Founder's blog: Pinterest & Instagram for Business

Here is a summary of what I learnt about Pinterest and Instagram for Business from Sam Parnell and Max Shelley (Measure Brilliance) at the Suffolk Internet Marketing Specialists event on 29 September 2015.

Pinterest

(Network of things)

Pinterest is visual bookmark (i.e. photos)

A board is a collection of ideas. The boards are very personal (name of people's board).

Pinterest Business is free, unless you advertise.

You can use it to create a step by step guide for your customers to engage with your business.

* If you put your website URL to Pinterest, it can show you who has pinned your pictures and in what context.

Remember, if someone pin your picture it can go far and wide to their news feed.

Make sure you add a link to your picture to drive the traffic back to your website.

when adding photos:

• use clear concise and searchable description
• tone: charm and inform users
• make pins helpful, beautiful and actionable

Add "pin it" button to your website to encourage people to pin your pictures.

Install Pinterest browser button, make it easy to pin your pictures.

Rich Pin: extra information, semantic markup (it can show description of the product, price and take people to your e-commerce site).

Use your pinterest analytic and Google Analytics to see whether your pins are working.

The pins are long life, don't add info that changes all the time.

Use it for

• users looking for ideas and product suggestions
• share testimonials and increase traffic to your website
• ability to share and curate other people's content

Instagram

(Network of people and brands)

It is pictures online. Photo and video sharing.

It is App based only. Not a browser based tool.

People have very close relationship, so it is more intimate.

For aspirational products.

Based on having the right people following you.

You can post on instagram and share on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbir, flickr.

Don't forget to tag the photos. Using hashtags properly really helps.

You can get your customers to post things on it too. Some companies have done it. But you will need to really trust the customers.

US app has a new feature which allow you to find information (hashtag) locally (geolocation).

Use it for

• More personal brand awareness gives increase brands loyalty
• ..

Take aways

Use Pinterest to capture stories of how our IT experts help customers (in person) solve their computer/IT/technology problems (the journey with the customer) and how their work helped enriched our customers lives (testimonials and photo of happy faces). Inspire the viewers to make an appointment with one of our experts.

Side notes

Measure Brilliance can help people set up analytics and push dashboard to you periodically.

Case study: Google Sarah Chatterton from SLC

Would you like to set up a e.g. Suffolk Pinterest user group for peer to peer evaluation and get feedback?

Etsy: for e-commerce early test

airbnb: for rental early test

News

Windows 10 default to Bing (search for your company and see)

Google ranks tweets above websites

Android and Apple Pay are live in UK

Contactless transaction has gone up to £30. Cancer research has a contactless window for donations.

You can upload a list of emails to Google and they can advertise to them for you.

Gmail now put ads that look like an email on people inbox

360 degree advert on YouTube

http://ecomchat.com/

Thank you

Thank you Sam and Max for the informative and inspiring talk about Instragram and Pinterest for business.

hello@measuredbrilliance.com

http://www.measuredbrilliance.com/

#pinterest #instagram #business