SEO Werkt!

Are you looking to build a strong Pinterest following?

Did you know that you can integrate your Facebook and Pinterest marketing?

Yes, there’s a way to get Facebook fans to create exposure for you on Pinterest.

Establishing a large audience of followers on Pinterest is one of the most important aspects of a successful Pinterest marketing campaign.

Here’s the skinny: Although during the setup process you can choose to link your Pinterest account to your Facebook personal page, there is currently no way to automatically hook up to your Facebook fan page.

So what’s a business to do?

The truth is most business owners have not figured out a solution. They are failing on Pinterest because they think that they have to build a new following from scratch. Well, that is patently untrue.

Here are five ways to use Facebook to build your Pinterest following.

#1: Get a Pinterest Tab for Your Facebook Fan Page

The easiest thing to do is just go to Woobox and create a Pinterest tab for your Facebook fan page.

Easily get a Pinterest tab for your Facebook fan page from Woobox.

It’s very simple to do and requires little to no technical skills. Within minutes, you can have your Pinterest account in front of thousands of your fans! This way, whenever people come to your Facebook page to either check out your latest posts or learn more about you, they can also see that you are on Pinterest.

The Pinterest tab allows fans to view all of your boards and even your pins while staying on the Facebook platform. They will not be transferred over to Pinterest until they try to repin or comment on one of your pins.

Within just a few clicks you can easily create a Pinterest tab for your Facebook fan page.

Inside the Pinterest tab as seen on the Facebook fan page.

#2: Post Pinterest Links as Updates on Your Facebook Page

There are a few different ways to use your Facebook status updates to promote your activity on Pinterest.

One way to build your follower base is to share the direct link to your Pinterest page as a status update and tell your fans WHY they should follow you on Pinterest.

What helpful information or cool contests will they have access to? Are there exclusive promotions? Why should they follow you on Pinterest AND Facebook?

Example post of a Facebook status update promoting a Pinterest business account.

The more specific you can be about the type of value you are creating for your followers on Pinterest, the more likely your fans will join you there too.

#3: Promote Specific Boards on Your Facebook Page

On Pinterest, people can choose to either follow all, or just a few, of your boards.

Because of that feature, you may find success promoting specific Pinterest boards on your Facebook fan page.

I recommend you promote a few different boards throughout the week.

That way, you have the opportunity to showcase your Pinterest account to a wider audience on Facebook, and you can introduce them to the diverse areas of value shared on your Pinterest page.

There are two ways you can promote a specific Pinterest board on Facebook.

• Update your status by uploading an image of a pin to Facebook. Add a description and include a link to the board on which that pin is featured.

Example Facebook post promoting a particular Pinterest board.

This works well if you have a really compelling image, because it will be granted more space on the Facebook newsfeed than a link.

• Post the link to your Pinterest board as part of a status update. An image of one of your pins on that board will be automatically generated.

Generate a full board preview (photo and all) by posting the board's direct URL .

Posting the link will also automatically include the text in your board description.

Make sure that you add proper descriptions of the content when setting up your boards. I’m always amazed by how few people take advantage of this opportunity.

Look how brilliantly realtor Raj Qsar utilizes this space for his branding purposes.

His board description reads:

“Raj Qsar & Premier Orange County Real Estate – is one of the most dominant Real Estate Teams in the Orange County Real Estate Market. For over 15 years Team Raj Qsar has held the philosophy to give the best service and most qualified advice to both buyers & sellers.

Implementing honesty and integrity at the highest level possible and to enjoy the entire process along the way. We are truly passionate about real estate.”

Take advantage of the description area below your board titles for adding value to your brand and board.

To add a description to one of your boards, simply click Edit Board and fill in the Description field.

Add a description to your board by clicking the "Edit Board" button at the top of your Pinterest board page.

#4: How to Promote a Particular Pin

Sometimes the best way to really serve your Facebook community is to highlight the value that you are providing in one particular pin.

This is a great way to get maximum exposure when pinning your own original content. Remember these posts can and will be shared across Facebook by your fans.

The same two strategies apply here, as they do to promote a specific board above. You can either upload the image of the pin as a status update (or include a link in the image description), or you can just include the direct link to the pin in your status area.

Promote a particular pin by pasting the pin's direct URL into your Facebook status update.

When you post a direct link to a pin as a status on Facebook, the following information will be automatically added and visible:

• The image of your pin
• The name of the board that includes the pin
• The caption that has been added to your pin

So make sure you have fully optimized both your board title and caption for maximum impact. Focus on creating intriguing board titles and including a further explanation of value in the caption.

#5: Promote Your Pinterest Contests on Facebook

Contests and promotions are becoming all the rage on Pinterest. They are a very effective way to quickly add a lot of new followers and drive a ton of traffic to your site.

Unlike Facebook, there are no real restrictions regarding the way contests are promoted and hosted on Pinterest. A great way to leverage both platforms is to promote your Pinterest contest on your Facebook fan page.

Example of how Bergdorf Goodman promoted their Pinterest contest on their Facebook fan page.

Bergdorf Goodman recently promoted their Pinterest contest on their Facebook fan page by posting an image of one of the prizes with a brief explanation. They included a link to their blog within the description of the image where fans could find more details about how to enter.

Hopefully you’ve found these five ways to use Facebook to build your audience on Pinterest helpful. I know from personal experience that introducing your fan base to your presence on Pinterest is an effective way to get more followers.

Despite all the hype surrounding Pinterest, Facebook is still the largest social media network. Why not leverage the audience you have already built there and let them fast-track your success on Pinterest?

So what do you think? Can you see the benefits of using Facebook to get more followers on Pinterest? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Awareness has added an interesting feature to its social media management solution with a new release this week. It’s essentially an influencer scoring and ranking functionality that allows you to set parameters or point values for a person’s action (Tweet, Retweet, Like, etc.) then score how they react or interact with your brand or content.

Scoring can be time dependent (more points if they’ve re-tweeted you in the last 14 days), geographic in nature (more points if they’re closer to you physically) and certainly reach/impact in nature (more points assigned to actions by those with higher follower counts, etc.).

What this allows marketers to do is automatically pull in fan and follower data, including specific information found in their social profiles, and grade how often or well they interact with or amplify your brand’s content. Unlike voluntary influencer programs like SocialToaster, GaggleAmp or Brandsforce, Awareness’s functionality scores anyone you’ve connected with socially. While you can certainly get deeper analytics from those voluntarily using your influencer tool, the Awareness approach has better reach and is potentially more useful in identifying passive influencers who might like your brand.

It’s kind of a CRM system meets influencer scoring to create your own internal Klout score for your audience members.

You can even use your monitoring streams within the Awareness Social Hub platform to cast a net and score influencers in a given topic without having a direct connection to them on the social grid. It’s an interesting new addition to the SMMS space and gives an already robust and powerful platform another highlight to attract new customers.

Another thing I like about this type of functionality is that you control the parameters. You’re not depending upon a Klout score or some other index whose algorithm you don’t even understand. It fits your needs. And that’s the truest form of influencer measure — that which is relevant to you and your brand.

Hat’s off to Awareness for adding the feature. Have you seen something similar elsewhere? How quickly will this piece of the SMMS pie be replicated in other tools? Or perhaps more meaty a topic to discuss, what parameters would you pick as the most important in determining influencers for your company? The comments, as always, are yours.

After setting up your Twitter Profile and posting some great tweets, the next thing that a brand owner should is to look for followers. Although there are various on how you can acquire fans, it would be ideal of you get qualified followers. That’s why it’s important that you know how to find them.

The Importance of Having Many Followers

In one way or another, having a significant number of followers could help your brand’s online presence on Twitter. Other than showing online visitors that you have a good follower count, it also reflects the health of your community. This indicates that you have a good relationship with your fans, which makes you attract more followers.

When looking for Twitter followers, it’s important the account you will follow have a close 1:1 ratio of followers and following. That’s because the owners of this account has a high tendency to follow you back when they saw that you’re following them.

Looking Through Individual Accounts

One way to look for qualified Twitter followers is by checking the follower and following lists of individual profiles. You can use the micro-blogging site’s search engine or use a third-party tool.

Just enter your keyword and then search for relevant users who have a close 1:1 follower and following ratio. This won’t just help you gain qualified followers; it will also create a connection between you and a relevant user who can influence hundreds and thousands of other users.

Looking Through Twitter Lists

Another way to look for qualified Twitter followers is by checking other users’ list. A third-party tool could make this task easier for you.

Search for Twitter lists created by other users within your niche. Once there, check out the user profile included on the list, and follow the account with a balance number of followers and following. The good thing about checking a list is that you are somehow guaranteed that you are following a qualified and relevant account.

Automating the Following Process

Other than manual procedures, there are also third-party tools that allow you to automate the whole thing. It will look and follow new users based on your customized searches, and it could also un-follow users who don’t follow you back within a specified timeline.

Of course, there are many ways on how you can gain followers. It’s your prerogative whether you will do it manually or automatically. Just remember that you shouldn’t follow a handful of users at once, so that it won’t make you look like a spammer.

Source: List of Followers on a Twitter Profile

The post Finding Targeted Followers on Twitter appeared first on About Social Media.

Twitter just announced the launch of its Twitter Political Index. This index, says Twitter, is “a daily measurement of Twitter users’ feelings towards the candidates as expressed in nearly two million Tweets each week.” Every day, twitter will evaluate and weigh the sentiment of tweets mentioning both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney relative to every other message that passes through Twitter’s systems. The system then calculates a score for both candidates. Currently Obama‘s score is 34 (and trending down) and Romney, whose follower count on Twitter may be somewhat inflated, is at 25 (and trending up a bit). The Twitter Political Index will be updated every day at 8pm ET.

Twitter, of course, has been used to study political sentiment for quite a while now and the company even has its own Government & Politics team to analyze this data and assist third parties with their own efforts. For this project, however, Twitter also partnered with the data analysts at Topsy, as well as polling firms The Mellman Group and North Star Opinion Research. USA Today will also use Twitter’s election meter in its coverage of the ongoing presidential campaign.

According to Twitter, its own data generally shows the same trends as Gallup‘s approval ratings surveys and frequently “hints” at “where the poll numbers are headed.” There is some evidence, however, that “the predictive power of Twitter regarding elections has been greatly exaggerated.” That study, however, mostly looked as message volume while Twitter’s barometer focuses on sentiment analysis.

Although it has been popular as a micro-blogging site, Twitter has also proved itself as an effective marketing tool. However, some businesses make the mistake of using it as a mere promotional device. If you want to benefit from your Twitter marketing efforts, you have to be smart in building your follower base.

Claim and Brand Your Profile

Make sure that all fields are properly filled out when creating a Twitter account. Include your company’s website so they’ll know where to go in case they’d want to know more about your brand. You can also personalize your account’s background and interface to match your company’s branding.

Establish Your Follower Base

There are various ways on how you can create a handful of followers on Twitter. You can start by inviting your friends to follow you, or you can also import your email contacts. Additionally, you can add a “Follow Me” button on your website, blog, business cards and email. You can also search for users that you can consider as a potential customer, or see who follows your competitors and follow them.

However, you must always keep in mind to balance your followers-following ratio. Instead of abruptly following hundreds of users, start with a small number, and then wait for majority of them to follow you back. You can also use third-party apps that will show you who among the users you follow don’t follow you. That way, you’ll know who to remove or to retain to your list.

Learn the Ins and Out of Twitter

As a micro-blogging site, Twitter is designed to be a social networking tool and not as classified ads. That’s why over doing company or brand promotion is considered as spamming. Every online marketer knows that spamming is a big no-no in all social networking sites. The key for a successful Twitter marketing campaign is to interact with your followers on a personal level.

Share Relevant Content

In all social media platforms, content is always the king. Sharing contents that will draw your followers’ attention is one way to gain loyal audience for your brand. However, you should learn to share content other than your own. The more versatile your posts are; the less people will think that you’re just using Twitter to sell your brand.

See What Your Competitors are Doing

If you have a competitor on Twitter, check out and analyze their strategy for having a large and active community. See what techniques work for them, and think of a way on how you can use it to your own advantage. Don’t just imitate though, study what other Twitter marketing efforts you can use to get ahead of them.

A simple 140-character tweet can either make or break your business online. Hence, you should learn how to properly use Twitter as part of your Internet marketing campaign.

Source: Alpha Male of the Group on Twitter

The post Using Twitter to Promote Your Brand appeared first on About Social Media.

Yesterday Paris-based analytics firm Semiocast noted that Twitter had passed the 500 million user account mark, with some detail on how that is playing out on a country-by-country basis. Today, we have some numbers that spell out what that actually means in terms of active Twitter users.

Paul Guyot, the founder of Semiocast, says its analysis indicate that on average, less than one-third, 27%, of Twitter’s user base is active — in other words, only around 170 million people, and possibly less at the moment.

The numbers come from research Semiocast conducted earlier this year, Guyot notes. That study, from January, found that the Netherlands had the highest proportion of active users, at 33%, with Japan following closely behind at 30%. As you can see in the list below, there doesn’t appear to be a clear trend in active users directly related to how developing/mature each market is.

Also: active in this sense means the number of accounts that were modified over a three-month period, including changes of avatar, subscribing to a new follower or tweeting, says Guyot. “We believe this is close to a monthly login rate,” he tells me. This is potentially the key one for Twitter as it seeks to monetize visitors with advertising and other marketing strategies. Also, there may be an argument for more people logging in who are just looking at what other people post, and not adding new follows or making any other changes.

Guyot also points out that the 500 million-account landmark it announced yesterday does not include spambots. “Twitter is massively deleting spam user accounts,” he noted. “Our figures do not include these deleted accounts.”

In terms of how people are accessing Twitter: Guyot says that Twitter’s own access points, including TweetDeck, represent 75.4% of all public tweets. That seems to imply that Twitter’s moves to make its APIs a little more difficult to use for certain third parties, it seems, is potentially a play to bring that proportion up even higher.

Semiocast analysis indicates that Twitter’s own website accessed from desktops, not mobile, is the largest platform overall, representing 27.6% of all activity worldwide.

But collectively it is mobile clients (including iPad software) that are most-used: they represent about 61% of all tweets, with Twitter’s own mobile apps and mobile web presence accounting for 74% of that.

Interestingly, Twitter is getting more activity these days from third-party apps outside of iOS and Android. The most popular non-Twitter agent [client] is Ubersocial for BlackBerry at 3.0%, followed by Echofon at 2.1%, Guyot tells me. Twitter clients that make it easier to tweet in languages other than English seem to also be performing well, offering some kind of edge over what Twitter itself offers. “Usage really depends on country, as many Japanese-only agents are in the top 50 of all agents,” he notes.

Most online marketers who use Twitter for their campaign usually time their tweets. That’s because it could be a great way to increase their user reach and get more traffic on their website.

In fact, a better timing of tweets could give your content more retweets. As a result, you could garner more followers. However, there are some factors that you need to consider when timing your tweets.

Followers Activity

If you want to your content and links to garner more exposure and retweets, the best thing that you should do is to monitor your followers’ activity. Check out when your fans are most active. Is it on a weekend or an a weekday? You should also take not of the time of the day when majority of your followers are most active.

When you already know the time and day when they are the most active, you should time your tweets accordingly. In turn, majority of your followers will see your posts, which could help your content get more exposure and retweets. The more people see your tweets, the higher the chance that you could boost your website or blog’s traffic.

Followers by Time Zone

Your follower’s daily activity on Twitter will also depend on their timeline. For instance, you are living somewhere in Asia, there’s a possibility that your day time could be nighttime on the other side of the planet. That being said, monitoring your followers’ activity is important.

Moreover, you also consider the density of your followers on various time zones. If majority of your followers are from Asia, you should time your tweets depending on their timeline. If most of them are from the Eastern Time zone, you should time your tweets when they are most active.

Using a Twitter Scheduling Tool

You don’t to stay awake all day if you want to post your tweets at the right time. There are various Twitter schedule tools that you could use to help you with this task. Just remember to space your schedules accordingly so that it won’t flood your follower’s time line.

Furthermore, you should not stop sending your tweets personally, especially if your post is conversational in nature. Responding and retweeting other content could also help to expand brand awareness.

Boosting your brand’s online presence on Twitter is not just as simple as posting a 140-character message. It also requires going with the flow to your followers’ activity.

The post Timing Your Tweets: What You Need to Know appeared first on About Social Media.

Yesterday, I wrote about some of the challenges that face companies that use social media for customer service. Today, I want to share a fantastic experience I had with Starwood’s customer service.

I had tweeted that over the years I’ve spent $660,000 on my Starwood American Express card. Someone from Starwood corporate replied asking what I was doing with all of the Starwood points I’d earned.

As it happened, I was using Starwood points to stay at the Sheraton New Orleans hotel. When I tweeted that, the hotel’s social media manager responded and asked how my stay was going.

I was having trouble with the hotel’s Internet service. The social media manager apologized and asked whether I preferred wine and strawberries sent to my room or beer and snacks.

When I returned to my room, I found this:

(I ended up with chocolates instead of strawberries, but I’m OK with that.) It was a fantastic response both from corporate and from the property.

I was relating this story to Swipely CEO Angus Davis, and he made the critical point that employees throughout the organization were empowered to make such decisions.

“The personal nature of hospitality, welcoming guests into our hotels, is inherently social,” said Abbey Reider, Starwood’s director of social media strategy. “And with travel, recommendations from friends and fellow travelers are important and naturally happen across these social platforms.”

“While these channels can be a great tool for marketing, first and foremost, they are important channels that allow us to hear from and engage with our customers,” Reider said. “We learned early on that the social channels are primarily for our guests to communicate with us before, after, and during stay. While publishing last minute deals has proven successful for some, our focus is really on that imperative guest dialogue.”

I can tell you what happened. But I can’t tell you why it happened. Did the social media manager send me wine and chocolate because that’s the reaction to every guest with a similar issue? Was it because I am a loyal guest who has stayed at Starwood properties for many years? Or was it because they looked at my profile and saw my follower count and the fact that I write about such things?

As a writer, I do care, because I want to relate the most realistic view to consumers. But as a marketer, I say it makes sense to reward the best customers and potential influencers who can have a meaningful impact on my business.

I was talking to Sam Shank, CEO of HotelTonight, about customer service and marketing. I told him that if I were running HotelTonight, I’d flag the accounts of people who were influencers. If one of them booked a room, I’d have someone call the hotel and ensure that they got the best possible room.

“We may or may not be doing that already,” Shank replied.

Rewarding influencers is a long-standing practice. This year’s Oscar nominees received gift bags with more than $60,000 in swag in the hopes that the celebrities would talk about some of their products.

Technology allows us to identify influencers who aren’t world renowned. Some companies do this by looking at Klout scores, others by follower counts, and others by manually identifying people who are influencers.

This extends not just to Twitter but to all customer interaction channels. If I were running Groupon, any customer-service emails from pain-in-the-ass writers would go to a special handling queue. Clearly, they haven’t been doing that.

But just in case they get smarter, I’m buying new Groupons under an alias.

Filed under: social, VentureBeat

As we all know, Twitter is one of the best social networking tools for bloggers.  So any blogger who is not leveraging the power of Twitter is really taking the long road.  I’m assuming you know enough about Twitter already, but if you don’t, you can read What is Twitter and How Important Twitter is to your business?

Now let’s assume you have a few followers already and talk about why your Twitter followers are making use of the “Unfollow button.”

Have you ever woke up, and found out that your Twitter follower number was decreasing?

If you are not making  good use of your twitter account, people will have good reason to unfollow you.

Here are some things you can do to keep you from loosing more followers:

1)      Stop posting like a robot
So many blogger make use of Twitter in a wrong way.  It’s one of the best tools for bloggers, YES – but only if use the right way.

Sometimes I visit a blog and follow the blogger on Twitter, but quickly made use of the unfollow button due to what I see.  This blogger had a habit of posting things like:  ”Make $2000 within 2days” OR “How I make  $5000 by just filling out a form online”…

Be real and stop posting what you know is not possible.

2)      Don’t be a link monger
Posting your new blog post to Twitter has a log of advantages, only if you do it the right way.  I unfollowed a pro blogger last week due to the fact that he posted links to his blog every minute of the day.  I was unable to see other people’s important posts, due to the fact that every minute the screen was filled with his links.  Many followers hate this – so stop it!

3)      Be friendly with your followers
Your followers will make use of the unfollow button if they feel that you don’t care about them.  To them, all you seem to care about is posting your own stuff.  Each time you tweet a post, people will surely reply your tweet, to ask a question or talk about your tweet, if you keep ignoring them, they will grow tired of being your follower.

4)      Have time for your followers
This is one of the most common mistakes many bloggers make.  They only care about the people they are following.  When you are less busy, take a moment to check what your followers are doing.  Find what they’re tweeting and post a reply or re-tweet something they’ve posted.  This will turn them to die hard fans of your blog.

5)      You need to follow some of them
I’m not asking you to follow all of your followers, but some may actually be worth following back.

6)      Not always about blogging or product
Every time you talk to your followers doesn’t have to always be about your blog post or a product.  You don’t always have to tweet about important things – take the time to be funny, be a little naughty sometime, but not too naughty, as it may cause damage to your rep). Talk about what’s going on, outside Twitter and what’s currently going on in your life.

I’m going to put a stop here today.  This should help you reverse the decreasing trend of your followers.

You can hook up with me on Twitter @Globalwalyy

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Top 6 Reasons Why Your Twitter Followers are Unfollowing You! is a post from: We Blog Better. © 2012. Share it freely, but please link back to this source.

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Need some Tumblr love? Got $5? You’re good to go.

Tumblr introduced a new feature Thursday called Pinned Posts that gives members the option to pin one of their status updates — be it a text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio, or video update — to their followers’ dashboard for a 24-hour period.

The option, available for purchase during the post creation process, costs $5 and gives you a way to ensure that your super important, must-read updates don’t go unnoticed. Of course, if you want instant fame and a gazillion views, you’ll need to build up your follower base. This paid-for-exposure tool only shoves your content in front of the people who already follow your updates.

Pinned Posts aren’t really a part of Tumblr’s official suite of advertising products, and are instead a self-serve way for users to pay for additional exposure. The option compliments Tumblr’s Highlight offering, which lets user pay $2 to add custom stickers to their status updates to make them standout on followers’ dashboards.

Still, with more than 55 million users, Pinned Posts will help the five-year-old company bring home some bacon while it works to perfect its real money-making products. Radar and Spotlight, Tumblr’s two advertising products, are still only available to select advertisers for a minimum $25,000 package commitment.

[via Mashable]

Filed under: social