The Benefits of Using Instagram for Business

I know what you’re thinking already. Another social media site I want you to look into. Between Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, your blog and all the other sites out there, how are you supposed to incorporate Instagram into your social media strategy? And, more importantly, why should you bother? You’re doing just fine without it, right…

Here’s why you should consider using Instagram for business – it’s the future of social media marketing.

Instagram isn’t going anywhere.

In just three years, they have grown to 150 million users. This is a faster growth trajectory than Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. And with 60% of users outside of the US, the global reach of Instagram is growing.
Beyond just the popularity and rapid expansion of Instagram, there are a number of reasons why it is beneficial to use this platform as a part of your social media strategy.

Visual Marketing

Instagram, and other visual content sites like Pinterest, are gaining popularity for a reason. We’ve heard the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” countless times since we were children. As marketers and content creators, why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of images as part of your content marketing strategy? Just think how much less typing you’d have to do!
“Visual marketing” is one of the latest buzz words, and for good reason. Consumers want images and content marketers need to provide them. Think about your Facebook feed, do you read every post? Likely not. What about photos? You may not stop on every one, but you stop and look at a good majority of them. And what about Pinterest? Think about how much more content you consume when each post is a well crafted image.
Instagram is just the same. It’s an entire feed of visual stimulation encouraging interaction at its highest levels. If you’re seeing any success with visual marketing on the other platforms you use, imagine the capabilities you have on a site dedicated solely to visual marketing.

High Levels of Engagement

While I don’t have scientific studies from Pew or Mashable to substantiate this claim, I have read other blogs and I ran my own studies that validate Instagram engagement is typically higher than any other site. The ratio and number of likes and comments on Instagram posts significantly surpasses the ratio and number of likes and comments on any other social media site.

High Visibility of Posts

One of the reasons Instagram posts receive such high levels of engagement is that posts are highly visible. There’s no Edgerank or other algorithm that selectively showcases your posts. Every single one of your posts will appear in the feeds of every single one of your followers!
Strategic use of hashtags can also significantly boost the exposure of your posts to new users who will like and comment on your posts and who may even follow you as a result.
Your posts also live on forever. They don’t disappear or get archived like old tweets. And they don’t get buried so far down your stream, like Facebook, that they get lost. A quick scroll through your profile showcases every single post you have ever shared. This is a great way for new followers to connect with your brand!

Connect With a Targeted Audience

I promise that your audience is using Instagram. With 150 million users and growing, your customers are on there. There may be a smaller number of your customers and it may take a while to grow your community to significant levels. But take advantage of the smaller community now to cultivate real brand advocates and loyal customers. Instagram users are passionate and active – they want to interact with you and get to know you.

Emotional Connection

Photos immediately convey emotional responses. You can easily use your posts to evoke powerful emotions in your audience in order to produce the reactions you desire. If you want people to donate to your non-profit, use images that elicit the desire to participate and donate. If you want to celebrate a milestone or achievement with your audience, use posts that stimulate those emotions. Using the right emotional connection through your posts will drastically increase your engagement and help you reach your goals.

Drive Traffic to your Site

One of the most important things we all want is more traffic to our websites. And, yes, you can drive traffic from Instagram! Make sure you post a link to your site in your bio – this is the only place you can put an active hyperlink on Instagram. Mentioning your website or using calls to action (CTA’s) in your post comments are great ways to generate traffic to your site. I also recommend using a specific landing page from your website as the link in your bio in order to capitalize on visitors coming from Instagram.

It’s fun!

One of the best things about Instagram is that it’s just plain fun! The posts make you laugh, you get to stage awesome photo shoots, and you see the beauty in the simplest things. Instagram will change the way you think of content marketing – because when you’re having fun creating your content, it really isn’t all that much “work”!

The growth and expansion that we’re seeing on Instagram is only the beginning for this powerful site. Instagram is the latest site to grow into a permanent position within the big social media giants. As this site gains more traction and more users, the more powerful it will become for businesses and marketers. The solutions and long term benefits that are provided by Instagram for business are inescapable. Be prepared – if you’re not on Instagram now, you will be in the near future.


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10 Pro Tips for B2B Marketing on Pinterest

We think of Pinterest as a lifestyle social network, chock full of party ideas, crafts, home decor inspiration, recipes, and fitness routines. But Pinterest is so much more than that. It’s become an asset to marketers who want to show off their visual content and drive traffic to their sites.
And here’s a notable benefit of Pinterest marketing. According to this infographic, the half-life of a Pin is a whopping 3.5 months. That’s 1,680 times longer than the half-life of a Facebook post. And don’t even get me started on the 24-minute half-life of a Tweet. Which means that the effort you put into your Pinterest presence will pay dividends for a long time.
And the value of Pinterest marketing isn’t limited to B2C businesses. Pinterest can supply fresh traffic and leads to B2B businesses as well. In this post, I’ll share 10 tips for B2B Marketing on Pinterest.

1. Pin a Variety of Visual Content

Pinterest is for visual content. That’s why so many B2B businesses often think Pinterest isn’t for them. They feel like they don’t have enough—or in fact any—visual content to share.
So, first of all, if you don’t have any visual content, it’s time to get cracking. Content marketing is the future of marketing, and the sexiness of visual content is undeniable.
But don’t wait until you have a fresh bank of visual assets before you dip your feet into the Pinterest pool. Trust me, you have more visual content than you realize. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Product images. Post your product images and link back to your site’s product pages.
• Quotes. Create graphic quotes that would inspire your target audience. Canva makes the job quick and easy.
• Blog posts. Pin your blog posts to drive people back to your site.
• Events. Pin photos of company and industry events.
• Employees. Show off photos of team members. Let your unique company culture shine through pinned photos of your inter-company social events.
• Marketing materials. Pin the covers of your e-books, white papers, and brochures—with links to where the materials can be downloaded.
• Presentations. Put your decks to work for you. Create a board for each presentation and pin key slides to the board.
• Industry-related topics. Share infographics and other pieces that are relevant to your industry.
• Tips and recommendations. Be helpful to your prospects and clients. Curate tips and recommendations to make their lives easier. Create boards on books you recommend, great blogs for them to follow, podcasts, and apps.
• Targeted boards. Create specific boards that cater to the needs and interests of individual industries and your different personas.

2. Balance Quality and Personality

When you create a new board, aim to make it the best board on that topic, and include a wide variety of quality pins. But while you target quality, don’t be afraid to show your personality. Quirkiness and humour can be very effective at making you stand out on Pinterest.

3. Use Pinterest to Find Great Content

Don’t limit your Pinterest presence to your own content. Round out your boards with content that your audience will enjoy, from other sources.
Don’t have time to scour the Web for that content? Follow relevant Pinners to fill your feed with quality Pins that you can conveniently re-Pin to your boards.

4. Use Great Images

Attention-grabbing imagery is key on Pinterest. Make sure you’re using the optimal image size for your Pins, board images, and profile images.
Use stunning photography, beautiful fonts and place subtle branding in the corners of your images. And make it easy for your site visitors to pin your content right from your site. Make sure that all your posts and pages contain at least one Pinnable image.

5. Write Quality Copy

Of course, great imagery that your Pinterest audience wants to click is key. But don’t forget to make your copy work for you too. Think of your descriptions as ad copy. Make them engaging enough to earn a click. And add compelling calls to action to help convert visitors to your site.

6. SEO Your Boards and Pins

Pinterest can be an asset in your SEO efforts. The more people re-pin your site content, the more backlinks your site earns. And social signals can improve your rankings.
To help people find your Pins on both Pinterest and Google, optimize your profile, boards, and pins. Search Engine Watch offers up some great advice here on how to do that.
But how about the Pins that are created directly from your site? You can’t always count on Pinners to enter a keyword-rich description on those pins. Many won’t enter a description at all. Give Pinners a hand by enabling Rich Pins, which automatically pull some of the post content into the description.

7. Get the Data

To help you decide what new content to create and post to Pinterest, you need to understand how your current content is performing. And for that, you’re going to need to get the data. Here are three great sources of analytics data for Pinterest.
To start with, access the analytics data for your Pinterest business page here. You’ll find a variety of engagement insights about your pins.
Next, remember that not everyone pins from Pinterest. Find out what content people are pinning directly from your site by visiting pinterest.com/source/example.com. (Substitute example.com for your domain.)
Finally, use Google Analytics to monitor engagement and conversion metrics for your Pinterest traffic.

8. Research Your Ideal Client

Are you trying to get a better understand of who your ideal client is as a person? Pinterest can provide a wealth of data. Just check out the boards of your clients and people who have repinned your pins. What else are they pinning? What insights can you glean from their boards?

9. Research Content Ideas

If content creation is a priority for you, you’ll hit occasional droughts in content ideas. (It happens to the best of us, believe me.) Pinterest’s guided search is effective for unearthing content ideas and curation opportunities around a topic.

10. Get Inspired by the Greats

Why reinvent the wheel when you can follow the lead of other great brands? Check out these great Pinterest business pages to see how it’s done:

• Hootsuite
• Intel
• General Electric
• IBM
• Fedex
• Marketo
• Hubspot

11. Bonus tip: Collaborate with Clients and Partners

Ok so this isn’t really a marketing, so consider it a bonus. Pinterest is a fantastic tool for collaborating with clients.
I use it whenever I build a visual asset for a new client – whether it’s a video, presentation, infographic or Website. So that I don’t waste time building a piece my client won’t like, I strive to get into my client’s head before I begin. I try to get a sense of the design styles that resonate with them.
Sure, I could have them fill out a client brief. But that exercise feels too esoteric to some of my clients. What’s worked brilliantly for me instead is to create a secret board on Pinterest, and add my client as a contributor. My client then spends time Pinning images, photos, colour palettes, fonts, and websites they love. Before long, I know exactly what they’re after and can deliver on their vision.

Over To You

Have you been using Pinterest in your B2B marketing? If not, why? If so, have I missed any key points? I’d love to hear from you. Please share in the comments.



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Using Automation to Be More Efficient With Social Media

WE ALL have 24 hours in a day, so we need to always be looking for ways to maximize our time. Fortunately, with social media there are ways to be more efficient with your activities through automation.

I’ll preface this by saying that you do not need to automate your entire social presence.

It kind of takes away from the whole social aspect of the channel.

Instead, let’s identify how you can use automation to be more efficient with social media that will allow you to spend more time on engagement with your audience.

Why You Need to use Automation in Social Media

I like to look for ways to automate or streamline repetitive tasks. It helps to free up my time to do other things that can’t be automated.

I know what you are thinking:

“You shouldn’t automate social media, it’s not authentic.”

Automation needs to supplement your social media, not replace it. This doesn’t mean using every social media tool to automate your existence.

Instead, you need to look for ways to streamline certain aspects of your social media initiatives.

If you are like me, I can’t stand doing the same things over and over…especially if it something that I know can be put on autopilot (or at least semi-automated).

This is the perfect starting point to figure out what you can (or should) automate.

I’ll share 3 ways I like to use automation to complement various social media activities.

Use IFTTT to Automate Social Media

One of my favorite go-to tools for automation is IFTTT. IFTTT is short for “if this, then that.” Basically, it means that if something happens, then something else should be a result of it. Essentially a “trigger” and an “action.”

This is referred to as a recipe in IFTTT.

Creating recipes in IFTTT is pretty straight forward. There is a nice wizard that will walk you through their simple 7 step process to set up your recipe.

However, creating a recipe from scratch is not necessary at all.

There are hundreds of pre-made recipes you can easily copy and use. Some of my favorite recipes are:

• Archive my tweets in a Google Spreadsheet
• Autopin Feedly Article to Pinterest Board
• Add @mentions to Twitter List

I’ll quickly go over what each one can do.

Archive Tweets into Google Sheets

The archiving of tweets into a Google Spreadsheet allows you to create a running list of all your tweets. This can come in handy in a variety of ways. The most notable is that you will have a running backup of your tweets. You can grab some of these old tweets and reuse them for future social media updates.

One thing to note about Google Sheets is that it will max out at 2,000 rows. When this happens, IFTTT will create a new spreadsheet to keep going.

Autopin to Pinterest

With Pinterest, your automation is limited in that there are not too many tools available yet for automation since their API is new/limited.

However, by using this IFTTT recipe you can automatically pin articles from your Feedly account to your Pinterest account.

Every time the recipe is triggered, a pin will be created for the board that you specified. It’s an easy way to add content to your boards from your favorite sources.

Create Twitter Lists Automatically

The final recipe is a simple way to add people that mention you on Twitter to a list automatically. This recipe will look for your username (or perhaps a competitor) and add people who mention the name to a list.

You can either use a public list which I recommend for adding people that mention you, or a private list for mentions of your competitor.

The benefit of adding users to a public list is that they will be notified of being added to the list which will typically drive more engagement.

If you haven’t used IFTTT, I highly recommend looking at all the recipes available and how they can help you automate some of your social media.

Recycle Your Pinterest Pins

I the previous section, I mentioned that there are not a lot of opportunities to automate Pinterest. However, there is one tool that I find invaluable when it comes to Pinterest automation.

It’s called Board Booster.

Board Booster does several things, most notably a feature called “looping.”

By using their looping feature, it will essentially recycle and re-post your pins from a board. This works particularly well if you have evergreen social content.

Setup is rather easy in that you load up one of your Pinterest boards and configure your settings:

As you can see, there are quite a few ways to configure this. I find that the most important thing to have enabled is the “automatic deduplication” which will:

“…give the new pin some time to accumulate repins, and then compare its number of repins to the number of repins on the original pin, and delete the pin that has the lowest number of repins.”

This ensures that you don’t have dozens of duplicate pins floating around your board.

Board Booster will also allow you to schedule pins. While I don’t really use this since I use IFTTT as mentioned above for posting to Pinterest, Board Booster is an option to use.

The way it works is that a “secret” board is created in your Pinterest account. A secret board is only visible to you (and Board Booster), so no one will know it exists. You can then manually add content to it and Board Booster will publish it according to the criteria you set.

It’s pretty straight forward to get going. You’ll just need to be sure to keep your secret board filled with content so Board Booster has something to publish.

If you want to get crafty, you can use IFTTT to add content to your secret board so you have more control of when items are pinned.

Find and Follow New People on Twitter

Back in the day there were quite a few Twitter tools that could follow and unfollow users automatically each day. However, Twitter clamped down on this eliminating many tools that once worked.

However, there are still tools out there that can assist with identifying and following users on Twitter. Albeit in a semi-automated fashion.

The one tool I continuously use is ManageFlitter.

If you are managing multiple Twitter accounts, I recommend upgrading your account to really get the most out of it.

With ManageFlitter, you have several ways to find people to follow. Primarily you can follow the followers of someone’s account, follow the accounts a user is following, search for specific accounts (bios, location, followers, etc), or search for tweets containing certain text.

Should you choose to follow the followers of an account, ManageFlitter will go and get the latest people to follow that account. With one click you can select them all and add them to your “process” queue.

Same goes for following the accounts a user is following.

When searching bios, you get some flexibility of the criteria to use.

You can get pretty granular with your requirements. Just keep in mind the more specific you are, the fewer the results will be. However, they will be more targeted than a broad search.

Finally, you can search for tweets containing specific text and location.

You don’t get as many options with this as other search methods on ManageFlitter. The results will be listed for you to sift through and hand pick people to add to your “process” queue, or you can bulk add all of them.

Aside from finding targeted followers, ManageFlitter will also unfollow anyone not following you back. This can be very useful in that you don’t have to manually sift through and check your followers to ensure they are following you back. In just one click you can select all who are not following you back and add them to you “process” queue.

In your “process” queue is where you will actually follow or unfollow Twitter users. Unfortunately, you will have to manually click follow or unfollow on each user.

Even though this is not the most fun thing to do, what is nice is that the way the site is designed is that once you click on follow/unfollow, that user disappears and the next one in the list scrolls up. This puts the button you need to click in the exact same spot, so it makes it easy to just click real fast to get through the list.

Now if you really want to fully automate these processes, ManageFlitter has a service you can pay extra for and they will handle all this for you. However, I have never paid them for it and would rather save a few bucks to do it myself.

Automate Social Media With Moderation

Social media automation is something you will need to use with moderation. By no means should automation be used to replace your presence on your social accounts.

The various tools and techniques are meant to help keep you out of the weeds and free up your time from performing mundane tasks. You can then use this freed up time to put more effort in engaging with your audience.

So the big question is, what are you going to automate and how are you going to use your additional free time?

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How to Use Social Media to Grow Your Email List

Can you really grow your email list by using social media sites?
Sure, getting more followers, shares or repins is pretty straightforward, but to really take advantage of social media in your business, you need a way to convert your social traffic into email subscribers.
The answer, though, is yes, you can grow your list through social, but it’s going to take a bit of strategic planning on your part.
There’s more to it than signing up for an account, posting a few status updates, sharing a few stories, and then sitting back while hordes of people start tripping all over themselves trying to get on your email list.
It’s a strategy worth pursuing, however.
According to a survey by the Pew Research Center Center, 69% of the population is using social media. In other words:

• There are over 1 billion daily active users on Facebook
• Twitter has over 330 million active users
• Instagram has a community of over 800 million

This essentially means your target audience is on social media all the time.
It’s your job to get on their radar and capture their email address.
Let’s take a look at some of the key ways you can start using social media to build your email list.

Contests and Giveaways

An easy way to grow your list and drum up awareness of your brand is to host a contest or giveaway.
There’s something about contests, sweepstakes and giveaways that people find irresistible.
Whether it’s to win a product or service – or even just a gift card – if it’s of value, you can be sure people will enter for a chance to win.
What amounts to a business write-off or marketing expense can get you buzz, publicity and grow your email list seemingly overnight.
For example, Design Milk hosted a giveaway for their readers with a prize consisting of a DIY Print Shop Original Print Shop Kit worth over $600.

To enter, people filled out the form and gave their email address.
Design Milk promoted this on Twitter and Facebook.

With a high incentive like in Design Milk’s example, many people will gladly give up their email address for a chance to win.
On the technical side of things, here are some places that make it easy to set up a social giveaway or contest:

• Rafflecopter
• Wishpond
• Woobox

Write a blog post, tell your current subscribers about the giveaway, and start promoting it on your social media channels to get the buzz going.

Optimize Your Social Media Bio

What does your Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or other social media bio currently say?
Most social sites have a spot for a personal statement or bio; are you taking full advantage of this valuable space?
Like a lot of businesses, you might have the obligatory boring blurb about your business and maybe a funny fact.
Instead of boilerplate write-ups and witty quips, tell people what you do and more importantly, what you can do for them.
Then, go ahead and throw a link to your lead magnet or landing page in there.
Use Bitly or another link shortener if your URL is too long.
Since you’ve already captured the reader’s attention – there’s a good chance they follow (or just followed) you – why not entice them to sign up for your mailing list?
This is an easy way to optimize your bio for conversions and gain more subscribers.
It’s exactly what blogger and photographer Julie Claveau is doing on her Twitter profile.
After telling you a bit about what she can do for you, she has a link for you to sign up to her free photography course.
 

Clicking the link takes you straight to a landing page where – you guessed it – you’ll need to give up your email address to join the course.

Make Use of Social Media Headers and Pinned Posts

Facebook and Twitter both allow you to upload a customized social media header image.
This is prime real estate you can use to promote your logo, company name and URL for your lead magnet or landing page.
Space is at a premium and this won’t be a clickable link, so like we suggested with your social media bio, use a link shortener like Bitly to shorten a long URL.
And, if you do use Bitly, go ahead and create a customized link that’s easy to remember (and type).
 

Not only do you want your lead magnet URL on your header image, you also want to have a pinned post.
With both Facebook and Twitter, you can pin a post so it always stays at the top of your page.
Whenever someone visits, it will be the first post on your timeline.
Brent Jones, a freelancer and blogger, pinned a post on his Twitter feed that contains a content upgrade – his preferred way to grow his email list.
 

By having the URL for your lead magnet in your social media header – and then as a pinned post on your timeline – it’s much more likely people will sign up to your list on their own.
And if they miss the pinned post or didn’t notice your header image, you still have your social media bio to attract their attention.
You’ll get them coming, and you’ll get them going – you do want to grow your email list, after all.

Add a Sign Up Button on Facebook

A great way to optimize your social media profile – on Facebook for example – is to add a Sign Up button to your header.
Start by logging into your Facebook page and finding the Create Call to Action button.
 

Just select the Sign Up option from the drop down menu and enter the URL of your lead magnet or landing page in the Website field.
 

That’s all there is to it.
You’ll have a dedicated button for people to click on in your profile header that takes them directly to your landing page – where you can work your magic to capture their email address.
It sounds so simple, but not a lot of people are doing this on Facebook.
And never underestimate how much people like to randomly click on buttons!
In addition, some email service providers enable you to integrate a sign up form tab directly on your Facebook page by using their Facebook app.
We won’t get into the technical details since each provider can implement it differently, but you can check out social media strategist Peg Fitzgerald’s Facebook sign up form to see what it could look like.

Social Media List Building Wrap Up

There you go – a handful of easy and highly effective ways to grow your email list on social media.
By running contests and valuable giveaways you’ll be sure to attract your target audience, and by requiring them to enter their email address to enter, you’ll grow your list quickly.
And with your newly optimized social media bio, social media header, sign up buttons, and pinned posts all focusing on directing visitors to your landing page URL, you’re doing all you can to push them to subscribe to your list.
Over to you – what other methods have you used on social media to grow your email list?



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4 Ways to Promote Your Products on Social Media

Do you want more sales from social media?

Looking for new ways to share your products on social?

The latest features from Pinterest, Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram can help you get your products seen by more people.

In this article, you’ll discover four ways to promote your products on the top social media platforms.

#1: Add Links to Your Products in Instagram Stories

Now that Instagram feeds are arranged by popularity rather than in chronological order, it’s more challenging to get visibility for your business. Posting Instagram stories can help you get in front of your target audience. Instagram also lets you include links and mentions in your stories, which will make it easier for viewers to browse and shop your products.

Take a look at this Instagram story from social media influencer Caila Quinn. She included a link to a yellow bar stool because many of her followers had asked for more information about it. Notice the See More prompt at the bottom of the video, which encourages viewers to swipe up.

Influencer Caila Quinn includes both a mention and a link in her Instagram story.

The mention in this Instagram story is also tappable (as shown below) and takes followers to the official Lulu & Georgia Instagram page.

When viewers swipe up on the See More tab, they’re taken directly to a page on Caila’s blog, which features a number of products for sale, including the yellow leather bar stools and other items in her house. Instagram opens linked pages within the Instagram app, providing a seamless transition between browsing Instagram and shopping on an ecommerce site.

To see if this feature is enabled on your account, go to your Instagram home screen and tap Add Story at the top left. After you film a video or take a picture, look for four icons in the top-left corner: Link, Audio, Drawing, and Text. If you don’t see the Link icon, you don’t have access at this time. If you do see it, tap on the Link icon and paste your link.

If you don’t have linking enabled in Instagram Stories, you can still take advantage of the feature two ways:

• Choose businesses or publishers who have audiences that align with yours. They can draw attention to your account by mentioning you in an Instagram post. Make sure you have a featured link at the top of your profile where people can browse your products.
• Work with influencers who often get access to features before everyday brands. An influencer can talk about your post in an organic way to create interest in what you’re doing.

#2: Import Your Online Store to Your Facebook Page

Facebook business pages have traditionally been a great way to connect with your audience and promote products and events. Now you can feature your ecommerce page directly on your Facebook page with the StoreYa app for Facebook.

StoreYa’s WooCommerce Shop to Facebook plugin supports 30 ecommerce platforms including Etsy, eBay, Magento, and others. This example will show you how to connect a WordPress-supported WooCommerce shop to Facebook.

To get started, open your WordPress dashboard and click on the Plugins tab.

Then search for the WooCommerce Shop to Facebook plugin by StoreYa.

After you install the plugin, it will appear in your Installed Plugins section in WordPress.

Next, click the WooCommerce tab in the left sidebar (just above Plugins) and click Settings. You’re then prompted to go to StoreYa’s homepage. Click Connect Facebook Fan Page.

Now you’ll see the Import your WordPress Store Onto Facebook page. Note that you can add other ecommerce stores, like Etsy and eBay, by clicking Choose Another Import Solution.

Paste your ecommerce store URL in the field and click Continue.

Wait a few moments for the page to load and then click the green Preview button.

Now you’re taken back to StoreYa, and if everything worked correctly, you’ll see a confirmation message that says “Well done! Your Facebook store is ready.”

Click the Visit Facebook Store button to see what your store looks like.

One great feature of the app is that it imports all of your categories, so your products remain in the same hierarchy as your ecommerce site. This is also true when you connect your store through Etsy or another ecommerce platform.

#3: Display Your Products in a Pinterest Showcase

One of Pinterest’s most promising new business features is Showcase. It acts as a virtual storefront for businesses and lets you put your best products on display in a rotating gallery that can easily be updated.

Lowe’s featured a variety of holiday-themed boards in their showcase throughout the month of December. They included buyable pins that link back to their website, as well as inspirational and informational pins that link to other related websites.

To set up a showcase for your Pinterest business page, go to your page and click the red Add button above Build Your Showcase.

Next, you’ll see the Edit Showcase window with five slots for adding featured boards. Choose the boards you want to feature. Keep in mind that this is designed for buyable pins and standard pins, so it might be beneficial to feature the items you have for sale.

After you’ve selected your featured boards, click Save. You’re then brought back to your homepage where you can view your newly created showcase.

The best part of the Showcase feature is that you can change and adapt it at any time depending on your business goals. As always, it’s a smart idea to test the type of content you post and the frequency of your posts to see how your customers best respond.

#4: Get Personal With Customers on Snapchat

Snapchat ads, which appear between friends’ stories, are reserved for well-known brands with large advertising budgets. For businesses that don’t have the resources or brand recognition to pursue such advertising, Snapchat stories are a free strategic channel for promoting an ecommerce business.

Take a look at cost-conscious clothing retailer Everlane, for example. The company posted a holiday-themed Snapchat story that both engaged viewers and generated brand interest in a non-promotional way.

The story followed two brand ambassadors as they performed random acts of kindness, including handing out Everlane beanies to strangers, buying coffee for people in line at Starbucks, handing out a free AMC gift card, and buying lunch for a construction crew.

After showing their audience which gift they were going to give, they recorded each person’s reaction to the random act of kindness.

The company then urged their followers to “go out and spread those good holiday vibes” with the world around them.

This well-planned Snapchat story illustrates two effective tactics to better engage with your audience.

First, Everlane was able to engage people both in person and in digital spaces. Online retailers usually interact with customers in online spaces only, so using a Snapchat story to interact with people in real life is unexpected, and therefore memorable and impactful. The two women who received free Everlane beanie hats will forever remember the positive interaction with the company.

Second, the free lunch, coffee, and movie gift card provided a less-direct brand experience than the beanie, since it didn’t involve an Everlane product. These acts show the company’s caring side and reinforce their commitment to honestly priced, ethically sourced clothing. This tactic balances the free product giveaway so the Snapchat story doesn’t seem purely promotional.

As you craft a Snapchat story for your business, consider how you can generate interest in your products while reinforcing your brand message. Your goal is to create a memorable experience that makes an impact on digital viewers in real time.

Conclusion

Social media can be a powerful source of ecommerce revenue, so don’t miss out on the latest features today’s social platforms have to offer.

What do you think? How do you use social media for your ecommerce business? What tips can you offer? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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