Let’s face it. Telling a story with visuals is far more compelling than trudging through a thicket of text? Pinterest seems to have got the mantra right! Nope, I am not meaning to be its propagandist – the data is doing all the talking.
Before you start to protest, let me lay out the facts first. The current user base of Pinterest stands at over 70 million, it contributes to about 20% of referral traffic to web, its international traffic grew over 125% in 2013 and it hosts more than 500,000 business accounts till date. Now, for a social network that started only three years back, that certainty ain’t any discouraging set of numbers, aye! Perhaps, it\’s time to boost your brand with Pinterest.
Oh! I am not at all deaf to the usual protests that Pinterest has majority of female use base and it is mostly useful for retails brands. Well, just to counter you on the first point, The Guardian reported a 40% rise in male user base of Pinterest in UK. Surely, the numbers are ‘un-skewing’. I want to take on the second point more seriously and challenge you back with a question. Unless you put more stuff that interests men, how can you expect them to make a bee line for it?
In fact, Pinterest has proved to be a very nifty social discovery site that actually lead users to their real places of interest. Thus, I posit that there is plenty of scope for a variety of brands and purposes to join the Pinterest and drive awesome engagement with their audiences. The ROI crazy marketers can breathe a sigh of relief, as Pinterest does provide its own very useful analytics matrics.
While at it, I thought of drawing up a list of businesses who could use Pinterest to their advantage and are still shying away from it. Here it goes:
Sports Organizers
Be it the fan frenzied, gate crashing soccer match or a star studded promotional match, showcasing it on Pinterest with candid shots or what the heck!, a full chronicle, sprinkled with some funny captions is sure to attract the bored executive stuck at work and garner hordes of followers. With so many related brand promotions involved, I see the possibilities of creative pins endless.
Event Organizers
Events are big ticket items, requiring huge pre promotional activities, generating interest and drawing crowds. There can be no dearth of content to share on Pinterest here. From posters, teasers, backstage photos to actual fan pics. Engaging the fans on the comment section will add to the excitement and hype. They could serve as a huge draw.
Internal Communication and Branding
Pinterest allows you to create boards and invite people to contribute. What is more, it can be a secret board. For all those internal contest within the organization, events and candid moments captured, this social tool can go a long way to create bonding among colleagues. In addition, the corporate values and branding initiatives can easily be promoted through imaginative pins.
NGOs and Social Campaigns
A number of pharmaceutical companies have discovered the value of Pinterest and in their own way drive many health campaigns. Though, not much is seen in terms of social causes and social awareness initiative on Pinterest yet. Who knows Pinterest will actually dedicate a category to its list on Social Causes, like it did for Father’s Day recently.
B2B
B2B companies always stand like lackluster gofers in the marketing realm among the femme fatales of flashy retail and luxury brands who are oozing with visual treats and glamour quotient. With the recent graphic revolution, though, they are in no shortage of glamour either. All those riveting info graphics, trend charts, fancy product diagrams – can all be used to draw traffic to the real content residing on the website and turn the laggard into a show stopper Hunk. Even pinning articles of publications where they have been featured is a great way to increase visibility.
The list could go on but for the want of space. As a parting thought I would say that the best thing about Pinterest is you can cross promote. So, while you are at Pinterest, you are not missing any other.
As if floundering through a sea of social media platforms was not intimidating enough, now we have a flurry of independent social media tools mushrooming in every nook and cranny of the web to baffle the wit out of you. Every social media marketer, today, has the working knowledge of social media analytics, that is, if that person is not a wizard at it already. Any brand that is just there to leave a footprint on social media is an antiquated species and will be looked upon with scorn by those who matter. That being established, the challenge is how to navigate through these myriad social media tools and know what exactly is right for you.
Before I embark on my recommendations, let us try and understand what all is there to measure and track:
Listening & Monitoring – When you want to know what is trending and where the conversations about your brand, your industry and your competitors are taking place. At times, these can give you a whiff of an imminent crisis or even an opportunity that you can encash on.
Measuring Influence – When you want to raise awareness of your brand, product or service, spread word-of-mouth recommendations, and identify your key influencers. After all, when it comes to social media, it is the consumers that drive the brands popularity today.
Measuring Performance: When you want to know how your campaigns are being received, what are the most receptive time of the day, day of the week, time of the year and so on. What kind of content is more engaging, what is being viewed more or shared more?
Managing Multiple Accounts: When you have multiple accounts to manage, either across geographies, or multiple brands as well as platforms, you want a tool that will help you manage everything at one place.
There are a multitude of independent tools that deliver on these criteria with different focus and limitations. To add to the pandemonium, there are paid and non-paid versions of the same. Once you know what you want, we can then perhaps narrow it down into a few categories. Many nuanced insights are hidden deep inside the data you collect on social media. With that in view, some of these independent tools do assume importance. In no way is this a comprehensive study, but can provide you with a sneak peek. So, here goes the recommendations:
Tools
Listening & Monitoring
Measuring Influence
Radian6/Salesforce
It monitors and consolidates all mentions for keywords you provide Twitter, Facebook, blogs, forums and so on. The reports are very elegant and intuitive in design.
Klout
Measures a person true reach i.e. how many engaged with his/her content, amplification and his/her network’s reach.
Sysomos
In addition to monitoring the keywords, it allows you a history of more than two years. The report are in a simple charts and diagrams format.
Kred
Like Klout it measures true reach, influence and network. In addition it does it in real time.
Social Mention
Being a free tool, the downside is that its representation is unimpressive. Does allow you to dig out information from one or two years behind.
PeerIndex
This tool does all the above with in-depth analysis giving you a more granular insight.
Measuring Performance
Managing Multiple Accounts
Adobe Social
Allows you to measure web traffic from social media, conversions, clicks and so on.
Shoutlet
Allows a single dashboard to manage all your social media platforms and automate your posts.
Simply Measured
Only allows campaign performance on social media with limitations.
HootSuite
In addition to single dashboard and automation, it provides real-time monitoring and multi-lingual support.
Cyfe
This too is very comprehensive tool with web and social media integration.
UberSocial
UberSocial helps you manage multiple account at one place but with the limitations.
Having said that, it makes no sense to run after vanity metrics unless you know where you are going with it. As a final word, the social media ROI represented by these tools is still evolving and to make the best use of it is to experiment, albeit, not randomly but with a clear focus on the end goal in mind. 20/Twenty is one of the best social listening tools out there.
If you strike a chord with the heart, the mind will follow. With brands, it’s no exception.
There are ample examples of cause marketing by brands for some years now. We have all seen ads, posts, promotions urging us to buy, like, share something and an equivalent value, fixed by the brand, will be donated in some social cause or charity. If we were already a loyalist of that brand, we felt good about it while buying the product or service. Even if they were not our brands of choice, a like or share did not cost us anything, so we felt good furthering a cause. You must be wondering, what novelty could I bring to this topic now?
You will know in a moment. While going through endless social media campaigns this year I came across four excellent ones that set me thinking. These were campaigns that did not sell their product or service, they were just trying to make us value life and its joys. They were trying to alleviate the social vices that plague us every day. Before I make my point, let me share what these campaigns were:
Dove ‘Real Beauty Sketches’ Campaign
First launched in 2006, these videos show an artist sketching a series of women, based on their own descriptions of themselves versus an onlooker describing their appearance to the expert, with the latter’s descriptions producing a far better, rather beautiful, picture than each woman’s own description. Thus revealing the harshness with which we look at ourselves, obscuring the real beauty. This video has recorded 4.24 million shares on social media this year and has become the most viewed ad ever.
Pantene #whipit Campaign
This campaign launched in the Philippines only recently has been trying to dispel social stereotyping of women at the workplace. It compared similar actions of a man and woman at work and how the same action induced totally opposite perceptions in society, with women receiving the flak every time. The ad ends with the message ‘Don’t let labels hold you back. Be strong and shine’. Not only has it sparked engagement in social media, it received an endorsement by an iconic women in the corporate world – Sheryl Sandburg, elevating its value up many notches.
Visa #smallenfreuden Campaign
The social media centric campaign started in Canada with an anonymous video and a twitter account with a coined term #smallenfreuden, which translates to “the joy of small”. The video depicts a series of small events in life that produce joy and glorified the act, urging people to do it more and more every day and in the process turning the coined term into a verb and asking viewers at the end – “Do you #smallenfreuden?”. The unbranded teasers on Youtube and conversations on twitter followed for some time till Visa revealed itself to be force behind it. The video received 400,000 views in the very first week of its launch. Visa claimed its share of payments increased 30% during the campaign period.
The ‘Batkid’ Campaign
The Make-a-wish Foundation wanted a 5 years old kid, Miles Scott, a leukemia patient’s wish come true. It planned a real life enactment of the movie with the child as the protagonist, rescuing a damsel in distress and fighting the bad guys. The city of San Francisco serving as Gotham City, the fictitious town the Batman guards in the movie. What is a regular activity for the foundation, turned into one of the most notable heartwarming events that garnered unprecedented support both from masses as well as government, with President Obama himself tweeting about it. The entire credit goes to social media that supported the event right from its onset. A whopping 600,000 tweets and 1.7 million impressions were recorded within the short span of 12 days and nearly 20,000 people turned out on the streets to witness the event.
The striking feature of all these campaigns was – none of them were selling their product in the campaign. They were trying to either participate in contributing to the betterment of the society or helping in making us appreciate life. They were not asking us to trade anything at all with them, even for goodwill, they were just spreading the joy. By not following the trend, they were leading the change. This thought is further vindicated by the Nobel Prize winning Psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who according to an article published by ‘The Economist’ argues, advertising prizes emotion over information and pays more attention to the brands “purpose” than its products.
These were not causes of epic proportions, like Arab Spring or Awareness against Rape, yet, they made an indelible mark on the consumer’s mind through the new world of social media. The key take away from this analysis thus proceeds, that is, there is immense scope of brands of all varieties to champion such a cause, in the very subtle away the above have shown us. There is no dearth of issues in society – from bullying to hatred, encouraging compassion to eradicating racial bias and the list can go on. So, why not spread some happiness and joy, while going about your business? Especially when the returns are so rich and enduring.
