Everybody is always looking for the next best thing in social media, to latch on to and Pinterest has caught the attention of several brands as the next best thing and owing to Uniqlo’s Gold Lion winning campaign, it’s now the best time to jump on to Pinterest before this ship sails.
Before jumping onto the Pinterest bandwagon, an organization needs to weigh the pros and cons to understand whether or not they are getting into this for all the right reasons. In previous articles, we have always talked about brands being where there audience is and because all social media presence must support and encourage growth, if Pinterest is where your product/service needs to be then, it’s time to have a good strategy in place. Strategy is the framework built to keep your goals together and the inner components of this framework are made of objectives and activities. Before beginning to build your Pinterest marketing strategy or framework, it’s important to zero in on the goal which can be either of the following:
Increase Sales
The most common of the goals with all efforts directly mapped with revenue earned. Organizations create a strategy to convert browsers into buyers, and with Pinterest’s growing popularity, this may not be so hard to achieve. According to wishpond.com 69% of people who have visited Pinterest have found an item they have purchased or wanted to purchase. Pinterest gets products and services seen and the best way to get customers to participate in a sale could be store coupons, online coupons or group coupons. Because Pinterest has hundreds of coupon pinners and coupon boards, your sales will go up at an excellent rate. Additionally the Pin it button is a Pinterest business feature. You’ve undoubtedly seen these buttons on numerous sites and pages, and they can be put next to all of the images of your products on your site. Since pinning doesn’t require any major effort, if anyone likes your product, the button makes it super easy to share on Pinterest and this pin it button can easily lead back to your website as well. Finally contests are a fantastic way to increase sales for any organization on social media and Pinterest is no exception. You can generate tons of repins, likes and shares through the excitement generated by the contest.
Increase Reach
According to Nymag.com, Pinterest drives more web traffic to other sites than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined. Robert J. Moore explains in the article that the Pinterest concept aptly, “It’s aspirational. People pin products they’d love to own, recipes they want to cook, and projects they want to tackle.” The popularity of these aspirational images/pins can only mean people will always be on the lookout for related items, willing to be redirected elsewhere from the pinned image itself, so ensure you always put a description of the image you are pinning, so it appears in search results and add a call to action to the pin description. Another great way of redirecting customers to your website would be to add the company logo and the URL as text in the image itself, that way the customer has all the information he/she will need right in front of them. A few simple modifications like addition of more images and with the pin it button next to every image will mean easy pinning. Add your website address to your description on your profile and verify the website to unlock Pinterest’s free analytics tool to check how much traffic you are getting from Pinterest and how you can get more.
Connectivity Between Website And Social Platforms
A critical factor to success for social media websites is definitely connectivity. Websites can’t get away by being operational individually, and Pinterest has identified that flaw to their benefit. Pinterest now connects with Facebook, Twitter and your website enabling users to automatically post new pins to their Facebook news feed for others to see. This means more eyes from other channels get access to the images you post to Pinterest. This kind of connectivity can ensure that your audience is fully engaged helping you build connections across all of your networks.
Discover Trends
Pinterest is a great place to discover trends. From marketing to fashion and beyond, you can discover what people love to share. You can follow your followers to see what inspires them. This gives you an opportunity to understand what’s trending today and use that information to position your own offers and products. Pinterest gives an insight into the lifestyle a person either lives or aspires to live. It is easy to find out what food they like, what cars they want to drive, the holidays they enjoyed and the books or movies they love, and this information is highly valuable for crowdsourcing. While introducing new products or lines, you can gauge its popularity by the number of repins it will get. You can ask your followers to pin an image of themselves with the product, this will encourage customers to pin about your brand as well as inspire repins.
With every brand out there adopting Pinterest, it would be best to know the value behind being here. If it’s just a matter of being where everybody else is, then you’re probably better off investing in some other channel. But if there is value in your brand being on Pinterest and you are still having a hard time wrapping your head around its appeal? Then think of Pinterest as a much-loved and a user-friendly way for people to move through content, whether on their desktop or on a smartphone. It’s a visually appealing way for users to interact with products and ideas.
What makes Vine different from all the apps available out there? Does it have potential that other apps don’t? Does it change the face of video sharing in the digital space? Does it tell a better story than posts and tweets? I’m going to say the answer is Yes, Yes and a double Yes for the final question.
With all the tried and tested formulas, it was time for the birth of a new frontier anyway and right on cue, as if on a silver platter Vine appeared before the ever hungry masses waiting for the next big thing. Brands big and small alike are embracing Vine and using it in the most creative of ways with the infusion of life in stop animation videos. Vine’s 6 seconds of video time may appear extremely challenging to overcome, assuming it was impossible to convey what you want to in 6 seconds but everybody loves a challenge. Just like businesses overcame the 140 character limit on Twitter, they learned to overcome the 6 second Vine barrier to effectively communicate their message. Even better is the fantastic storyline being built by big brands using 6 second vines. Let\’s explore 5 best vine videos any brand could come up with and what makes them so great.
1) Samsung Galaxy Mobile – #GalaxyVine
The series of Vines feature an animation of a basketball player shooting into a hoop, that streams continuously from one Samsung device to another. The fantastic use of the Vines demonstrates the capability of Samsung’s devices and the creativeness of their Marketing and Design team. As is the case with all good advertisements, showcasing the capability of the product is the key to product sales and this #GalaxyVine seems to be nailing it right now.
2) Volkswagen Shark Week – #VWSharkWeek
For those unaware of this phenomenon, Discovery channel\’s Shark Week is a weeklong series of feature television programs dedicated to sharks. Broadcast for the first time in 1987, the event is promoted heavily on Facebook and Twitter, and not wanting to be left behind, brands participate in the promotion, using shark week as an excuse to promote their product as well. Volkswagen\’s subaquatic Beetle Convertible is a fantastic example of celebrating VW and shark week.
3) Internet Explorer – Not Your Father’s Browser #IE10
Internet Explorer creatively used the vine feature to put together a hilarious set of videos to show off the features of IE 10. The videos depicted in the form of \”episodes\” highlights the relationship between father and son and the stark difference between the 2 generations. The videos are a hit with the social media audience making IE one of the most popular brands on Vine.
4) Nordstrom – #VineonVine
Nordstrom, an American Upscale Fashion retailer, already being one of Pinterest\’s greatest success stories with 4.4million followers on the social network, has experimented with Vine as well. With a series of nifty vine-within-a-vine effort to promote some new merchandise, it looks like Nordstrom has hit the spot again with some great visual effects. Don’t we love the effort brands make into being bigger and better every time?
5) Oreo – #Snackhacks
Oreo has consistently been on the forefront of social media trends and it should hardly come as any surprise that they seemed to have mastered Vine way before other brands even begin to discover it. Now that is being ahead of your times. Oreo has emerged as a leader and one of the best brands on Vine. From instructional videos on clever ways to use oreos to hack your snacks, or a flash mob Vine campaign in support of a new flavor, our beloved oreo has our support all the way.
In conclusion, the common thread between all these 5 best vines is the unique and interesting ways in which they have managed to showcase the use of its product. Some, even other than what it was originally intended for. To use Vine, it may be a great ides to start brainstorming for ways that your customer can get the most out of your product and service and the most innovative way to show them that. Vine’s timely acquisition by Twitter ensured the exposure of the app to all of Twitter’s users and having acquired 40 million users of its own since its introduction, Vine is most definitely the app to watch out for.
Companies take to Facebook and other social networking platforms everyday, to run contests with the purpose of creating more engagement, generate more fans and increase loyalty amongst audience members for the brand. Some get it right and some fail miserably. Although we can fill volumes of books on botched social media experiments and failed campaigns, for now we’ll focus on some of the most innovative and best social media campaigns of 2014!
#MyNatGeoCoverShot
With over 10 million fans on the Facebook page, Nat Geo India decided to promote their show CoverShot through a ‘My NatGeo Cover Shot’ contest on Facebook. Participants could experience the thrill of having their photo as a NatGeo magazine cover. All they had to do was upload their pictures and add a caption through the Facebook app to create a virtual cover page.
The USP of the campaign was that participants in India could download this image as well as share it on Facebook and Twitter with their friends and followers. Every week participants with the best shots were announced as winners on the show. Thanks to the contest the FB page currently has 13.8 million likes even though there was no need to ‘like’ the page to be able to participate.
#NoMakeupSelfie
With selfies being all the rage on, it wasn’t surprising to see that somebody would spin this blatant show of self-love. From author Laura Lippman posting a no makeup selfie to Gwyneth Paltrow’s no makeup picture of herself, to Beyoncé, Rihanna and Cheryl Cole. All of these women have taken part in a trend that ruled the social media space and helped Cancer Research UK earn more than £8m in just a couple of weeks.
Interestingly, a trend that was not even started by the NGO, directly benefited them and helped them sponsor 10 new clinical trials. Since its creation in March 2014, the No Makeup Selfie Cancer Awareness Facebook Page has received 261,692 likes with each of their photos gathering approximately 1500-2000 likes and over 100s of shares each photo.
#HyundaiGoal
Hyundai UK teamed up with the largest independent football channel on YouTube, Copa90, to engage with football fans through a contest to add value to its FIFA 2014 World Cup Partnership. The contest asked participants to create a video of them recreating their favorite goal celebrations and submit it via an app on the Hyundai Facebook page. They will then have a chance of winning one of seven pairs of VIP packages to the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
With the estimated number of digital fans alone for soccer being 3.5 Billion in Europe and America a campaign such as this was able to see huge numbers in shares and participation and Copa90’s YouTube channel jumped up to 613,056 subscribers with over 45,589,346 views
#MumbaiInANewLight
Philips India Ltd launched a campaign in partnership of the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation to promote the lighting of Mumbai’s iconic ‘Gateway of India’ structure. As a way to introduce and promote their new colored LED lights, Philips India utilized Facebook as a channel to multiply the reach of their campaign. The company asked customers to click interesting pictures of the Gateway lights or share their own plans on how they would enjoy the new lights.
The campaign killed two birds with one stone – an increase in the number of tourists to Mumbai as well as promotion of Philips.
#GetCovered
With his phenomenal success in the 2008 Presidential Elections, the President of the most powerful nation on the planet was widely called the social President. President Obama’s social media team made incredible strides in changing the course of history in 2008 and once again they were at work to spread the word about insurance coverage. The campaign originally launched towards the end of 2013 with a microsite was an abysmal failure with memes and gags turning up on social media.
The White House re-launched the #GetCovered campaign in 2014 with the support of prominent members of the movie and music industry. Some of the stars being Lady Gaga, Connie Britton, Kerry Washington, Will Ferrel, Zach Galifianakis and many more. The campaign focused on getting American Millennial (Generation Y) to sign up for insurance and before the deadline, since research showed that this demographic had avoided signing up for insurance so far.
Everybody is jumping on the bandwagon of social media. Businesses large or small, want to be where their audience is – online. But what does that really entail? Posting updates? Sharing links? Forcing your meaningless product on people? It’s neither of these and organizations need to realize this quickly. Besides the cost of a skilled team, it doesn’t take a huge amount of money to do social media marketing. So when it’s nearly free then why not take advantage of the fact that everybody you need to buy or use your product is available in one place? Your message and content will determine the interest level of your audience.
Content Is King
Content is the king of the marketing circuit. When you have the right content, it won’t matter how mundane your product is or how hot selling your service is. The lack of understanding as well as absence of correct content strategy in place can only mean a downfall in the social media world. An audience will react better to a good digital content strategy, that is built on 3 pillars: Relevancy, Frequency and Advocacy
Relevancy of the content to audience requirements, frequency in which you push this content on to them, and advocacy, peer recommendations, shares, retweets etc-all of these will tip the scales for you. Digital content is the message that goes out – the complete package, a holistic approach – the direction a customer conversation has gone in, the avenues you employ to shout out loud what you have and what you can provide.
It is all about the big 4 Ws:
Who should listen to your message?
What do you want to say?
Where do you want to say it?
When do you want to say it?
Who Do You Want To Say It To?
Sometimes, it works for organizations to talk about themselves, how they have grown, how they envision the future and so on. Other times it works to talk about what does the customer want and how you, as an organization and your product/service, can fit in their lives. What you talk about will depend purely on who your target audience is. Who are the end listeners of your message? Identify those members of your audience who are most likely to react to your message, put them in a separate bucket. Reach out to them first.
What Do You Want To Say?
Before you decide what channels to use, how to design your message, what pretty images to add, the first and foremost thing to decide is “What do you want to say to your target customer?” Do you want to tell them what they want to hear or would you rather just talk about random things with complete disregard for what the outcome maybe? Your message should effectively communicate, in as minimum words as possible, what it is you want the customer to know about you/your product or service. Customize the message to suit the audience needs, but maintain the theme and appear consistent to your entire audience set.
Where Do You Want To Say It?
Now that you have decided what you want to say and who you want to say it to, it won’t be too much trouble to identify the right channel to use to put out your message. Where you want to stand and shout your message for the world will depend purely on where your target audience is seated. You wouldn’t want to be holding a megaphone standing in the O2 Arena in London, when your audience is sitting in Madison Square Garden in NYC. Identify all the places online where your target audience is available and utilize to your advantage the facilities that channel provides to you to converse with your customers.
When Do You Want To Say?
If your target audience is an office going crowd, that typically works 9am-5pm, would you choose to put out your message at 11.30am, when you know for a fact that everybody is busy at work and has no chance of getting (let alone reacting to) your message? Audience, message and channels being decided, when you put them all together, the ideal time for dialogue will present itself. If in case you are a creator of aprons for the stay at home moms/dads, then you may want to reach out to them in the middle of the day, since they are homemakers, mid-day is when they have some time for themselves.
All in all, if I was to compare content with an object, I would choose to identify it with water. It has no form and can be stored in any manner, can be changed to adapt colors and is in free flow. It is available for everybody and can be shared easily. I put together a little poem for my content team at work; printed it out and posted it on each of their desks:
A conversation to be started, a message must be delivered,
Good content will take you places, bad will get you murdered
For content is our king, we serve only him,
He shines upon us all; we act as per his whim.
Content sits on our head, ruling us day upon day,
He protects vested interests; makes sure we don’t go astray.
In conclusion my marketing buddies; let us bow to our king,
Good content will make us #1, be it social media, search engine: google, yahoo, bing.
