To pin or not to pin? That is the question.
At first glance, Pinterest looks a site with random pictures posted by people you don’t know – aka dumb drivel you don’t have the time or patience for.
But in reality it could be one of the – if not THE – top traffic driver for your website. According to recent research, Pinterest is the third largest social media outlet in the United States as of February 2012.
The growth isn’t stopping any time soon, either. It’s the fastest website to reach 10 million unique visitors. Now, for those who quickly learned how to tap into the potential of Pinterest, some sites have a new top traffic referral resource. Sites such as CookingLight.com now list Pinterest as the second highest traffic driver (second only to Google), which is a dramatic increase of 6,000% from just six months ago.
The news gets even better if your business targets women: 97% of its “likes” on Facebook are women, and Pinterest is now officially the top traffic driver for women’s lifestyle publications (Being the publisher of Cincy Chic, that’s what originally caught my attention and why I started using it). Because of the predominantly female audience and the visually focused format, niche industries seeing the most success are fashion, home decor, cooking, beauty and bridal. In fact, Pinterest is the top social referrer for MarthaStewartWeddings.com and MarthaStewart.com, sending more traffic to both sites than Facebook and Twitter combined.
So, now you’re thinking… “Ok, ok. I’m interested. But what is Pinterest?”
In short, it’s a “virtual pinboard” for photos you find, like, and want to keep for later use. For example, if you were redesigning your living room (pre-Pinterest), you would print out a few ideas you find online, take a few color swatches from Home Depot, and tear out a few inspiring ideas from a home decor magazine — pinning each item to a corkboard in your office. But now with Pinterest, you can do all of that electronically, creating new virtual pinboards to collect and organize ideas for anything you need, want or just want to dream about.
What’s great about Pinterest is that the virtual nature allows you to pin via computer or mobile device (you can even upload photos!). Also, when you click on the photos within your pinboards, you’re taken to the webpage where the photo originates so you can learn more. Thus, the impressive web referral rates.
To begin, you need to request an invitation (email me at ascalia [at] cincychic [dot] com and I’ll invite you). In the meantime, you can browse around and see how other people are using Pinterest. Here’s my page, for example: pinterest.com/amyscalia where you’ll discover my affinity for shoes, food, quotes and crafts I’ll never actually have time to make. Ha!
Now you’re probably thinking “Crafts and shoes are great and all, but I really just want to drive traffic to my website.” Here’s what you do: First, make sure you have visually appealing, professional photos on your website. Most photos on Pinterest are professional photos, so invest in some if you plan to pin. Next, read this great article, which walks you through creating boards, pinning, and creating “key word rich” captions. Then, just for good measure, learn the five points of Pinterest etiquette.
Just be careful to not take #3, “Avoid Self Promotion,” too seriously though. Not only will your self-promotion leverage the power of Pinterest to attract the viral traffic referrals you joined the site for in the first place, but it’ll also avoid copyright issues.
Copyright infringement is actually the major hiccup Pinterest faces right now. You can learn more about the whole debacle here. In a nutshell, though, some people recently raised concerns about how Pinterest is infringing on various sites and copyright holders. So, to resolve the issue, Pinterest created an “opt out” option for website owners who would like to prevent pinning from any of their web pages. Pinterest also set up an entire page on their site about copyright infringement and how to report an issue.
I personally think this is a non-issue. These days, online censorship problems are just a right of passage for any major online resource – ala Google, Wikipedia, YouTube – and the public ultimately doesn’t stand for any such censorship legislation.
The most important thing to know about Pinterest is that it has the power to drive significant traffic and potential customers to your virtual doorstep. You just have to pin a pathway so they can find you. Happy pinning!
First off, it helps to remember that Facebook is a social website, not an advertising billboard. If you don’t keep this in mind you could turn off potential customers the same way too many emails get perceived as spam.
When setting up your Facebook page be sure to be as specific as possible on what type of business yours is. This tells Facebook what kind of fields to include on your page. Make sure all of the contact information s correct as well. This means mailing address, phone number(s), email address and so on. It also helps to make sure your images such as logos and product pictures are high resolution and royalty free. This ensures the most professional appearance to your potential customers. If you have a website for your business, then make sure your Facebook page resembles the website. Be Consistent! This is branding 101 here.
When gathering “Likes” on your fan page it helps to have some kind of incentive for them to “Like” you. Maybe a free eBook or a discount coupon. Even a promo code for an email address submitted would be great. It’s not as simple as being a numbers game. You want people who will actually use or have an interest in your service.
One great way to reach potential customers about your product or service and get more “Likes” on your Facebook business page s by using enhancements on your landing page such as iWipa.
Another great enhancement is adding a Walk On to your Facebook page. This creates interaction and s a great call to action platform. You can learn more by clicking here.
In my next post we will discuss some dos and don’ts for posting to your fan page.
-Mark
By Darrell Hacker
SEO Expert
Google is getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read.
Potentially, Google is granting itself more rights to combine what you do when using one Google product into another one. The main change is for users with Google Accounts. The new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, Google may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, the will treat internet users as a single user across all of their products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.
For example, if you’ve been doing some web searches, then head over to browse videos at YouTube, currently, Google’s various privacy policies don’t allow it to use your search history to suggest videos. Instead, YouTube suggestions would only be generated after you started searching there.
With this new change, Google can take search history and make these type of recommendations. Potentially, it can use that search history to do other things, such as allow advertisers to target you based on what you’ve searched on as you surf the web — something Google currently does not do.
Goolge is growing up and getting more advanced in targeting infromation accessed by the internt searcher providing more information to the internet marketer to target a vary narrow niche. This is a very exceting time for SEO and internet marketing
These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012 , to read the updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service go to http://www.google.com/policies.
By: Darrell Hacker
SEO Expert
When you launch a website you are not done there, you need to maintain your site too. Upon building a web-site, you might also start to hear a lot about SEO services available to you. S.E.O is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization, which is a significant factor for ANY web site to be recognized by the search engines and to have your website ranked in their index.
If you are new to the on-line world this may not hold much importance to you, however, ranking and indexing is important because it helps bring individuals to your site. These individuals are known in the industry as “traffic”.
How do I get traffic to my web site?
Some of the services you might want are: Link Building, Geo targeted services (local SEO), Analyze metrics and analytics, Social Media optimization. Another option you might be interested in when it comes to SEO services are custom SEO websites. These custom SEO websites help you kill two birds with one stone.
When you need a sustainable and functioning web-site, there is nothing I’d suggest more than custom SEO websites and SEO services. Get the optimization you require, the traffic you want, and sell the products you should sell so as to make a good income.
November 4, 2011 ipitchks_ks
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