Pinterest Board Ideas for a Craft Brewery

(Recommend minimum 10 boards, 10 pins on each board)

Four Saints Brewing Company, Asheboro, NC

Four Saints Brewing Company, Asheboro, NC: Pinterest Account

  • Our Beer (Brews):  pictures of each of the different beers in a mug. Put the name of the beer in the image, as well as in the pin description.
  • Our Brewery:  pictures of the brewery and staff
  • Asheboro Eats:  pins of local restaurants; use a Map Board for these
  • NC Craft Brewers (or Central NC Craft Brewers) (Could spin to at least three or four boards, Western NC / Asheville / Central / Eastern NC Craft Brewers)
  • Asheboro Events
  • Beer Recipes
  • Shop Local (use #shoplocal hash tag)
  • Zoo
  • Randolph County Historical sites
  • Brewing Equipment
  • Beer Steins
  • BrewFests around the State
  • Beer in the Press
  • Beer Quotations
  • Hops
  • Celebrities and Craft Brewing
  • Beer Fashion

Guidelines:  no more than 200 pins per board (business visitors won’t scroll farther).

40-60 boards max. for a business account, to increase the percentage of people who “Follow all” rather than following only a few boards.

Keep the pins in circulation by regularly pinning a few pins from the bottom of the key business-content boards, back to the top of the same board, and then deleting the “old” pin from the bottom, on whatever cycle works for you.  This will keep the brewery’s own pins “in circulation,” exposed to new people watching the pin flow, without much additional work for the marketing manager.

Craft Brew Pinterest Accounts to follow

DeschutesBeer

Bukowsky

Motor City Brew

Draft Mag

Pub Cake

Craft Beer Time

The Bottle Wrench

Four Peaks Brew

Beer Brewing Book

Look at who those accounts are following to find more craft brewing accounts.  (Some accounts get more political, or skew to a younger age, than you might find helpful.

Join this Group Board and pin your brews:

Beer for Everyone

 

Marketing with Pinterest at the MIAR Convention, Mt. Pleasant, MI

I was invited to teach Marketing with Pinterest to REALTORS attending the 2013 MIAR convention at the Soaring Eagle Casino & Resort in Mount Pleasant, MI.  The course focused much more on MARKETING than Pinterest, and then also with a focus on real estate.  Changed over all of the examples in the presentation.

We set a prerequisite that attendees have a personal Pinterest account with 10 boards and 10 pins each board.

Had a range of real estate focus represented in the attendees, from brokers-in-charge of franchises with 70+ agents, to solos, to smaller offices who sent several agents.  Many VERY lucrative account names were still available, it turns out, and I was impressed that the people in the class recognized the need to claim account names in real time, rather than waiting till they got back to the office.  (Quick check indicates that some of those accounts are already being populated, and the convention didn’t end till Friday evening.)

Good in-class discussion of pinning from the MLS (one picture, full-house, only), tracing images that have been pinned from REALTORS’ websites to see who likes your homes, and pinning at the level of the agency vs. agent accounts.

 

My travel schedule was such that I flew up late Tuesday, and then had to drive an hour north from Lansing to Mt. Pleasant.  Very nice surprise to find I had a luxury room with fireplace and soaking tub.  Taught the class over lunch break, and then drove south again to be in Lansing for a 6 am departure on Thursday morning because I was teaching again at Wake Tech on Thursday evening.

I’d never seen a wind farm that close.  One of my magazines had a story about a new style of wind turbine; it showed three models that looked just like the ones in the picture but I didn’t have any way to judge height so I don’t know who made these.  I think this is the farm in Gratiot County, near Ithaca, along Highway 127.

 

Spoliation and Social Media

IANAL, but I am a bit of a junky and can follow a certain amount of legal argument.  I found this story today:

Think Before You Facebook: Emerging Social Media Spoliation Sanctions

Actually, it should be titled, “think before you (delete) Facebook.”

If you can’t bear to read legal argument, here’s the layperson’s (IANAL) understanding:

If you delete ANY social media CONTENT, or ACCOUNTS, once it becomes possible that the content or account is “evidence,” you can be charged with spoliation.

Spoliation

<snip>

A spoliator of evidence in a legal action is an individual who neglects to produce evidence that is in her possession or control. In such a situation, any inferences that might be drawn against the party are permitted, and the withholding of the evidence is attributed to the person’s presumed knowledge that it would have served to operate against her.

It is possible that lay people can claim ignorance of the law. It is known that lawyers cannot. I would bet that professional social media managers fall closer to lawyers on this point than they do to lay people.

Plan A:

  • Don’t pin or post anything that can be used against your clients. (Duh.)
  • Make sure your clients are not pinning or posting anything that could be used against them. This should be addressed in the Social Media Policy for the account.
  • Make sure your clients know not to delete content or accounts if they get letters from lawyers. Again, this should be addressed in the Social Media Policy.

Plan B:

If something on an account (Facebook is the most commonly cited, but the law doesn’t care about platform) could ever be used against a client, take it down now, before there is any hint or suggestion of a lawsuit.

Once the lawyers have sent their letters, leave it alone.

How can I use Pinterest? Q&A

Dear Karen,
Thank you for the invitation and information you are offering. I write, and edit.

According to Marketing on Pinterest, Pinterest’s prime users are 25-34 years old and mostly use it in the areas of fashion and crafts sharing.

I am not a Pinterest expert, but I wonder how it could be a marketing tool for me?

All best,

——————–
Specifics from your profile below the numbered bit.

I suspect you’ll be pretty good at seeing how your trade can be mapped into Pinterest.

I can show you how the various elements of the Pinterest application can be used to drive traffic to whatever website you point the pin at.

While the bulk of the American users may be younger women, that is only the core. Long tail rules apply. I haven’t worked on the published numbers enough to understand what the 80/20 rule means to the rest of us. More men use it in Europe.

Fast Company, last month, put Ben Silberman on the cover (CEO of Pinterest). They described Pinterest as being the first new form of search since Goggle, and a radically different way TO search. Google can’t solve for “mother’s day gift.” I suspect Pinterest is going to put a huge hole in traditional SEO work.

I have myself seen a Pinterest board in the #2 SERP position for a term I want to own. Not sure how much attention you pay to SEO and so far, I haven’t heard any understanding or acceptance from the professional SEO people I know.

Specifics for your situation:

Re-write and update of Warm Heart Worldwide website, photographs and narrative to build public relations collateral and fundraising materials.

  • Every picture on that site could be on Pinterest, adding a bit of SEO to the captions. The fundraising plea could be on every board, without being too pushy.
  • See Using Pinterest to Raise $
  • Better yet, search on “charities in Pinterest” and follow whatever results look most interesting to you.

Non-fiction and fiction writing for general and academic readers. Blog writer.

  • I have a story that I haven’t used in the class yet about a fiction writer who is sharing / tracking / developing her next book through / using Pinterest boards; increasing engagement with her fan club.
  • Suspect the same would work for non-fiction.

Ongoing research to adapt writing to the social media environment.

  • QED.

Coaching professionals in a variety of fields in ESL.

  • Search for ESL in Pinterest
  • Your board could be one more on that set, and possibly better or more helpful or at least different. I don’t know enough about teaching ESL to know if those boards are useful. (I do know enough about children’s clowning to recognize that most of the “clown” pins were not young-child friendly, and that indicated a wide-open market.)

My “Free Spirit, Tough Mind” tutoring approach engages both right brain (intuitive) and left brain (logical) learning styles.

  • Couldn’t find anything about this and suspect it’s proprietary to you.

Consultant on French Renaissance literary research.

  • Looks like this topic’s pretty bare in Pinterest, which means an interesting board would be a goldmine.

Pinterest for a Local Newspaper

When people ask what I do, I say “Pinterest marketing.” The other evening, I met someone who was adamant that Pinterest had no place in local news marketing; that readers went to the newspaper’s event listing via Google and that Pinterest was only useful a source of craft ideas.

I didn’t argue. I don’t push string.

The business of a local newspaper is to drive traffic to its advertisers. Newspapers use stories as reader-bait. Some local newspapers are famous for stuffing their articles with the names of townspeople; others use the slogan “relentlessly local.”

Readers visit the newspaper website for information about what’s going on in town this weekend. This particular newspaper website maintains a top-ranked listing in the Google SERP because of the backlinks accumulated over time and the huge number of stories they have run featuring on the keywords of city and town.

Local news by Michael Avory (avorym)) on 500px.com--how local newspapers can use Pinterest to drive traffic
Local news: Man keeps up with the local news on a Roman street wall by Michael Avory

Pinterest won’t contain the most timely information, but on the other hand, it’s GREAT for sharing information that has a long shelf life. Local feature stories, in particular, have enormous shelf life, much longer than stories in the state and national papers. Grandma will still be interested in the twin’s softball activities long after the dust has settled on the latest international security threat.

Pillar articles about local points of interest (in my town, this is the railroad museum) never outdate and instead, accumulate traffic and visitors over time.

Newspapers can EASILY use Pinterest to expand their internet reach, driving traffic directly to the newspaper home page and from there, to advertiser’s links.

The newspaper website may own the top SERP position for events listings. Who owns the top listing for RR Museum? What if people don’t know to search your town for that story? What if people who collected railroad images would visit your town if only they knew you had a RR museum?

I watched a coffee shop crumble many years ago, back when allowing indoor smoking was up to the business owner. Every time someone complained about the atmosphere, the owner would survey the patrons to learn that most of them wanted him to continue to allow smoking. By the time the state law changed to ban smoking in commercial spaces, it was too late. All the non smokers had gone to the new coffee shop on another corner. They didn’t come back.

It’s good that a local newspapers’ readers know to search in Google for the local events listing. However, that paper is missing out on traffic from people who are searching in Pinterest for stuff that the town offers, but isn’t provided in a way that these searchers can find.

Don’t assume the way you use Pinterest is the way everyone uses Pinterest.

Outrun the Bear

Two hikers on a trail came around the bend to find a great big mama bear with a cub up the trail. Mama Bear sees them and starts moving toward them. One hiker sits down, yanks off his boots, and puts on his running shoes.

European brown bear and cub by Peter Cairns (Northshots)) on 500px.com
European brown bear and cub by Peter Cairns

The other hiker says, “What are you doing? You can’t outrun the bear!”

The first hiker says, “I don’t have to outrun the bear…”

If you’re in a trade with a lot of sophistication about graphic design and photography (weddings), yes, you have to outrun the bear and your Pinterest account will need to be stunning.

If you’re in a trade that hasn’t adopted high-end graphic design and formal product portraits (most heavy industry, agriculture, most services except dentistry and spa/appearance), home improvement, business advising), you simply need a bigger and marginally better footprint than everyone else.

WSJ Real Estate Section

Section D of the Friday Wall Street Journal has great real estate coverage, with lots of articles about how agents stage and sell VERY high end homes.

However, the WSJ is an expensive paper, and if you’re not reading it for business and stock market information, it can be a lot of money and content just to get the real estate news.

(The Friday paper also has a GREAT crossword puzzle, with lots of fun and tricky clues, and movie and TV reviews that align with my taste.)

Here’s how I manage what would otherwise be an overwhelming influx of paper and information: buy a 3 month subscription, which is about $100.00. Then, I put my subscription on vacation hold Saturday through Thursday every week. The new account management website makes this pretty easy to do.

If the paper on arrives on Fridays, a $100 subscription will last two years. I read about high-end real estate around the world over the weekend and don’t feel bad about not keeping up with the rest of the paper.

Vertical Pins: How Embarrassing

Everyone says, “make tall pins.”  I say it in class.  I show examples of tall pins when I teach.

I wrote a post about creating “before and after” pins that stack vertically because they are more visible than side-by-side images (which look better in a blog post).

I repinned rugs for exposure.

I got traffic.

I wasn’t happy with how my “Rag Rugs, Hand Made in America” board looked, but it was my work and it was colorful.

And one day, I realized that I could rotate most of my rugs 90 degrees and make tall pins.

OMG.  I am embarrassed.

Red Rag Rug pins, showing the difference between horizontal and vertical image alignment.

Red Rag Rug pins, showing the difference between horizontal and vertical image alignment.

The longer the rug, the worse it looked before the rotation, and the better it looked after. Seascape was so bad before I removed all of its horizontal pins across my account before I thought to write this post.

The round rugs will take a slightly different approach. I haven’t finished processing and uploading them.

Here’s another example of the difference between vertical pins and horizontal pins of the same images:

Gold rug pins, showing the difference between vertical and horizontal image alignment, and cropping a round rug to fill the space.

Gold rug pins, showing the difference between vertical and horizontal image alignment, and cropping a round rug to fill the space.

In this set, I have zoomed in on Red and Gold Spiral and cropped it to a rectangular shape so it fills more of the image space. Will probably do this will all of the spirals; not sure about the triskeles (triple spirals).

I will be deleting the horizontal pins over the next few days.  By the time you read this, the boards will all look different and only the screen shots will document my lesson learned.

Board Ideas for an Artist’s Business Account

Pinterest is a perfect tool for marketing art of all kinds. Many creatives take to it like ducks to water, but a few of my friends have a bit of trouble understanding what else they can pin besides their own work.

The point is to share yourself and your view of the world as an artist. You can share images that inspire you, tools you use, places you go to refresh your idea bank. Feel free to share parts of your personal life, and/but be aware that your art account represents you as an artist. For example, some potters do very well sharing recipes and food information. However, if you’re a painter but not a foodie, you may not want to dip your chip into the great flow of food ideas.

No-one will notice what you don’t pin; they may notice if you pin images that don’t strike them as artistic or representative of who you are.

So here is a list of board ideas for those people who get a little stuck understanding how Pinterest can work:

  • Your art
  • Painting a day
  • Color (a board for each; a board for different types of combinations)(A search on boards about “red,” for example, will show you that artists think about “red” differently than non-artists.)
  • Texture
  • Line
  • Tools
  • Other people’s art
  • Rooms decorated with art (particularly for the functional artists)
  • Gardens / garden art
  • Dogs and/or cats, in images that reflect you as an artist (some consistency recommended)
  • Humor that reflects you as an artist (lots of stuff is funny in Pinterest and I don’t want to share that I think it’s funny with my buying public)
  • How-tos (Videos can be pinned from YouTube and Vimeo)
  • Books that reflect some element of you as an artist (I leave my taste in murder mysteries off this list)
  • Gadgets and technology
  • Local places you get inspired
  • Quotations that inspire you as an artist

Pick 10 ideas from the above list, add 10 pins to each board, and see if you don’t start to understand how Pinterest can present your art to your friends and fans a little differently from Facebook or Twitter.
For more ideas, search Pinterest Accounts for accounts about “Art.” (Purple arrow points to search box in upper left, pick the “pinners” option for search.)

art_accounts

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How to Make Cover Pins for Your Pinterest Boards

Board “cover pins” are the pins you select to be the largest image on a board in your Pinterest account’s Board View. Setting board covers can help to identify the content of a board.

If you don’t set a board cover image deliberately, the first image you pinned will be displayed as the largest image under “Boards view.” Sometimes, this works, but more often,

Board title + the first image pinned = random = confusion

“Confusion” is not a good state for a Pinterest business account’s visitor. As the owner of a business account, you want to help a visitor understand what each of your boards is about.

Look at how the cover pins on the labelled boards below help explain what the board is about, compared to the boards that don’t have a branded label:

Cover pins from Small for Big

Cover pins from Small for Big

I help my clients create specific board cover pins, with text that provides more information than the board name can provide by itself.

You don’t have to create covers for all your boards. Title the boards that are most important for your business, as well as those on the top two rows of boards, which is your best Pinterest real estate.

Here are three ways to create cover pins for your Pinterest boards:

Use a Photoeditor to Make a Board Cover Pin

  • Use your favorite photo editing program or application.
  • Select your own photo for the background.
  • Add a frame.
  • Fill the inside of the frame with a contrasting color.
  • Add text that describes the contents of the board. Make the text large enough to be clearly visible when visitors view the image on the “board view” display.
  • If your account and/or website have a clear graphic style, make the colors and fonts match your business’ graphics. My art site is brightly colored and I can use different colors for each board and still “fit.” I am use the same font for all of the board labels; the same font I use on the website header and my price tags and other collateral.
Rug Board Cover Pin, created in Photoshop Elements

Rug Board Cover Pin, created in PS/E

  • If you don’t have a strong color sense of your own, select colors from the background image using the eyedropper for the frame and font. This will make a more cohesive board label than selecting random colors.  Both the purple and the green in the frame above were eye-droppered from the image in the background.
  • Save the completed image with text as a jpg.
  • Load it to the correct board using the Upload image feature. After you load this image as a pin, edit the pin to point the URL to a useful page on your website.
  • Set the board cover. Add a few more pins to push the cover image off the front row pins and hide it a bit lower in your collection.

Use PicMonkey online photoediting to create a cover pin if you don’t have Photoshop Elements.

Make a Board Cover Pin with Quozio

If you don’t have a useful image of your own, create a cover pin using Quozio. I don’t own the copyright to the images I pin on my teaching boards, so I can’t modify the images for my own purposes.

For example, I created a pin in Quozio (see Use Quozio to Create Text Pins for instructions) to explain that the pins on the Cancer Care board were examples of what you could pin if you were pinning for a health care practitioner in a specific condition-related field.

Cover Pin for Cancer Care board, created in Quozio

Cover Pin for Cancer Care board, created in Quozio

I allowed the title pin to point back to Quozio. When I write the blog post explaining how readers could create similar boards of their own, I will edit the cover pin to point to that blog post.

The board description also points out that this is an example of possible Pinterest Marketing information for a health care provider, NOT a board about any type of medical care.

I scrolled through the images available at Quozio to find one that was appropriate for a board about cancer.  Not all of the images worked as well as this one.  Quozio doesn’t offer any good “sky” or “cloud” pins. I can’t use Quozio to make a title pin for a flight school.

Select a Pin That Contains Text

Select a pin from the board that clearly explains what the board is about. I did this on the board I use for Accountants and CPAs. I found a pin of a book that teaches accounting. The book cover clearly explains the content of the board. I simply selected this with “set board cover.”

Accounting Board Cover Pin

Accounting Board Cover Pin

When you look at the RedTux Board view, it’s easy to tell what’s on this board.

Labelled vs. unlabelled boards

Mix of labelled and unlabelled boards on the Red Tuxedo Pinterest account.

First Row, Left

From the upper left, you can see that the first two boards are clearly identified. Residential Real Estate needs a better cover, with less overlap at the margins. It’s not at all clear what the three boards on the right are about (pins from the businesses of people who have taken my class) and they all need attention.

Second Row, Left

First board is clear enough; second and third need help. Four on the left are either labelled or clear. The text for the Flying board seemed big enough when I made the pin but it’s harder to read than its neighbors. May increase the size next time.

Third Row, Left

The image for Golf is reasonably clear. “Transferring” is a board I use to move pins between accounts, and is labelled as such. The other boards all need cover pins but may be left as is for teaching purposes.

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