January 15, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Don’t stress over your precious images

I have heard people say that they “don’t want to go near Pinterest because of their Terms of Service.” Hum, I thought. That’s your choice.

Pinterest’s terms of service (TOS) are shifting and changing frequently, by the way, so I can’t be sure which version anyone saw when they made that decision. The TOS on the site as of today are the most clearly presented I’ve ever seen. Pinterest has good graphic designers.

But later, I wondered. I run a site for a balloon twister. As a rule, event planners don’t exactly Search for these entertainers. They see a clown working one party, and they save the idea, and then they try to find the person they saw at the last event, and if they miss or lose the business card, they get whoever shows up in Google.
From a balloon twister’s point of view, being seen by an event planner, working parties in Pinterest, is almost the exact same thing as being seen working a real in-person event.

Ubi the Clown

Ubi the Clown’s Pinterest Account

What’s so bad about letting people copy your images, if you’re a balloon twister? You’ll be in the picture. Most balloon animals are stock items, known to all in the trade. Twisters have to be seen. Why not be seen in Pinterest? An image of a line of children waiting their turn for their own balloon animal, –what twisters call a “45-minute line? THAT’s good marketing!!

The problem, I believe, comes down to a mistaken evaluation of the dollar value of images.

Few pictures are “worth something.” The photographers who create images with resale value work VERY hard to market and sell them. I am not talking about professional photographers or their work in this post. I’m talking about pictures taken of balloon twisters at work entertaining children or convention-goers, when the photographer is the spouse or partner, and the camera fits in a pocket, and the lighting is ambient. What we used to call “snapshots.”

Understood, “Pinterest wants GOOD images,” but “good” is defined by your market. Trust me, the balloon twisting market will accept snapshots. If you’re marketing to the wedding crowd, God bless you; you need good photography. Child’s party planning? Not so much. You can go a long way with a well-planned snapshot. (Photoshop Elements helps. Crop. Crop. Crop.)

I can drive 100 visitors to a clown’s website because they saw a picture of him twisting balloons at a church picnic. If one of those people calls him and book a party, the picture is worth the party fee, which is 100% MORE than he would have been able to sell the image itself.

I don’t know about you, but I do not search the web so I can decorate my home with pictures of balloon twisters working at parties. For that matter, I don’t print and frame pictures of granite countertops, or place settings, or chimineas.

But really: what are you worried about losing if someone repins your image?

Caveat: I am NOT writing about professional photographers, fine artists, or jewelers, or anyone else whose work can be knocked off by a factory in China using only an image.

I’m talking to the balloon twister here. The professional seamstress selling steam punk. “They’ll copy my ideas.” Yeah, somebody will. But anyone who can sew that well would have copied them anyway once she saw the dress at RenFaire. Just as many might want to buy one for themselves, and they might find you through a good image on Pinterest.

So go ahead. Don’t put yourself in Pinterest. I can use all the lack-of-competition I can get.

Filed Under: Content marketing 658-8, Images 770, Marketing examples
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 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 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Guest Posting Pitfalls

I listened to one more call about the wonders of doing guest posts to build blog traffic yesterday, and my head started spinning.  Why is it that the people who sell these how-to programs always use examples in the big traffic fields of personal finance and (wait for it) BLOGGING?!?

Getting a guest post on a blog about blogging  when what you do is blog about blogging really isn’t a big deal.  It’s also kind useless if the business you’re in isn’t blogging, directly, or isn’t even related to what you MAKE.

It struck me that I’ve been listening to these webinars and the reason they don’t work for me and I don’t take any action as a result is that THEY DON’T WORK FOR ME.

Duh.

I blog easily about making textile art at Rugs from Rags.  I know a lot about sourcing textiles, repairing looms, and designing new colorways.  But these aren’t the topics that my BUYERS really want to read about.  Other textile artists, sure, but other artists can’t afford my work.

For guest posting, I need to be looking toward the home decor blogs, and I need to be writing about rugs and home decor, or perhaps color selection and stepping outside your comfort zone, and on a stretch, about sound attenuation by hanging rugs on your bigger walls.

Granted, doing a double handoff like that in the middle of a short free webinar designed to attract clients who aren’t sure they know how to write in the first place is a lot to ask.  That is, explaining to the listenership that it’s not quite so simple–write a guest post on Copyblogger!  Traffic will follow!  Especially if you can hit ProBlogger in the same month!  unless, of course, your business isn’t blogging.

Oh well.  You get what you pay for.

Filed Under: Content marketing 658-8, Networking 658.8
October 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Load a Portfolio to Linkedin

Post a Portfolio of Your Work to Linkedin

Linkedin is not a very image-friendly application. If you are successfully displaying your work on any of the portfolio sites including Pinterest, you may not need to worry about Linkedin. However, lots of professionals use the site, and adding either or both of the two portfolio display options to your profile doesn’t take very long.

Behance Creative Portfolio Display

If you already maintain a portfolio at Behance, link to it using the Creative Portfolio Display application (More / Get More Applications / scroll — on my account, Behance is #10).

Behance is the portfolio engine for Pantone, BTW.

SlideShare

At the time of this blog post, you can’t open a SlideShare account through Linkedin directly. (Check under More / Add more applications / Slide Share.) You can create a free account at SlideShare, and then link a presentation to your Linkedin Profile (as well as share it in your updates and groups).

Use MS PowerPoint or your choice of presentation software (most formats are supported) to create a deck with images of your work.

Think about a useful file name if you are going to allow downloading. Once files are downloaded, they are easily lost if the file name is something like “Portfolio 2012.” Use your own name and useful search terms to help viewers find the file again. (Put contact information in the header or footer of each slied, as well.)
Add captions and watermarks as needed. Load your portfolio presentation to SlideShare, and then let your network and groups know, as appropriate.

Filed Under: Content marketing 658-8, How to 680, Images 770, LinkedIn, Social media 658.87
August 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Headlines that Backfire

Why isn’t your dog sleeping on an Orvis memory foam bed?

reads the headline in the email subject line this morning. The text in the image in the email itself goes on to say, “Giving your dog a memory foam bed makes you feel good inside. And sleeping on a memory foam bed makes your dog feel good all over. … every dog benefits from the perfect support and unparalleled comfort of memory foam.”

Please!! (multisyllabic….)

Memory foam beds start at $300. I spend $400, give or take, per head per year to feed and care for five dogs and two cats. Orvis thinks I should be spending an entire YEAR’s support on a bed? Has Orvis ever been to a thrift shop and seen how many couches can be purchased with $300? A LOT. Without any shopping at all, at least 10. I could get a new-to-us couch almost every month for that much money.

My dogs have clearly voted. They prefer to sleep “up”–on the couch or bed, depending on what we allow, or “under,” in the cave created by the bed or corner table. They’ll argue and whine to get the best positions.

Orvis products are marketed as being of “better” quality. We purchased collars from Orvis a few years ago. The boys chewed each other’s off pretty quickly, although they left their sister’s collar alone (and hers faded from pink to dingy pretty quickly). In other words, they weren’t high quality for the variables that mattered to me.

The company markets to my own, human-centric, sense of quality, which is remarkably different from my pragmatic understanding of my dogs’ habits and preferences. Why would I spend $300 on a foam bed when I’ve seen what this pack can do to a foam teddy bear?

The larger conclusion, with regard to marketing: when you write a headline, make sure it doesn’t inspire a “because I’m not stupid!” response!

Saw another headline that backfired in my email box:

You have to make up your mind today!

No, I don’t.  Rather, I made up my mind last week.  The fact that your offer ends today is not affecting that decision at all…

Filed Under: Content marketing 658-8, Marketing examples
May 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Use a good picture

Clearly, I am not a big believer in the power of photographic illustration for my blog posts.  I had to laugh this morning, when I received an email newsletter with the heading, “Three Hurdles for New Businesses” and this illustration:  Hurdler wearing socks

People who know me in person understand what I mean when I say, “both feet rarely leave the ground at the same time anymore.”  I have never been a hurdler, or a runner of any distance, for that matter.  I put the shot in high school.  But even when I was in high school (back in the dark ages, when high school athletes first started weight training and Wake Forest football trounced the ACC because their players worked out in the gym in the off-season), hurdlers worked to get over the hurdles as smoothly as possible.

Good hurdling looks like this.

So what am I supposed to think when the illustration is completely wrong for the point of the article?  I get that images are supposed to capture the eye and engage the mind and make your writing more interesting to the casual reader.  Just sometimes, you create exactly the WRONG outcome.

Filed Under: Content marketing 658-8, Images 770
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