Pinterest marketing has become popular particularly in fashion, art, service industry and etc. Previous blog post had covered the features of Pinterest and Pinterest optimization, therefore this blog post will provide some ideas about how to measure the performance of Pinterest Marketing.

1. Traffic tracking: This capability is powerful for both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar storefronts. It’s valuable to know which medium is driving the most traffic for storefront-only businesses and online transactions for e-commerce shops. The data allow business to determine how much time to spend optimizing images on business site for Pinterest and the amount of merchandise are directly adding to brand’s own boards. Google Analytic tool is very powerful in tracking traffic from Pinterest to the business site through adding tracking code to the website. Here is an article about mastering the Google Analytics.
2. Track the effectiveness of the content which customers and prospects are pinning from a business website and Pinterest business page. Navigating to pinterest.com/source/BusinessSite.com allow a business or brand to gain better understand on which images are most popular and effective to prospects. Indicators include number of pin, number of repin, number of like, number of share and comment and what day of the week gets the most active engagement.  Moreover, evaluating the number of repins a single item received from business site enable the business to determine what kind of content is most viral and thus improve the business’s capability in spreading the brand’s content across Pinterest.
3. Impressions and reach: Impressions tells the effectiveness of images’ descriptions, frequency of the content appears in the Pinterest news feed, on boards or from the Pinterest search. While, reach tells a business about the number of unique views as the greater number of unique views, the more traffic and transactions a business may receive.
4. Clicks: the number of times a customer or prospect clicks from a pin that come from the business site. the clicks are able to show a business how much traffic its customers are helping contribute to its site through pinning its exceptional content.

Social media has been serving as a channel for various marketing activities, such as customer relationship management (CRM), customer service, and buyer research and branding (Ashley & Tuten, 2014). Social media has also been categorized as a branding channel which branded social media activities can be used to enhance brand awareness and visibility, promote customers engagement and loyalty, encourage word-of-mouth communication about the brand, and drive traffic to brand site online or offline (eMarketer, 2013).  But, what motivate or drive consumer engagement on social media i.e. Pinterest?

McQuail (1983) suggeted four general gratifications that consumers obtained from using social media, which are entertainment, information, personal identity, and integration and social interaction. Following table shows the details of sub-motivation of each general gratification:

Table 1 Motivations that drive consumers using social media. Source: (Ashley & Tuten, 2014)

While table below presents the main motivations for using Pinterest (Ashley & Tuten, 2014):

After understanding the motivations that drive usage of Pinterest, small businesses may want to include the above elements to their content of pins or boards in order to attract and fulfill the needs of their targeted consumers on Pinterest thus enhance users’ engagement.

Several foundational tips below might allow a business to optimize its Pinterest profile to gain better visibility and engagement for the brand.

1. Searchable profile. A business should ensure the business name is self-explanatory and easy to spell which a length of username between 3 and 15 characters. Moreover, including links to other social media accounts enable to increase crossover and visibility. Filling a brief description about business or company through using keywords will make the business profile more visible and discoverable (Mccoy, 2016).
2. Easy to pin. Adding a Pin It button to all the content on a business website is able to increase crossover between the business site and Pinterest account. This also allows users to connect and share the company’s content on Pinterest thus indirectly encourage engagement.
3. User-generated content. According to Honigman (2015), user-generated content is 35% more memorable and 50% more trustworthy than other types of media creation, thus user-generated content should play a key role in Pinterest strategy. Businesses should utilize Pinterest’s feature of collaborative board to invite their followers or customers to pin images of how they interact with the businesses’ products and services. However, businesses might need to include some rules in the description of the board to avoid irrelevant images or content are pin as that may bring negative impact to others fans’ experience while searching and contributing their ideas in the board. The figure below shows that the invited followers of users are able to contribute images to the board. GoPro is one of the brands which has active user-generated content boards.  Click here to learn how GoPro get their fans to engage with them on Pinterest.
   

   Collaborators box allows business to invite its followers and customers to interact with business through pinning images on the created board.

4. Relevant content to business’s industry. By keeping the boards and content focused may enable a brand to provide its fans the pins with quality, useful and interesting content. To find out what kind of content a business’s targeted consumers like the most, business are able to see what’s popular on its competitor’s website in terms of what’s being pinned by the targeted customers through using the url www.pinterest.com/source/(competitor.com). For example the popular pins shows from Nike in below figure. There are also several ways to check out competitors on Pinterest.Popular pins from Nike
5. Correct pinning time. Pinning at the right time allows brand to reach its targeted customer more effectively. Therefore, brands need to understand their targeted audience’s habits. While SocialFresh suggested that 2PM-4PM EST and 8PM-1AM EST are the best time to pin in general, and HubSpot‘s research showed that Saturday morning is the best time to post.
6. Connected with other social media platforms. By linking Pinterest account to other social media account enables businesses to get more followers from its existing networks, and also to spread Pinterest’s content across platforms to increase visibility.
7. Sharing Pins through the newsletter feature. Instead of waiting consumers to search your pins, businesses are able to being active rather than passive by sending their popular and latest pins directly to subscribers or fans from other platforms to encourage engagement from them.
8. SEO for Pinterest. SEO strategy will get businesses pins discovered by their targeted audience easily. Businesses should first start with research the poplar keywords related to the business by using Google AdWords Planner. After that, adding the keywords to pin titles, pin descriptions or to pin image file names.
9. Call-to-Pin. Call-to-pin is similar to call-to-action which will be included in businesses’ pins in order to boost the engagement of pins. Call-to-pin showed in pin’s description will provide 80%more engagement (Mccoy, 2016).
10. Pin actively. Post frequently on Pinterest may allow a business to get more Pinterest followers thus increase brand awareness.

Pinterest is a web-based social network system which allows its users to pin (post) images or pictures to virtual boards that they create according to their interests (Lee, 2011).  The social networking aspect of Pinterest takes place when users share images. Moreover, Pinterest is having a Facebook-like interface with Twitter-like metrics, thus enables business to engage customers at a higher level and capture measurable ROI metrics (Loren & Swiderski, 2012). Furthermore, corporations also view social media an important way to reach consumers and thus many companies are adding social media to their marketing strategies to offer more interactivity with their consumers. For example, Ferguson & Greer study in  2015 showed that media organizations use Pinterest to promote themselves and their programs. However, their study also suggested that boards carrying images associated with lifestyle are able businesses to enhance connections with their targeted audiences better than promition-related content. Therefore,  Pinterest could be considred as a suitable platform for certain service businesses (e.i. fashion, garderning, home decorating business or event planning) to attract new customers or traffics and also increase brand’s visibility and recognition.

There are several features of Pinterest which allows  small businesses to employ and facilitate their digital marketing strategies.

1. Adding pins to Twitter and Facebook easily and quickly. For businesseses that already have an Facebook or Twitter account, they are allowed to share the images they pin immediately on Twitter and Facebook. This is not only time saver for marketers in order to have consistent content among all its social platforms, but also increase visibility (Bennett, 2014).
2. Promoting business’s pins via Pinterest’s email. Businesses are able to email their pinners, customers or even prospects a pin that they might find helpful or information they might want to see via the Pinterest’s email feature.
3. Invluding extra information right on the Pin itself. There are 6 types of Rich Pins which includes app, movie, recipe, article, product and place. Different Rich Pins serve different function, for example, a home designer could use the Product Pins in the Pinterest page which allows the users to purchase for the product directly off of Pinterest by having a blue “Buy It ” button next to the red “Pin It” button (Abdurrahman, 2015).
4. Pinterest’s analytics. Similar to google analytics which enable busienesses to gain better understanding about their audience on Pinterest through collected data. Businesses will also receive analytics on the performances of their pins which allows businesses to know what could be made for better performance. Moreover, such feature also benefit the businesses by showing the right visual or content to their targeted audiences and thus increase engagement and sales.
5. Adding Pinterest Page widget to companies’s site, so that users who visiting the site will the businesses are on Pinterest and thus increase the number of followers.

References:

Abdurrahman, S. A., 2015. Want to Know How Pinterest Can Benefit Your Business?. [Online] Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/want-know-how-pinterest-can-benefit-your-business-suzan [Accessed 22 March 2016].

Bennett, A., 2014. 7 Pinterest Features You Probably Aren’t Taking Advantage Of. [Online] Available at: http://www.business2community.com/pinterest/7-pinterest-features-probably-arent-taking-advantage-0841489#c3ZtUpAxp8USuIPG.97 [Accessed 22 March 2016].

Ferguson, D. A. & Greer, C. F., 2015. Pinning and Promotion: How Local Television. Journal of Promotion Management, 1(21), pp. 64-81.

LAIRD, K 2012, ‘PINTEREST RATE’, Marketing Magazine, 117, 5, pp. 8-10, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 22 March 2016.

Lee, E. (2011, September 20). Pinterest lets people share their passions. San Francisco Chronicle, Business, p. D1.

Loren, J. & Swiderski, E., 2012. Pinterest for Business: How to Pin Your Company to the Top of the Hottest Social Media Network. 1st ed. Indiana: Que Publishing.

Neher, K., 2014. Visual Social Marketing For Dummies. 1st ed. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

We are now living in a world where information is overloaded with words and figures which may result in the lack of active attention leads users to unconsciously ignore content which require longer time and attention to analysis it  (Lambie & Hair, 2012) . However, several statistics shows that online content with visuals grab more attention and engagement from users.  Moreover, science also revealed that nearly half of human brain is involve in visual processing, interpreting visuals in less than 1/10^th of a second (Pettersson, 1989). Additionally, when users navigate mounting distractions, the average human attention is less than 9 seconds. Besides that, our brain process information more deeply when we receive it in a form of stories because storytelling is a fundamental of human brain functioning (Parkinson, 2010). Therefore, visual storytelling is getting vital in digital marketing today.

Visual storytelling includes the use of graphics, images, charts, and videos to engage with a target market and deliver a brand’s message in an effort to drive emotions and encourage a certain action (Alton, 2016). A compelling and captivating visual content is able to evoke emotions which results in deeper engagement with users and drives potential consumers to purchase for a product or service. Thus, visual storytelling has attracted many brands to employ it in content marketing in order to increase website traffic, customer engagement and even sales (Lasquite, 2015). Furthermore, visual storytelling also helps businesses to connect, inspire, and engage the brand with their consumers better and faster than a simple text (Gregorio, 2015).  There are 4 key principles that make a powerful visual:

1. Authenticity: Authentic visual marketing draws emotions and passions from the users, they are then turned into advocates of the idea the brand is attempting to tell.
2. Achetype: Archetype visual storytelling technique are used by brands to create engaging content through learning about archetypal stories that form our values and culture.
3. Sensory currency: Sensory stimulation is one of the element which enable a brand to connect with their targeted consumers.
4. Relevancy: Incorporating cultural relevancy in visual storytelling makes for a good and powerful campaign as it creates a deeper emotional connection.

Demand of using video as a marketing tool is increasing as video is employed by many organizations in telling targeted consumers and audients their story, getting the word out about a new product or service, as well as recruiting employees or vendors. So, how can a service business benefit from video?

Before exploring the benefits of video marketing, there are several facts to know about using video in business:

• 65% of millennials classify themselves as visual learners.
• 59% of millennials will watch an entire one minute video.
• Syndicast predicts that 74% of web traffic will be video by 2017.
• 65% of executives have visited a vendors’ site after watching a video. (39% have called a vender after watching a vide)
• 92% of mobile video viewers share videos with others
• The  average internet user spends 88% more time on a website with video.
• 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it.

1. Attracting new customers or targeted customers– An explanatory short video on homepage or social media pages enables new customers to understand a business’s products and services easily.
2. Facilitating announcement of a new product or service– Video is a great way to get the word out and generate buzz for a new product or service. Moreover, an effective product/service announcing video will encouraged viewers to visit the product’s homepage for detail information, thus bring in traffic.
3. Moving the customer through the business’s sales cycle– Effective video will move customers from attention and interest to conviction and action, thus boost company’s sale. Therefore, a deep thoughts on effective marketing video are necessary while making video marketing.
4. Recruiting new employees/ inviting vendors– Having a video that feature company employees, show team working with business vendors, promote the culture of an organization can be very influential and effective in reaching the right and suitable employees or vendors. Here is a recruiting video from Apple Inc.
5.  Validating business– Having customers to tell their story (customer testimonials) in the form of video provide an easy way to help validate business, build positive buzz about services and also create element of social proof. HP is one of the organizations who employed customer testimonial on its HP toner in form of video. Moreover, such video not only show who the business target demographic is, how customers were served well, but indirectly helps the business in reaching it targeted customers and excluding the customers they don’t want to work with.
6. Sharing best practice– Both live and recorded video can be used to create a community for business’s clients by bringing its vendors and suppliers together for sharing best practice. This is also allow business to maintain a long-term and healthy relationship with its clients.
7. Facilitating website’s search engine rankings– Video is searchable content on the internet and thus help in search engine optimizing.

1. Company overview video
2. Video bio
3. Explanatory video
4. Training video
5. Educational video
6. Video press release
7. Website FAQ
8. Email video
9. Presentation video
10. Call-to-action video
11. Trade show video
12. Lobby video

In general, most companies and businesses want to optimize the visibility of their portfolio to as many consumers as possible. However, it might not be the case for small bespoke service providers due to limited recourses and capacity. For example, most bespoke wedding planners accept limited number of wedding a week, therefore they are more likely to target valuable customers rather than large amount of customers. The following content will start with some approaches which are widely employed by small service businesses in order to increase visibility of company’s portfolio, and then some social media marketing tips and measurements to guide small services providers.

1. A website-Before getting into optimizing business’s portfolio visibility, an accessible and  visible company website is necessary. The benefits of having a website include gaining credibility, having a place to showcase your work and another 8 reasons why a small business needs a professional website. Moreover, the design of a webpage is also important in enhancing the online consumer’s experience especially for the creative businesses including advertising, architecture, designer fashion and the performing arts which website is a main platform to show or advertise their works or services. Therefore, it is helpful to apply Valacich JS, Parboteeah DV and Wells JD (2007) Online Consumer’s Hierarchy of Needs (OCHN) framework in evaluating your current e-commerce experiences and thus optimize the web page design.
2. Go Google (SEO)-In order to stand out online, wisely manage your business website and submit it to Google are the first step for most small businesses. “Go Google” is more then ranking in the top ten in google search, but to utilize the services and tools or even Google’s advices in optimizing the visibility of your company’s portfolio to targeted or potential customers. For instance, Google Webmaster tools enable your website to Google for indexing and also to view the kinds of search queries that are driving traffic to your site. Here are six simple ways to guide you in increasing your site visibility in google search results which I found it is quite comprehensive as well.
3.  Social Media– also plays an useful role in small-business visibility. A business’s social media pages will be indexed by search engine, and searches for the company name will turn up results for all of these sites (Null,2013). For example, frequently updated the content of your social media platforms might make your website to be the top result in a search for your company name, together with your company Facebook page appear next, and your Pinterest page to be the third. Other than facilitate visibility on search engine, being visible within the social media platform is crucial as it will attract in more users and encourage engagements thus increase brand awareness for services. However, before you start boosting visibility of your social media, you might want to have a look on the “12 ways to improve your social media profile” to ensure your profile in all social media is consistence and impressive. Now here are some tips for Boosting Visibility of Social Media Profiles.

References:

Davis, J. D., 2012. The 5 Easy Steps To Measure Your Social Media Campaigns. [Online] Available at: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/social-media-measurement/ [Accessed 28 January 2016].

Null, C., 2013. Make your business shine online: 8 steps to boost visibility. [Online] Available at: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2029636/make-your-business-shine-online-8-steps-to-boost-visibility.html [Accessed 28 January 2016].

Valacich JS, Parboteeah DV and Wells JD (2007) “The online consumer’s hierarchy of needs”, Communications of the ACM, Vol 50, No 9, p84-90 [online in: ACM Portal]

The listening hub was considered as a platform for the global company like Ikea, to boost its social engagement and monitoring . It helped Ikea in collecting global conversations about brand from various social platform such as Facebook, tweeter, furnitureforum and ect. It also enables Ikea to filter conversations and conduct sentiment and topic analysis in order to have a better understanding of Ikea’s customers’ needs.

Moreover, it is also quite useful in helping the global company in identifying where its customers tend to make complaint about their service or product on by country, thus the company could pay more focus on where should they interect with their customer and also identify the better method of complaint handling.

Lastly, the collected data and information are also sharing across department in real time, this might be important for different departments in improving their operation or customer service in order to enhance customers’ experience when interact or shopping with Ikea.

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