Why Hangout on Google+ Hangouts?

Google+ Hangouts is a free video chat service from Google that enables both one-on-one chats and group chats with up to ten people at a time. You may be familiar with the likes of Skype and Apple’s FaceTime which both focus on one-to-one chats, with Skype requiring you to upgrade to premium to use the group video chat element. Google+ Hangouts is a great way to connect with groups of friends, learn online, hold meetings or join in on live broadcasts from your favourite people and brands!

Let's Hangout!

You can 'hangout' in a number of ways; by joining an existing hangout, heading into a 'Hangout on Air' (a live broadcast) or creating your own hangout. If you want to join an existing hangout a member of that hangout needs to invite you to join or you can browse hangouts happening as they are taking place by clicking ‘view all’ on the ‘Start a Video hangout’ button.

There is a difference between joining a hangout with your friends and joining a ’Hangout on Air’. The latter are live broadcasts which you can watch as they happen, it could for instance be a panel discussion with 10 people by a brand or charity, but you will remain hidden, in the audience. We hungout on air with Richard Branson from his beautiful Necker Island - have a look at our earlier blog posts here. 

Once you have made it into a Hangout chat room all people in the room are shown in the bottom row. Google+ seamlessly switches the focus to the person currently chatting so they are highlighted at the top and you can switch to view anyone by clicking their thumbnail at the bottom.

Last year I took part in Comic Relief’s Hangout Comedy Club, I applied for tickets to be in the front row (one of the nine spots available, leaving room for the comedian) but you could also choose to virtually ‘sit’ hidden so that you could watch the laughs from the comfort of your laptop, without getting picked on – I was foolish! See my earlier blog post here to find out how I got on!

If you'd like to start your own Hangout, begin by inviting up to nine friends into a video chat with you. In your chat room you can share documents, images and even watch YouTube videos with your guests. The great thing about Google+ Hangouts is that you can prepare your chat room before inviting others to join, testing the screen sharing options and making sure you can be heard – this is especially handy when you are using it for work purposes.

Seven Simple Reasons to Hangout…

#1 Interviews – Online interviews are the future and with Google+ Hangouts you can not only be virtually interviewed but you can share your CV or portfolio with your potential employer too

#2 Online Classes – Hangouts is a great way to teach or learn online, especially if you are training more than one person at a time, we've used it for our social media training with great success

#3 Meetings – Save your petrol! We know a face-to-face meeting is sometimes necessary but a hangout is a very time & cost-effective way to conduct a quick meeting

#4 Launch your news – If you are launching a new product, or some exciting news for your company, think about how a live broadcast of Google+ Hangout could engage the online community

#5 Monthly newsletter – Reinvent your email marketing by conducting a valuable Google+ Hangout each month with your subscribers instead, you could even select your most loyal supporters onto the ‘front row’ to connect with face-to-face

#6 Working with colleagues – Share presentations, spreadsheets, videos and notes with each other during the day, this is particularly useful if you have a network of freelancers or have employees working from home

#7 Catch up with friends & family – If your loved ones are all over the UK or further afield, get everyone talking together by organising a Hangout connecting you all wherever you are for free

And what of the future for Google+ Hangouts…

Google’s Head of Community Partnerships for Google+, Steve Grove 

Click here to find us on Google+ too (of course!)

Katie x

Twitter Lingo or 'Twermingology'!

Katie and I are now avid Twitter fans after many years of being 'active'... it's very different to Facebook (phew!) so it does take a while to get used to the platform. Then, once you're used to using it, you then have to understand the Twitter lingo!

We've put together a simple list of key words to help you understand Twitter better followed by a list of abbreviations that you may find among all those tweets!

Di

Direct Message (DM) - Twitter's function allowing you to send a private message to a person on Twitter. It is a message only you and the person who sent it/received it can read

Fa

Favourites - you can 'favourite' a tweet you particularly like so that the tweeter who posted it can see it's one of your favourites. Another use of favourites is to bookmark or highlight a tweet to read later

Fo

Follower - someone who subscribes to and receives your updates

Following - someone that you are following and are able to see their updates in your personal Twitter timeline

Follow Friday or #ff or #followfriday - this is a popular trend that is used when you are recommending someone who your followers should follow (obviously used on a Friday!)

Ha

Hashtag # - a way of searching for and joining in on topics on Twitter. Include a word followed by the hashtag symbol # enabling others to search for relevant posts. Find out more in our Hashtag How To blog post 

Li

List - a list is a group of Tweeters. You can subscribe to other people's lists or create your own. Read our blog post on Twitter lists here

Me

Mention - a mention is a tweet that has @username anywhere in it. All those 'mentioned' in the tweet will see it on their Twitter account

Mi

Microblogging - the social media niche that includes Twitter

Pr

Profile Photo - this is the image that represents you and shows as a thumbnail next to all your tweets

Profile Header - this is the larger image that is displayed on your profile behind your profile photo

Re

Retweet/RT - used on Twitter to show you are tweeting something that was posted by another user, giving them credit. Twitter's quote equivalent

Reply/@reply - is a tweet that is directed to another user in reply to their post. Anyone can see them and get involved in the conversation

Tr

Trend - Twitter determines which topics are the most discussed at any given time, these trends are discoverable and displays on your timeline

Tw

Twitosphere or Twitterverse - used to describe the 'world of Twitter'

Tweet - a Twitter update or post using 140 characters or less. You can also say 'I tweeted'

Tweeter - refers to a person who sends tweets on Twitter

Us

Username (or Handle) - this is the word that defines you on Twitter. The @ sign usually comes before your username linking it to Twitter. Think of it as your Twitter identity

AFAIK: As Far as I Know

BFN: Bye for now

BR: Best regards

BTW: By the way

CX: Correction

EM/EML: Email

EMA: Email address

FB: Facebook

ICYMI: In case you missed it

IMO/IMHO: In my opinion or in my humble opinion

LI: LinkedIn

MT: Modified tweet

NSFW: Not safe for work

OH: Overheard
SFW: Safe for work

SM: Social media

SMM: Social media marketing

SN: Social network

TFTF: Thanks for the follow

TL: Timeline

TMB: Tweet me back

TT: Trending topic

TY: Thank you

W/: With

YT: YouTube

Hope that has helped you find your way around the Twitosphere (see above!). Understanding Twitter and the lingo can help you to find more people to connect with, keep to that 140 character limit and importantly make Twitter more enjoyable for you!

Jane x

7 Simple Tips to a Successful Social Media Presence in 2014 by #katieandjane - Reblogged from She Owns It

A fresh new year is often the time to shake things up so why not do that with your social media presence!? We’re not only talking for your brand or business but also for your personal social accounts too. We’ve put together seven simple tips to get your 2014 presence off to a great start…

1. Set goals
Goals are a great way of focusing on what you want to achieve on social media in the next 12 months. Set just a few, maybe three or four reachable targets across the social channels you are active on. It could be ‘increase the social reach of my Facebook posts by 100 views per post’ or ‘increase my Twitter following each month by 150′ for example. You can break these goals down into manageable chunks and into aims for each platform.

2. Engage, engage, engage!
In order to have a successful social media presence, you can’t just post great content and be done with it, you need to engage with your audience too. Take ten minutes a day to reply to posts, retweet tweets and get pinning on Pinterest (we find a time limit helps especially with Pinterest – so addictive!). This daily activity will not only make your audience feel valued but will help to increase your reach online.

3. Plan your content carefully
If we’ve learnt anything from our years of managing the social media presences for large consumer brands it’s how important planning content is. Create a weekly schedule where you can plot potential content topics for all social media posts for that week. This puts your mind at rest knowing you’ve got lots of great content to talk about leaving room for spur-of-the-moment posts too. Collect content from awareness day calendars, your website or even think about creating a blog this year.

4. Monitor trends
Delivering insights into you, your company and your industry is one of the best ways to create an engaged social media presence; people want to learn things. Staying on top of the trends is a great way to keep up-to-date, enabling you to share valuable information with fans. Monitor your industry and competitors but also regularly read social media and technology news to discover what’s happening with your favourite platforms.

5. It’s all about the images
We know that posts on social media with images increase engagement and positivity enormously so make sure all your posts have a great image attached. Try to use your own images (think about copyrighting rules) and also use apps to create your own images with text if you are stuck for visuals. The winning social media platforms for 2014 will be Instagram and Pinterest showing the popularity of image-focused channels and the interest consumers have for images.

6. Evaluating is not a waste of time!
Many brands we’ve worked with (and individuals in fact!) don’t evaluate their social media presence and, although this isn’t the most interesting part of being active on social media, it’s very important. Back to point one; setting goals – if we don’t evaluate our presence how are we going to know when we have reached our goals? How will we know what is working and should do more of or what activity to give up? Simple evaluation techniques include keeping a note of the size of audience, engagement levels and content types on a weekly basis for comparison. We cover this and more in our SkillShare eCourse.

7. Explore other networks
Maybe you love Twitter and are finding it really works for you so you spend much of your time tweeting away but what happens if you put more effort into Pinterest for example and actually you get even better feedback?! Although it’s simple to stay on platforms that you can use easily, it’s a good idea to spend some time on other networks, increasing your knowledge-base and enabling you to reach more people online. In 2014 set a goal to try some of the emerging platforms; Google+, Vine and Snapchat are just a few!

See this post on the fabulous blog 'She Owns It' 

Pinterest Place Pins: Travel Planners Everywhere Rejoice!

It’s no secret that Pinterest is up there when it comes to our favourite ways to pass the time, it’s a place we both love to find inspiration and collect ideas, products, words and places we love.  To us, it’s not just another social network, in fact it’s now the third largest source of referral traffic on the internet, helping people to discover things that interest them. It's a social media network that doesn't promote self-indulgence, inspires the user and connects people to other people that share the same interests and passions. Above all it’s the meaningful social media platform and should be set apart from the big guns; Facebook & Twitter.

In 2012 Pinterest Co-founder & CEO Ben Silbermann was worried about the number of users only reaching 3,000 since the platform’s launch in 2010, but good things take time, and today Pinterest boasts 70 million 'pinsters' (pinning gansters!), with the UK ranking third for the amount of users. Brands are getting involved too, click here to see our simple tips on how to create an inspiring presence on Pinterest.

People pin anything from recipes and products, to style tips, news articles and quotes to inspire them at work, while shopping and at home, and of course for their next exciting adventure. Every day people pin approximately 1.5 million places, accumulating in more than 750 million pins of destinations on Pinterest. 

Pinterest doesn't stop at just an online pinboard of things we like, it has a much greater mission: to help users turn their inspiration into a reality. Cue Place Pins, rolled out by the company at the end of last year…

What are Place Pins?

Place Pins (or Pinterest Maps) enable users to map out the locations of all the items they share on their pinboards. For example, if a user pins a photo of a delicious meal they enjoyed at a restaurant while on holiday in France they can also add the restaurant’s location to a map on their board.

Place pins could revolutionise the way we plan our travel; before heading to New York City I could look at this brilliant board from SarahTolzmann, Web Designer at Ralph Lauren and blogger behind Note to Self. I could then repin any of the hotspots she has highlighted onto my very own trip itinerary board. I can hear the planners out there bursting with excitement!

Ultimately it’s part of Pinterest’s mantra to make pins more useful, including more meta data and useful information such as the contact details so you can easily pull up details you need - something I found particularly useful as my frequently on-the-go googling fails to bring up the extra details on the first page such as postcodes and phone numbers.

How can you use them?

It’s very easy to create a board of place pins, you can either select ‘Add A Map’ when starting a board from scratch or edit an existing board’s settings – start with a board you've dedicated to travel as this will be the easiest way to get to grips with the feature.

Pinterest allows you to create boards with friends too so you can plan your holiday or trip as a team, and if creating a board of your favourite things to do in your favourite city, you can send your board to a friend who is planning their next holiday to the same destination to spread your inspiration!

Have a little look at Jane’s ‘I’d Like To Be’ place board to inspire you to give it a go yourself!  Jane puts in all the destinations, hotels and even restaurants she'd like to visit, keeping a record in one place. Jane loves the way she's able to easily see all the pins on one large map in order to plan her next trip.

The future of Pinterest Maps

Place Pins are the network’s first effort to make Pinterest more useful for travel and for someone looking to plan a trip away, getting the chance to tap into to real people recommending real places in your dream destination is more than valuable. It remains true to Pinterest’s goal to encourage users to actually visit the places on their ‘Where to Next?’ boards, inspiring and enriching users to live the life they really want.

With time and more improvements, the team at Pinterest will iron out a few little niggles, namely the limited places when searching to place your pin – but you can of course add your own too. The sharing place boards are a great idea, the only thing is that when a friend pins to the board, there still requires someone to ‘place’ the pin onto the map too.

The future of Pinterest & the main man Ben Silbermann

We listened to CEO Ben Silbermann talk at a recent Google Hangout with Virgin Unite (read our blog post about it here) and since then we've read a lot about his start up journey. So much of his advice resonates with us, especially about building a product that people enjoy and one makes the end-user’s life better every day. Below are a few gems from Ben we want to share with you and, if you have ten minutes today, have a look at this video of Ben speaking at a networking event too.

...and our favourite: “Don’t give up”

Happy place pinning and here’s to all those destinations becoming a reality! 

Katie x

Our 2014 Social Media Awareness Day Calendar is here!

Posting a constant stream of engaging and interesting content on social media throughout the year can be a struggle – we’ve been there! After much testing, we found the key to succeeding when it comes to content is... planning. There are lots of elements to planning social media content but something we find so valuable is having a calendar of national awareness days, events and historical moments to dip into to inspire online content – cue our newly updated 2014 Social Media Awareness Day Calendar!

This year we have revamped the calendar to make it an even more useful social media tool. We have researched each and every one of the hundreds of events to include all possible links to Facebook, Twitter and importantly, event hashtags too! This will make populating social media easier and less time-consuming enabling you to find the source of the event and join in topical conversations to increase engagement.

We have also updated the calendar and added many more events which can be adapted for a number of different target markets. We’ve had some lovely feedback about our 2013 edition, and although it’s been hugely popular among social media managers, we know that it’s been very useful for the PR industry and for lots of teachers using it to plan their lessons too!

When posting social media content, don't forget to...

• Adapt it to your target market, thinking about what fans already like to talk about online
• Give a call-to-action. That could be anything from a question relating to the topic or a prompt to visit your website to find out further information
• Add an image. Images speak a thousand words and are so important on social media, for example, on Facebook a post with an image increases engagement rates by 120%!
• Use the dedicated hashtags and include the official social media channels if present to increase your post’s reach.

You can download the calendar here where you’ll also find our Social Media Content Planner and if you'd like to see us add any further awareness days, just get in touch!

Happy planning, 

Katie x

Learning Online - A New Year's Resolution

Katie & I have promised to both complete an online eCourse in 2014 as part of our new year's resolution setting, not only to further our business but also to get more from our free time too. We found SkillShare earlier in 2013 and were inspired by their courses so much we decided to put our own social media course on it.

eCourses are a simple way of learning more in your own time yet with SkillShare there are practical activities throughout and an end of course project so you can really get hands-on and feel you have achieved something. With our 'Create an Effective Facebook Strategy' eCourse we set a Facebook strategy as the final project meaning students will be able to go ahead and utilise what they have learnt throughout the course in the real-world.

A few eCourses that have caught my eye (apart from our own of course!) are...

Love Photo Apps: Make Awesome Images Using iPhone Photo Apps 

Clear the Clutter: Design a Daily Writing Goal

Lettering With Texture: Dimensional Type With Layers And Color

Katie may try...

Create Your First E-Book Using Free Tools
Legal Advice for Entrepreneurs & Start-Ups

And finally, just for fun! Create Your Own Custom Sushi Roll

In celebration of 2014, there's currently 14% off our $23/£14 eCourse until 12th January 2014 - use the code KJFB12 here: http://skl.sh/19S61F6

Happy learning!

Jane x

Win a Social Media Advice Session with Katie & Jane!

Last month we launched our Facebook eCourse for business, and we’ve had a great response. To motivate those who take our course to complete all the lessons and upload a final project, students will be in with the chance of winning a free social media advice session with us!

Our eCourse on ‘Creating an Effective Facebook Strategy’ is packed with 12 video lessons (short ones, with no jargon!) where we bring our real-life social media experience and knowledge to you. There are also downloadable toolkits, class notes so you can go over what you’ve learnt and a wealth of helpful bits & bobs to ensure you are on the right path with Facebook for your business.

The social media advice session can be on anything related to social media, whether for your business or even for you! Simply enrol onto the course today for £14/$23 here.

If you have any questions about the eCourse tweet us at @janiexx & @KatieAMcD or email us at smile@katieandjane.com

Have fun!

Katie x

Simple Social Media Advertising Tips

We often get asked during our social media training sessions about advertising, particularly on Facebook and Twitter. It's clearly something people are confused about so we wanted to share with you some frequent questions and a few key tips on getting the most from advertising on social.

Why pay for adverts through social media?

From our experience, the brands we've worked with have really benefited from social media advertising, not only achieving objectives (like more Facebook likes or engagement) but have been able to use feedback from adverts in real-time to direct social activity and help plan future initiatives.

We particularly find social media advertising effective as you can reach a mass audience of targeted people very simply and quickly. You can see exactly who is engaging with each advert and what posts are more responsive than others, almost instantly making it more effective for managing budgets too. Also, the great thing is you control the adverts (and budget!) and your audience growth and objectives are based on real data.

It's no surprise that by 2017, social media advertising revenue is set to grow to 11 billion dollars becoming a massive part of advertising buying efforts! 

What's the difference between advertising on Facebook and Twitter?

The obvious difference is you'll probably be targeting different people and you will have different advertising objectives for each platform although the creation of the adverts itself is pretty similar.

Set your objectives...

On Facebook there are a number of types of adverts you can run to meet different objectives. You can optimize adverts for website conversions, page likes, website clicks, post engagement, app installs, app engagement, offer claims and for event replies.

On Twitter it's more simple - you can advertise a specific key message through Promoted Tweets or gain more followers through Promoted Accounts.

Selecting where the advert will appear...

With Facebook adverts can appear in News Feeds or on the right-hand side of the page. Facebook will give you the best option according to the objectives set.

The creative element should be taken into account here as this is where you can upload images (on Facebook) and create different forms of copy (see tips below).

Targeting...

Targeting people by demographics such as location, gender, interests, language or workplace, etc is easy on Facebook so go in with a set target audience in mind.

Over on Twitter there are two types of targeting; keyword and interests & followers. Keyword means you can target those who tweet about, search or engage with a particular term. Interests and followers allows you to target by broad interest categories (like beauty for example) or target those who follow accounts that tweet about categories.

Budgets...

Finally on Facebook you can pick a daily or lifetime budget and decide how you want to pay for actions. For example, you can pay for likes or for impressions. This all depends on your objectives but don't worry, Facebook will help with selection.

On Twitter again, you can set lifetime or daily maximum budgets. If you go down the Promoted Tweet route you set an amount you are willing to pay for every reply, retweet, favourite, click or follow. For Promoted Account adverts you pay per follower.

Do I need to pay someone to create adverts for me?

In a word, no! If you have large budgets to play with and are unsure about creating your adverts of course we'd say to talk to an expert but by no means do you have to. Facebook and Twitter have made it very simple to create your own advertisements and even give you lots of tips and feedback. The process is very straightforward and once you've done one test (maybe with a very small budget) you'll have lots of fun creating and managing your own adverts.

A note here... we've seen some brands allow 'experts' to manage their adverts on social media (there's really no need!) and get exploited in some way, whether it's taking a big percent of the budget for 'fees' (not if you create ads yourself!) or by not understanding the target market or objectives and getting hundreds of likes from Portugal when the company only trades in the UK! Remember, setting up the adverts in one way means every new like the page receives will be paid for so targeting is important, paying for likes in Portugal was very frustrating for the brand!

Key Tips...

• Set objectives before you create the adverts whether that's on Facebook or Twitter. Create a purpose for promoting your content maybe it's to increase Facebook likes, encourage more users to visit your website or to increase awareness - objectives are key and will help you when setting up the adverts
• If possible, create adverts around campaigns, even if it's a small-scale Facebook competition - this will give users even more reason to engage with your advert and give them something to invest their time in online
• Include Facebook advertising in your marketing budget but remember you don't need to spend thousands a month to see results. We've worked with brands before who have moved a very small percentage of their budget into Facebook advertising and gained a lot of traction
• Use a number of creatives... try to use around four different images in one advertising campaign (Facebook will rotate these automatically for you) and use a number of copy alternatives even if it's changing a few words around. This will help you to test what your audience responds to better

Hope that's helped in the seen-to-be confusing world of social media advertising but we promise... it's simple! If you have any questions just email us at smile@katieandjane.com

Visit Facebook Ads and Twitter Ads to find out more.

Jane x

20% Off Our eCourse 'Create an Effective Facebook Strategy' Plus a Fun New Competition!

We blogged last week about our first SkillShare eCourse 'Create an Effective Facebook Strategy' and we're excited to let you know that it's now live on SkillShare for just $23/£14!

SkillShare is a fantastic global website where you can discover new and interesting courses to take at your own pace through video lessons, powerpoints, audio and project tasks. Each class finishes with a final project where students can display their skills and get practical feedback from the teachers.

The final project on our eCourse asks students to complete a full Facebook strategy after being carefully guided by us through six lessons; the power of social media, Facebook's key features, Facebook guidelines, Facebook audits, social media evaluations and finally, strategy. By the end of the eCourse you'll have your strategy, you'll understand how to evaluate your presence and also how to audit yourself and your competitors.

Our eCourse is packed with 12 video lessons (you'll see our faces a lot!) where we bring our real-life social media experience and knowledge to you. We wanted to make the eCourse as fun as possible so students who complete the eCourse and upload their final project will be entered into our competition to win an online social media advice session with us both worth £150!

Until the 26th November we also have 20% off the eCourse so there's no better time to sign-up! Remember, you don't have a time limit to complete the course so you can work at your own pace and still benefit from the 20% reduction. Although to be in with the chance of winning the competition, you need to upload your project before the end of the year.

Follow the link: http://skl.sh/182SQmb and use the code: KJFB20 to get your discount today!

If you have any questions about the eCourse tweet us at @janiexx or @KatieAMcD or email us at smile@katieandjane.com

Enjoy!

Jane x

Sharing Our Social Media Skills with Everyone, Our First eCourse is Now Live!

When we launched Katie & Jane, we had one aim and that was to deliver social media training simply, honestly and in a bespoke way to ensure it was meaningful and added true value. We wanted to throw out the jargon and buzzwords, and instead find a way of imparting our social media knowledge in a simple way that inspires confidence and achieves goals.

We also wanted to make our training accessible to as many people as possible, and are big believers in the idea that learning is as much about ‘doing’ and taking action as it is about education. SkillShare was founded on one principle; anyone can learn anything, at any age, at an affordable cost, anywhere in the world.

We are very proud to announce that we have launched our first eCourse with SkillShare; Create An Effective Facebook Strategy and it is now available to sign up to!

“The Future Belongs To the Curious” - Skillshare

To celebrate the launch we have ten free places to give away worth $23/£14

Facebook is one of the most powerful social networks in the world connecting people with brands instantly and creating a successful Facebook presence is not rocket science - it's all about organisation. You need the knowledge, a clear strategy and the tools to go ahead and make an impact on the platform and this is exactly what you'll get from our course with simple step-by-step projects that you can complete in your own time.

We have packed 12 video lessons and 22 project steps into six lessons which result in you creating a tailored Facebook strategy for your brand. Alongside the lessons are additional resources to help you complete the project steps and enable you to create a really effective Facebook presence.

Our course gives you experienced knowledge of exactly how powerful Facebook can be for your brand and how to utilise the platform to its full potential to achieve brand goals and objectives. Key units include; the power of social media, the features of Facebook and evaluating your presence.

On completing the course you’ll have created your very own social media strategy tailored to your business after gaining the knowledge needed to understand the platform and the guidelines behind a successful strategy. You'll also be able to evaluate your ongoing Facebook presence with our free tool recommendations and carry out an audit of your own or a competitor’s Facebook activity.

Our class is designed for business owners, brand managers, marketers and entrepreneurs who would like to use Facebook to further increase awareness of their brand in the most effective way. If you want to create a Facebook strategy, our course is for you.

To find out more about the course details or to register, click here. Be one of the first ten people to sign up and use the code KJFB10 to access the course for free!

Watch SkillShare’s Manifesto video to find out more about their incredible work here.

Katie x

Facebook & Twitter? I’m not Pinterested!

Pinterest is my favourite go-to place when I’ve read my weight in books and newspapers and to me it signifies some time for some feel-good inspiration. It’s easy to use, it’s not full of negative comments or shameless brags, and it adds value to my life in a creative, inspiring and positive way.

At a recent networking event with Red Magazine, Jo Malone told us that she was debating the future of using Facebook for her new brand Jo Loves, and potentially focusing significantly more time and effort on Pinterest because of the value it has for luxury brands. This inspired us to question whether Pinterest was in fact the only platform needed for luxury brands? You can read the blog post in full here.

With that in mind, we thought we’d give you some simple tips to help you use the Pinterest to its full potential, and answer the common questions we get asked many times from our trainees. If you are not familiar with Pinterest, head to our earlier blog post here first which gives you a quick introduction and some interesting stats.

Pinterest for Business

Businesses can use Pinterest to inspire customers and increase brand awareness. The innovative platform allows brands to strengthen the personality and ethos behind the brand through inspirational pins alongside product or service pins. Pinterest is best used to create the character behind the brand with, for example, lifestyle pins that show users the inspiration behind products. These types of pins greatly increase reach and in turn, changing consumers to passionate brand advocates.

The Key Features…

Profile

As with Facebook & Twitter, you will have a profile which includes a small place for a bio piece and link to your website. Your profile also displays your follower/following count, your likes and all of your Pinterest Boards containing your pins and repins (see below!). From your profile you can search for pins, and other boards you would like to follow. It’s a good idea to make your profile picture your brand logo, and ensure you have a compelling bio with searchable keywords.

Boards

Acting as an online pin board, your boards are where you categorise your pins. Users can follow all of your boards, or individual ones, so make sure you have a purpose for each of your boards, and keep them simple, defined and regularly updated with lots of creative, inspiring images. Don't forget to set your board cover image to one of the most engaging, eye-catching pins within that board to attract more users to view it. You can also move your boards around to have them in the order of your choice so if you have a particular board which you'd like to promote at any one time, move it to the top row of your Pinterest profile.

Original Pins

Brands can upload original pins that are unique to the business. Pinning products will be the easiest way to start, however remember high quality photography is the key here, the aim is to attract potential customers to repin your product pins or in fact buy on the spot so make sure your imagery shows off the features of your products – a significant 69% of Pinterest users have found at least one item that they’ve bought or wanted to buy. If you can, include a price banner as 36% of all pins with prices get more likes. Don’t forget you can pin videos too!

 Repins

As we discussed above, you can use your boards to reflect your brand through original pins but you can also repin other users pins that relate to your brand and boards. For example, if your business is an online surf shop, along with product pins, your lifestyle boards could include the best surfing spots around the world, life on the beach, the surfing bucket list and so on. By using boards in this way on Pinterest, the lifestyle represented will start to become synonymous with the brand, keeping consumers interested. However, remember to stay true to your brand and stay in your lane, make sure any repins represent your brand ethos.

Rich Pins

Rich pins are valuable for brands with consumer products, as they present your product pins with automatically updated details including pricing, availability and importantly where to buy at that exact moment. To start the process, you’ll need to ensure your business website is 'rich pin ready' with meta tags – it’s a good idea to have a chat with your web developer as they will need to help you here if you are not familiar with the term. Find out more information on rich pins here.

Creating a Successful Pinterest Presence...

Engage, Engage, Engage!

As with every social media platform it’s so important to make sure you regularly engage with users and not just expect consumers to find you. The more you put into it, the more you will get out. Pinterest gives you the opportunity to like and comment on other pins, so use these native features to build relationships.

Launch Innovative Competitions

Competitions are great to increase reach, engagement and your follower numbers. Like any social competition, make sure it adheres to Pinterest guidelines and includes clear entry mechanics, and before you run a lazy Pin to Win competition, embrace the opportunity with creativity – Pinterest likes this! Read the guidelines in full here.

Know Your Audience

As with any marketing activity, it’s so important to research and understand your audience. Keep in mind that one of the goals here is to attract your audience to repin and share your products with their friends, so clear knowledge of what your audience also likes (apart from your products) will enhance engagement. Remember to stay on trend too, try to keep within your business niche but pin what people are talking about, and factor in national awareness days (download our helpful calendar here), holidays and seasonal celebrations too. Take a look at our recent Pinterest blog post here to discover more about the demographics of 'pinners'.

Increase Traffic to your Pinterest Boards

Don't forget you can increase traffic from outside Pinterest too using your other online networks to reach more people. Here are a few key things to do:

• Optimise your website with the 'pin it' button – this allows users to directly pin from your website onto their Pinterest boards
• Direct existing customers from other social platforms to your Pinterest boards
• Include Pinterest on your marketing activity as you would with Facebook or Twitter – but remember when promoting it, make sure you give a reason for Pinners to follow you!

To find out how we are using Pinterest, head over and be inspired by our boards here.

If you are in need of some help & advice why not register for our latest online e-course with Skillshare, How to Create An Effective Facebook Strategy for just $23 (£14) here. 

To find out more about us head to www.bykatieandjane.com or sign up to our monthly newsletter here for regular social media tips, advice and news of our latest App release! 

Katie x