Are You Pinterest Savvy?

Pinterest Savvy

Pinterest Savvy

Recently, I read Pinterest Savvy and participated in a Facebook group run by the author, Melissa Taylor. Check out Melissa’s fabulous Pinterest account and you’ll see why any marketer might be interested in seeing what she has to say about Pinterest. While I think that I’m good at Pinterest, I had no idea what I was getting into by following her advice. Here are a few reasons Melissa’s book should matter to you, and a high-level of her book.

Set Up Your Profile

Have you taken the time to really work on your profile, verify your website, and added some keywords? Melissa takes you through the process in her simple-to-understand guide. Here’s my own top ten tasks for beginning pinners.

Worksheets

One thing I really love is hands-on, and Melissa’s book has plenty of worksheets that you’ll be able to write all over, revise later, and use to improve your boards. Some of my favorites are about using keywords, scanning your home feed, and practicing your skills to make better pins.

Are You a Blogger?

Melissa suggests pinning your blog posts to a board. This is something that not everyone takes the time to do, and can have a huge impact on your website traffic. If you’re not doing this yet, you will definitely see an increase in traffic if you do! Not only that, but Pinterest offers you analytics so you can see which of your posts are performing the best. You might be surprised that some of the best-performing don’t have repins or even likes.

Making Money from Pinterest

Something that will really interest marketers is the part about making money from Pinterest. You can find a sponsor, especially if your Pinterest brand has become very popular.

Get Pinterest Savvy for Free!

Act quickly (really) because this offer won’t be available for long. Even if it’s not available, Melissa’s book is a very good investment.

 

 

Social Media Calendar: Six Ways

Social Media Calendar: Six Ways

Social Media Calendar: Six Ways

What do you think of when you consider creating a social media calendar? Would it be a complex document, filled with charts and graphs, passed around at long meetings? A calendar is simply a tool to help you, a structure that can assist you with your overall goals (including your time management)–nothing more. You don’t even have to follow it all the time. And if you want to know why you need to create a social media content calendar, this Sprout Social article has plenty of reasons.

Keep it Simple

First, create a very high-level, daily structure. So for example, say you are a new zoo. Your schedule could go something like this: Monday: Monkeys, Tuesday: Toucans, Wednesday: Warthogs, Thursday: Tortoises, Friday: Flamingos. You can always revisit your daily calendar later and tweak it to suit yourself or your team.

Decide When to Post

Let’s use Facebook as an example. If you’ve set up a business page, you might want to post once a day to begin with (two or three times a day is fine). So, keeping with the above example, find content that matches your strategy of Monday Monkeys. What do they eat? Where do they live? You might start your search with Google and then find more specific sites to search.

Find a Model

Monkey See, Monkey Do Could Work for Your Editorial Calendar

Monkey See, Monkey Do Could Work for Your Editorial Calendar

Say your zoo is in Sydney, Australia. Find another zoo in a different part of the world to model your account after. (Maybe the San Diego Zoo?) Then find two more. Examine what the zoos are posting. What posts are getting the most traction, likes, comments? How often do they post? Adjust your schedule. “Monkey see, monkey do” could work for your social media editorial calendar.

Learn from What Doesn’t Work

You may not find another account you like, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from someone else’s failures. You can often learn more from someone’s failures than their successes. If you had to write the headlines for someone else’s Facebook posts, what would you do differently? What makes you want to comment on a post? Is there a particular writing style that you like?

Use Analytics Combined with Common Sense

Try using analytics, but also experiment with posting at different times. For instance, you may see that everyone is online at 5:30 pm, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re active then–lots of people leave their Facebook accounts open while they watch TV or eat dinner. Also, your followers may not be online on holidays.

Track Good Sources of Content

You might have your own blog, but you may also need content from other places. Could you share content from another zoo? Or is there enough going on at your zoo that you can post every day? When you find a good source, record it somewhere. I like to throw everything into a Word doc, so if I’m half-asleep looking for content, I’ll have some ideas. Images are becoming increasingly important in posts, so make sure to have a good source for images. Huffington Post has a great article on how to create engaging images.

What Else Goes Into Your Calendar?

What has helped you create your content calendar? Please leave a comment!

 

 

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