The New Pinterest Analytics Tool: How To Use It for Business

Are you struggling to measure your Pinterest efforts?

Do you want an easier way to track pins and engagement?

The new Pinterest Analytics tool gives you access to a variety of data, including how potential customers interact with your pins beyond your website.

In this article I’ll share how the new Pinterest Analytics features help you get the most out of your Pinterest marketing.

Pinterest Analytics Overview

Pinterest’s original analytics tool only shared information about how users interact with the Pin It button installed on your website. Unfortunately, those stats couldn’t give you a complete picture of whether your overall Pinterest efforts were working.

The newest Analytics features give you access to quite a bit more data, such as stats on engagement beyond your Pin It button. Now you can track actions that originate from your Pinterest profile—including boards and the pins you share (whether the pins are from your own website or not).

Check out new features found in the new Pinterest Analytics.

Why is this important? Many successful pinners spend more time curating and sharing content from websites other than their own.

The updated Pinterest Analytics tool gives you the data you need to see the bigger picture and determine where to spend your time and effort to maximize your presence on Pinterest.

The Pinterest Analytics Dashboard

To gain access to Pinterest’s new analytics, you must have a Pinterest business account. When that’s in place, head over to your analytics dashboard.

Your Pinterest Analytics dashboard shows an overview of the three main categories:Your Pinterest Profile, Your Audience and Activity From (Your Website). You can click on each category to see additional details and have a better idea of how your Pinterest efforts are paying off.

New features include three categories overflowing with data.

The bottom of the page features your five Top Pin Impressions from the past 30 days. At a glance you can see how many repins, clicks and likes these pins have and whether they are rich pins.

Below I’ll go through the main analytics categories and show you what you can find in each.

#1: Your Pinterest Profile

The Your Pinterest Profile category has four sections: Impressions, Repins, Clicks and All-Time. The Impressions section shows your top 50 pin impressions and your top 20 boards with top pin impressions.

If you click over to Repins, you can see your 50 most repinned items and which of your boards have the most repins.

The Clicks section is pretty much what you’d expect: A detail of your 50 most-clicked pins and your 20 boards with the most-clicked pins. You can also see the number of repins, impressions, clicks, likes and # of pins.

Impressions metrics are easy to find.

The All-Time section is particularly helpful. Here you’ll see your 50 most repinned pins, your pins with the highest search rank and power pins (pins with a high mix of clicks, repins and more). As you review this data, note which topics people are searching for and provide more of that content.

Don’t forget to repin your top pins to different boards or group boards. It’s a good way to get that content in front of new pinners who may not have seen it the first time around. Keep that momentum going!

#2: Your Audience

It’s not often that we get a free glimpse into how consumers self-select their interests, but that’s exactly what the new Pinterest Analytics tool is giving us in the Your Audience category. For the first time, Pinterest is sharing details about the users interacting with your pins.

The Your Audience category offers an important filter option. In the top right of the page you can choose to filter data by All Audiences or Your Followers. All Audiences highlights the entire audience of Pinterest, while Your Followers focuses on just your followers.

Viewing and comparing data from both are vital to understanding how your Pinterest performance measures up to your goals (and your audience’s needs).

Compare data from All Audiences and Your Followers to see the big picture.

You can use the All Audiences and Your Followers filters on both the Demographics and Interests tabs. The Demographics tab is easy enough—it shows you basic audience data, including location, language and gender.

You may find the Interests tab a bit, well, more interesting. If you want to find out what people are talking about or looking for, this is the place to be. Definitely look at how your All Audiences data overlaps or differs from the Your Followers data. By comparing them, you can home in on the topics your audience is searching for and create content to match.

As you compare the data, ask yourself these questions: Does your content match the interests of your typical pinners? Is your content reaching the intended target audience?

Keep an eye on how your competition is using Pinterest.

Another important new feature lets you see the other brands your followers are following. Knowing which business accounts are similar to yours is extremely important on Pinterest—it’s always good to keep an eye on the competition.

#3: Activity From (Your Website)

Encouraging people to pin articles and images from your website is a key element of Pinterest success. The Activity From (Your Website) category shows your website’s 50 top pins and 20 top boards and how their impressions, repins and clicks stack up.

You also have access to three other important stats: Original Pins, All-Time and Pin It button.

Original Pins shows you the 50 newest pins shared from your website. This is valuable because you can easily tell which topics are resonating with your audience (and create similar content for even more pins).

See how effective pins from your website are.

As with the Your Pinterest Profile category, the All-Time option gives you the top 50 pins that are most repinned, rank well in search and are power pins.

Click on the Pin It button link to see how many times your website’s Pin It button has been seen on your site’s pages, how many times it’s been clicked and most importantly, how many times someone has pinned from your website.

Options Each Analytics Category Offers

You’ll notice that the main categories have some option overlap. For example, all categories allow you to export data so you can use it in your own spreadsheet and create reports as needed.

Each of the pins listed within a category is clickable and takes you directly to that pin’s page. Listed pins also show a thumbnail of the specific image users pinned. You can use those popular pins as inspiration for your own images.

Another universal feature is the ability to see how people are accessing Pinterest(e.g., via the web or a mobile device) and filter your data based on that information.

Find out how your audience accesses Pinterest and optimize your content accordingly.

In the top right corner, click Apps to see a menu of different filter options and click the one you want. For example, if you only want to see analytics for users who access Pinterest via iPad, choose iPad to filter your data.

When you’ve determined how most of your audience accesses Pinterest, turn your attention to your images and optimize them to look great on the apps your audience prefers.

Finally, on each page you have a box called Here’s a Tip. These tips are customized based on Pinterest’s evaluation of your stats.

Pinterest gives you tips on how to improve your Pinterest stats.

I strongly encourage you to take advantage of Pinterest’s free advice so you can make the most of your Pinterest marketing efforts.

Sign up for the Pinterest Business Newsletter, Pinterest Business Blog and Success Stories for even more insider tips.

Wrapping Up

Whether you just need a quick high-level overview or want to delve into specific performance factors, you’ll find everything you need in the revamped Pinterest Analytics tool. Take advantage of every feature to discover what’s popular with your audience, how they’re repinning from your boards and what the competition is up to.

What do you think? Are you using Pinterest Analytics? Which feature has been most helpful? Please let us know in the comments below.

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Social Media Personality Profiling For Business

It’s the epidemic that’s defined the 21^st century. Everyone has it, it’s shared amongst us and spreads like wildfire…yes, social media has pervaded all aspects of our day to day living. Everyone knows the scare stories about how over-exposure to the internet can be damaging to our health and personality, but let’s turn it round and think about how different personalities can affect social media. Everyone’s different – just take the fascinating Myers-Briggs personality test from the clever folk at Quistic. For business owners and social media managers, it may be interesting to think about specific personality attitudes and learn how certain stressors and energisers can help guide marketers in best engaging with their target audience.

borderlinepersonalitytypes.com

According to a recent article by Penelope Trunk, founder and CEO of the personality and career experts Quistic, everyone is motivated by one of three core desires: achievement, affiliation, or competence (or in simpleton’s terms: winning, relationships/affiliation, and craft). Think about what drives you: if you can understand and identify yourself amongst these three key motivators then you can better place yourself to succeed in business. The Myers-Briggs test places one’s personality on a sliding spectrum of 16 possibilities but somewhat worryingly, if, like myself, you are an ENFJ personality type it appears that you find “thinking is often your weakness”; however, it also advises to start writing a blog to further career prospects, so perhaps it’s bang on.

Certain City banks are already using personality profiling to better engender brokering partnerships and deals – if a client is particularly data-focused they will match them with a similarly data-minded broker, or match more ‘blue-sky-thinking’ companies with their own optimists. Understanding how to improve communication across different personalities is a useful and insightful business move.

simplyzesty.com

You might think that marketers should be sensitive or empathetic or have a keen eye for detail or a creative spark or an appreciation for deadlines; in fact, they need to be all of the above, and more. A split personality is perhaps encouraged in the marketing world, and even more so in the social media marketing world. You have to be able to tap into the different mindsets of your varied audiences, understand which channels will best speak to which personalities and create content that appeals to a variety of character types. Your strategy needs to speak to multiple personalities, thus you need to be able to adopt multiple personalities.

Everyone knows that social media is a great way to market your business; obviously you understand what your business is about, but do you really understand your customers? For all you social media managers, and there are a lot of you – five million‘social media experts’ at last count on LinkedIn – here are a few personality traits that you might wish to nurture when marketing a business online. The thinkers at Hubspot suggest that in order to better engage with your business’ customers, you should become: 

The informant – tell your brash reader what they need to know. And don’t beat about the bush.

The inquirer – appeal to the quieter members of your audience by asking them questions, and encouraging a climate for engagement with considerate content.

The helper – for the busy-bodies who are never satisfied you must provide top-notch customer service and answer questions and complaints directly.

The thought provoker – show the curious members of your target market that you are open to dialogue and debate, and that you are the go-to-expert for knowledge in your specialism.

The class clown – appeal to the jokers with some classic slap-stick humour.

The entertainer – this applies to everyone. Everyone likes, and needs, to be entertained. So be interesting.

The go-getter – and for those personality types that your business hasn’t yet tapped into…go and get them on board.

behrouz.jafarnezhad.com

It’s no longer enough for a business to market itself along outdated ‘buy me now’ call-to-action commands; with the advent of social media marketing, the emphasis is clearly on the social aspect. Everyone loves a good story, and this works to any good marketer’s advantage. Your blog and social media personality should be in sync, as this shapes how customer’s view your business’ character and will affect which personality types are more naturally drawn to your company. People come to expect a certain tone from your business, so keep your online personality consistent across the multiple channels. Social media is pre-disposed to helping you nurture and expand your business – people buy things from people they trust and respect, so let your honest and knowledgeable personality come to the surface.

Obviously social networking engages the interests and activities of more narcissistic individuals as opposed to those less motivated by peer approval; introverts and extroverts use online communities differently according to their need to be people-oriented and outwardly social. Nearly 60% of extroverts use Facebook,Twitter and LinkedIn for professional purposes, while 47% of introverts shared the sentiment; although there is clearly a difference in the figures, it’s good news for marketers as it shows the popularity of social media in general. Studies into how different personality types use the internet consistently show that, despite minor fluctuations, on the whole all personality types are using social media for business and professional purposes.

Although there are obviously nuances and dynamics to be considered when marketing on social media, and those marketers who can most intricately manage these will be rewarded, overall the vast majority of your target market – be they introverts or extroverts, shy or narcissistic, thinkers or feelers – are using and responding to social media for professional purposes, and  it follows that it is a useful and successful channel for marketing.

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If You Publish Content and Don't Promote It, Will Anyone See It? (Infographic)

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

The same could be said about a content-marketing strategy, when it comes to optimizing the elements of a company's blog or other website copy for sharing. If you publish content without a plan for its distribution, it certainly won’t get noticed. Then all the time and effort put into the work are lost. That's unless, of course, you want your blog to remain a private journal.  

The performance of that content online can be affected by little changes in the call to action, optimizing the web copy for search, adjusting the post's timing, using images and even where social-media buttons are placed.  

The infographic below explains some basic points to consider for your blog and content-marketing plan. 

Click to Enlarge+

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Social Media Now A Part Of School Curriculum

OCR Includes Study Of Social Media In Sociology Course

Social media is to become a part of the school curriculum, following an announcement from the OCR Exam Board that it will take into account ‘how people are responding to the new rules of the digital global village.’ Students will now study and be tested on social media, online security and privacy, and the culture of selfies.

The decision applies to sixth form students studying Sociology for AS and A level, a combined number of around 80,000 students each year, and will take effect from September 2015.

Source: googleenterprise.blogspot.com

OCR is one of England’s largest exam boards, and this decision is sure to have an impact on the way in which the study of sociology is considered across not only different boards but beyond – 7,000 people graduate with a degree in Sociology from UK universities every year.

It is not just Sociology which will be affected. Those students who study Sociology for A level go on to a wide range of degree courses, and by including a discussion of social media at this relatively early stage such thinking is sure to inform disciplines like history, literature, and even more traditionally science-based subjects like psychology.

The course will look at traditional sociological concepts such as identity, power, and community through the lens of social media, bringing a modernity and immediacy to the subject which is seen by some to be lacking. OCR’s subject team manager, Victoria Hunter, said that the board has ‘brought [their] syllabus bang up to date with exciting new content that tackles some of the biggest issues facing societies today,’ and hopes that this move will reverse the trend of Sociology being seen by some as a ‘soft option’ for A-level students.

Source: learnforlifeenterprise.co.uk

The use of social media in the actual process of education has been acknowledged for some time, with students using services like Facebook and WhatsApp to communicate and co-ordinate projects and even to stay in touch with teachers outside school hours. Many courses, particularly at university level, take place wholly online, and so for students to have some grounding in not just the practicalities but the theory and history surrounding social media would be apt not only on an intellectual but also a practical level.

This may be where the difficulty will lie as far as the individual student is concerned. Separating one’s personal experience of social media from a detached intellectual analysis of it will not be instinctive, and it is perhaps this – the ability to distinguish between social media as an aspect of daily life and its place within a broader socio-historical context – which will be of the greatest long term benefit to students.

Use of social media inherently encourages critical thinking, as the famous ‘Facebook gap’ between people’s real lives and how they present themselves online becomes an established phenomenon, and the codifying of this in the educational establishment is an important step towards widespread recognition of this fact.

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Social Media Playing A Part In The Rising Complaints Against Doctors

Doctors Under Fire On Social Media?

A recent report commissioned by the General Medical Council has revealed that a rise in complaints against doctors reflects the role of social media and negative press coverage of the medical profession as a whole.

Source: blog.cureus.com

It comes after the revelation that complaints by the general public against GPs doubled between 2007 and 2012, and as a result, a research team from Plymouth was asked to investigate the dramatic increase.

The numerics are stated in the report, and it is identified that the number of complaints went from 5,168 in 2007 to 10,347 just five years later.

Despite the numeric details, the report did not point to any specific cause for the rise in complaints made by the general public. Instead, it rather ambitiously chose to identify a number of trends that it says have influenced the general public, and correlated these trends with the rise in complaints.

The report suggested that patients are now more aware of their own health, and therefore have much higher expectations of doctors. This attitude results in a shift in power relations between the two parties, andultimately removes doctors from the pedestal.

As well as this, the report said that social media had a role to play in the rise in complaints, as it encouraged people to discuss their previous experiences with the medical profession. This has been conducted in dedicated public forums and this ensured that specific information about health care could be shared easily and accessed by all.

The biggest influence on the general public is the negative press in the media, and this is also highlighted in the report.

Whilst the media coverage of high-profile medical cases may have had an influence on the rise in complaints, the report also suggested that this also gave rise to more complaints that were not relevant to the GMC, which regulates GPs in the United Kingdom.

Source: pando.com

The lead author of the report, Dr Julian Archer, said that the report had produced “some fascinating findings.” He said: “they show that the forces behind a rise in complaints against doctors are hugely complex and reflect a combination of increased public awareness, media influence, the role of social media technology and wider changes in society.”

He added that “the report also indicated that there is much to do to improve the wider complaint handling system, so that complaints made by the general public about their doctors are directed to the appropriate authorities.”

The research certainly brings up some interesting points, without outlaying hard evidence. Social media gets a hard time in the report, as these conversations about healthcare were happening long before the birth of social media, but they were conducted in private.

The more sinister reason for the rise in complaints is the negative media influence, and a possible government agenda to privatise the NHS.

The mass media will always have great control over the general public, so it comes to no surprise that with all the negative press that surrounds the medical profession, people have chosen to complain. It is a subtle form of indoctrination, and maybe by citing social media as a heavy influence on people’s negative connotations towards doctors, the researchers have been indoctrinated also.

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22 Social Marketing Tips Your “Social Media Expert” Won’t Tell You

“Social media experts” are great at tweeting and joining the conversation. But they’re terrible at marketing.

You know, the kind of marketing that actually matters. Like generating leads, increasing sales, improving customer retention, and growing your business.

Social media isn’t an isolated “thing”. It should help you accomplish all of these goals. But if you follow their advice, then you’ll have an “active” Twitter account and little else to show for it.

Here are 22 social marketing tips you can use to help grow your business.

Start Right

1. Start with a Goal: Why are you blogging? What are you doing on Twitter? There are only three acceptable answers: (a) increase brand awareness by growing your reach, (b) build customer loyalty by providing more support, or (c) increase sales by getting more people to purchase, more frequently. Don’t even start unless you can answer this question.
2. Ignore Your Competition: Trying to benchmark other people’s Fans and Followers is a fools game. You’ll start making bad decisions because you’re trying to “keep up”. And when you make bad short-term choices, your long-term success will suffer. The best tactical ideas and campaigns haven’t happened in your industry yet. So use arbitrage marketing to figure out what new, untapped opportunities you can seize and gain an early lead. Look at what people are doing in other industries and try to experiment with similar tactics.
3. Don’t Be on Every Social Network: Community management will deplete all of your resources. Each social network you manage will cost you exponentially more time, money and energy. And contrary to popular belief, social media isn’t free. It takes tremendous resources to do it properly, and has an enormous opportunity cost. Soprioritize one or two networks to see the biggest growth.
   

   Don’t Make Excuses

4. You Do Have Enough Time and Money: People always claim that they don’t have time or money to invest in social media. But the truth of the matter is that you can’t afford not to. If you’re short on time, then hire a virtual assistance and outsource your lowest level tasks. Or invest in resources that will speed up your learning curve. If you’re short on money, then you should have more time to spend on content creation or networking. Set an easy, actionable goal like 2 extra posts each week, or reach out to one blogger a day. And do an informal audit of how you currently spend your time. You’ll be amazed at the time wasted and the opportunity cost your time could be worth.
5. Being Efficient Doesn’t Mean You’re Being Effective: Social media is wonderful, but people confuse busyness with effectiveness. Start with a goal, reverse engineer how you’re going to reach that goal, identify your highest ROI activities, prioritize and set boundaries, be disciplined and accountable to others.
6. Have Relentless Focus: When you’ve identified one main business goal, every online strategy and tactic will need to support it to get the highest ROI. And sooner or later, you’ll have to make a tough decision. You’ll need to divide your limited resources and choose what you’re going to do (and what you’re going to ignore). But you’ll see that this decision is easy when you have a goal. Your social media use will now have a purpose. And you’ll find that you do have enough time for it’s strategic use.
   

   Set Yourself Up for Success

7. Be a Publisher First: Online marketing can’t exist without content. No SEO. No email marketing. No social media. That means you’re in the media business. So you better start learning how to create valuable content. Check out Red Bull, American Express andLowe’s for good examples.
8. Understand What Motivates Your Audience: “Industries” or “businesses” aren’t boring – the people who say that are. Nobody cares about your business (or mine!). People only care about themselves (including you and me!). The way you come up withblog content ideas is to understand your audience, and the benefit your products or services give them.
9. Don’t Overemphasize Tactics: Oprah isn’t good at social media because she’s a Twitter guru or Pinterest expert. She understands (a) what her audience wants, and (b) uses these new tools to create a repoire to get them to trust her more and stick around longer. Once you’ve identified the goal you’re trying to reach, then you need to create marketing objectives and a strategy that will deliver on these promises. Tactics help you accomplish a strategy. But they can’t increase revenue or decrease costs on their own.
10. Crown a Dictator in your Organization: Bureaucracies and politics kill action. Even getting someone to make a decision can take weeks. But be careful of HIPPOs – where the highest paid person’s opinion reigns supreme. Instead, companies need to findchampions with a history of success, and who prefer data-driven decisions over political ones.
    

    Be Unconventional

11. Be Lazy: Connecting one-to-one is great. But it doesn’t scale. Instead, you should be lazy and make people come to you. Create content, provide expertise, or use money to put yourself in front of communities of people – and give them the chance to find you.
12. Do Less: Spreading yourself too thin will give you average results. If you want to grow, then get good at creating content (or hire someone to do it). Then contribute articles to top media properties in your industry, or speak in front of organizations (for free!). You’ll get real business leads (first), and build a social media following (second). All with one investment of your time and money. Exactly the way it should be.
13. Ignore Trends: Trends are like waves in the ocean, they come and they go. Pinterestmight work for some businesses. But for others, it’s a waste of time. It has the (a) wrong kind of traffic, (b) not enough users, and a (c) demographic mismatch. Instead, focus and invest in the fundamentals – like your blog and email marketing.
    

    Be Original

14. Have a Voice: People don’t want to connect with faceless corporations. They want to connect with real humans. But a lot of companies still don’t understand this. No one will like, trust or respect your company in the long run if they can’t get straight, honest feedback in a timely manner.
15. Take a Stand: In his TED talk, Simon Sinek said, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”. Think about the special companies that you like and admire. They start with “Why”. They tap into a bigger cause than themselves, and that emotionally connects with people. If you only sell “What” you do, then you’re going to be stuck selling commodities and you’ll always compete on price.
16. Declare an Enemy: If you’re going to have a voice and take a stand for something, then by default there has to be examples of people, trends, business philosophies or companies you don’t agree with. Again, you’re not marketing to everyone. You want to attract those who share your worldview. And one of the best ways to get people to commit and emotionally engaged is through sharing a common bond, or defending yourselves against the same threat.
    

    Measure the Right Things

17. Twitter Followers -> Email Subscribers: Twitter is a great communication channel. It helps you contact and stay in touch with anyone you want. But it doesn’t directly make you real money. Email marketing is still the most profitable online marketing channel.
18. Facebook Fans -> People Talking About This: Facebook’s EdgeRank was designed to keep companies from spamming their “fans”. So it only allows you to reach the fans that actively engage with your brand. “People Talking About This” is the closest metric you have to increase your “viral reach”. The higher that number goes, the better chance you have of reaching more people. And the bigger your page will grow because you’ll start reaching more “friends of fans”.
19. Forget about Blog Comments: The 1% rule of the internet is a general rule of thumb that says most people (90%) will consume content, while very few will interact (9%) or create it (1%). This is even more lopsided when you look across different industries. People in these warm and fuzzy industries are extremely active in creating content, and will leave more comments than the rest of the world. So the type of person each industry caters to says more than the actual, real engagement.
20. Klout -> Net Promoter Score: Klout is like the stereotypical pretty girl in high school, she looks good on the outside but lacks substance on the inside. Do you really want to know how satisfied customers and fans are? Then ask them to take the Net Promoter Score. It’s one simple question that will only take a few seconds, and it’s vastly more accurate than Klout.
    

    “How likely are you to recommend to a colleague or friend?”
    Your Net Promoter Score equals the percentage of Promoters (9s and 10s) minus the percentage of Detractors (0 through 6) (7s and 8s are “Passives”, and are left out).

    
    

    Have Perspective

21. Have Realistic Expectations: People are too impatient. You can’t throw a Hail Mary pass in the last minute of the game and expect to win every time. Marketing and sales only work if people trust you. And that process takes time. In the simplest terms possible, there are two ways to market online: (a) use advertising to “rent” attention, or (b) use inbound marketing to “earn” attention. But both are going to cost you something. If you don’t have the time or energy, then you need to spend money on advertising. If you don’t have money to invest, then you need to spend time and energy in creating content, building relationships, and learning how to get people to find you.
22. Go Beyond Facebook and Twitter: Social media (and internet marketing) at larger companies is easy. Extremely easy. It’s easy to build Twitter Followers and get people to engage with you when your company has been around for decades. But it’s extremely difficult to transcend those networks and get the whole organization aligned with how your consumers shop today. Social media success transcends your Facebook page or latest Twitter promotion. It’s a new way of doing business and it starts with your DNA, your product or service, and your people. So if you want to improve your social media presence, then start on the inside of your organization first.

Conclusion

Social media is much more than “engaging in the conversation”.

It’s a new way of doing things, and a new set of tools to help you do it. But the same marketing fundamentals apply.

You need to gain attention, build trust, and keep people engaged longer.

Because in addition to growing your “social media presence”, you’ll also be able to get more traffic, bring in more leads and create more happy customers.

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18 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros

Would you like to improve your social media marketing?

Are you wondering what social media marketing tactics the pros like to use?

We asked top social media pros to share their hottest social media marketing tactics.

In this article, you’ll discover strategies the pros use to boost their social media marketing.

#1: Stay Top of Mind Using LinkedIn Tags

Viveka Von Rosen

On LinkedIn, you shouldn’t send an email blast to every one of your connections. However, you can create lists of “tagged” groupingsso you can send relevant and helpful information to your contacts at strategic times.

When you tag your connections on LinkedIn, you can sort/filter them by Tags and—wait for it—send a message to up to 25 people at a time.

You can filter by tag and then send a message to up to 25 people.

For example, if one of your niche markets on LinkedIn is marketers who target medical professionals, all you have to do is:

1. Create a tag called ‘Medical Marketing Consultant’ (they can’t see it)
2. Do an advanced search on the keywords “marketing OR marketer OR consultant AND medical” (or some such)
3. Sort by first-level connections
4. Open and tag each connection with ‘medical marketing consultant’
5. Open Contacts
6. Filter by the tag ‘medical marketing consultant’
7. Click on Select All
8. Write your message to the first 25 folks
9. Then the next 25
10. Then the next 25
    

    Tag your contacts for easier messaging.

The message subject line might be something like: “As a medical marketing consultant, are you frustrated with LinkedIn’s new visibility limitations?” Use the body of the message to resolve their particular pain point. You don’t have to be the creator of the content, you just need to share it.

While you can use a different subject line to share the same tip with any number of tagged groups, I recommend creating an editorial calendar to keep track of what you sent to whom.

Use these targeted messages to create a feeling of trust and top-of-mind awareness, so that when your connections need you (or hear of someone who does) they will think of you!

Viveka von Rosen, author of LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day and known internationally as the “LinkedIn Expert.”

#2: Post in ‘Micro-Opportunity’ Windows

Jay Baer

Here’s my social marketing tip, ideal for B2B. For me, the people I want to reach with my social media marketing are other businesspeople, and which activity are businesspeople engaged in all day? Meetings. And when are meetings scheduled? Almost entirely on the hour or half-hour.

Based on the way meetings are scheduled and conducted, I believe many businesspeople are checking their social media accounts just before and after the top of the hour or the bottom of the hour. It works like this:

Meeting is scheduled from 1-2 pm. Meeting lets out slightly early at 1:57 pm, and attendees check Twitter on the way back to their desk. Meeting goes a little long, and that dip into social media occurs at 2:03 pm. You get the idea.

Schedule your social media marketing at opportune moments; for example, at times before meetings are due to start and end. Image source: iStockphoto

Because of this sequencing, I use Buffer to set my social media marketing to deploy most frequently in these micro-opportunity windows. I also try to pay attention to when people might be at lunch/dinner; although of course that’s a bit of a toss-up due to time zone differences. I haven’t been able to prove that this works (yet), but it makes so much sense to me intuitively that I’m going to keep doing it.

Jay Baer, founder of Convince & Convert.

#3: Research Popular Content From Your Competitors

Ian Cleary

If a type of content is popular with the audience of your competitors and colleagues, it stands to reason that a similar post will be popular with your audience.

This isn’t about copying content, it’s about crafting content around a similar topic, but with a different slant.

For example, Jeff Bullas wrote a blog post on 7 Marketing Trends You Shouldn’t Ignore, which was very popular. I used his post as inspiration to write a post titled 7 Social Media Tool Trends You Shouldn’t Ignore that was also very popular.

There are a few tools that will help with research:

Social Crawlytics does an analysis of your competitor’s content and shows you how often each post is shared across each of the social networks.

SEMRush shows you what keywords bring your competitor the most traffic so you can target the same keywords in your own content.

Use SEMRush to gain insights into what keywords your competitors get the most traffic from.

Ian Cleary, founder of RazorSocial.

#4: Increase Views on YouTube Using These Thumbnail Creation Tips

Gideon Shalwick

It’s no secret that getting more views on YouTube can greatly help grow your business online.

But with the vast majority of videos on YouTube getting mediocre results, everyone wants to know how to get more legitimate views!

One of the easiest ways to get more views is to create compelling, attention-grabbing thumbnails for your videos.

The Secret to Creating Powerful YouTube Thumbnails

You need to get three things right for creating powerful YouTube thumbnails.

Graphics: Start with a good headshot or closeup of your face to create a personal touch with your thumbnail, then add a colorful background—like a starburst—to grab viewers’ attention.

Use attention-grabbing backgrounds.

Text: Use compelling text inside your thumbnail design to tell your viewers instantly what your video is about and why they should watch it—maybe use your video title.Make sure your text is easy to read, even at the smallest display size of your thumbnail on YouTube, and that the image is on the left and text is on the right.

Make sure the image is on the left and the text on the right of the thumbnail.

X-Factor: Think about how you can inject emotion into your thumbnails. For example, the expression on the face of the person you’re using can be that of shock, amazement, disgust, enjoyment… choose an emotion that will create intrigue and get people to click on the image.

The expression on a person's face can be enough for someone to click through.

To learn more about thumbnails and how to use them correctly on YouTube, check out the YouTube Playbook.

Gideon Shalwick, founder of Splasheo and author of Rapid Video Blogging.

#5: Limit Your Social Media Platforms

John Lee Dumas

My social media marketing tip for businesses today is to find three or four social media platforms where you can build the strongest presence that will be most beneficial for your business.

With countless social media platforms available today, it’s impossible to grow a strong presence on every one. Having a mediocre presence on six or seven social media platforms is far inferior to a strong presence on three or four when it comes to your social media marketing goals.

Build a strong presence on three or four platforms. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Why spend time on social media platforms where your audience might be hanging out when you could be spending that time on social media platforms where you know your audience will be hanging out?

To find out if your target audience spends most of their time on one platform over another, join online groups within those platforms that focus on your industry or niche. If you find that the members are really active and engage on the topics you’re focused on in your business, there’s a good chance that a presence on that platform will benefit your business.

John Lee Dumas, founder and host of EntrepreneurOnFire.

#6: Find Work With Twitter’s Advanced Search

Kim Garst

One of the great challenges for business owners is being “top of mind” exactly when prospects either want the product or service you offer, or have a problem that your product or service can solve for them.

Think about the billions of dollars spent on billboards, television and radio commercials, print advertising, etc., just to be in the right place with the right solution at the right time. There has to be a better way, right?

What if I told you there was a tool that could put you personally in touch with a new prospect at the exact time they desperately needed you for FREE! Interested?

I’m talking about the Advanced Search function on Twitter.

Let’s say you are a handyman in New York City and you need paying customers today. Simply log into your Twitter account, go to Advanced Search and type in the word or phrase that somebody might use when looking for what you have to offer in the geographic area where you work.

In the example below, we are going to see who is “looking for a handyman” in “New York City.”

Use Twitter's Advanced Search to see who is looking for a service you offer.

Ready? Here comes the magic……

It can help you find your next customer.

There’s your next customer. Imagine how shocked Regan is going to be when you send her a tweet telling her that you’re a great handyman and you just happen to be working in her area today.

So all the people who say you can’t do anything meaningful in 140 characters—certainly not anything business-related—need to rethink that position.

Twitter search is the mother lode for live leads that can create sales for you and your business!

Kim Garst, CEO of Boom Social.

#7: Grow By Giving Away Your Best Stuff

Melonie Dodaro

Forrester Research found that over 90% of purchasing decisions begin online. Having quality and relevant content allows your prospects to learn about you and the products/services you offer.

Many people are worried about giving away their best content for free. They are concerned it may prevent people from taking the next step and investing in their products/services. I understand this fear, but it is truly unfounded.

When your prospects see the high quality of your free content, they will be much more confident in paying for your services because they already know the great value you deliver.

Give away your best content for free. Image source: iStockphoto

When you create content, you want to think about the problems your ideal clients have and solve them with blog posts, articles, infographics, free reports, webinars, teleseminars, podcasts, etc.

Additional benefits you’ll receive include:

• Evangelists who will recommend you to others
• People will share your content, which puts you in front of a much larger audience
• A strong reputation as a trusted authority and expert on your topic/niche
• Additional opportunities such as speaking engagements and interview requests from the media
• Improved SEO rankings of your website with quality content

Giving away great content opens up an opportunity for you to really educate your potential prospects and build trust, positioning you as the solution to their problem. Content marketing allows you to begin a relationship before ever speaking with a prospective client.

Melonie Dodaro, founder of Top Dog Social Media.

#8: Connect With Twitter’s Mobile Users

Jamie Turner

There are two easy things you can do to improve the impact of your efforts on Twitter. The first is to do a promoted post that targets people only on smartphones. A lot of people don’t realize that you can target promoted posts just for smartphones (or just for iPhones, or Android devices, etc.).

By targeting people while they’re on their mobile devices, you catch them while they’re out and about and, hopefully, near your business. It’s a great tactic that takes context (where people are located) into consideration when youconnect with them via Twitter.

If you’re not ready to spend money on a promoted post, that’s okay, because you can try another technique. My estimates are that about 30% of the people using Twitter are self-promoters, which is a no-no. About 60% are simply retweeters, which is not the most efficient way to use Twitter. And about 10% are conversationalists, which is the best way to use Twitter.

Shift to a conversationalist strategy and have a dialogue with your followers to keep prospects and customers engaged with your brand. This deepens your relationship with them, which, over time, turns into customer loyalty. Customer loyalty = more revenue for your business.

Have conversations with your followers to keep them engaged with your brand.

Long story short, if you’re not going to do promoted posts targeting smartphones, thentry being more conversational and watch your results change overnight.

Jamie Turner, founder of 60 Second Marketer.

#9: Find Prospects Online With Twitter

Tom Martin

To truly prospect with social media, you need to understand where you’re most likely to find prospects online—what I call your Propinquity Points. Twitter is an excellent resource for this.

First, create a private Twitter list called Prospects. Thensearch for relevant keywords for your company or competitors. Find tweets where folks are obviously talking about your company, product category or competitor in a way that convinces you they are true prospects. Next, add each person to the Prospect Twitter list. Do this every day.

Create a Prospect Twitter list.

Now, create a column in HootSuite or whatever Twitter client you use and populate that column with the Prospect list tweets. Lastly, filter the column so that you see only tweets with links. Create a spreadsheet to track all of the links you find, and note when multiple folks share content from the same site.

Over the course of a few months, you’ll have a pretty solid list of online destinations frequented by your target prospects. This shows you where to make comments on existing content—or better, where to contribute your own content.

Tom Martin, author of The Invisible Sale.

#10: Easily Connect With Your Email Subscribers on LinkedIn and Facebook

Stan Smith

Email is critical for notifying subscribers of new posts and generating repeat visits to your blog. However, the latest Gmail Promotional tab addition by Google means that most of your notification emails are routed to the promotional folder where they can be overlooked by your readers.

Tackle this problem by connecting with your blog update subscribers on LinkedIn and Facebook. Simply download and install Rapportive, a social CRM tool that displays social network connections in your Gmail sidebar.

Add Rapportive to Gmail.

Next, export a list of your blog update email subscribers. Compose a new email in Gmail, and paste 10 addresses from your list of subscribers into the To: Box.

Mouse over one of the addresses and you will see Rapportive offer a Connect button for LinkedIn or Facebook (if the subscriber has an account). Click on the Connect button and customize the invitation to connect with you on the selected platform. Repeat the process for all of your contacts.

Rapportive offers a Connect button for LinkedIn or Facebook.

When you publish a new post, update your LinkedIn or Facebook to increase the chance that your Gmail subscribers will see your updates on LinkedIn or Facebook.

Stan Smith, founder of Pushing Social.

#11: Find Content to Share Using Platform Searches

Cynthia Sanchez

When business owners or marketers begin to use social media as a part of their marketing strategy, they often focus on getting the right profile image, when the best time of day is to post or what scheduling tool is best. While it’s important to consider these things, there is something very valuable within each platform that is often overlooked.

Networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest each offer a search feature.

The search feature available on each of these networks can help businesses better serve their customers or clients by providing insight into what the users of each platform are interested in. Search can reveal if there is even a place for their business there.

For example, at a recent conference where I was speaking, I was asked to provide an example of an investment banking business using Pinterest.

After a quick search, we discovered that there were only two investment banking accounts on Pinterest. However, when we switched from searching for pinners (accounts) to searching for boards about investment banking, we found several.

Search for boards as well as pins on Pinterest.

This discovery shows that there is an interest in investment banking among the Pinterest audience and the two accounts currently on Pinterest with investment banking in their name were not active. This presents a big opportunity for an investment banking business to become the go-to source for information on Pinterest.

Earlier this year, Facebook introduced Graph Search. In Graph Search, you can refine your results down to pages, groups and events. Inspiration for future blog posts or even new products or services could emerge from the search.

Graph Search can be very useful for a business.

Twitter offers an Advanced Search feature where you can perform a very specific search, but the option to search for tweets with questions is most helpful. How better to serve potential clients or customers than by answering their questions?

The option to search for tweets with questions is extremely valuable.

Cynthia Sanchez, writes and podcasts about all things Pinterest at Oh So Pinteresting.

#12: Make Your Podcast Easily Consumable on Mobile

Paul Colligan

Smartphones have changed social media in some amazing ways. Perhaps most exciting (for me, at least) is how they’ve helped podcast consumption explode. More and more people are listening to podcasts on their smartphones—and they (and the podcasters) are better for it.

When someone clicks on a podcast from a blog, most smartphones open a new window and start playing the content. It just works. A simple link to an MP3 will “work” on most blogs for a media player and a number of podcasters are fine with that.

Install a simple HTML5 audio player on your blog that doesn’t open a new window, but does, in fact, give a similar (in-screen) experience to what listeners see on the desktop. This lets the listener read your content while listening to your podcast.

Which experience below do you want your audience to have when they’re listening to your podcast, the first or the second?

Provide listeners with a convenient player.

Let the listener read your content while listening to your podcast on mobile.

Paul Colligan, director of content marketing at Instant Customer.

#13: Think of Social Media as a Publicity Engine and Distribution Channel

Brian Clark

The best social media marketing strategy I’ve found (and have used for years) is to think of social media as a publicity engine and distribution channel for content. Even back before Facebook and Twitter, content was the fuel for traffic back to our web properties from social media news sites like Delicious and Digg.

Now there’s content, and then there’s content that functions as marketing. After all, no amount of traffic from social networks means anything unless a portion of that traffic converts into customers and clients.

The content you create must attract your ideal prospect, not random traffic. To do that, you discover the problems and desires your ideal prospect has, and thencreate content that addresses those problems and desires at an introductory level. Once these prospects visit your site, you must entice them to follow your content over time by email, which is still the highest-converting online sales channel (by far).

The reason content works as a social media marketing strategy is that people not only want valuable information, they like to share it as well. This results in an amazing word-of-mouth effect where new people are exposed to you and your brand each and every day via those in their own networks.

Attract your ideal prospects, then encourage them to share with their own networks. Image source: iStockphoto

People don’t want to be pitched directly via social media. They do seek out and share content though, and if that content is fine-tuned to appeal to your perfect prospect, you’ll develop a social media marketing strategy that works for you night and day.

Brian Clark, founder and CEO of Copyblogger.

#14: Include an Original Photo in Your New Piece of Content

Gini Dietrich

The best social media marketing network most businesses still ignore is Pinterest. Too often, we hear, “Oh I don’t have anything visual to show” so they ignore the fastest-growing network. But here’s the deal: Sixty-five percent of human beings are visual learners. That means they’d rather look at pictures or watch videos than read text, yet most of us still use text as our main method of communication.

Let’s say you run a professional services firm or a manufacturing company or a software-as-a-service business. If you are creating content for your business, include an original photo and you have something to pin to Pinterest.

First, create a board for your content. For instance, I have one on my personal page called Spin Sucks.

Spin Sucks on Pinterest.

A best practice for a new piece of content is to include an original photo. When you publish the content, you’ll want to pin it to the board you’ve created specifically for the business. Click the “pin it” button and get it saved.

Include an original photo in a new piece of content.

Do this every time you publish content for a month. Then go into your Google Analytics and see what kind of traffic it’s driving.

Even if you don’t have anything to sell online, it’s a quick and easy (incredibly easy) way to bring new visitors to your site. And now you have a huge opportunity to capitalize on that new traffic!

Gini Dietrich, founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich.

#15: Allow Employees to Advocate for Your Business

Neal Schaffer

One of my best social media marketing tips, and probably the one that is most underutilized by businesses, is employee advocacy.

You’re a business engaging in social media and creating content, but you’re only sharing that content from your company’s account. Wouldn’t it be great if all of your sales and marketing people also shared your content? It would help your company reach more people and help your sales and marketing folks better brand your company in social media.

The recent Edelman Trust Barometer reported that 41% of people believe company employees rank higher in public trust than a firm’s PR department or CEO. With the advent of social business, every employee can and should play a role in your social media efforts, and there are now a handful of platforms like GaggleAMP (you can join my own Gaggle here to see what an employee would see), Addvocate, PeopleLinx,Dynamic Signal, Expion and SocialChorus that make it easy for you to both facilitate and measure your employee advocacy program.

My Gaggle makes it easy for me to facilitate and measure my employee advocacy program.

Your social selling can also be helped by employee advocacy. Prudential Financial embarked on an employee advocacy program, which encouraged their employees to get connected. Now each of their 15,000 employees has an average of 160 connections, meaning that as a company, their message—through their employees—can potentially reach 2.4 million LinkedIn users! It’s time for companies to wake up and unleash the power of some of your most passionate, but often forgotten, brand advocates: Your employees!

Neal Schaffer, president of Windmills Marketing, author of Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing: Understanding, Leveraging and Maximizing LinkedIn.

#16: Attend Live Events

Jeff Korhan

Live events are where you experience firsthand the energy and enthusiasm of other like-minded people who share your interests and business objectives.

In addition to building meaningful relationships, you walk away with abundant ideas for invigorating your social media marketing. I’m still mining ideas from my experience at Content Marketing World a couple months ago, not to mention being better connected with industry colleagues.

Jeff Korhan and Joe Pulizzi reconnecting at the Green Industry Conference shortly after Content Marketing World.

One of the challenges of social media is translating our weak connections into stronger relationships that can potentially lead to mutually beneficial outcomes. The solution is to literally get out of the office to meet the people with whom you’re connected online, and make new connections that you can bring to your social networks. When you integrate the two, you enhance the effectiveness of both.

A few years ago, it was predicted that webinars and other digital events would eventually replace live events, thereby putting professional speakers and trainers like me out of business as we know it. It turns out we are now experiencing a resurgence of live events, and the reason is somewhat surprising.

Now we are more connected than ever as a result of social media and people want to meet their connections in person to further develop their relationships. The community and energy of live events adds richness and depth to your social media relationships, and makes a positive impact on that illusive metric—your social media ROI.

Jeff Korhan is a small business marketing expert and the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business.

#17: Build Authority Relationships With Google+ Reverse Image Lookup

John Jantsch

Networking for link relationships has taken on a bit of a popularity feel due to Google’s emphasis on authority when it comes to content.

Links from sites that Google ranks highly have always been important, but now individuals inside of Google+ carry a great deal of weight as well.

It’s important to build relationships in your industry with those authors whom Google already thinks highly of. I’m not talking about stalking, I’m talking about discovering the most valuable relationships and finding ways to build value within them.

Find those authors in your industry who appear with an author box in common searches with your industry and do a Google reverse image search tofind where they contribute content currently.

• Find an author whose image shows next to highly indexed content
• Navigate to their Google+ profile, right-click their profile image and copy the image URL
• Paste the image URL into a Google Search by Image box
• Scan the results to find a great deal about their contributed content landscape
• Create a plan to build relationships based on value
  

  Reverse Google image lookup reveals a list of places where this author contributes.

You’ll turn up some great guest post opportunity possibilities for yourself, as well as gain some insight into ways you can connect with authors of authority.

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Commitment Engine and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

#18: Actively Use SlideShare Pro to Acquire Subscribers

Joe Pulizzi

A subscription strategy is critical to any social media and content marketing professional. I’m astounded that more marketers aren’t actively using SlideShare to acquire subscribers. If you’re not familiar, SlideShare was purchased by LinkedIn and sees about 100 million visitors per month. Simply put, SlideShare is the YouTube for PowerPoint presentations (and so much more).

A SlideShare Pro account starts at $16 per month and lets you collect leads and/or subscribers. Also, SlideShare can be integrated with most marketing automation systems.

At Content Marketing Institute, we’ve been using SlideShare Pro for two years now, and it’s our number-two overall source for new subscribers. We’ve done nothing different with deploying content on SlideShare, but now we actively drive new leads.

The images below show one of our presentations on SlideShare.

Use SlideShare to acquire subscribers to your content.

The second screenshot shows the SlideShare Pro subscription popover that appears near slide 10 of a presentation. The popover can easily be skipped so viewers can access the full content, but on this presentation alone, we’ve collected over 500 subscribers with no additional work.

The SlideShare Pro popover can collect more subscribers.

Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute.

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