Archive for pin it button

Bing Puts a ‘Pin It’ Button on Image Searches

April 12, 2013 / Devon Glenn / No comments

Bing will now allow Pinterest users to pin images directly from the image search results to their boards, the company announced today.

“Last fall, we hosted a group of lifestyle and design bloggers at the Bing headquarters to better understand their search and social media habits,” explained Bing program manager Chen Fang in a blog post. “What we discovered is a community that does more than its fair share of image searches, with much of it tied to Pinterest. They shared some of the hassles they face, and that finding efficient ways to hunt down original, high-resolution images and filtering image results were some of their pain points.”

Bing’s Pin to Pinterest feature automatically detects and links back to the original source of the image to save time for the pinner and to ensure proper attribution. The button is already pre-loaded into the search engine and does not require users to install a bookmarklet.

 

 

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Category: Bing, images, News, pin it button, pinterest, social search /

Pinterest Marketing: What Marketers Need to Know to Succeed

November 9, 2012 / Michael Stelzner / No comments

Are you wondering if Pinterest can help your business?

Do you want to get more traffic from your Pinterest account?

To learn more about the power of Pinterest for marketers, I interview Beth Hayden for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.

More About This Show

Social Media Marketing Podcast w/ Michael Stelzner The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview Beth Hayden, author of the new book Pinfluence: The Complete Guide to Marketing Your Business on Pinterest. 

Beth shares her insights into how Pinterest can drive more traffic to your website or blog.

You’ll learn tips and techniques on what images work best on Pinterest and why content behind the image matters.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!

Listen Now

You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, Zune, Stitcher or Blackberry.

Here are some of the things you’ll discover in this show:

Pinterest for Marketers

Beth talks about the demographics of Pinterest users. The latest number of Pinterest users is about 11 million.

Up to 80% of Pinterest users are women between the ages of 25 and 55. Beth says that the demographic is shifting and there are more men joining. Pinterest users are fairly affluent, with a salary of $50,000+.

women on pinterest

80% of Pinterest users are currently female, but more men are joining so the demographic could change in the future.

Discover Beth’s theory behind the success of Pinterest and why there’s something addictive about it.

Listen to the show to find out more about Pinterest and how it draws you in.

What Pinterest offers marketers.

Beth shares how Pinterest is a great source of referral traffic for websites and blogs, even when compared to other social media sites.  At present, Pinterest is driving more referral traffic than LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube combined. And the only social media site driving more traffic than Pinterest is Facebook.

You’ll learn how Pinterest can drive referral traffic back to your blog or website as Beth goes through all of the steps involved.

You’ll discover what makes Pinterest different from Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. The secret is in Pinterest’s simple model of videos and images on boards that are linked back elsewhere.

Listen to the show to understand how this visual billboard platform can work for you.

What social actions happen on Pinterest.

On Pinterest there are three action buttons: Repin, Like and Comment.

repin like comment

Visitors can choose to repin, like and comment on the images shared on Pinterest.

Beth explains the importance of repinning—how every time something is repinned, it’s shared with the person’s followers—and how this becomes exponential. You’ll also discover what works best on Pinterest between liking, repinning and commenting on pins and the reasons why they are different.

Beth shares why she believes that people should take more advantage of commenting on pins. It’s an opportunity for marketers to create more engagement.

Listen to the show to learn how to get more out of your Pinterest marketing.

How pinboards work.

Beth explains how pinboards are collections of images and videos. Beth describes the process as creating a collage out of images that you cut from magazines.

this is a board

The pinboard is the heart of Pinterest.

Beth suggests making your boards as specific as you can. For example, instead of having a generic recipe board, you need to be more specific and maybe break it out into entrée recipes or dessert recipes. The more specific you are, the easier it is for people to see your interests.

Listen to the show to hear why the pinboard is the heart of Pinterest and what the two key pieces are.

How to build a following. 

Beth believes that a following on Pinterest is as important as a following on any other social media site. Building a following on Pinterest can take more time than on other social media sites, even if you are fairly active.

You should consider quality over quantity because you want to have an engaged audience that really likes what you are sharing. The better your content is, the quicker and better you will build your audience. You need to be a content curator on Pinterest.

Listen to the show to find out how to become the “go-to” person on Pinterest.

How to grow your email list.

Beth explains how Pinterest can help build your email list. First you’ll need to make sure the traffic from Pinterest goes back to your website or blog.  Then the best way to get them onto your email list is to have a prominent opt-in form on your website or blog.

beth hayden opt in form

Place a big opt-in form on your website or blog to make it easy for visitors to get on your email list.

In your Pinterest profile you have an opportunity to put a link to your website. Make sure it goes back to a landing page, where your visitors can get free products in exchange for their email address.

Remember, on Pinterest you can also market your webinars and conduct other list-building activities.

Listen to the show to hear why Pinterest is ideal for service businesses.

What are the best images to share?

You’ll find out what size images or video work best on Pinterest.

The maximum width you can use for images on Pinterest is 554 pixels.

And you’ll also learn why very tall images should be avoided. They tend not to work well, because once someone scrolls all the way to the bottom of the image, they are less likely to scroll all the way back up to repin it. So if you have a long infographic, make sure you have a shorter version that is more pinnable, then link the smaller version to the full infographic on your website.

beth hayden infographic

Use a short screenshot of a long infographic and link back to the full version of the infographic.

Some images are more compelling than others. The type of pictures that get repinned are often gorgeous travel photos, great-looking recipes and practical “how to” content.

You’ll sometimes find that even though the picture isn’t visually pleasing, it’s the content behind that people are really interested in.

One of Beth’s favorite tricks on Pinterest is what she calls “photo badges” where you can take an image and put text on top of the image to describe content behind the link.

pinterest badge

A great example of a photo badge that is highly pinnable! This image has driven thousands of visitors to Nester Smith's blog, thenester.com.

Although Pinterest shows you how many times your pin has been pinned or liked, it doesn’t show you which pin is sending traffic to your site. To find this out, you need to track it on your website or use Google Analytics. Google Analytics is great for finding out which individual pin is sending traffic to your website or blog.

Listen to the show to hear Beth share a story about a lady who gets an amazing amount of traffic from “photo badges.”

How to enable a website or blog for Pinterest.

It’s important to have a Pin It button on every page of your website or blog to make it easy for people to share your content on Pinterest. Once your content is on Pinterest, others will be able to repin your images. As these images are shared across Pinterest, you’ll get more links back to your website.

Beth explains the importance of making sure the images on your website are pinnable. Some visuals are not pinnable, such as Flash banners. If you want to be sure your visual images are pinnable, try to pin them to your own Pinterest account.

And if you have a Pinterest account, make sure the Pinterest icon is together with your other social media icons wherever you publish them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRwy0mOAJ7U

Listen to the show to hear more about the Goodies section on the Pinterest About page. 

How #hashtags help with visibility in search.

Beth explains how hashtags and Pinterest work the same way—but they don’t work quite as well—as they do on Twitter.

You can enter a hashtag into the Pinterest search box in the top left corner of the site. This pulls up the pins with either the whole #hashtag or the words searched for. At present this seems to only pull in recent pins.

Listen to the show to find out why Pinterest hashtags aren’t great for SEO.

Beth’s Pinterest marketing tip.

You’ll find out how you can search Pinterest to find out what people are already pinning from your website or blog.

Go to the URL field in your browser and put in pinterest.com/source/yourwebsite.com. Pinterest searches of all of its images and pulls up everything from the domain that has been pinned by users. You’ll discover what others are pinning from your website, who’s pinning it and the description on it.

pinterest source sme

Go to pinterest.com/source/yourwebsite.com to discover what content people are sharing on Pinterest.

Whether you are just starting out or have been on Pinterest for a while, take a look to see what content is taking off with pinners. It’s super-valuable and you will be surprised.

Listen to the show to learn how checking out this tip can help you discover what images are working.

Discovery of the Week

If you have a blog or a website with lots of images that you think people would want to share on Pinterest, then this Pinterest plugin by Phil Derksen is the tool that you’ll want to use.

This WordPress plugin has a free version and a paid version. It allows users to select from your article an entire array of images. All of the images in your blog will show up in a cool interface from which users can then choose and pin on Pinterest. This tool can also show the number of times an images has been pinned.

sme create pin

The Pinterest plugin allows users to share images from your website through their pinboards.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how these work for you.

Other Show Mentions

Social Media Marketing World is Social Media Examiner’s latest mega-conference—taking place at the waterfront San Diego Marriott Marquis & Marina in San Diego, California on April 7-9, 2013.

As you’d expect, Social Media Examiner recruited the biggest and best names in the world of social media marketing for this conference. Only the best for you! Be sure to check it out.

Key takeaways mentioned in this episode:

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What do you think? What are your thoughts on Pinterest as a marketing tool? Please leave your comments below.


Category: beth hayden, Expert Interviews, michael stelzner, pin board, pin it, pin it button, pinning, pinterest, pinterest goodies, pinterest marketing, pinterest plugin, pinterest traffic, podcast, repin, social media marketing podcast /

4 Tips for Increasing Pinterest Traffic to Your Blog

September 24, 2012 / Mitt Ray / No comments

social media how toDo you want more traffic coming to your blog?

Getting lots of pins from your blog posts can increase engagement and drive traffic.

It can also help boost your performance on search engines because pins to your post are ‘do-follow’ links.

Pinterest’s recent growth has been unstoppable. According to comScore, Pinterest has grown by 4377% since May 2011. Many blogs are using Pinterest effectively to increase traffic and build engagement.

Below you will find 4 tips to get more traffic to your blog from Pinterest.

#1: Share a Lot of Content

One of the best ways to promote your blog is to pin a lot of images onto your boards.

You need to share both your own content and content from other people.

Aim to create content-rich boards where people come searching for articles on your particular topic.

If you have good boards that are followed by people who regularly view and share your pins, you can boost your blog traffic by pinning posts from your own blog.

Make sure you pin content from your blog and other blogs together on the same board so your pins will seem more credible and clickable.

A blog with a great Pinterest brand page is The Next Web.

Their brand page has several boards onto which a lot of content is pinned. And the boards are mainly on topics like technology, social media, mobile, etc.—the subjects The Next Web publishes articles on.

the next web

Pin a lot of content from your blog and other blogs.

An example is the board Tech & Design, where as the title mentions, they pin articles on the subjects of technology and design. If you look closely, you’ll notice they mix content from their blog and content from other websites.

tech and design

When people follow this board, they know what to expect.

And this works for The Next Web too. When they pin images of their posts, they can expect likes, repins and increases in traffic.

Another great board is TNW team, where they pin images of writers, staff, editors and contributors who play a big role in creating all of the wonderful content.

tnw team pinterest board

Pinning pictures of your writers can improve work culture and boost morale.

This works well as it brings their authors and their fans together and will help them connect as a part of The Next Web. Doing this not only helps them build a good work culture, but it also helps their regular readers get to know their favorite writers better.

#2: Create Taller Images

In a recent post, I wrote about how infographics can get you more pins and repins on Pinterest. In a recent study, Dan Zarrella shows that taller images get more pins and repins.

dan zarrella infographic

Study shows that taller images get more pins and repins.

So if you want the images on your blog to be shared more on Pinterest, focus on creating taller images. This doesn’t mean that you need to create more long infographics, but that you need to create taller images in general.

Think of ways in which images can be elongated, either when you combine several images or stretch images wherever possible.

An example is the image on the post Make Your Own Cake Flowers on the Wedding Chicks website.

make your own cake flowers

This massive image is a combination of many images.

If you take a look at the image, you can see that this is actually a combination of images. This single long image is very pinnable and repinnable. If you want proof, look at the image below and you’ll find that it’s been pinned more than 49,000 times.

mr make your own cake flowers pin it button 1

This tall image has been pinned more than 49,000 times.

Yes, that’s right. The image above has been pinned more than 49,000 times!

So before you publish that post, take a look at your images and try to figure out if it’s possible to put all of your images together and create one long image.

#3: Add Images to Every Post

A blog post can be pinned onto a board on Pinterest only if it has at least one image on it. This image should also be a minimum size of 110 x 100 pixels.

If there are no images on your blog post or if the images aren’t big enough, you won’t be able to pin the post. So try to add at least one image to every post.

A great blog with beautiful images in every post is Live Well For Less run by Sainsbury’s.

Sainsbury’s is a chain of grocery stores located all over the UK. On their blog, they post recipes of food made out of affordable ingredients. On the top of their recipes, they have an attractive and big-enough photo of the end product. This makes the recipe pinnable.

For example, take a look at the photo of their Eton Mess recipe. There’s a large and beautiful photo, which is quite prominent. If you click the Pin It button, you’re asked if you want to pin this image and you’ll want to pin it because it looks so good.

sainsbury eton mess

A photo of the end product of the recipe.

So make sure you add images or photos to your post so that people can pin them.

If you want to take it a step further, you could add several images to your post instead of just one.

You can learn more about the advantages of this by reading 6 Ways to Drive More Pinterest Engagement, where I wrote about how Ree Drummond of Pioneer Woman adds many images to her posts.

#4: Add Default Images to the Entire Blog

Another option would be to add default images to your blog that will be visible on every page and post.

This way if your post doesn’t have an image or if you forget to add the image, you can always be sure that one image on your posts can always be pinned. This image could be on your blog sidebar, header or footer.

ching ya blue bird

The image of this blue bird can be seen on every page and every blog post of Ching Ya's blog.

You can see a default image on the header of Ching Ya’s blog Social @ Blogging Tracker where there’s a cute little blue bird on the top.

If you visit every page and every post, you’ll notice that the image of this bird is always present and you can pin it. Click the Pin It button and try it for yourself.

This image is very pinnable and fits perfectly into her blog as it resembles the Twitter bird, which is relevant to the topics they post here on social media. So even though it’s very general, her readers should relate this image to most of the posts.

Don’t just create a default image; create a relevant default image that suits your posts.

These are 4 ways to get your blog to thrive on Pinterest. Follow them all if you want to get the most out of your blog through Pinterest.

What do you think? How do you promote your blog with Pinterest? Are there any other tips you would like to share with us? Please leave your comments in the comments box below.


Category: blog traffic, How To, mitt ray, pin it button, pinterest, pinterest board, pinterest content, pinterest marketing, pinterest pin, pinterest strategy, pinterest traffic, repin /

6 Ways to Drive More Pinterest Engagement

July 17, 2012 / Mitt Ray / No comments

social media how toAre you engaging your fans on Pinterest?

Pinterest has been growing at an amazing pace. Recently, comScore reported that Pinterest grew by 4377% since May 2011.

This is because people like to be engaged with images.

The good thing about Pinterest is that every new post is an image around which a lot of engagement can be driven. So there’s great potential to drive a lot of engagement on this social media network.

Here are 6 ways to drive more engagement with images on Pinterest.

#1: Run Competitions

People love taking part in competitions, whether it’s to win a coupon, money, get their two minutes of fame or just for fun.

On Pinterest, you can run competitions where the winner is the user who pins the best pictures or has the Pinterest board with the best collection of pins. You could also do something creative like Peugeot Panama.

Peugeot Panama takes a picture of one of their cars and divides it into pieces. They pin one of these pieces of the picture onto a Pinterest board and ask their followers to pin the rest of the pieces onto one of their boards and share it with Peugeot Panama.

Their Pinterest followers have to go to Peugeot’s Facebook page or website to find the missing pieces of the picture. Usually the first 5 people to complete the picture win a prize.

peugeot panama puzzle

Complete Any Puzzle was a very creative Pinterest competition run by Peugeot Panama.

The example above shows the Complete Any Puzzle board where the picture of a Peugeot 101 car model was divided into 5 pieces and the participants had to locate the 4 missing pieces.

With these competitions, Peugeot Panama encourages people to pin images from their website, Facebook page and Pinterest boards. This drives a lot of engagement.

Also, to win the competition, you need to add Peugeot Panama as a contributor to your board so they can see your board on their profile. This can only be done if you follow them or at least one of their boards. So they’re not only getting a lot of shares on Pinterest, they’re also getting a lot of followers with these competitions.

#2: Add Board Contributors

Fans like it when you recognize and reward them for their contribution. You can either give them something or make them a part of the product or brand they love so much.

This is something you can do on Pinterest. You can add contributors to your board as long as you follow them.

add fan as contributor

Adding fans as contributors to your board can be a great way to engage your fans and promote your board and brand page.

All you need to do to add them is go to Edit Board and type in the name of the contributor in the Add Another Pinner field.

Adding your fans as contributors to your board can be a great idea—this way, you’ll have more people contributing to one board instead of just yourself.

Your boards will be shaped around your audience, which makes your fans and followers like you even more. Your other fans will also start getting more active pinning and repinning your images, hoping that they could be a board contributor one day too.

It can also save your company time as your fans can do your pinning while you focus more on running and shaping your social media campaign.

guest gardening post

Shoots adds several contributors to their Shoot's Guest Gardening Board to enable some of their followers to pin a lot of images.

This example shows Shoot, run by Nicola Gammon, a website to help you create and manage your own garden.

On their Pinterest brand page they have a board called Shoot’s Guest Gardening Board, where they add contributors and let them pin images of plants and gardens.

This helps them promote their board and their Pinterest brand page really well. It also helps them build a better relationship with their fans.

Currently this board has 241 contributors, 1418 pins and 720 followers. You’ll also see that almost everything they pin here is being shared multiple times.

#3: Run Offers

Free, giveaway and discount are magical words that can get people running toward you even if you’re out of reach.

People love offers, especially if they find the product or service useful. Use the image-based nature of Pinterest to promote your offers.

To do this, you can either pin images of offers from your website and detail your offer in the description, or you can create images exclusively for Pinterest where everything about the offer is written on the image.

A good offer that a lot of people find interesting can get you a lot of pins, likes and repins.

pin it to unlock

Pin It to Unlock! is a very creative Pinterest exclusive offer run by Gilt.

One company that’s creatively running Pinterest exclusive offers is Gilt Baby & Kids. These offers are called “Pin It to Unlock!” where they allow shoppers to unlock a special deal on a Gilt kids product by pinning and repinning it.

After the image of the product on the Gilt Pinterest site is pinned 50 times, access to the sale is unlocked and shoppers can buy the product at a 77% discount. This deal is exclusive to their Pinterest brand page and can’t be found on their website.

With this wonderful offer, Gilt encourages people to pin and repin to spread the word to their followers. Followers hope the offer will be repinned 50 times so they can take advantage of the 77% discount. This is probably one of the most creative ways to engage your fans on Pinterest.

#4: Get Into Your Fans’ Heads

People follow you for a reason—because they want something from you that might help or entertain them. So it’s your job to find out what they like and want, and you need to provide it. Usually it’s because they want to know more about something you offer.

A recent study by Facebook found that the images that are most shared, liked and commented on are related to the brand. So only share images that revolve around your brand and the lifestyle it provides.

Starbucks is a company that gives their audience what they want. They pin images relating to coffee and the other products they sell.

On their brand page, they have a board called Coffee Moments where they pin images of recipes of various drinks based on coffee, creative pictures of coffee and pictures of people enjoying coffee.

starbucks coffee moments

On Coffee Moments, Starbucks pins images of coffee recipes, creative pictures of coffee and pictures of people enjoying it.

On another board called Beautiful Objects, they pin images of coffee-related objects like coffee mugs, coffeemakers and coffee holders.

starbucks beautiful objects

On Beautiful Objects, Starbucks pins images of coffee products.

One of their boards is called Real Food where most of the pictures they pin are recipes of cakes, tray bakes, croissants and bite like sandwiches and wraps.

What I love about this board is that they stick to pinning images of foods that are similar to the ones they sell in their stores.

starbucks real food

On Real Food, Starbucks pins images of food similar to the food they sell.

These pins not only help drive a lot of engagement, but they also help promote the Starbucks brand as a pioneer in coffee and coffeehouses.

#5: Add Several Images to Every Page

Pinterest only lets you pin pages where there are images (the images need to be a minimum size of 110 x 100 pixels). If there are no images of the appropriate size, your pages can’t be pinned and people who visit your site won’t be able to share them.

So make sure you add at least one shareable image to every page. A better option would be to add many wonderful images to every page, so your readers get to choose their favorite image to pin.

Someone who does this really well is Ree Drummond of The Pioneer Woman. Her blog posts usually contain several images, which gives blog visitors a variety of images to choose to share on Pinterest.

If you visit the Pioneer Woman you can check out all of the images being shared from her website.

shared from pioneer woman website

Lots of images get shared from The Pioneer Woman website.

An example of a Pinterest-friendly blog post is Strawberry Sparkle Cake—just visit the page and take a look at all of the wonderful images in that one post.

choice of images on pioneer woman

You can pin a wide range of images from each post.

If you click the Pin It button, you will see a large selection of images to choose from. This allows you to pick your favorite image and pin the recipe on Pinterest.

This works well as people will choose different images to share. People have different tastes and different people will like different images.

If you only have one image and your readers don’t like that image enough to display it on their Pinterest profiles, they might not pin it.

However, if you give them a choice, they’ll pick their favorite one and pin it. It also shows that you’re doing something extra for your audience.

#6: Analyze Pins and Images

As mentioned in #4, you need to get into your readers’ heads and share images that interest them. Find the most shared images on Pinterest and get to know who’s sharing them. You need to do this regularly to improve your own Pinterest marketing strategy.

You can do this by several methods:

  • Check out Popular pins: One option would be to visit the Popular page on Pinterest and check out what types of pins are being shared the most. You can then pin similar images onto your boards or create similar themes for your website or blog.

    popular page on pinterest

    The Popular page on Pinterest displays the most shared pins on Pinterest.

  • Use Google Analytics: Using Google Analytics, you can find out which of your website pages Pinterest refers the most traffic to. Then analyze these pages and images and publish similar images on your other pages.
  • Check out what’s being pinned from your site: You could also use the link http://pinterest.com/source/domainname.com/ (just replace “domainname” with your company’s domain name) to check what’s being pinned from your site. This will help you find out what the most popular images from your site are so you can work on creating similar images for your other pages and blog posts.
  • Use an analytics tool: Another option is to use a Pinterest-specific analytics tool like Curalate. I have had the pleasure of trying out Curalate recently and I have found it very helpful. Curalate is a Pinterest-only tool that tracks analytics based on image recognition.

    curalate website

    Curalate is a Pinterest analytics tool.

With Curalate, you can:

  • Find out who’s pinning, repinning, liking, commenting on and tweeting your pins.
  • Track referral traffic—which content is driving the most traffic.
  • Find out who’s sharing your pins—this can help you identify your best fans and add them as contributors to boards.
  • Monitor your competition—track what’s being shared from your boards and monitor keywords.

Another important point to keep in mind is to add the Pin It button to every page so that your website pages and blog posts are easy to share.

If you have a WordPress blog, you can easily add the Pin It button by using the Digg Digg plugin run by Buffer. Otherwise you’ll need to add the button separately on every page. You can learn how to do this by reading this post by Charlene Kingston.

These are just a few creative ways you can engage your audience on Pinterest. Use these techniques or build on them to come up with your own innovative ways to engage your audience.

What do you think? How do you engage your audience on Pinterest? Have you got any techniques you would like to share with us? Please leave your comments in the box below.


Category: board contributor, curalate, Engagement, How To, mitt ray, pin, pin image, pin it, pin it button, pinterest, pinterest board, pinterest competition, pinterest image, pinterest offer, pinterest statistics, popular pin /

How Sony Became a Pinterest Rock Star

June 29, 2012 / Louise Julig / No comments

social media case studiesCallan Green, senior social media specialist at Sony Electronics, never thought she would want a pair of leather pants.

“But I saw enough pins on Pinterest that I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to own them,’ and I went out and bought some.”

It was the fall of 2011 and she was discovering firsthand the power of Pinterest to drive sales.

The image-based, pinboard-sharing social media site launched in March 2010 is now the third-largest social network, behind Facebook and Twitter.

In March 2012, it tallied 2.3 billion page impressions to over 4 million unique visitors a day.

“We were all using [Pinterest] personally,” said Green of the social media team at Sony Electronics, “and realized the power of the platform to drive people’s interest in purchasing.”

Organization: Sony Electronics

Social Media Handles & Stats:

Highlights:

  • Over 2,500 followers in the first six months since launching the Sony brand page on Pinterest
  • 800% increase in traffic from Pinterest to Sony Store website since launching the page
  • Pin It button has received more than 10 times the clicks from Sony Store vs. Tweet This button
  • More than 4 million brand impressions (via Curalate dashboard)

Here are 6 things Sony did to make Pinterest work for them.

#1: Research What People are Already Pinning

When they began research to find out what people were already pinning about Sony, they found a nascent community that was pinning not only Sony products, but also ads, logos, pictures taken with their Sony cameras and all manner of creative expression related to the brand. Launching a brand page seemed like a natural extension.

playstation tattoo

Fans were already pinning a wide array of images related to the Sony brand.

The Sony team identified three things they wanted to focus on with the platform:

  • Drive sales to the website
  • Increase brand affinity
  • Grow the Sony community

But before starting to think about driving sales or building the community, they put in three months of preparation planning and populating about 10 boards with visually appealing content—at first mostly repins of what others were already sharing.

When they felt they had a solid base of content, they launched the Pinterest Sony brand page both internally and externally at the same time, taking advantage of their biggest base of Sony fans—their employees—with an internal contest.

#2: Involve Employees and Internal Team from the Start

“We have so many Sony fans that are already at our fingertips, we wanted to get them involved from the very start. A lot of companies do this backwards, thinking of their employees last,” said Green.

The contest encouraged employees to check out and follow the Sony boards and to create a board of their own about what Sony meant to them.

Participation was better than expected, with several hundred employees requesting Pinterest invites and generating a slew of content that Sony was able to repin on the brand board.

“That content was key in helping us to turn around and repin to create better, more authentically pleasing boards,” said Green. “There are people who have been at Sony for 30 years, and they had access to assets that I’d never seen or even heard of.”

The team also reached out to the Corporate Communications team.

“They’ve been really helpful in sending us content for pins and creating content for us,” said Green.

The key to generating internal support is to give feedback about their contributions, letting them know what is working and what isn’t.

“More often than not, their ideas have worked and they get very excited and want to contribute more,” she said.

#3: Make Your Website Pinterest-Friendly

Company buzz from the contest also helped generate support internally to get the Pin It button on the Sony Store website within a few weeks of launching the board. At the time, the site did not have any social plugins. A Tweet This button was subsequently added.

pin it button

Sony was an early adopter of the Pin It button.

“The excitement about Pinterest got the web team to get really creative and figure out a way to make it work,” said Green.

Adding the Pin It button increased the number of pins from the Sony site about tenfold over what it had been before.

#4: Plan a Strategic Mix of Boards

To craft the Sony Pinterest presence, the team created a mix of lifestyle and fun pages interspersed with commercial product pages.

Boards featuring retro Sony products and ads were designed to appeal to fans of the brand, as was the Sony Art board highlighting art created with Sony products or featuring the brand logo.

The team also built boards to stimulate conversation with the wider, non-techie community, such as Sony Artist Style, a fashion board of Sony recording artists, and Rooms We’d Love to Live In, where Sony products take over. The board features pictures of stunning places users would like to inhabit.

On the commercial side, boards such as Brand New Sony Products and Sony on Sale provide direct links to the Sony store.

#5: Create Original Content and Exclusive Programs

Sony created its first content specifically for Pinterest on the Sony Art board, bringing in a photographer and art director to create the image of Sony cameras arranged in a heart shape to give the Pinterest community something they couldn’t find anywhere else. Reaction was positive, generating repins, likes and comments.

sony heart

Collage of Sony cameras created exclusively for Pinterest.

The Sony on Sale board also offers Pin Deals, where an exclusive Pinterest offer is unlocked once the deal gets repinned 20 times.

The research and preparation is paying off for Sony.

“Month over month, we continue to see an increase in traffic from Pinterest back to our site,” said Green.

In mid-May 2012, there had been an 800% increase in traffic from Pinterest to the Sony Store since before launching the brand page.

In addition, the store’s Pin It button has received more than 10 times the number of clicks than the Tweet This button.

Although a hard ROI is difficult to measure at this point, Sony management sees investing time in the platform as a good use of resources and is willing to see where it goes.

#6: Promote Through Other Channels

The main challenge, according to Green, is that there is currently not an easy way on Pinterest to find followers. “It’s very hard to get eyeballs on Pinterest,” she said.

Currently the team is taking advantage of tools like Pinreach and Curalate to help monitor their brand, but the most effective tactic so far to drive users to the Pinterest page has been to get the message out on other media.

Sony has posted on their other social platforms, used email blasts and media releases, written about it on their own blog and reached out to other bloggers in an effort to find followers.

sony blog

Sony officially launched the Pinterest page with a blog post in February 2012.

The Bottom Line

The Sony team was careful to balance the promotional pages with fun content, but Green’s biggest surprise has been seeing where the most engagement has come from.

“The Brand New Product board, where we’re driving the most sales from … is consistently our most popular engagement board. Which proves to me that people definitely want the fun and the fluff and the brand stuff, but at the end of the day, people on Pinterest do want products, they want to pin products and they want to buy products. There’s room for both kinds of strategy,” she explains.

What do you think? Is your brand on Pinterest? What can you do to develop and engage a Pinterest following? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.


Category: Case Studies, curalate, louise julig, pin it button, PinReach, pinterest, pinterest board, pinterest case study, pinterest marketing, sony, sony case study /

5 Ways to Tell if Pinterest is Right For Your Business

June 4, 2012 / Jason Miles / No comments

social media how toShould you add Pinterest to your social media strategy?

Would you like to benefit from a flood of new traffic as millions of new users join the social media site and search for familiar brands?

Could your business benefit from 482,000 followers?

That’s what happened to author Sherry Petersik, on Pinterest at Sherry @ Young House Love. Talk about an early lead.

In this article I’ll walk you through five things to help you decide whether Pinterest is a good fit for your business.

sherry at young house

Early adopters win big, and it's still early.

#1: Tap Into the Wisdom of Your Crowd

Look in your Google Analytics. You might have a surprise if you check the traffic referral section and discover that Pinterest is already driving traffic your way.

If so, then your customers are already indicating this is a platform for you to consider investing your time on. They say the customer is always right, and in this case, you might have a very easy decision to make about joining Pinterest.

As a side note, in October 2011, we went through this process. We had no clue about Pinterest until we saw it pop up as a strong source of referral traffic.

google analytics referral

Pinterest's presence in your referral links data is a great sign.

#2: Audit Your Eye Candy

Do you have any high-quality pictures, video or related visual content developed?

Think creatively about this. It doesn’t have to be a product shot or video. It could be an infographic you’ve had made, a book cover from one of your published works or even an original quote placed onto an image using Photoshop Elements.

The trick here is quality over quantity. To spark a pinning frenzy, you must identify your highest-quality visual content, and then put it within easy reach of Pinterest users.

Put Your Best Content Within Easy Reach

Make your best content pinnable. First add the Pinterest Pin It button to your bookmarks bar, and use it to see how your homepage is currently being treated. (This Pin It button bookmark is how your customers started pinning things for you before you even knew about Pinterest.)

If you’re happy with the results of your Pin It button experiment, great. If not, tweak your site as needed. You want your high-quality content to be as many pixels tall and wide as possible, and have good resolution. I call this process pinnable image optimization (PIO).

The bottom line is that your best stuff needs to be easy to pin from your homepage. It needs to be branded well, visually impressive, and valuable as stand-alone items. This is your first order of business.

Create a unique Pinterest account. When you create your Pinterest account, you’ll want to set up unique pinboards to feature your best visual content. As you pin them into Pinterest, they will be repinned over and over.

#3: Test Your Creative Tensile Strength

Do you already have an ongoing method for creating high-quality visual content? Does the idea of needing to generate this type of content stretch you to your breaking point? Let’s call that a question of your creative tensile strength.

Some small businesses will have it, some won’t.

You’ll need to decide if you can produce a steady stream of really good content. It needs to be niche-specific, and rather than just purely promotional, it needs to help your customers express themselves.

You benefit when you help them display their enthusiasm to their friends.

5 Ideas for Getting High-Quality Content

Re-imagine your product photography from an artistic perspective.
Take your standard product shots, but then take pictures that are more creative. Zoom way in, or find a way to (gasp) set a puppy down next to your product and take a nice shot of the dog. Don’t laugh; you’ve entered the new world of visual-trumps-practical. And as Trump himself would say, “Boring pictures. You’re fired.”

number of repins

Look at the number of repins!

Don’t have physical products? Learn to either create or commission niche-specific infographics. They are all the rage, and if someone on your team cannot make one in Photoshop Elements, then consider shopping around on Fiverr or Elance. You just provide your expertise and let a designer lay it out.

Capture and record. Use Camtasia and record a niche-specific screencast. Upload it to YouTube and then pin it to Pinterest.

Write a post. Start blogging about your niche, and then pin those articles. Make sure you create or find a unique image to accompany each post.

Dig into your archives. Do you have interesting historical content, images, blueprints or artwork that could be photographed? Do you have fantastic blog posts that never had a unique picture embedded? Pinterest is for visual collectors, and if you are the original source of interesting collectible items that can be shared on Pinterest, you could have a goldmine of content on your hands.

#4: Run a Bandwidth Check

Let’s be frank—Facebook and Twitter are labor-intensive. For a one-person shop, the thought of adding another social media burden might be enough to send you over the edge. But don’t worry. There is good news here.

Pinterest is more passively managed than either Facebook or Twitter. Pinterest content has a long shelf life, more like YouTube content. So your contributions are much more valuable, and will provide a longer-term stream of referral traffic. And again, as identified in factor #1, you might already have a fan base building your Pinterest referral links for you.

But even still, someone has got to do the work. So let’s just make this simple. Be honest, do you have the mental and emotional energy or not?

#5: Get a Free Pass if You’re Simply Passionate about Pinterest

Regardless of whether you have any customers pinning, have any initial content to use, have any ongoing source of content or have any personal or organizational bandwidth, you might still be really passionate about what you can do on Pinterest. Maybe you’re an artist stuck in an accounting practice…

In this case, if Pinterest is something you’re passionate about, there is a 100% chance that you can turn that passion into a successful traffic-generating strategy for your small business. It might sound silly, but a passion for visual curation is all you need. You’ll figure everything else out.

The inverse is true as well. You might have customers pinning your content, a nice set of professional items to use as a starting point, a steady supply of high-quality content and the mental and emotional wherewithal to do Pinterest right, but if you’re not passionate about it, then you should stop. Don’t even bother, just agree from here on out that it’s not for you. Pick your best communication platforms and get super-good at using them.

What do you think? I’m interested in what you think about Pinterest, and whether it’s right for your business. Leave your questions and comments in the box below.


Category: How To, jason miles, pin it button, pinnable, pinterest, pinterest board, pinterest decision guide, pinterest for business /

How to Use Pinterest to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog

May 29, 2012 / Charlene Kingston / No comments

social media how toAre you wondering how Pinterest could increase your blog readership?

Pinterest drives more traffic to websites than YouTube, Reddit, Google Plus and LinkedIn combined according to new research.

With this in mind, here are six easy steps for tapping the power of Pinterest to drive more traffic to your blog.

#1: Choose the Best Blog Posts to Pin

You don’t need to pin every blog post on Pinterest. You’ll get better results if you selectively pin your blog posts on subjects that already have an audience on Pinterest.

This means you need to do a little research on Pinterest to find if people are already pinning items on your blog post topics.

It’s easy to do research on Pinterest, and you don’t need an account to get started. Pinterest has a search feature that lets you find one or more keywords throughout the site.

For each search, Pinterest shows you:

  • Pins that contain the search term in the description
  • Boards that contain the search terms in the title or description
  • People who have the search terms in their profile

Tip: Pinterest never returns a list of every possible match. You should try each search several times to see how the results change.

For each blog post you consider pinning:

  • In the search box, type a word or phrase that fits the blog post topic.

    search box

    Type your search term in the Search box and click the magnifying glass.

  • Pinterest displays a list of pins that contain your search term in the pin description.

    search results pins

    Pinterest displays a selection of pins that contain the search term "scone recipe."

  • Review the list of pins to see how your blog post topic would fit into this list. Make a note of the words used in the pin descriptions.
    Tip: Modify your search terms to see if there are different words that people are using for your topic.
  • Click Boards to review all boards that contain your search term in their title or description.

    search results boards

    Pinterest collects search results for pins, boards and people each time you search.

  • Pinterest displays a list of boards that contain your search term in the board name or description.

    search results boards

    Pinterest displays some of the boards that contain pins for your search term.

  • Review the pins in each of these boards.

Make a list of the search words and most common words found in the pin descriptions. You want to consider using these terms in your pin description as well.

After spending a little time using Pinterest and figuring out how it works, you’re ready to start using it to drive traffic to your blog.

Tip: As you do your research, why don’t you start following some of the people who are actively pinning on related blog post topics? It’s a great way to make a connection to people who may be interested in your blog.

#2: Select or Create Your Pin Image

Choosing the image for your blog post pin is the most important decision you make. A good image encourages people to share your post.

There is no right or wrong choice. You want an image that is eye-catching and related to your blog post content. You want to invite people to click through the pin to visit your blog. The best image should clearly identify your blog post content to Pinterest users.

Reuse Blog Post Images

You can reuse your blog post images as the pin. You chose the blog post image because it conveys the idea of your post. However, taken out of context, the image can appear meaningless.

post image uncustomized

This pin shows a blog post image as it appears in the post.

Reusing a blog post image usually doesn’t provide enough information to explain the article’s content. If someone repins it and changes the description, the image’s meaning is lost.

Instead, you may want to use the blog post image as the background and customize it with the blog post name or contents. This doubles the effectiveness of the blog post image.

post image customized

This pin shows the blog post image with customization. By adding the article title to the image, the picture clearly identifies the blog post contents.

Create a New Image

You can create a new image for your blog post pin. An effective custom image uses the blog post title on a plain background.

post customized image

This pin shows a customized image created using the blog post title.

Tip: Your image must be available online (have a unique web address). If you customized your blog post image or created a custom image, upload it to your blog and make note of the image’s web address. You will need it later.

#3: Write Your Pin Description

The pin description appears under the pin image and provides additional information about your blog post. You should always write a pin description. No one else can write a better blog post description.

Your description appears every time someone pins your post directly from your blog. However, each Pinterest user can delete your description and write his or her own description.

full pin description

This pin explains the importance of the image to the casual viewer.

Writing your pin description is like writing your blog post summary or excerpt. In it, always tell people the benefit of reading further.

Your pin description should:

  • Tell people what to expect in your blog post.
  • Leave a little bit of mystery so people want to read more.
  • Include all search terms appropriate for the blog post.

While you can use up to 500 characters in your pin description, shorter is always better.

You can also add a web address and hashtags in your description. Hashtags are search words that start with the hash or pound symbol (#).

For example, if you include the hashtag “#socialmedia” in your description, people can click on the hashtag to instantly search through Pinterest to find all pins with this search term.

pin with hashtags

A pin with hashtags in the description.

#4: Add the Pin It Button to Your Blog Post

The Pin It button allows blog visitors to easily pin your blog post. You provide all of the pin description information when you add the button to your site. This way, your blog visitor can click the button and pin your post quickly and easily.

Unlike other social media sharing buttons, you must add the Pin It button individually to each blog post. This is a little extra work on your part, but it only takes a couple of minutes to set up and install.

In return for this effort, you get to choose the image and set the default description for everyone who pins your post from your blog.

To add the Pin It button to your blog post:

  1. Log into Pinterest (if necessary).
  2. In the top right menu, choose About | Pin It Button.

    about menu

    The About menu contains the Pin It button option.

  3. Pinterest displays the Goodies area.

    pinterest goodies

    The Pinterest Goodies area.

  4. Scroll down to the Pin It Button for Web Sites area.

    pin it button for post

    The Pin It form collects the information you need to create your Pin It button and displays the code in the boxes.

  5. Provide the blog post web address for “URL of the page the pin is on.”
  6. Provide the web address for your chosen pin image for “URL of the image to be pinned.”
  7. Provide the pin description.
  8. Choose your pin count format (horizontal, vertical or no count).
  9. Copy the top code box contents. Open your blog post and add this code where you want the Pin It button (top, bottom or both).
    Tip: You must insert the code from steps 9 and 10 into the HTML view of your blog post. Consult the help for your blogging software if you are not sure how to do this.
  10. Copy the bottom code box contents and paste at the bottom of your blog post.
  11. Save and publish your blog post. The Pin It button appears where you pasted the code in step 9.
  12. For WordPress users, Phil Derksen has an excellent plugin called Pinterest ‘Pin It’ Button.

#5: Pin Your Blog Post

You have created a pin for your blog post. You can be the first person to pin your blog post in Pinterest by adding it to a board in your Pinterest account. This step is not necessary if you don’t have a Pinterest account. However, at this point, your post does not yet appear in Pinterest. You have only created a pin for someone to use.

To use the new Pin It button to add a pin for your blog post on Pinterest:

  • Display your blog post.
  • Locate the Pin It button.

    pinterest new pin button

    The Pin It button on your blog post before any pins.

  • Click Pin It. Your blog displays the pin window.

    pinterest pin window

    The Pinterest pin window with the image and description you set up with the Pin It button for this blog post.

  • Choose the appropriate board for your blog post pin.
  • Click Pin It. Pinterest adds your pin to the board.

#6: Track Traffic to Your Blog from Pinterest

The pin for your blog post appears in your pins and in your selected board. Everyone who follows your pin has a chance to see it. Anyone who checks out your pins can also see it.

Other people see your pin, and if they find it interesting, they will click through to your blog post. They may also repin your blog post to share it with the people who follow them.

There are several ways you can track the traffic to your blog post from Pinterest. Use whatever traffic monitoring tools you have in place on your blog. For example, you might use the blog statistics in JetPack for a WordPress blog, or Google Analytics.

pinterest google analytics

An example from Google Analytics showing traffic coming from Pinterest to a website.

It’s Your Turn

What do you think? Have you found an audience for your blog on Pinterest? Have you created customized images for your posts on Pinterest? What is working well for you? Share your insights and experiences in the box below.


Category: blog traffic, charlene kingston, How To, pin board, pin description, pin image, pin it, pin it button, pinterest, pinterest marketing, pinterest traffic /

5 Ways to Create Highly Shareable Pinterest Pictures for Your Business

April 23, 2012 / Kelly Lester / No comments

social media how toAre you looking for creative ideas to drive Pinterest traffic to your site?

If you’re wondering just how effective a great image can be in driving traffic to your website, read on…

Since the launch of Pinterest, bloggers and website owners have been amazed to see just how much traffic this social photo-sharing platform can generate for a site or particular post.

The power of Pinterest comes IF the image on the page or post is a real attention-grabber; in other words, “pinnable.”

So how do you create images that tell a story and intrigue the viewer, all in the split second they take to glance at it?

pic worth a thousand words

The better the image the greater the pins.

#1: Send a Clear Message

If you spend lots of time writing your blog posts and structuring them for maximum search engine optimization, don’t stop short of including one of the most important traffic generators: the images.

Now that there’s Pinterest, a picture may be the ONLY thing someone sees, using it to decide whether to visit your site or not.

At least one of your images should convey the whole message of your post or page.

Images with easy-to-read, bold text do that particularly well. There are lots of easy and free image editors you can use to modify or create custom and compelling graphics for your posts. Pixlr is my personal fave for quick online editing.

Below are some great examples of eye-catching pics from Kid’s Activities Blog, Rhonna Designs, Six Sisters’ Stuff and Instructables.

Don’t these images just make you want to click through and learn more?

pic with clear message

A clear message on your image will demand attention.

 #2: Make Sure Your Photos are the Right Format

When people visit your site and like what they see, they’ll want to pin it to one of their relevant boards. So it’s important to know what people are pinning from your home page, your product pages, etc. You can find out by using this URL: http://pinterest.com/source/YourWebsite.com/ (replace “YourWebsite.com” as appropriate).

Additionally, if you’ve installed the “Pin It” button in your browser, visit any page of your site and see what comes up when you use the Pin It button. Do all your pages have effective images, available for pinning?

pin it button

More images on a page will lead to more pinning of your content.

You may be as dismayed as I was when I realized that a flash slide show on the home page of my website featuring product images and selling points was NOT pinnable. (And I’ve seen countless other sites that have this problem too.)

Only images and videos (YouTube & Vimeo) are pinnable.

It’s ineffectual for your business (and frustrating for a reader) to love your site, go to pin it and find that nothing relevant comes up to save and share.

On my website, the only thing that was pinnable and even remotely interesting was my banner image, but it was much wider than the maximum width Pinterest will allow (554 pixels). People still pinned this banner image (resized by Pinterest and ultimately misshapen) but it looked awful, and therefore was not generating much traffic. So I quickly added a very clear and properly sized image to my home page. Here’s the difference:

before and after

Size your images to display without distortion.

In his very informative article and rich-with-tips infographic featured recently on Mashable, Jeremy Cablona points out, “A properly optimized pin can make all the difference between 50 repins or no repins.”

image optimization

Click this image for lots more great image optimizing tips.

#3: Reach Outside the Box

Not sure how to market yourself or your biz using images? If you think your business is not particularly “image-centric,” think again.

Just like everything in a successful social media campaign, it’s all about sharing things of value with your audience. You are selling to people. Even if your product only serves one particular niche, those people have lots of different interests outside of what you offer.

Think about them. What do they do in their spare time? Do they have families? Do they share common interests?

Find some of your customers’ pin boards and do some research. Get to know the things they like by looking at their boards. This will inspire you to create image boards that will have broad appeal to your market.

Just because you only sell blue widgets doesn’t mean you can only feature blue widgets on your pin boards. Two terrific articles with some creative, outside-the-box ideas for business pin boards can be found on Sprout Social and Copyblogger.

#4: Increase Traffic with Contest and Giveaway Entries

Lots of companies use contests and giveaways to increase traffic. Pinterest is a fabulous way to promote them! By creating a very clear image of the event and the prize, people can see at a glance what they can win.

If you do a search on Pinterest for “enter to win” or “giveaway,” you’ll come up with all kinds of images. Serious contest entrants are using Pinterest to search for contests to enter. Let them know you have one!

  • In the description field, be sure to include “contest,” “giveaway” and “enter to win.”
  • If you also include a dollar amount for your prize, Pinterest will add a banner in the upper left-hand corner of your pin with the prize amount. This can attract even more attention.

Below are a few examples of terrific contest graphics from Amy’s Daily Dose, Giveaway Bandit, Family Fresh Cooking and Kid’s Stuff World.

prizes

Pin your contests and don't forget to include the prize!

You can even have your entrants use Pinterest to enter your contest:

  • Ask your readers to create boards that include your keywords in the descriptions.
  • Have them repin your images to these boards.

Bold images promoting your giveaway will surely increase traffic. Fabulous, pin-worthy contest graphics, as well as other Pinterest marketing tips and ideas, can be found on Pin ‘n’ Tell:

call to action

These images include a strong call to action.

#5: Captivate Emotions

Though we may see things differently, all of us have emotional responses to the things around us, the things that touch us. A picture can tell a story. It can also convey intense emotion, or even a complete thought or feeling.

When you are searching for the right picture for your blog post, or creating images for your website, think of single words that convey the message you’re trying to get across.

For example, are you promoting opulence, professionalism or newness? Is your product yummy, affordable, hilarious, convenient, lifesaving, etc.? Use images that speak those words.

“When you think of a single word, your images will always be focused, and they’ll always convey a meaning that makes a real impact.” – Smashing Magazine.

emotinal image

Emotional and stirring will immediately draw a viewer in.

Pinterest is now the best social platform upon which to share “a picture worth a thousand words.”

With or without added text, if you use images that people can relate and respond to, you’ll increase the likelihood that they’ll find value in what you’re sharing. Growing your fan base via Pinterest can be fun, free and easier than you think.

What do you think? Is your business on board yet? A Pinterest board, that is… Share your biz pinning strategies in the comment box below.


Category: How To, image, kelly lester, picture, pin boards, pin it button, pinnable, pinterest, pinterest contest, pinterest marketing, pixlr, repin /

How an Alaskan Mom Brings Millions to Her Carpentry Blog

January 16, 2012 / Casey Hibbard / No comments

social media case studiesJust over two years ago, Ana White wasn’t quite sure what a blog was.

Today, she runs her own rapidly growing destination, drawing nearly three million page views every month.

Successful professional bloggers aren’t hard to find, but a few things are remarkable about White’s success:

  1. She writes a do-it-yourself carpentry blog. With White’s help, droves of women are discovering they can build beautiful, stylish things.
  2. She started with dial-up Internet and does it all from her home in the Alaskan interior (where record-smashing temps recently hit -40° F).
  3. White succeeded accidentally. She never expected that simply sharing what she loves could support her entire family.

This self-described “homemaker” has an innate knack not only for woodworking but for business as well.

Turns out, this blog Cinderella tale is all about sharing your personal story. Oh, and relentless blogging.

ana white

Do-it-yourselfers find hundreds of easy – and free – building plans on White's site.

Social Media Handles & Stats:

 Highlights:

  • Ana White’s blog draws nearly three million unique page views every month.
  • 90-95% of her Facebook content comes from fans, and she leaves it all public.
  • Pinterest is the #1 referring site to her blog, bringing 6000 unique visitors a day.
  • In year two, the blog began bringing in enough advertising revenue to support her family.

Three Months – One Million Page Views

Delta Junction, Alaska, population around 1000, is about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks – and more than 2000 miles from the nearest Pottery Barn.

delta junction

Delta Junction, Alaska, population ~1000.

But that’s not a problem for Ana White, who grew up in this Alaskan interior making forts and other projects from salvaged wood and nails. After she and her husband painstakingly hand-built their home, she relied on her handy skills to furnish the place and make extra money selling her furniture.

But White really wanted to share her passion for woodworking with others. In October 2009, while reading a friend’s blog, she clicked “Get Your Own Free Blog” on Blogger.

She started by posting her carpentry plans for a farmhouse bed, the same one she made for her own home. Then, every single day, this stay-at-home mom with an infant in tow blogged more designs for items like dining tables, shelves and storage cabinets, adding up to nearly 400 posts that first year.

Without White doing anything else, the blog hit one million page views in just three months, and then reached more than one million page views every month following. She’d struck a chord with an audience eager to furnish their homes at a fraction of retail prices.

Fortunately, those readers proudly told their friends about their handiwork.

“This is a one-woman show from remote Alaska with no experience, no connections, no network,” White says. “I’ve just got a real passion for what I do and a huge desire to share it.”

What she also has is her story, which she shares on her blog and in many of her posts. Readers – many like her – get to know about her husband, daughter, extended family, home, town and weather.

High-Value Content – Always Free

Today, White’s site, “Ana White Homemaker,” has more than 500 plans. Despite suggestions to charge for plans, she’s insistent on keeping them free.

“I needed to be able to provide plans for free so women could look at it and it would create confidence in them that ‘I can build this’,” she said. “I knew that for me, as a mom with a single income, a really limited income, at home all day, it needed to be free because I myself couldn’t have afforded to pay $10 a plan.”

dimensions

All 500-plus designs on White's site are free for readers.

But she stresses “free” content doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the business seriously. From the start, she committed to frequent blogging and continues to post new plans a few times a week. With so many audience photos coming in, she started a brag blog dedicated to featuring fans’ work.

brag blog

White started a second brag blog just for readers to share their work.

Facebook: Fans Helping Fans

Blogging alone was enough to grow the site at a nice clip. The addition of a Facebook page increased traffic, but has largely become a community for her fans to share their work and help each other.

With a base of more than 50,000 fans, those posting questions know they will get an answer from other fans or White herself. The audience – and even White – learns from those responses.

facebook brag

Facebook fans share their handiwork.

facebook get help

Fans enthusiastically help each other with tricky building questions.

White stresses that she’s specifically chosen to allow fan postings to be publicly viewable, while many other fan sites do not.

“Ninety to ninety-five percent of the content on my Facebook page is from my readership,” she says. “What you’re seeing is not filtered. I feel like it should be an open and transparent forum where people can ask questions and post.”

The Payoff: Making a Living and a Life

White admits the first year was tough work, with long days of writing and making designs, photographing projects and blogging relentlessly while caring for her daughter.

In year two, the payoff came. The site’s high volume gave White the credentials to secure marquee advertisers like Lowe’s and other retailers appealing to women. Now, the site supports her family, with extra to invest in growing the business.

The momentum continued, with her plans appearing in numerous home magazines (without sending a single pitch letter), the chance to contribute designs for HGTV.com and now a book deal from Random House.

press

All press has come to White without a single pitch letter.

 Readers Help Design the “Momplex”

White recently added a whole new dimension to her blog and story with the “Momplex” project. Last summer, she and her husband started building a duplex for both of their mothers and now are letting readers decide much of the home’s design.

momplex

Sharing progress of the duplex White and her husband are building for her mom and mother-in-law, the "Momplex," adds to White's story and gets readers involved.

Readers might not want to check in daily for furniture plans, but they may want to see updates on the Momplex.

When White asked readers to weigh in on which kitchen design they preferred, more than 1300 readers indicated their preferences by “liking” one of the Momplex kitchen mockups.

facebook kitchen voting

More than 1300 fans voted on the Momplex kitchen design.

“My community is full of really smart people, so we’re actually getting a better product with their input,” she says. “It’s helped us make a better Momplex.”

Pinterest: The Game-Changer

Now in its third year, White recently discovered an interesting change in her site’s stats. Just three months after showing up as a referring site, Pinterest has taken over as the number-one source of traffic to her blog.

“Google, Facebook and direct traffic – none of those are the top referrers. Six thousand unique visitors a day are now coming from Pinterest. It’s dominating my traffic,” she says.

Pinterest lets members “pin” images of their favorite things to virtual pinboards. Their followers see those pins and can choose to “Like” or “Repin” those images to their boards. Highly visual, Pinterest works perfectly with the photos on White’s carpentry blog.

pinterest shelf

Fans of White's designs enthusiastically "pin" images on their Pinterest boards.

She considers Pinterest a potential “game-changer” in her industry, with extremely viral person-to-person sharing. As a membership-only site, that traffic is also likely of higher quality than from other sources, she says.

As for encouraging “pinning,” White added a “Love this? Pin it right now!” button on all pages of her blog. She also gives readers photography tips to enhance the quality of their photos, which in turn helps increase pins.

pin it now

White encourages "pinning" with a button on every page of her site.

While White has her own pinboards on Pinterest, she rarely pins her own content, preferring to let readers share freely and naturally what they like.

Reader-Inspired Content

White’s content model has also changed since she began. Though initially she blogged all her own ideas, now nearly all new design ideas come from readers. A fan will snap a pic of an antique or something in a catalog and post it to Facebook, asking if White will design plans for it.

“I look at myself as a servant to my readers. What do you want me to design a plan for? And then we go from there,” she says.

facebook suggestion

Nearly all of White's new designs now come from reader suggestions.

Not content to just sit back and rest on her handcrafted farmhouse bed, White continuously looks ahead to the next thing.

“If you’re on the Internet, your business goals and your business plan can change overnight,” she says. “You always have to be on your toes and be aware of technology emerging and be willing to adapt to your readers.”

Building a Better Blog the Ana White Way

  1. Tell your story – Weave in your personal story and keep sharing it.
  2. Care about photography – If what you do is visual in some way, try to get great photos and educate fans on taking attractive photos. It matters more than ever with sharing sites like Pinterest.
  3. Allow public postings on Facebook – It becomes a community when you allow fans to freely post and help each other.
  4. Invest back in the business – What will make the business better – a new camera, a new blog platform or content management system?

What do you think? Is what you provide visual? How are you tapping into new social media avenues like Pinterest? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.


Category: ana white, blog advertising, blogging success story, brag blog, carpentry blog, Case Studies, Case Study, casey hibbard, community, content marketing, facebook community, momplex, personal story, photo marketing, photography, pin it button, pinterest, public posting /
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