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Leveraging Your Expertise Through Social Media

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Leverage Your Expertise through Social Media

While many people use social media for their own personal endeavors, whether to communicate with friends, share their favorite articles and stories, or connect with their next potential employer, an increasing amount of users are also looking to these social platforms to do business. Here’s how you can leverage your expertise through social media.

Business owners want to know the different between the 4 major social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+) and how to leverage each site for their business.

In response to this question, Zintro, a business network that connects clients with experts in a large variety of business areas, has produced this infographic, “Leveraging Social Media To Showcase Your Expertise”, which explains and highlights the key features of the four big social media platforms of today.

How is your business using social media to connect with clients? Which social media platforms is your business using and how did you decide which ones to use?

Small Businesses That Get It Right On Pinterest

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Arnima-Small-Businesses-That-Get-It-Right-On-Pinterest

I’m sure by now you’ve at least heard of Pinterest. If not, feel free to zip on over to the site and I’ll see you in a few days after you’re done creating your holiday dinner menu for the next 5 years and completed redecorated your home 3 times over.

Pinterest Is a virtual bulletin board of all your favorite ideas and finds. Yes, it’s great for finding recipes, DIY projects, and the latest fashion trends, but companies are now jumping on to the Pinterest bandwagon. It’s a great way to showcase your company culture, products, research customer segments and increase brand recognition.

For small businesses, this can be especially difficult. In order to utilize Pinterest effectively, marketers must focus on the concepts of people’s lifestyles, encourage users to share their interests and find like-minded individuals. Take a look at some of these small businesses that get it right on Pinterest:

Mr. Rooter

 MrRooter

Waco, Texas plumbing franchise

Mr. Rooter uses Pinterest as a retention tool to help keep the company top-of-mind when a customer needs plumbing work. With Where in the World is Waldo boards to fix a leak and plumbing trick boards, Mr. Rooter understands and pins to their customers’ needs.

Project coordinator, Rachel Florence says, “We just want to keep out name on their minds so when they need a plumber, we’re the first thing they think of.” It’s really all about name recognition.

Tamara

Suttle Castle Rock, Colorado, Licensed Professional Counselor

What Mrs. Suttle does right is pin often and pin right. Her boards are for her followers and she is a great resource to her community. She has boards offering advice in every facet of counseling as well as Connect To Me board, allowing her followers to easily connect to her if they want to learn more about her services.

Yala Designs

Ashland, Oregon Bamboo and silk bedding and apparel

YalaDesigns

Yala Designs uses Pinterest for customer research. Their “Your Yala Apparel Ideas” board allows followers to post images of products from other companies they want Yala Designs to make.

This board alone has over 1100 followers and 200 pins. Social media manager Lauren Sarget notes, “We never know for sure how well they will be received until tradeshow season. Pinterest is the perfect venue for us to get ideas from the public rather than guessing at what we think they will like.” User boards are not only great for customer research, but they’re also great for engaging and building relationships with users, which is key to your social marketing efforts.

Easy Lunchboxes

Tarzana, California Environmentally friendly lunchboxes for all

The California-based company’s main goal was to increase sales without looking desperate.

EasyLunchboxes
To avoid over-promoting, CEO Kelly Lester created a user board for others to show they use her lunch boxes. The “Easy Lunch Box Lunches” user board lets other users promote the product. So what you’re saying is you do half the work for twice the results…Genius! Lester even said, “Google analytics is showing me that 56% of the visits to my site generate from my Pinterest boards.”

Pinterest: Where The Big Spenders Shop

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Pinterest: Where The Big Spenders ShopI’ll never forget my first pair of Tory Burch boots. One, because they’re my favorite pair of shoes in my closet, and two, I paid for them all on my own. Now, $350 for a pair of boots may not seem like a lot to some of you, but for a poor college student who had been saving up for months, it seemed the equivalent to a down payment on a house.

Every retail site knows that social media is their friend. Social media sites drive traffic based on sheer user numbers, but also from a trust factor. When it comes to clothing, I’m probably going to trust a friend’s recommendation or pin over an ad on the side of my newsfeed.

But not all social media sites are created equal when it comes to driving retail traffic. A recent study from RichRelevance, looked at over 700 million shopping sessions and found that while Facebook still drives the most traffic, Pinterest has one notable plus high-end retailers should pay close attention to.

According to the study, Facebook drives 85.8% of online shopping sessions, Pinterest with 11.3% and Twitter with 2.9%. That being said, the average order from Pinterest referrals was $168.83 compared to Facebook referred orders at $94.7 and Twitter at $70.84.

Another study, by Tamba, reports that Pinterest will account for 40% of social media driven purchases by the end of this year. The study also found that Pinterest buyers are 10% more likely to purchase something and spend 10% more than visitors from other social networks.

Diane Kegley, CMO of RichRelevance said, “Every social network promises a new way of connecting consumers with retailers and brands. However, the big take-away from our research is that not all channels in the social space are created equal.”

That being said, which social platforms are driving your traffic?

– Sarah

How can Pinterest Help your Business?

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How Can Pinterest Help Your Business

How can Pinterest help your Business? The concept behind Pinterest is actually very simple and that is what makes it powerful!

Pinterest is an effective social media marketing channel if utilized properly. As with many of the good ideas on the Internet, Pinterest is based on a simple form of communication that most people are already familiar with. When you sign up for a Pinterest account, you will establish your own “digital” pin board. This is just like the cork board you have by the phone or the board that you put on your refrigerator. Just like with a physical pin board, when you want to share an image, you “pin” it to your digital board: the Pinterest website refers to the process of posting images as “pinning images” on the board. It is a common form of communication that just about everyone can identify with.

As with any other social networking platform, Pinterest relies on the interaction of its members to produce interest in the website itself. Members are not allowed to post any offensive or pornographic images, and images can be reported to the administrators for evaluation. People can subscribe to (in this case, follow) other member’s walls and be notified when new “pins” are posted. Pinterest is utilizing the growing popularity of pictures and videos on the Internet and it can be the ideal place for you to grow your business and expand your brand name recognition.

The key to utilizing a social networking website properly is to understand that the average person does not want to read a commercial. When you use Pinterest to promote your business, you want to give customers the images they are looking for. As you prepare to release a new product, you can use Pinterest to post pictures of the product in action so that people can see the practical applications that the product offers. It helps people to understand why they should be excited about the product and that will drive sales. And if they are excited, they will share your “pins” with their connections and their connections with share with others and that can help you get rapid visibility on the Internet.

The advantage to using Pinterest is that people love to see pictures and Pinterest gives them just that – pictures!. It is the same principle that made YouTube so popular. When people know what to expect from a website, then they will feel more comfortable using it. So, once you get your business account set up on Pinterest, then you can start to post images that are interesting to your prospective customers. You can monitor the popularity of each image and use that information to develop additional “pins” that will get even more interest from the rest of the community. It can be a very powerful marketing tool if you take the time to learn how to really use it.

Here is a graphical representation of the tremendous rise in visitors to Pinterest between May 2011 and February 2012: