How to Use Pinterest to Promote Your Business

Image via Wikipedia

Social media changes on a regular basis and it can be difficult for small business owners to keep up. You've got a Facebook page? Check. Your twitter feed is regularly updated? Check. Well here's something else to keep you busy - Pinterest. The issue with technology changing so swiftly is that you do not always understand what horse to back. You may have wasted your dollars getting your MySpace site custom-designed, only to find all your potential customers have moved onto Facebook. So when you read about a fresh social media experience, you're right to pause and ask yourself, ought I be worrying with this? So, should you be bothering to use Pinterest? Pinterest (rhymes with interest) is an online virtual pinboard. Items which you stick on your pinboard or freezer at home, you are able to stick on Pinterest. I'm not really speaking about a piece of paper stating 'Buy Milk' - more beautiful/interesting/inspiring stuff. If you were getting married and came across a great idea for bouquets you might stick that on the site, or if perhaps you're a fashionista, you may use Pinterest to show a high-heeled shoe you love. Whenever people 'pin' these pictures on Pinterest, other individuals will be able to comment. So when you stick up the wedding flower design you believe will make your eyes look fabulous, your bridesmaids can give their suggestions, as well as suggest alternatives. Ideally, consumers link through their pin to the source, so high heeled shoe ought to link to the company's webpage, or the style blog page you found it on, though not everyone does this. Profiles on Pinterest may be public or private, and individuals can follow other people's boards. All this is visually good, is intuitive to navigate round, and is filled with cool youngsters publishing stuff other fashionable individuals have made. But do you need it? The first thing you'll notice when you visit Pinterest.com is it is visually stunning. The web page has photos of beautiful food, clothes, architecture and everything else that's pleasing to the eye. It's really a very visual social network website, which ought to offer you an idea of what sort of business might benefit from a presence on Pinterest. Aesthetically eye-catching merchandise will work well on Pinterest. If you're in an artistic niche, it's worth investigating promoting your merchandise via the site. Unquestionably anyone who offers a service for the wedding industry needs to look into it - brides looking to plan their special day appear to be big consumers of the service in its early stages. The primary users of Pinterest at the minute are women aged 25-44. If you supply via eBay or Etsy then you definitely ought to be investigating what Pinterest could do for you. Indeed Etsy recently added a 'Pin It' button to their item listings, allowing members to effortlessly share their items in the social network. If however you happen to be an accountant, solicitor or other skilled professional who is offering a specialised service, you probably won't identify much of interest for you professionally. Focus instead on working on your LinkedIn profile. Should you feel Pinterest may be of interest to you, then the next issue is how may you use it to PR your business? Pinterest is a social network site, thus rather than directly marketing your products, the emphasis should be on encouraging visitors to share your items. Direct promoting of your products won't go down well and will not boost your brand. Should you be providing craft items or clothing, it will be straight-forward. Inspire your customers to pin your items via your email list or Facebook account, and think about including follow and 'Pin It' buttons to your results next to your other social networking buttons. You can do this by following the instructions on the Pinterest website. Some other industries will have to be a little more original about promoting their products. Should you operate a cafe or catering service you might share some recipes on Pinterest. Ensure that you've got a good, enticing photograph of the dish, post the recipe on your own website and add a Pin It button. Hopefully customers will pin the shot on the site and others may click through to your website. Don't forget - the key to being successful on Pinterest, and making it to the high traffic homepage, is to always have appealing photos. Make sure that your visuals are first-rate and you will thrive. A possible problem for you is that you are unable to easily join Pinterest at the time of producing this article - it isn't open to the public. The fastest method of getting onto it is to ask a friend who is on the website for an invitation. If not you should ask for an invitation from Pinterest and simply wait patiently by the pc. To conclude, creative people have to have a look at Pinterest. Get an invite today and have a play around to see whether it will work for your enterprise. It's definitely going to grow in popularity within the coming months, so by getting on the website nice and early you might with a little luck manage to steal a march on your competition and grow a presence on the website. Robbie Knox writes about public relations at How To PR, a blog that offers free PR advice to small businesses interested in boosting their brand using the media. Visit the site for more articles like this, and learn how to PR your business. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Robert_Knox

Related articles

• how might #Pinterest help you market your organisation (by @tweetsandSEO) (tangobiz.wordpress.com)
• The Marketer's Guide to Pinterest [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)
• Sorry, Pinterest Users: Websites Can Now Block Pinning [VIDEO] (mashable.com)
• Can Pinterest Help Your Job Search? (mashable.com)
• We're on Pinterest. Are You? (bellasugar.com)
• How to use new social network Pinterest as a small business (marketing.yell.com)
• Pinterest for Sellers (vendio.com)
• Integrating Pinterest on your site (annehornyak.com)
• Where Pinterest Will Go From Here (inc.com)
• Pinterest is Simple and Somehow Unique (christill.com)
• Explaining Pinterest, and Why You Should Care (itprosusa.com)
• Pinterest puzzlement (myswingstrategies.wordpress.com)

Hell Freezes Over As MySpace Fully Surrenders To Facebook

Hell Freezes Over As MySpace Fully Surrenders To Facebook: "It was just a couple of years ago that MySpace wasn’t all that concerned about the fast growing Facebook. Fast forward two years and a handful of CEO changes, and everything has changed.

Last summer MySpace found a way to get MySpace status updates into Facebook. And today at noon at a special press event that everyone was invited to except us, they’ll announce more integrations. And it’s ok that we weren’t invited, because we now know exactly what they’re announcing."

Full Article Here

MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta Fired by News Corp. Digital Head Jon Miller | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD

The long-running telenovela that has been MySpace over the years took yet another dramatic turn late today when News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller fired MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, whom he had hired only nine months ago to turn around the troubled social networking site, according to several sources.

(The pair are pictured above in happier times, with Van Natta on the left, during an interview Walt Mossberg and I did with them at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference in May. You can see the full video below.)

While News Corp. tried to paint the departure as more mutual in its official statement, it was most definitely not, as problems among top execs finally came to a head today.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

Among the issues were tensions between Miller and Van Natta, as well as growing tensions with his top two execs, COO Mike Jones and Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn.

Miller hired Van Natta, but the CEO didn’t bring in the two executives directly beneath him: Both Jones and Hirschhorn were hired by Miller, along with News Corp. (NWS) CEO Rupert Murdoch, who signed off on both men.

Sources also noted that Van Natta, a former Facebook and Amazon (AMZN) exec, had begun to bridle at not being able to select his own execs and at increasing meddling in the MySpace turnaround by Miller.

“There were three senior thinkers put in place to fix MySpace and it became clear that not all those voices were needed anymore,” said one person close to the situation. “So, Owen was the odd man out.”

And out he went in a flash, with Miller flying to Los Angeles early in the week to deal with rumors that it was Hirschhorn who was on his way out.

In fact, the well-known media exec had been vocally complaining for months about the harder-than-expected struggle to right MySpace’s once innovative business and had told many he was contemplating leaving within the next few months.

Today, several sources said, he conducted an all-day review of the plans Van Natta, Jones and Hirschhorn had been working on to revive MySpace and morph it into an entertainment and music hub.

After it was over, multiple sources said, Miller met with Van Natta and told him his tenure at CEO was over.

The move came as a shock to the staff at MySpace, as it was not expected, although it was clear that top execs at News Corp. were aware of the decision made by Miller.

“Simply put, it was a power struggle and Jon won,” said one source.

Miller has not returned my emails or phone calls about the situation, and a News Corp. spokeswoman declined to comment.

Ironically, after fixing a range of technical and product issues over the last several months, MySpace was beginning to see stabilization in the bleeding of users.

Comparatively, rival Facebook has seen explosively growth, reaching 400 million global users this week.

More details to come, but here is the D7 interview with Miller and Van Natta:

Print http://bit.ly/cCDtrY" title="Post to Twitter">

Share

View commentsComments Tagged: BoomTown, D7, D: All Things Digital, Facebook, Internet, Kara Swisher, digital, entertainment, innovation, interview, media, music, social networking, video, Amazon, arrivals departures feature, California, conference, Dow Jones, firing, Jason Hirschhorn, Jon Miller, Los Angeles, Mike Jones, News Corp., Owen Van Natta, Rupert Murdoch, tension, turnaround | permalink

Related from BoomTown

• After Even More Turmoil, Can the "Hot Mess" at MySpace Be Saved?

  February 11, 2010

• The Flixster/Rotten Tomatoes/MySpace Mystery Solved: A Christmas Miracle!

  December 24, 2009

• MySpace and News Corp. Eye Flixster (But for What?)

  December 15, 2009

Related from All Things Digital

• Owen Van Natta Out at MySpace

  February 11, 2010

• A Very Short List: Publishers That Have Actually Told Google to Take a Hike

  December 21, 2009

• Sony Recruits News Corp. to Give Its Reader Line a Boost

  December 17, 2009

Sphere

via kara.allthingsd.com

Posted via web from SGB Media Group, LLC

MySpace to announce new ad platform

The MySpace business model continues to evolve, and today the social networking site is due to announce a new advertising platform to allow better targeting of MySpace members.
by Helen Leggatt

Targeting MySpace users is a “balance of what users say, what they do and what they say they do” said Fox Interactive’s executive vice president for production and technology, Adam Bain, in a New York Times article.

To that end, MySpace is introducing a new advertising platform called “SelfServe by MySpace” to be showcased the day before an expected Facebook announcement of a similar nature.

The system, to be announced tomorrow at ad:tech, will enable advertisers to purchase, create and analyze the performance of ads, much like Google AdWords except based on display, not text, ads. A number of targeting factors will be available including geographic, demographic, gender and previous ads they have responded to.

The completion of phase one of another new advertising platform, “HyperTargeting by MySpace” is due to be announced at ad:tech tomorrow. This system allows marketers to target the MySpace audience based on their interest groups and even their profile images.