December 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

How to Pin Existing Blog Posts into Pinterest

One of my clients, Team Nimbus of North Carolina, has an extensive collection of “all star” posts about people who have taken the small business marketing and lead generation course, 100 Days to Abundance.  We would like to send more traffic to some of the older posts, so we decided to pin them to an All Stars board on his Pinterest account.

These are the steps we followed:

    1. Install the Pin It button on your browser.
    2. Create a board labelled “Team Nimbus All Stars.” (You can do this on the first pin.) (Use whatever title works for your business.)
    3. Open the blog post from the outside, NOT logged in.  (That is, do NOT use the Word Press “preview” button from within the blog post itself.)
    4. Click the “Pin It” button in your browser bar, and a new overlay will display all the pinnable images on that blog post.  In our case, one is the image of the business owner, and others are ads from the sidebars.
    5. When you click on the image you want, Pinterest will display a “Pin” box.  Check to make sure the right board is selected.
    6. Pinterest will add some field from the image file to the description field.  This is rarely adequate.  Go back to the blog post and select up to 500 characters of relevant and useful text, including (in our case) the name of the business person and the name of the business.  You can edit text within the description box.
Pin-in-process

Pin-in-process

    1. Click on the red Pin It button, and the pin will be saved to the board.
Post-pin screen

Post-pin window allows you to see your pin. Don’t tweet or FB unless it’s a REALLY good pin.

  1. If you’re not sure about what it looks like, click on “see it now” on the window that appears next.  You can edit the description from this view, too.
  2. Don’t tweet or FB the pin when you’re loading a lot of blog posts into Pinterest; you’ll irritate your friends and followers.
  3. Go to the next blog post and repeat these steps.
  4. From time to time, visit the Pinterest board, click Refresh on your browser, and make sure everything’s working the way you expect. You can edit and delete pins from this view, too.

Happy Pinning!

Filed Under: How to 680
December 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Hubspot says, Dump Pinterest

In a free eBook, Hubspot says,

If the social networks you’re using aren’t working — 2013 is the year to stop using them. For example, if you gave Pinterest the old college try, and it simply is not driving any meaningful business results for you, cut the cord. Just make sure you’re making your decision based on analytics, not gut feelings.

Then, to make sure you didn’t miss it, they repeated the book in a blog post.

OK–so it’s “an example,” not a directive.  Not so fast.

I’ll have more to say about this in a different article.

Not clear why they singled out Pinterest as the target. Seems that Instagram might have been a better example of a social site not designed to drive traffic.  For that matter, Twitter has been around long enough so that it’s possible to know it doesn’t work for you and your business. I don’t think the same is true in ANY way for Pinterest.

The people who are “not seeing any meaningful business traffic” from Pinterest are the ones who gave their Pinterest account to the receptionist at the front desk, who has no marketing guidance or oversight, who pins images from the company website with captions like, “cool kitchen!”  (Face it, if trained marketing department employees are writing those captions, the business has an entirely different problem…)

Or what about the images that are all “uploaded by user?” They CAN’T drive traffic–no link!

Sigh. So let Hubspot run your marketing and decide that Pinterest (which has only offered business accounts for a month when this post was written) won’t work for your business.  My clients would rather you weren’t using Pinterest anyway.  All the more traffic for us…

From the comments on that post, added after I wrote this one:

Pinterest is a complete waste of time for most B2B companies, unless you’re a company like Procter and Gamble that can promote through multiple channels.

Interesting.  P&G is not a B2B company. SAP, which IS exclusively a B2B company, is testing Pinterest.  CSC is even more active.
Pinterest is definitely a hit or miss for some businesses. But, if you know exactly how to market it to your audience, then it is sure to succeed. One must think outside the box 🙂
I would say, NOBODY knows “exactly how to market it to your audience,” because Pinterest is far too new and much too fluid and metamorphic right now for “exactly” to apply in any way.

OTOH, if you have even a glimmer that Pinterest may be a game changer that we haven’t figured out how to use reliably yet, give me a call or come to a class and let’s see what we can figure out together.

Filed Under: B2B 658.8, Content marketing 658-8, Pinterest
December 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Follow Your Customers

If your business is closely aligned with the kinds of items your clients will pin, consider putting a form on your website or a sign-up sheet at the front desk:

May We Follow You?

May We Follow You? Sign up sheet for a brick-and-mortar business

For some businesses, this is a non-starter.  If you sell children’s music lessons, you may see more crafts and recipes than you can stand.

However, for a business selling home decor items from a brick-and-mortar store, it’s an instant winner.  The owner can keep an eye on what her customers are wanting, pinning, and sometimes buying.  Because “following” is often reciprocal, individual users she follows will generally follow her store account back.

Notice that you must include a note about what you are using the email address for and that you will not (or do, if you do) share the email address. Use text that works for your business about why they may not want to be subscribed to your list.

“Following” Etiquette

If most of the people you will follow this way have personal accounts, consider following them at the account level (follow all), and then unfollowing any individual boards that are outside your  business interest.  This way, Pinterest will tell your customers that you followed their account, and they won’t know you unfollowed individual boards.

If you only follow the boards that fall under your business category, Pinterest will tell those clients that you “followed their ‘living rooms!’ board,” and some of them may feel a bit hurt that you didn’t like their “brunch recipes” collection. Better they don’t find out…

Website “Follow You on Pinterest” Experiment

I’m testing this on my Rugs site now using one of the Fast Secure Contact forms.

DIY Follow You form

DIY “Follow You on Pinterest” sign up form for a website.

If my programming skills were better, I’d create a button that performed the same function. It would look better.

I may have to go back and add a captcha. Will post here when I have results.

Filed Under: Marketing examples, Pinterest
December 12, 2012 By 1 Comment

Better Before and After Pins

I created a before-and-after pin to illustrate photo cropping for my Improve Pinterest Images post. In order to manage the way text flows in a WordPress post, I created a one side-by-side image image with both the before and after versions in Photoshop Elements. That way, I didn’t have to worry about how WordPress would align the images and the surrounding text.

Horizontal Before and After Pin

Horizontal Before and After images in pin format.

I pinned the image to the Pinterest Photography board so it would point back to the blog post. The pin looked pretty insignificant on the board, because it was wider than it was tall and Pinterest formats all pins to be the same width.

OK enough, but not really eye-catching enough to drive traffic to the blog post, which was the point of creating the pin in the first place.

The next morning, I thought about the problem while I was writing my Daily Pages.

Because you can edit the link in an “uploaded by user” image to point anywhere you want, you don’t HAVE to use exactly the same images on both sides of a Pinterest board-blog post pairing.  I could create a vertical before and after pin, load it to the board, and edit the link to point to the blog post.

The new pin is shown below.  It stands out much better on the Pinterest board.

Vertical Before and After Images

Vertical Before and After Images in Pin Format

Here’s a picture of the board before I deleted the horizontal image:

Pinterest Photography Board

Pinterest Photography board, showing both versions of the before-and-after cropping pin.

Understood, this exercise took way too much time for the potential value. I’ll know better next time. Stack images vertically for pins; horizontally for WordPress. Edit the link. Repeat.

Filed Under: How to 680, Images 770, Pinterest
December 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Superpowers we already have. Or don’t really want.

Women’s magazines regularly run survey articles about what superpowers we wish we had. Just as regularly, these article make me irritated, as the people who respond usually want powers they either already have, or really really don’t want because they haven’t thought through the consequences. Superpowers that are equivalent to absolute dictatorship are also irritating.

Herewith, my responses.

Can’t see a problem with these

I wish I could be with my mother in jail when she was arrested for civil rights work.

Other-oriented. Comforting. Not changing anyone else’s behavior. Check.
Time travel elements are always dicey, of course. Would the civil rights workers have worked any harder if they had known that an African American president was less than 50 years in the future? Probably not. Would they have given up if they thought it would take 50 years to put an African American in the White House? Also, probably not.

Grant worldwide equal rights to women

Sounds good. Say more. What would this look like and how will the various institutions have to change to make it so? How will the women be different on the other side of the power?

And when you’ve thought through all though, realize you have created the next set of seven Harry Potter – magnitude miracle stories. Start typing.  (There’s a reason people write about vampires–it’s easier than making up REAL miracles and superpowers.)

Learn new languages easily

Fact is, we can do this before we are six years old. Lots of neurological reasons why the ability goes away with age, and we’d be in bad shape if we all had the mental skills of a five-year old when we are 40. But if we could figure out how to reinstall the language learning connections into otherwise adult brains, we might have something…
It’s all that hard-shell brain casing. VERY limited real estate. I’d trade the lyrics to Hotel California for fluency in Spanish any day.

Wriggle my nose for a blast of energy

  • This woman hasn’t watched enough Bewitched; her goals are too low.
  • She can wiggle her nose? That’s a superpower all its own…

Probably a really bad idea

No sleep

Good luck with that. We don’t understand why we need to sleep, but it’s pretty universal across mammals, certainly, and most vertebrates (are sharks vertebrates?). Do you really want to be like a shark? There must be something we gain from sleep, and one of these days, we’ll understand it. Accept it.
Limits are good. Sure, you could get more done than every other woman in the car pool, but so can most meth heads, at least till their teeth fall out.

Respond with compassion, always

It’s not a superpower. It’s within you already. If you know that compassion is a possible response, than any time you don’t use it, you are making a choice, sometimes to be a bitch, at other times to simply be tired, or overwhelmed, or limited. 
Those are all fine choice and often necessary choices, IMO, but they are choices, not a lack of a superpower.  (People who have no clue that compassion is always a choice are simply ignorant {insert label here}.)

To be invisible and listen to conversations

Get a Facebook account.

To know the outcome of all the choices I have

This woman MUST be young. I don’t know that I know anyone over 40 who would wish this on themselves. Two words: Christopher Reeve.
Behavioral economics tells us that we are always happier with the choices we make than the alternative, because we’re wired to think that way. In other words, no matter what you decide or which choice you make, it’s the right one. There: I’ve granted a superpower.

The ability to manipulate time

You already have it. Thinking “time” is something outside of yourself, and an enemy that’s keeping you from enjoying your life is like thinking the problem with hoarding is a house that’s too small.

The facility to fly

I could get to Italy by this time tomorrow if I really wanted to go. Everything standing in the way of travel is real-world, not “superpower” related. Make it happen. (Suggestion: start with a passport.)

Filed Under: Leadership 303, Process 153
December 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Improving Your Pinterest Images

Professional product photography is a wonderful resource. If you can afford to have a professional photographer take images of your products, services, and events, use them. (Make sure you have have permission to use those images on Pinterest, according to your contract with the photographer).

However, you can spend a lot of money on good product photography, and Pinterest is hungry for more images than many smaller businesses can afford.

You can improve the photos you take.  This post talks about how to train your brain to think about images differently; plenty of pins point you to information about the technical elements of improving your images through camera settings and lightroom processing.

Crop!

When in doubt, crop your image! Cut out as much of the background as possible and get in close to what matters to the pin.

Pink bicycles example of cropping

Example of cropping to remove most of the sidewalk and show more of the color.

If your photo processing software offers a 3×3 grid during the cropping process, get one of the intersections of the grid close to the center of interest in the image.

Real world lesson: TV close-ups of a character (Law and Order pre-commercial fade-out) ALWAYS show the character’s face on one side or the other of the screen, NEVER in the middle.)

Educate Your Eye

Before you can create better images, it’s helpful to be able to recognize better images. As you read trade magazines, end-user retail advertising, or any other source of images including Pinterest, notice which images catch your eye. Tear out pages from magazines and keep them in a notebook or file folder. Pin interesting pin images to secret boards if you don’t want to do your learning in public.

From time to time, look over your collection and let it talk to you. You may find that the images group themselves into categories, by distance from object; time of day, color scheme.

Ask yourself:

  • Where is the camera?
  • Where is the light source?
  • Is there more than one light source?
  • What time of day is it?
  • What’s in the background and how did the photographer make the background look that way?*

*It’s possible to blur a background by changing the apeture on your camera; it’s easier to make sure the background is as simple and plain as it can be (or at least, interesting and deliberately selected) before you take the picture.

When you’re ready to create your own images, take this information with you and your camera.  Chances are, simply thinking about how an image you like was created will help you create images that you like a lot more.

Books

The board below shows pins about books and other sources of information about improving your photography. I focus on shifting your point of view and general artistic understanding rather than the technical information about how to use software.

Photograph Daily

See Everyday:  A Year Long Photo Diary, by Byron Wolfe.  Anohter book that has the same effect on me are Speck:  A Curious Collection of Uncommon Things, by Peter Buchanan-Smith.

Wolfe is a photography teacher who set himself the assignment to make one good image every day.  Lisa Creed did the same thing with her paintings.  Julia Cameron teaches this about writing daily in The Artists Way.

Carry your camera / smart phone everywhere.  Allow / force yourself to stop and take photographs whenever something catches your eye.  Photographing the same thing every time you pass it will have much the same outcome, if that is easier to do.  (I have a series of the nuclear power plant plume; another of a highway intersection construction project in process.)

If you’ve ever watched a professional photographer work, you may have noticed that he or she took HUNDREDS of photos in order to get the 20 that appeared in your wedding album, or the three that were used in the magazine article.

The point of these exercises is to help you let go of the idea of “one good image” and move into an understanding of “lots of images will lead to one good one.”

Jim Krause’s Index Series

Jim Krause’s Index Series

Jim Krause Book image

Books that can help you be a better designer.

I love all of Jim Krause’s books.  People doing their own product photography should buy the Photo Idea Index (bright green plastic cover in the picture on the site). The chapters in this book take you through 350 ways of looking at the world (and products!) around you and taking pictures that will make people stop when they see them on the pin flow.

If your business is more specific and you KNOW you only need landscapes, or people, or products, you might want to look at one of Krause’s focused idea books.

If you do nothing but set yourself the exercise of duplicating each of his images with your landscape and/or products, you’ll have 14 boards full of images that work. Add your paid professional shots in with your own images, and your business account will look as good as any big business.

Caveat: I have not been able to duplicate professional interior design photography worth a hoot.  The pros use lights; more lights than you can image.  Using the homeowner’s in-home lighting is NOT enough.  If you pin in the interior design trades, pay for professional portfolio images.  Focus your own photography on close-ups and products, rather than finished installations.

Pins about Pinterest Photography

This is a board where I collect pins about how to create better images for Pinterest; not pins about photography in general.
(Board keeps disappearing, and I’ve submitted a help ticket into Pinterest. Stay tuned.)

Filed Under: Books 028
December 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Pinterest for Home Improvement

Insider’s joke about green building

One energy company experiments with Pinterest

Drywall board

Replacement windows from an end user’s (client) perspective (look at what else he is pinning and think about how you might also intersect with him, or at least, understand him when you’re in the sales conversation)

As expected, the window treatment companies (in this example, Levelor) are already playing well in the Pinterest.

Eugene is another user with an interest in home improvement, although these boards might also be created for his SEO clients.

Vic Resto pins home improvement information to feed his website design business.

Garage doors

Security doors and related products. Good pins, account needs logo or headshot.

Insulation

Boards found while searching on “insulation”  (Note that most pins called “insulation” are pictures of glass electrical insulators.  Fiberglass, foam and foil insulation falls way down the chart.)

Underfloor acoustic and heating

Basement waterproofing: GREAT use of before and after! (or at least, “afters”)

Filed Under: Marketing examples
December 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

How To Showcase Clients’ Work on Pinterest

Last month’s newsletter from the NextGen photo gallery plugin for WordPress contained an invitation to showcase a gallery on the NextGen Pinterest account. I use NextGen on two sites to manage large numbers of photographs, and Pinterest sends lots of traffic to one of those sites, so I jumped at the opportunity to create additional pins.

Their system could be used by anyone who makes a product / app / system used by other creators to further their work.  First, create a board named for the most common name of your product (the name your users call your product = better SEO value).  Use the description of the board to spell out the steps your users need to follow to be invited to guest pin.

Then, add a logo pin to that board.  In this case, anyone who comments on the logo pin will receive an invitation to be a guest pinner on the board.

Because NextGen is a live photo display system, they are asking users to pin screen shots of the software in action, rather than any actual live gallery display.  Anyone who uses the NextGen plugin will know how to do this; it’s possible that people who make other apps may have to provide more detailed instructions.

Because the screenshot images will, most likely, be uploaded from the users’ PCs, the instructions include a reminder to edit the pin so that it points back to the original website.  Again, NextGen users who play in Pinterest will probably know to do this already; other users who are uploading images may need a few more instructions.

The board is fairly new and I expect it will grow quickly.

NextGen Gallery Board

Board showing screenshots of image galleries created with the NextGen plugin for WordPress.

Filed Under: B2B 658.8, Content marketing 658-8, Pinterest
November 16, 2012 By 1 Comment

How to Photograph Jewelry for Pins

Look at the following boards:

Diamond jewelry on white background

Diamond jewelry against white background looks flat.

and this one, from Michaan’s Auctions:

Jewelry on a black background

Jewelry shown on a black background shows up.

Any one of the pins on the first board is probably worth more than everything seen on the second, but which one are you more likely to repin?

If you don’t have Harry Winston’s brand recognition or advertising budget, make your jewelry do your marketing work for you.

(I’ll write a whole ‘nother post about all those “uploaded by user” tags that leave clickable URLs on the table…)

Filed Under: How to 680, Images 770, Marketing examples
November 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Linkedin Endorsements

Linkedin is, in general, not full of LOLs. However, its new “Endorsements” functionality has made me smile more than once. I’ll have to go back to find the one about my best friend and politics. I’ll collect future funnies here.

Jan Swicord


Does Lt Col Jan A Swicord, USA (Retd), USMA’83, know about “Army?”

Here’s another one:

Bob Burridge


 Does Bob Burridge Know Art?

Funny how these go by. Some people are obviously endorsible; I worked with them and know they have the skills they claim. Others are claiming (or be associated with) non-obvious skills that make sense for what I know of their profession; fine. Other people are strangers to me (albeiit connections, from one source or another, and I just let them go. ANd a few I don’t like now and never did, so I skip them, too.
And then you get something like this:

Billy


No, no, not at all. C’mon, Linkedin, what ELSE would a guy like that do for a living?

Filed Under: How to 680, Marketing 658.8
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