Q and A: How can I use Pinterest for Business?

QuestionHi Kalena

I am the online marketing manager for a medium sized toy retailer. We have brick and mortar stores but also allow people to purchase online from our toy catalog. Increasingly, our web sales are outperforming our offline sales, and we are trying to grow this side of the business.

One of our staff here is a big user of Pinterest for her crafting hobby and she said we should be using the site to promote our company and products.

Can you please advise if this is a good idea and if so, suggest ways we could get started using Pinterest for business?

Thanks in advance,

Liam

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Hi Liam

Your staff member is right. Despite being initially hyped as a site for hobby bloggers, Pinterest has exploded into the online marketing space since its astounding popularity and skyrocketing user numbers were revealed.

According to Mashable, customers who find a product via Pinterest are more likely to purchase it than those who find the product via other social networks. Although over 80 percent of Pinterest users are currently women, I imagine that would be a good match for your target market, given women are traditionally the gift purchasers of the household. You might also want to look at the more detailed lifestyle demographics of Pinterest users.

In terms of how to use Pinterest for business marketing, initially, I would talk to your staff member about how she uses Pinterest and how she thinks it could be used to promote your products. I’m not sure how long she has worked at your company or in what department, but if she has familarity with your products and understands your target market, she will probably have some good ideas already.

If you need more inspiration, there is a free eBook on how to use Pinterest for business. Plus here are some related articles that should tweak your imagination:

5 Creative Ways to Use Pinterest for Business

Boost Your Business With Pinterest

Why You Should Be on Pinterest

Honda’s Pinterest Debut

Hope this helps!

Kalena

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Search Industry Job of the Week – SEM Account Manager

Job Title: SEM Account Manager
Position Type: full time
Name of employer: Supermedia
Location: Dallas/Fortworth Airport, TX, US
Date Posted: 15 June 2012
Position description:

  • Optimization of accounts to meet internal objectives and advertiser’s specific metrics.
  • Setup, implementation, and development of PPC campaigns including, copywriting and detailed content collection.
  • Responsible for paid search program success through bidding strategies and effective key word management on pay-per-click search engines; manages positioning to meet ROI targets within budgetary constraints.
  • Continually optimize pay-per-click campaigns in Google, Yahoo!Search & MSN and other search engine marketing platforms.
  • Growth and Retention of assigned accounts.
  • Provides detailed analysis of key metrics and program tracking techniques in order to identify, recommend and implement program changes to increase overall search performance.
  • Manage campaigns using web reporting and bid management tools.
  • Research and analyze the on-line marketplace to determine the optimal strategy.
  • Act as subject matter expert for analytics tools, provide SEM education to business unit and other internal departments.
  • Follow all trained processes on account management procedures and documentation.
  • Presale support to prove value of advertising products and services. Sales support will include both clients facing as well as teleconference. Preparation of advertiser proposal recommendation maybe requested as well.

Requirements

  • Ability to travel 10% or greater.
  • Requires greater than 3 – 5 years of directly related job experience in a fast paced high growth environment.
  • Strong interpersonal skills including client facing; ability to communicate and persuade at all management levels and thrive in a cross-functional environment.
  • Superb verbal and written communication skills.
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Supermedia is an equal opportunity employer.

Salary range: Competitive
Closing date: Unknown
More info from: Jobs Supermedia
Contact: Send resumes via online form: Apply Now

for more search industry job vacancies, or to post a vacancy, visit Search Engine College Jobs Board.

Facebook Logout Ad Placement

It seems the Facebook premium ad placement on logout has finally reached New Zealand.

After logging out of Facebook earlier today, I was shown a full page ad for Harvey Norman (see below). I have never seen an ad on logout before, even though the service has apparently been in testing since February.

 

Hat tip to Matt Burgess for demystifying the ad format for me. Apparently the service is VERY pricey, but if any NZ company can afford it, it’s *Hardly Normal*. So now I need to put up with their annoying Facebook ads AND their extremly shouty tv commercials.

Oh goody.

 

Search Industry Job of the Week – SEO Strategist

Job Title: SEO Strategist
Position Type: full time
Name of employer: Morpheus Media
Location: New York, NY
Date Posted: 4 June 2012
Position description:

Department: SEO and Emerging Technologies
Reports to: Senior SEO Strategist
Oversees: Associate SEO Strategist

Role Responsibilities:

  • Maintain client strategy document
  • Compose and send client status emails and notes and manage client communication
  • Delivery of phone and in-person presentations of material direct to client
  • Assist in team project management and oversight of associate deliverables and reporting production
  • Assist in creation of long/short term strategy and deliverable ideas for clients
  • Review of associate reporting and deliverables and effectively train associates and/or interns
  • Attend all team meetings, actively contribute and share findings within the agency

Desired Skills & Experience

Role Abilities:

  • Demonstrates basic professionalism and ability to speak and write clearly and persuasively
  • Conduct Client/Phone and team training presentations
  • Ability to maintain strong client communication and  take and apply all forms of constructive criticism
  • Strong organizational skills and detailed orientation
  • Adaptable to change and ability to multi-task
  • Ability to successfully manage personal workflow and to achieve on time delivery of projects and reports
  • Demonstration of resourcefulness and the initiative to participate in advanced projects
  • Ability to work autonomously, demonstrate self-started qualities, research SEO issues and formulate solutions
  • Demonstrate SEO leadership by continuing to learn/gather information about SEO
  • Become an expert in a sub-category of SEO
  • Proactively taking on responsibilities, client deliverables, and exploring the digital space (blogs, webinars, etc)
  • Ability to draw critical analysis from data, to fulfill set strategy by creating deliverables, and make specific recommendations
  • Understanding of higher level SEO concepts, such as link building strategies and tactics
  • Including IA structure, on site elements, sitemaps, redirects, crawlability, URLs,
  • Visual recognition of HTML/CSS source code
  • Understanding of goal funnel, traffic conversion, search engine functionality and algorithms
  • Understandingof the components of back end systems – ie CMS
  • Ability to understand and make content optimization techniques for SEO
  • Competency with basic keyword research tools
  • Basic awareness of SEO industry and digital marketing
  • Working knowledge of front end code tagging hierarchy, third party reporting, and analytics platforms
  • Working knowledge of Google Webmaster Tools and secondary search verticals
  • Advanced computer skills (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)

MUST BE AUTHORIZED TO WORK IN THE US.

Address: 127 w. 26th Street, New York, NY, US

Salary range: Competitive
Closing date: Unknown
More info: Morpheus Media Employment
Contact: Send resumes via online form: Apply Now

For more search industry job vacancies, or to post a vacancy, visit Search Engine College Jobs Board.

SMX Sydney 2012 – Christine Churchill – Advanced Keyword Modeling

This is a summary of Christine Churchill’s presentation at Search Marketing Expo / Online Marketer Conference held in Sydney 1-2 May 2012. Christine Churchill SMX Sydney

Christine Churchill is the President and CEO of KeyRelevance.com, a full service online marketing company that specializes in helping businesses succeed on the web.

Christine starts by saying we need to understand the user intent with searches and where they are in the buying cycle.

Too many webmasters get the on-page SEO keywords right, but they don’t match content with searcher intent.

Keywords can indicate *exactly* where the consumer is in the buying cycle.

Christine recommends reading A Taxonomy of Web Search – a paper by Andrei Broder.

A lot of people still type in navigational queries into Google – using it as a browser e.g. CNN, Disney. Also typing informational searches eg, “How do I…”

Google rewards content that delivers the intent of original search. Searcher intent is key. Therefore, you should design your page to support the query type. Ideally, there should be no ads on an informational page.

Transactional searches should lead to a ecommerce or transactional page e.g. download, sign up, purchase etc.

 

Recommended Tools for Keyword Research

Google Keyword Toolbox is an obvious place to start. Another rarely used option is to put a URL into the Google Keywords Tool (as opposed to a keyword), to see related keywords for a particular site. Great source of potentially overlooked keywords.

Yahoo Clues offers a great source for keyword research and searcher demographic by region.

Google Contextual Targeting Tool (accessible via adwords) is like a digital version of the now defunct Wonder Wheel. It’s a free tool and builds a themed keyword list.

Google Trends shows US search trends in real time and related content themes growing in popularity.

DoubleClick Ad Planner is a great for competitive research.

Google Insights for Search is excellent for search term trends – future or past.

Google Instant makes a great keyword research tool as well. Don’t overlook Google’s predictive search for research purposes. It gives you great content ideas based on popular topics. But remember that Google Instant shows different results if used in Google Shopping Search.

Ubersuggest will give you alphabetical keyword suggestions.

Twitter Search is ideal for real time keyword trends.

YouTube Keyword Tool can give you additional ideas, particularly for promoting multimedia content.

YouTube Suggest is basically the same as Google Instant, but for YouTube searches. Search on YouTube for an initial keyword and notice the drop down auto-complete search suggestions to get keywords and ideas for popular video content.

 

Recommended Tools for Competitive Intelligence

Searchmetrics provides detailed competitor keyword information for paid, organic and universal search.

SEMRush provides competitor intelligence data for PPC bids, search rankings and more.

Spyfu enables you to see current and previous bids for PPC keywords, even ad content and historic performance.

SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool allows you to compare two keyword phrases to decide best one. Also shows you the link competition you might face to target particular keywords.

When trying to cope with the loss of referrer data in your analytics (the dreaded *not provided* stats) – look at Google Keywords tool for missing queries to see those from persons not logged in to a Google account when searching. Look at Bing and other engines as well to fill in the blanks. Use PPC tests to get a guide from impressions and infer that missing data from your analytics by looking at referrer keywords and phrases.

When you’ve found your sweet spot keyword list, use those keywords in ALL your digital data, not just web pages. That should include podcasts, videos, tweets, infographics and so on.

 

Geographical Keyword Research

Use region-specific keyword research tools where available. Use Excel to power your keyword research strategy, it’s a much overlooked tool. Watch that the Google keyword tool is accurate for your region. Perhaps subsidise this data with local research and impression data from your locally targeted Google AdWords campaign.