Ways to Make Pinterest Work for Your Brand

Pinterest has become hard to ignore. If you need proof, take a look at this article about how Pinterest has surpassed email in social sharing. That’s a major shift.Coming up with the right Pinterest strategy or deciding whether to use the service at all can be a challenge. disadvantages of social media marketing The good news is that there are a few basic rules you can use to home in on the right way to employ boards for your brand. Poor reviews can hurt, but it's important to respond in a calm and professional manner. "You may be talking to the individual reviewer, but your audience is really whoever else also comes across that page," Grappone says. "Even if you don't agree with it, it's best to write a thoughtful response that directly addresses the situation and describes a reason why this is still a desirable business."Holt and other officials of Two Maids & A Mop meet bimonthly to determine if any reviews need follow-up.
He also provides a standard response template to ensure that his 15 affiliate- and franchisee-owned location managers respond to reviews in an acceptable manner that is consistent with his brand's values.Factually incorrect reviews are another problem, but the complaint system to have them removed is difficult and often unsuccessful. So it may be preferable to simply continue to collect reviews so that the questionable ones are outweighed."The more reviews you have, the more likely that your customers' voice will come through, and if you're doing a good job, that will show," Grappone says. facebook social media marketing "Any negative stuff will be diluted."One of the biggest frustrations with review sites is that they can (and do) filter legitimate reviews so that they may be hard to find--or even removed--based on individual site parameters. "It's a real challenge, because they totally control their algorithms to say what gets shelved and what doesn't," says Peak of CaJa Popcorn.

If you’re managing a lifestyle brand, Pinterest is your oyster

Pinterest is made for lifestyle brands. Your customers expect to see amazing photos of your products, from food to clothes to electronics. Don’t forget that Pinterest enables you to express the brand in many more ways than just product. For example, los angeles social media marketing Sonos makes music systems, so its Pinterest board of music-related tattoos is in line with the brand, but isn’t just a bunch of photos of speakers.Yelp's policy states that it doesn't want businesses to ask for a review, and that it will filter reviews it believes have been solicited. Yelp and other sites also commonly filter comments from people who have written only a single review; those that are too glowing, which may appear fake; and even those that are too negative, because they may have been written by a competitor.Rather than worry too much about the game, Peak makes a concerted effort to ask customers who actively use social media to share feedback about his company.
"We say, 'If you like us, and you use social media, we'd love for you to help us out,'" he says, adding that the CaJa store has experienced a 62 percent increase in monthly customer visits over the past year. "If you worry about the filters, it's almost as if you have to say, 'Do you Yelp a lot? Because if you don't, your review doesn't even matter.'"For 'treps who feel strongly about getting reviews on Yelp, Grappone offers one easy hack: marketing using social media "Ask everybody who comes through your door for a check-in, and if those people haven't already reviewed you, they will get a prompt from Yelp after they've checked in requesting a review of your location," she says. "That's a way to encourage reviews without breaking their rules.Holt directs customers to a private website and gives them step-by-step instructions on how to leave reviews. He even provides coupon codes to sites that require a fee to join.

If you’re managing a ‘boring’ brand, get creative

You don’t have to manage a lifestyle brand to take advantage of Pinterest to gain awareness. The trick is to get creative with what you share, and create partnerships with your customers and like-minded pinners. Don’t be afraid to offer humor, social media marketing applications as in the example below, which stays true to the heart and soul of the General Electric brand while winking at online culture at large.While that may seem like a lot to ask of customers, Holt's goal of a 1 percent online review rate is enough to attract the new customers he needs to continue to grow."If we can get three to six reviews out of the 300 customers we have each day, then those reviews on a daily basis will provide exponential growth for us," he says, noting that his company's annual revenue has grown from $500,000 to $5 million since dedicating 100 percent of its marketing budget to gathering online reviews. "We've invested a lot of time and research to make it as easy as possible for our customers to talk about our service without actively soliciting for that in an over-the-top way," he says.
"Automating the process of requesting reviews and making sure your listings are correct is helpful, because the more reviews you accumulate, the more credibility you have," Grappone says.And while plenty of business owners believe they shouldn't have to pay to control their own information, research suggests that advertising on review sites in the form of so-called "enhanced listings" might be worth the expense.A Boston Consulting Group survey of nearly 4,800 small businesses found that companies that had a standard Yelp profile but did not pay to advertise on the site reported incremental annual revenue of $8,000 from Yelp. search and social media marketing Businesses that paid for Yelp ad campaigns, on the other hand, saw an average annual revenue increase of more than $23,000. Ron Holt, CEO of Birmingham, Ala.-based Two Maids & A Mop, launched his cleaning service in 2003 but revamped his marketing efforts in 2009 to focus solely on leveraging review sites.