A Plethora of Pinterest Tools for Businesses

Pinterest is driving traffic to websites. 
According to a recent report for the first quarter of 2013 published by Monetate in its latest E-commerce Quarterly, 55.18% of site traffic from social networks came from Facebook, down from 62.45% the previous quarter, while Pinterest accounted for 24.96%, up from 17.51%. The remaining traffic came from Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks. 

Brands can no longer afford to ignore Pinterest.
According to Monetate, shoppers visiting e-commerce sites from Pinterest had the highest average order value, spending $80.54 per order, compared to $71.26 for Facebook and $70.17 for Twitter. A study by RichRelevance reports an average order of $169 from Pinterest traffic, compared to $95 for Facebook and $71 for Twitter. Whichever study is more accurate, the one thing that appears to be clear is that Brands, especially e-commerce brands, can no longer afford to ignore Pinterest as part of their online marketing efforts.

Tools for Managing, Advertising, Marketing & Measuring:

No matter what your budget, there are tools available to help you manage, create, improve or simplify pinning and sharing content on Pinterest. I have compiled a list of the current tools available and intend to review this list periodically, keeping it up-to-date. I also created a list on Listly that includes many of these tools. I am not recommending one over another, I am merely providing links and a brief description of each so that businesses and marketers are aware of everything currently available before making a decision.

If you are aware of a tool that should be added to this list, or if you find that one is no longer available, please let me know in the comments below. Get more tips by following me on Pinterest at http://pinterest.com/chrisdegraff/.

Ahalogy
Formerly Pingage, Ahalogy recently announced a pin-based platform called Content Network. Content creators who have opted-in to the network are given complimentary access to Ahalogy's image editing and pin scheduling tools in exchange for allowing paying Content Network customers to source the pins for repinning on their own boards in a pay for performance model.

Curalate
A marketing and analytics suite for Pinterest and Instagram. Curalate's scheduler feature enables brands to schedule pins and batch them into campaigns. Curalate also offers detailed analytics for marketers, monitoring and consumer engagement tools and promotions that can "live anywhere and everywhere" including your website, blogs and Facebook. A free demo is available to potential clients with a decent sized marketing budget.

GoPixel
Formerly known as Pinster, GoPixel offers powerful automated scheduling to help you spread out your pins evenly throughout the day. You can measure and monitor interactions and website referrals using their analytics tool that also integrates with Google Analytics. There is also an insights tool that provides recommendations for the best time and content to pin based on your data. The free version allows you to schedule 3 pins per day for 1 Pinterest account. Basic, premium and custom versions are also available.

HelloSociety
Formerly known as Pinpuff, HelloSociety is a premier Pinterest marketing and technology platform with a suite of tools, an exclusive influencer network, leading brand partnerships and powerful analytics. Contact HelloSociety for a price quote.

Octopin
Claiming to be the most advanced Pinterest marketing suite, Octopin features a scheduling tool, a campaign manager, and measurement tools that help you identify top influencers and track competitors. With Hyatt, Volkswagen and IKEA as current customers, Octopin is targeted to larger companies. Contact Octopin for a price quote.

Pinbooster 
For advertisers looking for a pay-per-click model, Pinbooster is a platform to connect advertisers to pinners who are willing to post your pin for profit. You only pay for the originating pin, so repins, likes and comments are "free press." When a pin goes through Pinbooster, it is automatically tags to indicate that it is an advertisement so it is in compliance with FTC regulations. Contact Pinbooster for pricing.

PinLeague
There is a free starter version of PinLeague, but it seems to be pretty limited. Starting at $29/mo, the lite version allows for 1 Pinterest account, tracking for 2 competitors, basic profile and domain trends and tools to optimize your pins and engage your audience. The professional and enterprise versions enable you to track virtually everything and is used by brands such as Nike, Microsoft and Target.

Pinterest Web Analytics
Businesses can access basic metrics including impressions and reach and is included free with your Pinterest account. You can use this to tailor your website and Pinterest boards by understanding which pins get the most repins and what else people pin alongside your pins.

Pinterest Web Analytics Walkthrough from Pinterest on Vimeo.

Pinterest Widget Builder
The Pinterest Widget builder can help you create free buttons and widgets to add to your website or mobile app. Pinterest's newest tool allows you to create "Rich Pins" and apply to get them on Pinterest. The types of Rich Pins currently available include:

• Product pins include real time pricing, availability and information about where to buy;
• Recipe pins include ingredients, cooking times and serving info; and
• Movie pins include ratings, cast members and reviews.

Piqora
Piquora (formerly Pinfluencer) is a tool for advertisers and provides the ability to customize, deploy and track contests, sweepstakes and promotions on Pinterest. Future plans for Piqora include a Social CRM (currently available for Instagram and Tumblr) to help brands identify and act on purchase intent. Contact Piquora for pricing information.

Reachli
Using Reachli (formerly Pinerly), you can create posts and publish to your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr accounts at the same time from one place. The free version allows you to connect four accounts, includes a link shortener and offers tracking including the number of clicks, likes, reshares and reach per social site. If you want to reach a wider audience, Reachli has a pay-per-click option and your campaign can be pushed out to publishers' blogs, websites and social sites.

ViralHeat
Social media management for various platforms; however, Pinterest is only included in the premier and enterprise versions. The premier version is $99.99/mo but only supports monitoring for Pinterest at this time.

Viraltag
The $12/mo basic account on Viraltag (formerly PinGraphy) allows you to schedule 100 pins per month and includes a free trial. The $28/mo premium version does not limit the number of pins that can be scheduled, provides access to analytics and gives you the ability to add up to 5 accounts. This is probably one of the best options for small businesses on a tight budget.

Free Search, Discovery & Other Cool Tools for Pinterest:

Hipstamatic, pixlr and Tweegram
Free apps that can add some "fancy stuff" to your images.

PicMonkey
Quickly edit, filter and apply touch-ups to your photos with PicMonkey.

Pin Search
A Chrome extension that enables you to perform a Google Image Search on any picture on Pinterest.

PinAlerts 
PinAlerts (beta) is like Google Alerts for Pinterest and will notify you when someone pins something from your website.

Pinalytics
Search pins, boards and people on Pinterest to find, track and evaluate content and interactions using Pinalytics. (Note: This didn't seem to work very well for me, but you may have to create an account to get the full results.)

Pinstamatic 
"Share more" on Pinterest with Pinstamatic including your favorite music which can be played on your board if the user has a free Spotify account, clickable maps and the ability to add quotations and sticky notes on your boards.

Pinvolve
Using the free version of Pinvolve, you can post your Pinterest pins onto your Facebook profile or business page. The pro version allows you to automatically post your Pinterest pins to your Facebook business page and you can sync a specific board or all boards.

Postris
Formerly Repinly, Postris is a tool to help you find popular pins, boards and pinners on Pinterest for a given category.

Quozio
Type your own quote or highlight text anywhere on the web and easily convert it into an image to share on Pinterest.

ShareAsImage
Formerly Pin A Quote, ShareAsImage allows you to highlight text on the web to share as an image on Pinterest.

Snapito 
A free tool to capture and share a screenshot of a website

Url2pin.it
A free tool to capture and share a screenshot of a website.

WiseStamp
This tool allows you to add an elegant Pinterest link to your email signature. It offers free and premium level accounts.

Woobox
The free version of Woobox can be used to display your Pinterest boards and pins as a tab on your Facebook business page. 

Get OFF the Twitter #UnfollowTrain

Are you making it easy for people to unfollow you on Twitter? 

Did you know that Twitter accounts are sorted by various social media management tools according to a variety of criteria in an attempt to help users decide who to follow or unfollow? If your account is not up to par and is at the bottom of the list, you are likely showing up as "someone to consider unfollowing" on many of these tools.

Here are 10 common reasons why your Twitter account might be labeled "a great candidate to unfollow" by various social media management tools:

1. You are inactive.
2. You are "too quiet" or "too noisy." 
3. You do not have a profile photo or your profile is not complete.
4. You are not following people back.
5. You are not engaged or have a low engagement score.
6. You do not have very many followers. 
7. You have a low Trust Score or low Social Authority. 
8. You are following the wrong crowd (i.e. spammers, inactives, etc.).
9. Your follower-to-friend ratio is too low.
10. You are not adding value to your followers or the community.

If your account is falling into this category which I call the "Twitter Unfollow Train," you will most likely continue to be unfollowed at a higher than average rate, making it very difficult to grow your community.

SocialBro got me off the Twitter #UnfollowTrain and back on track!

I have tried many Twitter management tools and prefer SocialBro. Using SocialBro, I turned my Twitter #UnfollowTrain around, broke thru the 2001 barrier and got back on track!

Here are some suggestions for improving your performance on Twitter so you can get off and stay off the Twitter #UnfollowTrain and get back on track!

Social Media Addict? Take this Quiz to find out!

Give yourself a "plus one" for each of the statements that you can identify with.

"You may be a social media addict if you have ever tried to plus one or like an email." +Dirk Talamasca

You may be a social media addict if...

1. You realize in the middle of the night that there actually ARE people online and you suddenly have a lot of friends that live in other time zones.
2. Your Empire Avenue portfolio is doing awesome but your bank account is overdrawn.
3. You have ever tried to scroll through TV channels with the remote.
4. Your pocket often vibrates... even if your phone is on your desk.
5. You realize you are growing very fond of the people who give you the most +K.
6. You are the Mayor of a gas station.
7. You have circles for your Facebook and Twitter followers and Twitter lists for your Facebook and Google+ followers.
8. You have created a spreadsheet to track your network scores.
9. You have a XeeMe profile.
10. You belong to more than 25 Facebook groups.
11. When you plus 1'd #10, you weren't counting secret groups.
12. You type a + or an @ sign before you type someone's name, even during those rare moments when you are NOT using social media.
13. You have sent over 5,000 Tweets or have pinned more than 10,000 pins and you aren't even sure why...
14. You know what IFTTT is and you are a master at creating recipes.
15. You have photos ready to share for every #caturday for the rest of the summer.

"You may be a social media addict if you already have 45+ networks and you are looking for more." +Steven Krohn

"You may be a social media addict if you add the hashtag #birthday onto a birthday card." +Adrian Bold

"You may be a social media addict if you have ever played the bitly memory game."
+Christine DeGraff

In the comments below, please add to this list by filling out the rest of this sentence: 

You may be a social media addict if __________________________________________________. 

Thanks everyone! See you online!

The New MySpace :: How to Become a "Top Fan"

Become a Top Fan in Five Minutes or Less

I never used the "Old" MySpace, so I can't really compare, but I think the New MySpace is pretty cool. I have always been a music fan and I like the look and feel of it - and I am definitely into social media, so the ability to connect with people that like the same music as me is fun.

In a nutshell, people that are connected to you can see what artists, albums, photos, songs, etc. that you are connected to and can then connect as well. The New MySpace also has a "Top Fans" feature. Still in Beta, Top Fans are "people who have interacted the most with an artist and their content."

Being a "Top Fan" will eventually (supposedly) give you access to exclusive content from the artist (tickets? autographs?)... so imagine my excitement when I realized I was one of the Top 10 fans for Metallica - possibly my all time favorite band! I bet I started listening to their songs twice as much - and then I was #2.

As silly as it may seem for a 44 year old, I was very excited and proud of my "accomplishment"... 

Become a Top Fan of Your Favorite Artist (or any artist) on the New MySpace... in 3 steps and in less than 5 minutes

I checked my rank on some of my other favorites... and discovered that I was in the top of quite a few. I do tend to be a little OCD and listen to the same bands a lot, so I guess that isn't TOO surprising... but it did make me curious about just how easy it might be to become a top fan of other artists. To get to the point, I figured out (I believe I am the first, or at least the first to write about it) that actually playing or listening to the music has very little or nothing to do with how a "Top Fan" is calculated on the New MySpace.

I am writing this in order to tell others how they can get to the top of the Top Fans list for their favorite artist in the hopes that once the "secret" is out, it will get corrected so we can truly see an artists' Top Fans, rather than who is good at the social media game. Think about it - as soon as there are rewards involved, it will just become another social media numbers game of who can connect the fastest.

The 3 Keys of Online Marketing :: Acquisition

Acquisition, Conversion, Retention

In my previous post in this series "The 3 Keys of Online Marketing," I talked about the importance of correcting any conversion problems you might be having before wasting time trying to acquire new or more traffic. Assuming you have done so and are ready to continue, let's talk about "acquisition."

Acquisition: Driving or acquiring traffic to your website.

Traffic to your website is basically going to come from 3 major sources:

Search—Google, Bing, Yahoo, MSN and others provide an excellent source of traffic for many websites. This type of traffic will be either be free ("Organic") or paid ("PPC"). Getting highly ranked in the organic search engine results pages ("SERP") depends upon whether or not your "score well" in the search engines' algorithms, which attempt to determine whether or not your content is relevant to the user's search query.

Referring Sites—When someone visits your site by clicking a link or banner ad from another site or by clicking a link in an email*, this is known as a "referring site." Building links from quality referring sites can also improve SERP as many search engines use this as one of the ways to measure the importance of your site ("PageRank").

*Direct—These are the visitors who are demonstrating brand awareness by typing your website address into their browser... but direct traffic can also be any traffic that is not recognized as coming from search or from a referring site.