Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Pinterest Strategy: Are You Pinning with Purpose?

Pinterest Strategy
Let’s say you’re a tour guide. For the sake of this example, you’re in Rome. You take the excited group of participants on a walk and end up in a random piazza. Everyone looks around, squinting at the buildings and studying their surroundings. “Maybe this is where Michelangelo studied,” quips one. “Is this architecturally significant?” wonders another. You proudly ask the group, “So, what do you think? I think we did it!” People uncomfortably look around, unsure of what to say. Finally someone half-whispers, “Did what?”
Since you didn’t decide what you were trying to see ahead of time, no one knows whether or not the group has successfully arrived at the destination. Is this the destination? There’s simply no way of knowing whether you’ve accomplished your goal if you don’t set goals first. Deciding upon arrival whether or not your destination is suitable is a waste of time and effort.
The same goes for social media. You can’t measure analytics before you set objectives. You risk wasting time doing things that aren’t helping you achieve your goals, and I wouldn’t want you to waste any of your precious time. It really is precious, I know. Before you start pinning and repinning and counting your followers, decide what you want to get out of Pinterest. To get you started, here are some ideas:
Drive Traffic
If you have products on your website that can be pinned, it might be a good idea to aim for increasing website traffic via Pinterest. Whenever you or anyone else pins from your website, it creates a link on Pinterest. If people click through to your website to see this product, you will be able to tell based on referral traffic.
Tools: Google Analytics, Reachli, Pinfluencer
Measure by: number of referrals, increase in referral traffic visits
Increase Brand Awareness
Even if you don’t sell products to pin you can still use Pinterest to build your brand by sharing your content, office, employees and more. When people follow you it might be the first time they’ve heard of your company, but if they see it or hear it again, they might remember who you are and recognize your brand more easily.
Tools: Pinreach, Reachli, Curalate, Octopin
Measure by: Number of followers, number of repins, number of likes, a Pinterest Analytics score value, or by an increase of any of these numbers.
Engage Brand Loyalists
Social Media is a powerful tool for word of mouth marketing (WOMM) and when people who are influential become champions for your brand, it gets promoted even when you’re not there. Engaging your brand loyalists can take time, but can be very valuable for your brand.
This one is a little bit more qualitative than quantitative. You can monitor for brand loyalists by just checking in with who’s following your boards and repinning your content. When you notice a user is repinning a good amount of your pins, liking your pins, and sharing your content across Pinterest, that’s a good sign that you’re developing a brand loyalist.

(VIA)

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