pins board, along with comments about what worked/didn’t work, etc. This is very helpful for me – and for the followers of that board.

3. Follow a lot of people I love following a lot of people on Pinterest because it means I find a lot of great items to pin. Interestingly, Pinterest also adds you as a follower to boards that their algorithm thinks you will like. This helps you to find more great stuff to pin.

4. Learn your URL If you are a blogger, use this formula to search  pins from your site: http://pinterest.com/source/URL/ So, for the Mom Creative, my URL is http://pinterest.com/source/themomcreative.com/. This is also a handy way to see what has been pinned from your favorite sites.

5. Pin from your favorite sites If you see something you like on a website pin it! (I have the Pin It tool installed on my toolbar, which makes it really easy to pin from any site. It takes about 5 seconds to install.) Pinterest is only as good as the stuff that is pinned on it, so it needs people to pin new items to it. Plus, pins help drive traffic to your favorite sites. (I’m so thankful every time you pin something from this site.)

6. Pin the specific URL of a post to Pinterest (not the generic site URL) This is an important one! When you see something on a site that you want to pin, be sure to click on the post so that you pin from the actual post – and not the main site URL. Otherwise, once that post moves from the main page, no one will be able to  find it. (Similarly don’t pin from a google image search – pin from the site the image came from).

7. Search pins to find new inspiration If you are researching ideas, check out the search function on Pinterest to find new ideas. The search function isn’t as robust as I would like it to be (it isn’t endless, you can’t sort by recent or popular, etc.), but I do always find SOMETHING worth repinning. I especially like using search when I am looking for a recipe, home dec ideas or party inspiration.

8. Write meaningful descriptions (include key words, @+a name will tag someone) Pinterest requires you to write a description of some sort. It is frustrating when a description is something like yum or must try and doesn’t tell the viewer what the picture is of. Be sure your description tells what the pin is.  It is also nice when you include the blog name or tag someone.  (ie: all-tecknows crock pot beef stew from @gmkk). You may have noticed that more and more bloggers are including text on their images to make the images “Pinterest friendly” and helpful for viewers on Pinterest.

9. Don’t post an entire blog post in your pin It is poor etiquette to paste an entire post/recipe etc. on a pin. Instead, when you pin an item, write a simple description of the item so people will click to get the full tutorial, recipe, etc.

10. Comment! Pinterest is a social site like Facebook and Twitter, so interact!

Bonus Tip for Bloggers If you are a blogger and are interested in generating revenue through Pinterest, optimizing your boards for SEO, and more – click here to check out this class by Dan Morris. I met Dan at NAMS last month and he is BRILLIANT. When you buy this class, you also get free access to his weekly mastermind site, which has incredible resources on it. Definitely worth the $9!

What would you add to this list? Please feel free to leave your Pinterest name in the comments so I can follow you. AND, if you are not on Pinterest and need an invitation, send me an email and I will happily send you an invite.

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7 proven ways to create viral Pinterest posts

7 proven ways to create viral Pinterest posts

Pinterest has demonstrated its traffic-driving ability in a big way. 

As a lifestyle blogger, I have seen huge traffic from Pinterest in the past six months. I have had multiple posts go “viral,” each receiving anywhere from 1,000 to 35,000-plus pins. These posts have translated to:

• new followers of my blog; 

• revenue from affiliate links; 

• higher positioning in Google search.

For each viral post, I used the same strategies. If you want to see your blog posts get pinned hundreds, if not thousands, of times on Pinterest, consider these seven tips: 

Write your post as a list 

This is the easiest tip. People love lists. They are easy to read and pinned a lot. Consider writing your post in bulleted or list format.

Use text on your photos, or create a title graphic 

This is the single most important thing you can do to stimulate pins and repins. When people pin and repin on Pinterest, they are scanning through a lot of thumbnails. Having text on a photo makes it easier for users to identify what an image is and if they want to pin it. 

(It is important to note that if you are using stock photography on your blog, you should check the terms of your contract. Many stock sites do not include rights for a photo to be pinned to Pinterest.) 

Add a “Pin It” button beneath the photo you want to be pinned, and write a smart, searchable tag for the caption

Some people think that they don’t need to add a “Pin It” button to posts—that people who use Pinterest will naturally just pin the posts they like. This is not true. People don’t always have “Pinterest on the brain.” You need to tell them to pin the post. The pin button is an easy way to say hey, you should pin this. It also shows that you give the person permission to pin the content. 

Also, when you put the “Pin It” button on your post, you can customize the copy. Be smart. Include key words and hash tags to make your content searchable.

Write a post that is timely

This is a big one. My post on 101 Easter Basket Ideas would not have been pinned more than 41,000 times if I had posted it in February because people weren’t thinking about Easter yet. Be very strategic about a post’s timeliness and you will likely see big returns on pins and repins.

Ask friends who are active on Pinterest to pin your content

If your content is relevant to a friend’s Pinterest boards, ask if they would be willing to pin your post. It is important to do this on the first day, when you are trying to gain momentum on Pinterest. 

I have a circle of blogging friends who regularly support each other’s content through pins, tweets, etc. It can be difficult to keep up with so many blogs (even of people you genuinely like), so don’t assume that your friends will share your content. Of course, don’t forget to say thank you and return the favor when the time comes. 

I have seen a direct correlation between asks and posts going viral. That early traction can make a big difference. 

Push the post out via social media, multiple times over an appropriate period

While I am not an advocate of posting every single blog post to Twitter, Facebook, etc. multiple times, certain posts that I am really trying to push via Pinterest I will share numerous times. 

For instance, I had a post that received more than 19,000 pins related to Father’s Day gift ideas. I tweeted about that post almost every day for the two weeks leading up to Father’s Day. Each day, I saw more pins to Pinterest, more traffic from Pinterest, and more sales from the affiliate links within the post. I was creative with my tweets, posted at different times of day and had other unrelated content in my Twitter stream, so it wasn’t like my followers were only hearing about that post. 

Remind people of the posts after the initial “peak” period

In my experience, posts gain the most traction on Pinterest in the first 72 hours of being live on your blog. That doesn’t mean you can’t gain additional pins after that period, but you might have to work a little harder.

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10 must-have social media tools

10 must-have social media tools

10 tools to increase the power of your social media strategy

10 tools. 10 platforms.

Is it really possible to order the chaos of your social media—and boost your PR and marketing reach while doing it? Find out how to do it with Pete Codella.

Learn how to:

Monitor social platforms more efficiently

Automate Twitter status updates and the people you follow

Set up RSS feeds and readers

Optimize Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ pages for business

Use this knowledge to boost your PR and marketing reach

Here’s how. Discover the 10 top tools that will help you boost your influence and readership on (at least) 10 major platforms. You’ll figure out Pinterest, garner search engine tips, and master powerful add-ons to get your WordPress site noticed.

And if it sounds overwhelming to tackle all this at once, Pete Codella has a strategy. Take baby steps. He’ll tell you how in “10 Tools to Increase the Power of Your Social Media.”

“10 Tools to Increase the Power of Your Social Media”

Pete Codella VP of marketing and public relations for Alexander's

Pete Codella guides you through the 10 top social tools you need in order to harness the PR and marketing power of the most popular social media channels.

Join us for this event and Pete will explain how these incredible social platforms can help you know what your audience is saying, respond to their comments, move them to action and measure your success.

Pete covers tips and tools for these social media:

Facebook

LinkedIn

Google+

Google AdWords, Analytics and Reader

FeedBurner

ShortStack—to create Facebook pages

Twitter

Pinterest

WordPress

YouTube

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5 Easy Ways to Optimize Social Media Marketing for Mobile

5 Easy Ways to Optimize Social Media Marketing for Mobile

Several weeks ago, I was looking at the user data for one of the brands that I manage and one statistic stuck out more than others. Nearly 60 percent of the people who interact with that brand do so via smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device. I started checking other brands, and the numbers were all similar. 

The majority of people interacting with our content were doing so from a mobile device. 

Nielsen’s State of the Media: Social Media Report confirms that our brands aren’t alone. 

In 2012, the time spent accessing Facebook via mobile increased 85 percent, Twitter 140 percent, LinkedIn 114 percent, and Pinterest 4,225 percent. That’s a staggering increase. Forty-six percent of social media users say they use their smartphone to access social media; 16 percent say they connect to social media using a tablet. 

Here are a five easy tips to help you optimize your social media content for mobile readers:

1. Be much more thoughtful about when you’re posting.

The average Facebook post gets 50 percent of its reach and engagement in the first 30 minutes of being posted, according to Socialbakers. It’s all downhill from there.

Start asking yourself: Where is my audience going to be in the hour or so after we post this? Is there an opportunity to capture them where they are at that moment and inspire action or tap into an emotion that you know a large number of your fans are experiencing at that time? 

Don’t limit it to experimenting with when you post, either. If you have an assumption about where your audience is consuming your content (specifically, where they are on Earth), you can create some calls to action and inspire them to engage that way. 

For instance, Instagram, where the mobile engagement is close to 100 percent, is great for this: “Show us what you’re doing now and how our product fits into that.” 

2. Add value to the mobile experience -- which differs from adding value to the desktop or laptop experience.

The greater the distance you make your fans travel in mobile, the worse the experience becomes. No one wants to hop from one app to another—to another—to download your app that, let’s be honest, isn’t all that cool in the first place. On a desktop or laptop, people are more forgiving when it comes to bouncing around the Web. You have to be more respectful of the mobile experience.

Similarly, if you’re in the Facebook or Pinterest app and you click on a brand’s link, it’s going to send you to a website. Unless you’ve checked that link in social, you’re not 100 percent sure where you’re sending them. It might look great on your laptop, but on mobile it could look like a Geocities site and do your brand a huge disservice. 

Keep your posts simple and undeniably specific to your brand. 

3. Design for mobile first.

Keep your font sizes legible on your graphics. If you’re tapping through to a photo, you don’t want to have to zoom in on something just to read it. If you’re taking the time to design an asset, make sure you’re taking the time to design it so that mobile users can read it.

The default has been to design social assets for the desktop or laptop experience and back into mobile. Reverse that. Design for mobile, and it will back into the desktop experience. 

4. Test different mobile platforms to understand the differences.

If you post a photo album on Facebook, you can’t click on the links that you’ve put in the captions of the individual photos if you’re using an iPhone or Android phone. However, those links work when you’re using most tablets. That’s good to know if you want to drive traffic in mobile. 

Of course, that’s just one of the many quirks and intricacies when it comes to presenting social content in mobile. Understanding the user experience across devices is important in making sure your posts are accomplishing their desired outcomes. 

5. Check your analytics.

Every brand is different, and every audience is different. Before you completely shift the way you’ve been creating and posting content, take the time to dig deep into your metrics and understand where your engagement is coming from. Certain demographics will use mobile more than others.

For the brand I mentioned earlier, males 18-34 had the highest instance of engaging with our content through mobile (nearly 75 percent). We were able to make some assumptions based on that and test some content around those assumptions.

Test, measure, analyze, optimize, rinse, repeat. 

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STATE OF THE MEDIA: THE SOCIAL MEDIA REPORT 2012

STATE OF THE MEDIA: THE SOCIAL MEDIA REPORT 2012

Social media is coming of age. Since the emergence of the first social media networks some two decades ago, social media has continued to evolve and offer consumers around the world new and meaningful ways to engage with the people, events and brands that matter to them. Now, years later, social media is still growing rapidly, becoming an integral part of our daily lives. Social networking is now truly a global phenomenon.

This report reveals insights such as:

What's driving the continued growth of social media?

How is consumer usage of social media evolving?

How is social media impacting marketing?

Who is using Pinterest?

Download your copy today and learn more about the social media audience.

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Google's 10-Minute Guide to SEO Basics

Google's 10-Minute Guide to SEO Basics

From keyword research to backlinking, staying on top of search engine optimization strategies can be a full-time job in itself. But fear not, time-crunched entrepreneurs. Google has a killer resource for you.

It's a 10-minute video loaded with must-know SEO advice for startups from Maile Ohye, a developer advocate on Google's Webmaster Central Team. Some of Ohye's tips include:

* Don’t bother with meta keywords tags. Google ignores it for search.

* Sign up for email forwarding. Google can forward you notifications regarding issues with your site that could dent your search ranking.

* Use Google's Webmaster Tools to search for the keywords related to your domain name. If the domain's previous owners were spammers, your site might not rank highly in search.

For more of Ohye's tips, watch the video:

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Google's New Portal Provides Help for Hacked Sites

Google's New Portal Provides Help for Hacked Sites

This week, financial giant JPMorgan Chase's Chase.com website became the latest victim in what appears to be an escalating series of cyberattacks from a variety of sources over the past several months. For an entrepreneur, a website hack can be disastrous, disrupting revenue and causing customers to lose confidence. Perhaps mindful of the increasing frequency and severity of cyberattacks, Google has launched a one-stop shop for advice on how to recover after your website has been compromised.

On the new "help for hacked sites" portal, which opened Tuesday, you'll find a series of videos that walk you through how to assess the damage, contact your website host, quarantine your site and more.

Of course, protecting your site before hackers find it is always best, says Maile Ohye, a developer programs technology lead on Google's Webmaster Support Team who narrates the first video. Her tips for safeguarding your site, which she writes in an accompanying blog post, include:

* Keeping software updated
* Removing extraneous software
* Using strong passwords (and making sure that your employees use them)
* Backing up your site on a regular basis

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5 Steps to a Stress-Free Website Redesign

5 Steps to a Stress-Free Website Redesign

You and your customers are too busy for your business website to be too busy.

Between fast moving social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and emerging mobile smartphones and tablets, it has never been more critical to keep it simple online. The good news: A flock of new third-party tools make redesigning your site for speed and simplicity easier than ever.

Here are five basic steps to a clean, simple and stress-free website redesign.

1. Focus on your website's data to refine your features. Thoroughly review the data showing how people use your current site. The trick to keeping it simple is figuring out which elements you absolutely need.

What to use: Basic tools such as website traffic logs and free services such as Yahoo Web Analytics or Google Analytics offer insights into your site's performance. But sophisticated data analysis tools can also prove helpful. La Mirada, Calif.-based CrazyEgg (starts at $9 per month) creates a visual heat map showing the most frequently clicked parts of your site. Such sites as FiveSecondTest and UserTesting.com can provide qualitative analysis from actual users on what is working and not working with your site. Fees start at $20 a month and $39 per tester.

The goal: Create a list of must-have functions based on your user data.

2. Break out what your site should and shouldn't do. With the right data in hand, businesses should be able eliminate many unused features. After that, rank the remaining functions by their importance to accomplishing your goals and begin the process of laying out pages.

What to use: Web-based brainstorming and outlining tools can create rough page designs that match your new plan. San Francisco-based WorkFlowy (free for up to 500 stored ideas) and Germany's MindMeister (starts at $4.99 per month) are tools to plan content flow, feature sets and basic layouts.

The goal: Create a set of page layouts that are as exact as possible and include the most important functions. Don't worry if it's nothing more at this point than basic contact information, links to social networks and a simple brand statement.

3. Match the right website solution to your needs. Most essential business content can usually fit in a small amount of website space. Therefore, a deep pool of hosted website services are now possible. These hosted services require no coding experience and manage everything from security to upgrades, and creating mobile-friendly features that work well on tablets and other devices.

What to use: Simpler is almost always better with hosted sites. For an easy landing page -- with links to social media -- New York-based Flavors.me or Spain's Dooid offer basic, easy-to-build sites.

For more features, such as online forms or product photo galleries, more sophisticated web options are necessary. Manhattan-based Squarespace (starts at $8 per month), London-based Moonfruit (starts at $6 per month), and Estonia-based Edicy (starts at about $7.50 per month) offer a balance of design features, ease of use and performance.

The goal: Choose as lean a hosting solution as possible, and be sure to develop your site with a mobile phone or tablet handy to confirm that it works as it should on those devices. It's important that your site display correctly and effectively to the growing number of mobile internet users.

4. Emphasize social media in your design. Carefully consider placement of social media content on your site. Usually, it's front and center and features your most dynamic content, including blog posts, updates and video.

What to use: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social networks have sparked a cottage industry in third-party apps that integrate their tools into your site and mobile devices. Explore ways to share you company content on social media, and look for features that promote follows on Twitter and likes on Facebook.

The goal: Outsource as much of the site experience as possible to social media and mobile devices, while still following your design plan.

5. Once it's up and running, rigorously test your new site. Decide early on how to measure your site's success -- or failure. This will vary, but useful metrics include email list sign-ups, additional followers and conversions into phone calls or chat sessions.

What to use: There's an array of third-party tools to optimize the performance of the different elements of your design. Optimizely (starts at $17 per month), Google Content Experiments (free within Google Analytics package), Visual Website Optimizer ($49 per month), SproutSocial (starts at $39) and Radian6 by Salesforce (free to start for Salesforce users, plans start at $5 per users per month) mix social media into the data analysis. Also worth a look are customer feedback services such as Hively (basic plans are free, paid service starts at $15 per month), which prompt visitors to answer survey questions about their experience using your website.

The goal: Have a firm plan to track your site performance and commit the resources needed to manage and update your new design. The web is a never-ending work in progress -- and so is your new site.

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How to Do an SEO Audit of Your Website

How to Do an SEO Audit of Your Website

Because search engine optimization (SEO) best practices and procedures change all the time, business owners should conduct periodic assessments to determine whether or not adjustments need to be made. If a business website isn't properly optimized for search, it's most likely missing out on a significant amount of traffic from the search engines, including from potential customers.

To properly audit your site for SEO, carry out the following steps at least once or twice a year:

1. Check on-page tag optimization.

One of the easiest ways to quickly improve your website's SEO is through on-site changes. While it can take time to build high-quality backlinks, another hallmark of good SEO performance, on-site tweaks require just a few hours of effort.

Begin your SEO audit by asking the following questions. Identifying weaknesses in this area could provide an easy place to begin future website improvements:

          * Are my title tags (headlines) written to appeal to both website visitors and search engine visitors, or are they "keyword stuffed"?

           * Do my title tags contain relevant SEO keywords and brand mentions?

           * Are my title tags no longer than 65 characters?

       * Do my meta description tags (which display a preview explanation for a page in search results) provide interesting content that will appeal to viewers of search engine results?

          * Does each page on my website contain a naturally written, keyword-rich <h2> tag (headings within posts)?

           * Does each page on my website include high-quality, original content?

           * Do my pages contain internal links to facilitate visitor and search engine robot movement throughout my site?

           * Are my images optimized according to current SEO best practices?

2. Check for broken links or dead pages.

Avoid broken outbound links or links to internal "dead" pages that have since been deleted from your site. They can be detrimental to your site's SEO performance, so be sure to identify such problems.

If your website runs on a content management system (CMS) or an e-commerce platform, you may be able to install a tool that can check this automatically. For example, if your site runs on WordPress, installing the Broken Link Checker plugin can notify you whenever broken links are detected.

Alternatively, simply navigate to a site like BrokenLinkCheck.com and run the service's free link check to identify any issues on your site that need to be resolved.

3. Make sure your site can be indexed by the search engines.

Beyond making sure that broken links don't trip up the search engine robots while they're on your site, it's also important that these automated programs can access your site in the first place.

Any number of issues -- from improperly installed code files to hacked site content -- can prevent the search engines from reading your content correctly. To determine whether or not this is occurring on your site, head over to WebConf's free Search Engine Simulator and enter your site's URL. If you can see your content displaying correctly as text, the search engines can as well.

4. Examine your link profile and compare it to competitors.

Once you've finished with on-site elements, check the state of your site's backlink profile. The number and quality of links pointing at your site play a major role in your content's performance in search engine results.

To do this, use a link explorer tool like Majestic SEO (free version available, with paid plans starting at $49.99 per month) or the SEOMoz Open Site Explorer (free version available, with paid plans starting at $99 per month) to view a list of all the links pointing at your site. Pay particular attention to:

          * The types of links that your site has received, such as directory links, press release links, social media links and more.

             * Whether or not the sites sending you links are reputable.

             * Whether or not the sites sending you links are related to your site's content.

Then, run this same assessment on your competitors' websites. This process could turn up backlink building opportunities for your future off-site SEO efforts, as well as uncover link-building patterns in your industry that you should be paying attention to.

5. Test your site's speed.

Examine your site's average speed and page load times, as Google has unequivocally stated that it intends to prioritize site speed as a ranking factor in its natural search algorithms.

To find out whether your site is fast, slow or somewhere in between, head over to Google's Page Insights tool and enter your URL. This tool will then analyze your site's load times and provide suggestions on making improvements. You can either make changes on your own or enlist the help of a developer if they require technical expertise.

These steps should give you a general overview on how well your website is performing from an SEO standpoint. If you go through the steps, make changes but still don't get the search results you'd like, consider working with an SEO expert to improve your site's natural search performance.

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Improve Your Website: 3 Free Tools for 'Screencasting'

Improve Your Website: 3 Free Tools for 'Screencasting'

A screencast, or video of what's happening on your computer screen, is commonly used for video tutorials. But screencasts can also be used to create a tour of your website, present a slide show or demonstrate the features of any online product.

While a screenshot is a static image of a computer screen, screencasts essentially are short movies with narration that can show changes made to a site or page over time. They can be used to demonstrate how to use a new piece of software, to report problems with your site or to illustrate potential changes to your site through a redesign.

All you need to create a screencast is a microphone and a service to capture the video. Here are three free tools that can help you get started on the right foot:

1. Screencast-o-matic. This free program lets you start recording within 30 seconds of opening the webpage. One button opens the resizeable recording frame. Another button starts the recording. 

With Screencast-o-matic, you can record up to 15 minutes then upload your video directly to your YouTube account. You can create as many videos as you want for free, but they come with a "Screencast-o-matic" watermark in the corner.

To get screencasts without the watermark, upgrade to a pro account for $15 a year. This includes a full editing suite, screenshots, offline recording, additional publishing options and unlimited video length. If you're going to shoot more than two screencasts a year, it can be worth the price.

2. Screenr. This is another free, instant record tool with a resizeable frame and one touch record button. Screenr only allows recordings up to five minutes and you're required to sign in with a social media account such as Facebook, Twitter or Google.

The advantage is that you can easily upload short videos to your social media pages, not just YouTube. Screener's free screencasts don't include a watermark but they do make all videos public on their site so pass on this option if you need to keep your video private.

You can go private by paying $19 a month for a pro account, but even the paid options don't include the ability to edit videos.

3. Jing. This is a free tool you download to your desktop and activate from an icon that stays at the top of your screen. Jing allows you to quickly grab stills or record anything on your screen with just a few clicks. You can pick up your full screen or any portion, then instantly upload to Facebook or Twitter.

Videos are limited to five minutes in length and, since they're hosted on screencast.com, storage and bandwidth is limited to 2G a month. You can increase storage space to 25G with a Screencast Pro account for $9.99 per month. Even with the limitations, Jing is one of the quickest ways to create short, single-use videos on the fly.

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Steal These 3 Social Marketing Tricks From Top Brands

Steal These 3 Social Marketing Tricks From Top Brands

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Do you follow a brand in social media? Are you glad you did? If that's the case, they are either doing one of three things:

Connecting with one of your passions and/or interests.

Entertaining you with their engaging personality.

Providing interesting and/or important information to you.

If you're a small business owner, you may want to consider which of the three strategies you're following. You might also mull following one of the strategies exclusively. However, it's fine to dabble in each. "These approaches are interchangeable, and a brand can not only switch back and forth between them, but also use two or three at the same time," says Caitlin Francke, SVP, and Director of Social Strategy at Publicis Kaplan Thaler. "The most important thing is for a brand to stay true to their DNA, identify what they are best at, what they can offer the consumers the most of, and focus on that. That will be their strongest play."

The three strategies — passion, personality and transparency — are outlined below.

1. Passion Brands

No matter how much you like it, it's hard to get worked up about an energy drink. But that drink may be just a part of the optimum experience that you associate with that brand. For example, for some, Red Bull conjures up images of action sports. This is no accident, since the brand has worked hard at tying the brand to images of young people risking their lives on extreme outdoor activities. The cover photo on the brand's Facebook Page, for instance, shows a guy on a snowboard.

Another consistent brand is Nike. Though the brand's social media communication highlights both professional and amateur athletes, the underlying point is the same: celebrating athletic achievement. Adidas' feed is also consistent and differentiated from Nike in its international focus.

Finally, a good example of a passion brand in another category is Whole Foods, whose social media stream consists almost entirely of recipes so fans can indulge their love of cooking and epicureanism.

2. Personality Brands

Not every brand can connect itself to a pastime the way that Nike could. What do you do, for instance, if you're Oreo? Oreo's not associated with much besides milk and perhaps binge-eating. But Oreo and interactive agency 360i aren't interested in connecting Oreo to a particular passion. Instead, they've infused the brand's social media activity with personality. Oreo's 31 million-strong Facebook feed shows the familiar Oreo looking slightly different in the name of a visual pun. The daily updates are sort of a variation on Absolut's long-running ad campaign that featured the bottle against unusual backdrops for the same witty purpose.

Another personality brand is Skittles, which has racked up 24 million followers on Facebook with whimsical, stream-of-consciousness status updates like "The frenemy of my frenemy is my enefriend" and "Beavers are excellent at making pancakes, omelettes and anything that needs a spatula."

3. Transparent Brands

Transparent brands want to tell you about all the stuff that they're doing in the real world. A good example of such a brand is IBM, which hosts some

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What Is Social Media Marketing

What Is Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media sites.

Social media itself is a catch-all term for sites that may provide radically different social actions. For instance, Twitter is a social site designed to let people share short messages or “updates” with others. Facebook, in contrast is a full-blown social networking site that allows for sharing updates, photos, joining events and a variety of other activities.

Why would a search marketer — or a site about search engines — care about social media? The two are very closely related.

Social media often feeds into the discovery of new content such as news stories, and “discovery” is a search activity. Social media can also help build links that in turn support into SEO efforts. Many people also perform searches at social media sites to find social media content.

Advice At Search Engine Land

Here at Search Engine Land, we provide social media marketing information and news in a variety of ways:

Search & Social is Search Engine Land’s column that covers different social media marketing topics every week, as they relate to search.

How To: Social Media Marketing is our section that is devoted to practical tips and tactics about social media marketing. 

Social Media Marketing Library Archives: This area of Search Engine Land provides a collection of all stories we’ve written on the topic of social media.

In addition to covering social media marketing generally, Search Engine Land also has areas specifically about particular major social media sites and social search sites:

Delicious

Facebook

Foursquare

Google+

Twitter

YouTube

Social Search Engines

Word Of Mouth & Buzz Search Engines

Remember, those with Search Engine Land PRO memberships also have access to a wide-range of video content about social media marketing recorded at our SMX: Search Marketing Expo conferences. Our Digital Marketing Depot sister site also has social media marketing presentations available on demand, to anyone, for free.

Advice At Marketing Land

Marketing Land is the sister site to Search Engine Land that covers all facets of internet marketing, including social media marketing. At Marketing Land, you’ll find regular news coverage about social media marketing. It also offers three dedicated columns on the topic:

Social Media Marketing

Facebook Marketing

Twitter Marketing

Advice At SMX

Search Engine Land produces the SMX conference series. Many of our SMX events have topics that cover social media. There’s also our annual event entirely devoted to social media. Check out the site to learn more: SMX Social Media Marketing.

More Advice & News

There are a number of blogs and forums that focus heavily on social media marketing, including: aimClear, BlueGlass, Bruce Clay Blog, Chris Brogan, Facebook’s blog, Google+ on Google+, LinkedIn’s blog, Mashable, Marketing Land, Scobleizer, Search Engine Land, Steve Rubel, TechCrunch, Techipedia, Twitter’s blog and WebProNews.

Looking for an easy-to-scan compilation of social media news? Check out Alltop. For compilations of the best articles on paid search in a given year, visit The Semmys. At Search Engine Roundtable, you’ll discover a regular compilation of important discussions happening on a variety of search marketing forums.

Also be sure to subscribe to our free SearchCap newsletter! SearchCap has a recap of all the day’s social media marketing news from sources all over the web, as well as the day’s news from Search Engine Land and Marketing Land.

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How to Design Amazing Images For Your Social Media Profiles

How to Design Amazing Images For Your Social Media Profiles

Creating compelling visual imagery for your social media profiles has never been more important for your brand. Not only are Facebook, Twitter and Google+ all adapting their layouts to make images more central to the user’s experience, but the two fastest growing social networks – Pinterest and Instagram – both put pictures rather than text at the forefront.

With the upcoming changes to Facebook’s newsfeed placing more emphasis on images and increasing their size, powerful images, now more than ever, are an integral part of successful social media engagement.

Research from Socialbakers shows that photos are the most shared post types by brands on Facebook at 77% and made up 93% of the most shared brand posts across the site.  Tweets featuring images see 88% more retweets than tweets with links and 19% more retweets than those that are text only. Gratifying the short attention spans of the social audience, images are quickly and effortlessly consumed, making content easier to digest and share.

Therefore, graphic design plays an important role, not only in building brand awareness and recognition, but also attracting the user’s attention. Because of this, marketers and social media managers should have a basic understanding of graphic design, especially design that works where your social audience spends most of their time: online and on mobile devices. When graphics are used consistently over various platforms, customers may view it several times over, in turn generating more brand recognition

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Social media imagery is essential to getting people to follow you, so here we will provide you with a few tips on how to create the best imagery for your posts.

Original Images

Images are a great way to emotionally connect your audience. When you use photos, always aim to make them original and true to your brand. People tend to react well to pictures of “real” people, but we distance ourselves from stock photos because they are associated with advertising and spam. Clean, simple images from a decent camera are best. If you are going to overlay text on the image, shoot with this in mind, so compose your image to incorporate white space.

Always keep consistency with your identity and branding. When you create your own images, always include your logo. This shows it’s your original image and increases brand awareness. If it’s simply not possible to create your own images due to time/resource constraints, here’s our guide to sourcing images without getting into trouble.

Keep It Relevant

Something many brands do is post images of irrelevant content for the sake of likes. All your images should deliver your brand message and hopefully have your own unique style. The most highly engaging graphics have a sound strategy behind them and aren’t just jumping on the “cute animal pics” bandwagon for the sake of it. Choose your words and colours carefully and you’ll be rewarded by your community.

Entertain Your Audience

Users like to be entertained. Share your funny stories or ideas and come up with creative ways to present your product or service. Facebook is the place where users have the opportunity to really get to know the brand’s personality. Many brands have also seen the advantage of sharing behind-the-scenes images and photos of everyday-life situations.

Know Your Target Group

People engage with brand pages to express their opinions and individuality, and if you understand your users, you can use that information to make content that they will relate to, and if it’s clever, share as a statement. Regular updates and competitions that genuinely engage with the irreverent attitude of the online audience will go lengths in building confidence in your brand.

The Importance Of Colour

When selecting the colours to use in your graphic, always consider your target audience. It’s important to select colours to stand out, while staying on brand. It’s a good idea to choose colours that differ from the Facebook-blue to draw more attention to the image.

Generally, as you’ll see with the examples further below, it’s a great idea to colour pick from your logo and image, if you’re using one. Have a look at the type of graphics that are successful in your field. Which colours are most popular and appropriate? Also, consider the general psychology of colour theory. For example, studies show that both men and women tend to really like blue and dislike brown.

Choose The Right Font

When choosing your font, it’s essential to stay consistent with your branding and identity. Examples of places you can source free fonts for download are FontSquirrel.com, Google.com/WebFonts and DaFont.com. When placing text, add a comment or question that encourages users to interact and add comments of their own.

Keep Up To Date With Graphic Dimensions

Keep in mind that these are constantly changing as each site updates their layouts, so it’s a good idea to regularly check for new dimensions. Always remember to resize your images for social media. When people aren’t in front of a computer, they’re in front of a smartphone or tablet. The larger the photo and the greater the resolution, the longer it takes to process.

You only have a few seconds to capture someone’s attention. It’s wasted pixels if the user isn’t going to wait for it to load, so always resize. Here’s a very handy infographic for all the pixel dimensions and sizes you’ll need for creating your social media images.

Educate, Motivate, & Inspire

While brainstorming what kind of quotes or information to include on your graphics, remember that people want to be educated. It’s fun to learn something new everyday – especially if it’s short, easily remembered, helpful, funny or particularly thought provoking. You’ll want to choose your quotes or statistics carefully to ensure they resonate with your target market. You should also ensure your image and quote complements the industry you’re in.

Case Studies

Since there are so many examples out there, here is a selection of great brand examples for you to take inspiration from.

Benefit

Most brands will have created themed seasonal graphics recently for St. Patrick’s Day. Here, make-up brand Benefit gets it just right, staying very true to their brand with their signature speech bubble and font, incorporating green for their text colour and into their logo in honour of St. Patrick’s Day.

Heineken

A very simple, but creative wall image from Heineken shows a green bottle on the left, a pint on the right with white space in the middle to create a clever Irish flag.

Subway

A great way of showing of your product is to create a shape or image using your product. Here, Subway cleverly built a rainbow out of their sandwich fillings.

McDonald’s

Here’s a similar example in which McDonald’s created the text “Hot ‘n’Spicy”, to describe the product by building the words from the chillies!

Clarks Shoes

Again, Clarks shoes have ingeniously created a flower from its product for Mother’s Day. Also worth noting is its consistent branding and font as well as the use of white space in the graphic.

Bulmers

Another method that brands use to engage their fans is by creating simple but engaging ‘game’ graphics. In this example, Bulmers selected this beautiful product image and altered one of them for a ‘Spot the Difference’ game. An idea like this ensures retaining fan attention as they try to complete the task.

Fairy

A similar idea here where Fairy created a maze in which the user has to figure out which route leads to the Fairy pack. A very straightforward idea, but the excellent use of branding and colour and time spent looking at it will help enormously in increasing brand awareness.

Nike

Many brands also go down the route of posting nicely designed quotes. Here, Nike remain consistent with its brand authenticity with its font choice and colours. As it’s such a well-known brand, even without the logo below, it’s likely that you could guess what brand it is.

The Body Shop

Again, staying consistent with its identity through the use of font and colour choices, The Body Shop created a simple inspiring quote with its logo taking prime place below.

Domino’s Pizza

Another excellent way to engage your audience is to ask a question. Here, Domino’s create a great graphic with a question. The background texture looks like a pizza box and the colours used are very much in keeping with its branding, as well as the subtle logo in the corner.

Malibu

A great way to overlay text nicely on an image is to blur out your photo. Here, Malibu created a beautiful graphic, again posing a question, with a great composition of the elements. The colours in the photo are again complementing its logo while creating that warm relaxed Caribbean vibe emanated from its advertising.

Software

Generally, the industry standard for creating graphics is PhotoShop. However,  if you’re unable to acquire PhotoShop, here are a selection of great free alternatives for you to try:

Photoshop.com/Tools/ExpressEditor

Gimp.org

Pixlr.com

When it comes to content marketing creation, there is absolutely no doubt that visuals are an essential component for increasing and retaining your reach. Hence, generating attractive and engaging graphics should be the priority for your brand.

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