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Social Media Tools: What Is Pinterest

Written by Jennifer

Pinterest. You’ve probably heard the buzz by now. Mark Zuckerburg just created his account, and as of December 2011, it had joined the ranks of the top ten social media sites, surpassing Google+ and Tumblr, with over 11 million visitors. So what is this new site all about, and how is it different from Facebook, Twitter, and the other big players on the social media scene?

An Online Tack Board

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, which organize your information in a chronological way and focus on text updates and written posts, Pinterest uses a unique visual layout that isn’t tied to any particular timeline.

Think of it as an online tack board, or several online tack boards, that you can theme and use to organize your projects, discover new products and ideas, or just post photos and videos you find fun or inspirational.

A Little Terminology

Your board is where you group related pins. You can have as many themed boards as you want and use them to group and organize your pins. For example, you might have one board about Food, another for Drink, and a third for Design Inspiration. It’s up to you, and the sky is the limit.

A pin is a photo or video that you add to your online pinboard. You can find these pins anywhere on the Web.

Repinning is adding an image to your board that you found on someone else’s board.

If visitors like one of your boards, they can choose to follow it, kind of like “following” someone on Twitter. They can also comment on your pins and repin them on their own boards.

Linking

One of the coolest things about Pinterest is that each image you post on your board can serve as a link, guiding your visitors back to the site where you found it.

Let’s say you find an interesting slideshow about organic farming practices. You can pin one of the photos onto your board and create a link to the original website. When your visitors click on the photo, they will be taken to the full slideshow. If you are linking to a product, you can also add pricing information that your visitors can see when they scroll over the picture.

Why You Should Join

Pinterest can be a great way to increase your businesses’ and/or brand’s online presence. While you can (and should) add pins of your own products and services to your boards, you don’t want them to become the equivalent of online stores. Think of them more as a way to get people interested in your company and develop a deeper understanding of what you do and why.

You can also link your Pinterest site to Facebook, Twitter, and blogs, using it to drive traffic and increase online interest in your brand.

Pinterest has also created a “Pin It” icon that you can add to your business site, allowing other uses to easily add images from your site to their online boards. And all those “pinned” images can link directly back to your website.

How to Join

As of now Pinterest is “invite only.” But don’t let that scare you away. If you know someone using the site, you can simply ask for an invite. If not, you can go to Pinterest.com and request an invite. In a couple of days you should receive an email with an invitation to start pinning!

Twitter Is Traffic

Written by Carl

If A Tree Falls

By Kalyn

Yes, you’ve heard the age-old adage, ‘if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound’?

Well, if you have a website or a Facebook Fan Page that is beautiful but has no hits, then you likely think that no, no sound is made.

Running an online marketing and advertising campaign today is tricky. You have to understand what mediums, like a website and a Facebook Fanpage, are a must and which sites, like Linked In, depend on what kind of business you have. You have to understand where and how to tweet, update, add; what to say and how often!

Then there is the most important factor of all, how to create traffic. It doesn’t matter what online presence you do or don’t have, it all comes down to whether or not it is seen. Thus, creating traffic should be your primary focus so that any other online efforts do not go in vein.

Twitter Means Traffic

So, when it comes right down to it, your online presence must be a combined effort these day, but Twitter should be thought of as the foundation to your campaign. Similar to a highway, Twitter provides a constant flow of traffic that speeds by. An update on Twitter, like a car on the highway, is only visible for a few minutes before it is gone out of sight. Also similar to a highway, a sign of what is available in town with an off-ramp provides advertising that can bring tourists to an otherwise sleepy town.

Twitter is the number one traffic driver. Because the tweets are limited to 140 characters max, they allow viewers to get a great overview or tidbits of information about your offerings. The tweets can be fun, informational or provide hyperlinks to anything you like.

How Do I Tweet?

On Twitter it is important to connect with people who are interested in the same things as you are or as your business offers. ‘Following’ others is the customary method to get them to follow you back so that your updates can then be seen by them. Gaining followers on Twitter is easy this way, especially as opposed to other social sites where an audience is not near as quick to join your social network.

Hundreds and then thousands of followers on Twitter is not uncommon, thought it takes some time to build up and can be time-consuming. A short cut to this is to have a social media marketing company run this for you. Either way, whether you run it yourself or have your social media run for you, building a Twitter audience will ensure that your voice is hear and will help you drive traffic and business.

Kalyn is co-owner of SMP and works with clients and the marketing for SMP. She offers business mentoring and, like the rest of the SMP team, works to help increase her client’s online presence, increasing traffic and business.

Successful Entrepreneur – Confidence

Written by Editor

By Kalyn

Stuck In A Rut

Sigh. Like me, you may just sigh when you think of “special” people, like Bill Gates who walked into a meeting with IBM at a young age and made the deal of his life. You may shrink a bit in your seat when you think that Dell computers began in a garage, as you sit in your home or small office wishing for more success. Or, you may be a bit bitter that Google’s home office, more like a home town, offers employees free gormet meals, massages and much more when you may be struggling to get insurance that covers very little anyway.

What makes these entrepreneurs quite so successful? Are you stuck in a rut in which you have business, but not enough? And yet, you are too busy to drum up more business, which you probably couldn’t handle anyway?

As a business owner, you may very well be stuck trying to get to the next level. You may need more space, more customers and more help, or any combination thereof. You also may find yourself in a catch 22 in which more business means too much work for you and not enough to hire out help.

Clarity

This is why a successful entrepreneur always needs clarity and intent in their business. Unlike being an employee in which you don’t need to foresee problems, solutions, marketing needs and growth for the company, you do. Above the every day waters of your day to day business, you also need to raise yourself above, giving yourself a bird’s eye view of the waves you are navigating.

You need to have clarity in your business.

Just staying a-float can take most, if not all, of your energy and time, something that most business owners say and experience. However, they say ‘a stitch in time’ and I say ‘can set your course to success’.

Any airplane requires a pilot; a country requires a leader and your business requires a captain at the helm. While most entrepreneurs may have to identify themselves as jacks of all trades even though they’d prefer that captain’s hat, this needs to change in order for you to be a “special” person who succeeds in business.

Whether it is Gates, Lennon or Walten, They Knew

Across many walks of life, one thing that successful entrepreneurs have in common is that they know. If you read about the stories of huge, successful entrepreneurs you will find a few commonalities, namely that they all had an unwavering belief in themselves. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard because he knew he’d be successful in life and that it was time for him to join the business world. John Lennon, one of the greatest influencers of music in our time and Steven Tyler both say that they knew they were great musicians before anyone else did. Sam Walten believed in himself and what he was creating even when he was 2 million dollars in debt and trying to get Walmart off the ground.

The Myth of a Map

Somewhere along the line we all seem to believe that we are supposed to be handed a map leading us to a treasure in life or a golden egg that we can cash in for our dreams and it never happens.

As successful entrepreneurs on the road to even greater success we need to realize that the map was a myth. The only treasure you were given was yourself. The only head start in life you could have received or can receive right now as you read this is the authentic belief in yourself. These were the magic elements that other kings and queens of enterprise had and that you have too. The only difference lies in their recognition of it.

Lead The Way

For many people the right marketing plan or the right social media campaign leads to success. For others it is having the team or directors on your staff. For someone else it will be something else. The elusive carrot that we chase to create the right circumstances can lead us on wild goose chases.

On the other hand, when you choose to own your business by wearing your captain’s hat and to have clairty and intent in your business, then you begin to navigate smooth and choppy waters. You begin to attract the right people to support you and the right campaign to help spread the word. When it comes to the chicken and the egg, you came first.

As an entrepreneur it is important for you to recognzie what it is that you do better than most and what you can offer others. It is crucial for you to see that you are the key to your success, and to then turn these into authentic confidence. When you blend such confidence and the vision for your company together you will begin to create the clarity you require. Now add intention and you provide that mythical map for yourself.

When you believe in yourself and take the time to get the clarity and intent your business needs then you will find a magical touch that helps you advertise, grow and enjoy success, naturally.

The Perfect City: What Does “Community” Mean to You?

Written by Simon

A post by Simon Townsend

The people (or person) over at Brainpicker featured a column today on community. They ask, “What is community?” In the age of social media, and the new world of advertising, this is a great question to ask–especially as one builds out their brand. And it is important to go one step further and ask how you will build a community with your customers.

The thing that companies like Starbucks, Facebook, Google and Apple have done is to create products, and a brand that connects people, that gives them a sense of community. They don’t just offer a service or a product….they offer an experience. Researchers have determined that some people’s feelings toward Apple border on religious devotion (http://consumerist.com/2011/05/mri-shows-apple-stimulates-fans-brains-like-re….) There have been other studies that have linked brand loyalty with loyalty within a relationship.

08 JUNE, 2011

The Perfect City: What Does “Community” Mean to You?

by Maria Popova

What borrowing sugar has to do with robust public life.

Last year, the wonderful Fifty People One Question offered a poetic glimpse of the soul of four communities, and last month the city of Grand Rapids demonstrated the goosebumps-inducing power of community. I’m relentlessly fascinated by cities and what it is that transforms them from shared urban space into thriving, lively communities full of shared humanity, vision and aspiration, so I was happy to take part in a think-tank event by nonprofit CEOs for Cities last fall, which assembled some of the country’s brightest minds in urban planning, design, policy, information technology and other facets of culture to dissect the elements of “robust public life” and how to best foster them in building successful, happy communities that attract and retain talent.

That’s exactly what this beautifully filmed short video explores, by asking people one simple but profound question: “What does ‘community’ mean to you?”

I’d love to be able to walk out and know everybody in my community.”

Something that kind of has a little bit of everything and access to everything, but still is quiet, so it’s not so quite so hustle-and-bustle.”

I like to pass other people who are walking their dogs early in the morning or late at night.”

A few universal needs seem to emerge: Walkability, a combination of private space and readily available entertainment, face-to-face interaction with neighbors and, more than anything, a sense of belonging.

What’s your ideal community?

via brainpickings.org

As a business owner, by creating a powerful unique sense of community within your brand, through social media, through the experience of going to your restaurant, or shop, or buying your products, you are going to create that sense of loyalty, that sense of relationship with your consumers. So how you are creating a community? What are you offering beyond just a meal, a haircut, some music, a t-shirt? Can you create an experience in such a way that your business becomes more than just a mode of exchange, of profit or loss, can you create a business that is a community? And what would that community look like for you?

Posted by Simon Townsend

Ten Advantages of Google Places For Your Business (besides the fact that it is free advertising)

Written by Carl

Are you using Google Places Yet?

As you become familiar with Google Places and update your listings on a regular basis, you’ll discover hundreds of advantages for advertising your business through this free service. Listed below are 10 advantages worth mentioning.

1. Online advertising like Google Places is the way of the future, and it will soon replace paper phone directory listings that cost thousands of dollars per year.

2. Google Places is free.

3. When your Google Places listing is optimized properly, your business listing appears on the first page of Google.

4. You can offer discounts and coupons for one day, one week, or one month.

5. Your website, physical mailing address, and your phone number are displayed in your listing, which allows customers to find you more quickly and to get the information they need.

6. Mobile phone users can find your business listing immediately, and they don’t need a computer to do it.

7. You will receive more traffic and new customers.

8. You don’t need a physical retail or warehouse location to get accepted into Google Places.

9. By using citations and reviews, your Google Places will move up in ranking. With high ranking, within eight weeks, rather than eight months or eight years, your free advertising with Google Places will bring you more targeted customers faster than traditional organic methods.

10. Finally, and the most important to your financial goals, is that because it is so easy for customers to find your business listing, you will make more money than you did before your business was listed in Google Places.

Whether you are going to set up and claim your Google Places page on your own, or have someone do this service for you, the sooner you have your Google Places page working for you, the quicker your customers will find you.

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Ten Advantages of Google Places For Your Business (besides the fact that it is free advertising)

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