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Your Daily Dose of Pinterest Part IV – Businesses Leading the Way

March 27, 2012 in pinteres e-book, pinterest, pinterest marketing, pinterest pdf, social media marketing

It hasn’t taken long for businesses to find interesting and innovative ways to make use of Pinterest for marketing. Businesses of all shapes and sizes: B2B, B2C, service-based, retail…you name an industry, you can bet there’s an example on Pinterest. Sometimes all it takes to spark an idea is an inspiring example. So to get the gears turning, here are a few examples of companies getting creative with Pinterest.

Restaurants

The chain restaurant, Panera Bread has established itself on Pinterest with a wide array of boards dedicated to different menu items, recipes, kitchen tips, seasonal offerings, and their involvement in the community. Panera’s image portrays a business focused on health and well-being, so they have a board dedicated to inspirational quotes called “Make Today Better” and one called “Everyday Oasis,” with pins of peaceful and calming spots to enjoy coffee and relax.

Ideas for Restaurants

Seasonal foods
Recipes
Menu items
Products for the kitchen
Kitchen tips
Community involvement

Health and Wellness

Anytime Fitness is a gym franchise that uses Pinterest for more than just sharing workout ideas. They have boards dedicated to health food, health blogs, inspirational quotes, and success stories. With a gym, not only can you promote the activity of exercising, but also the whole “fit lifestyle” that goes along with it.

Ideas for Health and Wellness Businesses

Workout routines
Yoga poses
Healthy recipes
Inspirational quotes
Before and after shots
Workout apparel

Automotive

There is so much room for creativity for the auto industry on Pinterest. Volkswagen is just getting started on Pinterest and has populated a few boards on their profile. Volkswagen has created boards to show off their vehicle models, participation in auto shows, and fan photos, featuring pictures of their happy customers with their VW.

Many people choose a vehicle based on lifestyle preferences and what stage they are at in life. Going forward, VW could break up their boards into categories based on the target driver for each car. For example, they could create a board with vehicle options for moms and a board filled with vehicles for new drivers. They could also branch out to include boards showing the type of lifestyle VW owners lead.

Ideas for Auto Dealers

Display vehicles
Lifestyle
Consumer boards
Going places
Clever commercials

Action Summary

Sometimes examples are all you need to jump start a good brain storming session. For more examples of different industries making use of Pinterest for marketing, download our e-book, All Aboard the Pinterest Train – Your Express Track to Powerful Marketing on Pinterest. The book is loaded with examples of businesses on Pinterest.

Download

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by Dana VanDen Heuvel

Your Daily Dose of Pinterest Part III – Pinterest Tips & Tricks

March 26, 2012 in pinteres e-book, pinterest, pinterest marketing, pinterest pdf, social media marketing

Ready to become a Pinterest Power User?! If you’ve got the basic functionality of Pinterest down, then you’re ready to move on to some more advanced operations. These tips and tricks separate the leisure Pinners from the pros; the consumer Pinners from the cut-throat marketers. Employ some of these techniques on Pinterest to foster a more rich user experience and implement a more effective marketing tool.

Pinterest Contests

Contests are always great for getting your followers involved and for attracting new followers on the social networks. As with any contest held on a social network, it’s important to consult Pinterest’s contest rules and terms of use.

Pin it to Win it

There are a couple of different ways to hold contests on Pinterest. One of our favorites is the “Pin it to Win it” contest put on by children’s furniture and decor retailer, Rosenberry Rooms. Contestants have to create a pinboard containing their dream kid’s room or nursery using Rosenberry Rooms’ products. The winners receive products from their boards. This contest is brilliant because it not only gets followers to interact with Rosenberry Rooms on Pinterest, but it also gives people a reason to spend lots of time looking at their products and sharing their products with friends.

Drive E-Commerce Sales

Although there is not an e-commerce component built in to Pinterest, there are some tricks to help facilitate the transition from the network to your website. If used correctly, Pinterest can basically act as your virtual store front. Pinterest allows you to display items by category, shed light on new product lines, and even price items.

Price Your Products

Make it known that your pins represent products that are for sale by including the price of the item in the description of the pin. Anytime there is a dollar sign in the pin description, the pin is flagged with a price tag and automatically gets categorized in the “Gifts” section of Pinterest.

Unique Uses for Pinterest

Consider your customer base and the things they like. Think about the people that make up your business and the type of culture your business embodies. Create boards that speak to your target market and display the kind of brand you’re working to build.

Show Company Culture

Businesses that don’t have a tangible product or service to pin definitely want to pay attention to this one. You can use Pinterest to give followers an inside look into your company and give your business a persona. If your company exudes a certain lifestyle or culture, create boards that reflect that.

Electronic Portfolio

For designers, artists, and stylists, Pinterest is a dream come true. It’s a great way to showcase your work and promote your business. For example, ThreeOwl Photography has created a board for each type of photography package they provide, including senior portraits, landscape photography, and kids pictures. It gives people a feel for their style of photography and makes it easy for people to share their work with their followers.

Interact

The beauty of social media marketing is that it allows you to actually interact with your fans. It allows you to get your message across without irritating the consumer. Consumers actually want to see what you’re up to on Facebook and it’s fun for them to contribute to your boards on Pinterest. As a marketer, you should embrace this unique opportunity to interact with
your customer base and encourage participation any way possible.

Follower Boards

Creating specific boards that followers can contribute to is a great way to encourage followers
to interact with you. Pinterest allows you to grant any follower the ability to pin to your boards. For example, Drake University has a board called, “Pin Your Pride,” which allows alumni to pin pictures of themselves wearing their school apparel. Any business could follow this concept and encourage followers to pin pictures of themselves using their favorite product of yours to the board.

Action Summary

For more great tips and tricks to help you become a Pinterest power user, download our e-book, All Aboard the Pinterest Train – Your Express Track to Powerful Marketing on Pinterest. The book is chuck full of great technical tips to help you get the most out of Pinterest.

Download

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by Dana VanDen Heuvel

Your Daily Dose of Pinterest Part II – How to Use Pinterest for Marketing

March 22, 2012 in E-book, pinterest, social media marketing

Pinterest is obviously a hit with consumers and it seems to provide significant value to its users, but what does this have to do with marketing your business? Like most of the social networks out there, Pinterest was not created with marketing in mind. But where there’s a captive audience, you can bet there’s an eager marketer just around the corner finding a way to take center stage.

The Benefits of Pinterest

There are tons of benefits to incorporating Pinterest into your marketing strategy, but here’s a list of a few of the big ones:

Link-building to your website
Viral marketing
Market research
Create a brand image
Share company culture
Connect with your customers

Pinterest for the Service-Based Business

For many businesses the value of such a social network is obvious and the possibilities are endless. For other businesses, it may not be inherently clear how to best siphon the value out of Pinterest. For example, what if your business doesn’t sell a physical product to feature on your pin boards? How could professional service-based companies benefit from this highly visual social network? Well that’s where your creativity comes into play.

Let’s take a look at Taylor&Taylor Law Firm, for an example. They’ve created a few boards dedicated to law-related stuff, but most of the boards are more light-hearted and fun in nature. Chances are, if Taylor&Taylor Law created tons of law-related boards, they wouldn’t have a very receptive audience, besides maybe some other lawyers. However, the non-business related boards show their company culture and give followers an incentive to stick around. You’ll attract followers based on name brand recognition, but you’ll retain followers based on the entertainment value you provide with your boards.

Let’s Get Started

Request an Invite

Getting started on Pinterest is relatively simple. Since the network is still in beta, you must first request an invitation from Pinterest. You should receive an email with an invitation a few days after you place your request. Or if you know someone on Pinterest, ask them to send you an invite.

Set up Your Profile

Fill in your profile as completely as you can, using a clear image of your logo and a clever spiel about your business.

Add the Buttons

There are two Pinterest buttons to incorporate into your website or blog; the “Follow Me on Pinterest” button and the “Pin It” button. Incorporating the buttons into your website is simply a matter of copying and pasting a couple of lines of code into your website’s content management system. The HTML code for these buttons is provided by Pinterest.

Create Your Boards

Now it’s time for the fun part! Before you go and spread the word about your new Pinterest profile, make sure your boards are populated with lots of pins. Pick a few categories to focus on and as you have more time you can always expand. Create a few boards dedicated to business-specific content and then get creative with the rest.

Promote

Pinterest is inherently viral in nature, meaning if you pin something that people really like, it won’t take long for that pin to gain a lot of exposure. That being said, having a lot of followers ensures that your pins spread like wild fire. Gaining followers on Pinterest is much like gaining fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter. It takes time and requires your active participation.

Action Summary

For more information on how Pinterest can supplement your social media marketing campaign, download our e-book, All Aboard the Pinterest Train – Your Express Track to Powerful Marketing on Pinterest. The book gives even more thorough instructions for setting up your profile and features more ways to use Pinterest for marketing.

Download

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by Dana VanDen Heuvel

Your Daily Dose of Pinterest Part I – Introduction

March 20, 2012 in pinteres e-book, pinterest, pinterest marketing, pinterest pdf, social media marketing

Have you succumbed to the Pinterest Craze yet? If not, you’re soon to be in the minority. New subscribers are piling up by the millions, and users are spending an astronomical amount of time on the site. A recent stat showed that Pinterest generates more monthly usage than Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ combined! For anyone who’s spent any time on the site, you know how easily an hour can slip by without even realizing it.

Usage Stats

Twitter: 36 minutes/month
LinkedIn: 17 minutes/month
Google+: 6 minutes/month
Pinterest: 1 hour 17 minutes/month
97% of Pinterest users are women
Pinterest’s unique visitors increased by 429% in Q4 2011
Pinterest accounts for 3.6% of referral traffic to other websites

Pinterest Defined

For those of you who haven’t yet had a chance to explore Pinterest, let’s rewind and start from the beginning. In the words of its maker, “Pinterest is a virtual pin board that lets you organize and share the beautiful things you find on the web.”

Imagine you are browsing the web for a new recipe to try for dinner tonight. In the process, you come across all kinds of intriguing recipes. Of course you can only choose one to make tonight, so you “pin” all of the recipes to your “recipes” pin board on Pinterest, and revisit them when you’re ready. It’s a fun way to organize ideas and share them with your friends.

How it Works

Pinterest is like a virtual magazine full of all kinds of images and videos. When a Pinterest user sees something they like and want to save, they can “pin” it to one of their own pinboards. Users can create as many pinboards as they can think of categories. Each pinned image or video links back to the original website from which it was taken so users can easily get back to the source if necessary. The social aspect of Pinterest comes into play when you start following people and sharing your pins with your friends.

There are two ways to pin items to your board:

Repin something that someone else has already pinned
Install the “Pin It” button on your web browser and Pin images you find on the Internet

Repin

Your Pinterest home screen has a feed that displays pins from people in your network. You can also view other people’s boards, just as you might view someone’s Facebook profile or Page. Each pin gives you the option to comment on it, like it, or repin it. When you find a pin on your friend’s board that you want to pin to your own board, click “repin” to pin the image to your own board.

Repin2 Your Daily Dose of Pinterest Part I Introduction

Select which board you'd like to pin it to and write a brief description

Pin It Button

When you create your Pinterest account, one of the first things you should do is add the “Pin It” button to the bookmarks bar in your web browser. Pinterest does a great job explaining how to do this on their website. Once you have the button installed, you can pin anything you find on the web that has an image associated with it.

When you find something, say a recipe, you want to pin, click on the “Pin It” button that you installed in your web browser.

Pinthis2 Your Daily Dose of Pinterest Part I Introduction

If there are multiple pinable items on the page, you will be asked to select which item you meant to pin.

Pinthis Your Daily Dose of Pinterest Part I Introduction

Make your selection

Make your selection and provide a brief description of what it is you are pinning and choose which board you want to pin the item to.

Action Summary

Have we piqued your interest? Are the ideas coming fast and furious? If you haven’t had a chance to check out Pinterest for yourself, go ahead and check it out. Spend a few minutes browsing the site to get a feel for the layout and how people are using it.

And most importantly, download our e-book, All Aboard the Pinterest Train – Your Express Track to Powerful Marketing on Pinterest. The book is a great resource for getting started, learning insider tips and tricks, and gathering tons of great examples.

Download

Your Daily Dose of Pinterest Part I Introduction

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by Dana VanDen Heuvel

Social Media No Longer Optional in Career Search

March 15, 2012 in blog, career search, facebook, Job Hunt, linkedin, Marketing, personal branding, social networking, Twitter

Image via @Mashable

In the world of marketing, it is common practice to market in the places where your customers will most likely be found. It seems very intuitive for even that non-marketer that marketing a sports jersey on a sports website is just sound business. As a job seeker, you need to apply that same intuitive approach. Only this time, the stakes are higher. You’re the product and it’s your personal brand that you’re marketing to the customer, which is the employer seeking out your unique talents and value.

Years ago, you might get a call from a sourcing specialist hired by the company to “find the right candidates,” however, that model has changed. Now, these companies are all using sites like LinkedIn.com and social media to tap into the vast pool of active and passive candidates themselves. And guess what, if you’re not swimming in that same pool, you’re all but out of the race.

Getting Started: Your Personal Brand Online

Have you Googled yourself lately? What comes up? The first and most important part of using social media for career advancement is to have a complete profile on the social media sites that you intend to use. Whether it’s LinkedIn or your personal blog, you need to spend some time ensuring that your personal brand (who you are, why you’re the best, etc) is well laid out and consistent across the various digital outposts.

Think of LinkedIn as more than just an online resume. Your profile should really tell the story of who you are and why you’re a great candidate.

Social Networking: Making the Connections

Just setting up a profile will not get you the opportunity you want. Connecting with the right people will. Use the social media tools to find local influencers, decision makers, and people with whom you’d like to meet. Use social media to connect with at least a few new people each week and schedule an opportunity to sit down with one of them each week. You’d be surprised how many people simply love to help others.

Following Through: Going Beyond Online

Online social networking is a great tool, but it’s just that, a tool. If your personal brand is undeveloped and your networking skills are rusty, no amount of technical wizardry is going to do the heavy lifting for you. Nothing can replace good face time with other human beings. Here are a few tips to ensure success in blending your offline and online networking.

Seek out opportunities to meet members of your network in person at LinkedIn events like Link Greater Green Bay, local Tweetups, social media breakfasts and other networking events.
Contribute useful content to a blog or answer questions on the LinkedIn Q&A area in between your job search outreach to help those in your network and showcase your expertise
Make daily and weekly goals for networking. Make it a point to connect with someone who can connect you with at least one person in each of the companies that you’d most like to work

Think like the CEO of You, Inc.

We’re in an era where many candidates are seen as wonderful people with adequate skills. If that’s you, what really differentiates you from the rest? If you’re in full-time job search mode, your job is to be CEO of You, Inc. and to market yourself in every way possible. Always be working “on the business of you” to improve what you know, who you know, how you work and how you’re perceived. Taking command of your own brand is the first step to securing your ideal career opportunity.

There are so many ways to use social media in a job search, but if you start with a solid personal brand, use a few of the right tools and follow a sound strategy, you’ll find that perfect position and make some great friends and new connections along the way.

Social Media No Longer Optional in Career Search

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by Dana VanDen Heuvel

6 Tips for Handling Negative Comments Like a Pro

February 20, 2012 in negative comments, reputation management, Twitter

One of the biggest challenges in social media marketing is giving up complete control of your message. When you create a Facebook page or Twitter account, you expose your company to the opinions of the general public. Pretty much anything goes. But the truth is, even if your company chooses not to participate in social media, you’re still at risk of being talked about in an unflattering light on the Internet. By participating and creating a social presence, you can more effectively monitor and react to any negative comments being written about you.

The worst way to respond to negative comments is to ignore them and hope no one notices. An unanswered negative comment makes you look irresponsible and leads other followers to believe that the comment is true, even if it isn’t. It’s best to analyze the comment and determine your response from there. Of course you can never be prepared for everything people say, but here are a few tips for reacting in a professional and responsible way to negative comments online.

1. Apologize

After all, the customer is always right. Although this can be tough to do (especially if the comment is particularly surly in demeanor), by doing so you show that you are a responsible and respectful adult. If the comment in question truly brings up a valid fault of your company, it’s best to own up to it and respond with a genuine apology. Offer your suggestion to amend the situation that warranted the comment in the first place.

2. Make it Right

Sometimes, a simple “I’m sorry” is not quite enough in the wronged customer’s eyes. They want restitution for the trouble your error has caused them. Try to come up with a gift that matches the severity of the blunder and offer it up to the offended customer. I would suggest extending this proverbial olive branch in private. If word gets out that you bend over backwards for customers who complain, this will just spur a cycle of social media drama. People could start taking advantage of your generosity, and make up ficticious complaints about you, just to score freebies.

3. Set the Record Straight

You may come to find that some negative comments are just downright false. This could be the result of a misinformed fan or someone trying to spread harmful lies about your company. My advice: Assume ignorance. When you assume the commenter simply didn’t know any better, you are more likely to respond in a polite, informative manner. Plus, if this is something that other people are confused about as well, it gives you a chance to clear things up in front of your social media audience.

4. Embrace It

If you determine that the comment was intended to stir up controversy, use it as an opportunity to start a discussion. Chance are, your loyal supporters will see the conversation unfold and jump in on your side. Comments made by your supportive fans serve as informal reviews of your company as they deffend the quality of your product or service.

5. Agree to Disagree

If you’re known for taking a stance on a certain topic, you’re bound to draw comments from people who disagree with you. It’s not your place to try and convince everyone on the Internet to see things your way. Address comments that challenge your point of view with an open mind. Try to see where the challenger is coming from, but in the end, you may just have to agree to disagree on the issue.

6. Watch out for Trolls!

Some negative comments may be completely unwarrented and irrelevant to your company. These comments fall into the “spam” category. People who make negative comments on social networks just for the sake of gaining exposure or drawing negative attention to a company are called trollers. There really isn’t any good that can come of these comments. If the comment is posted on your Facebook wall, as administrator of the page you have the power to delete the post.

In my experience, negative comments are few and far between. When you encounter a negative comment, take a few moments to think about your response before you take action. Figure out a way to turn a negative comment into a positive situation for your company.

6 Tips for Handling Negative Comments Like a Pro

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by Dana VanDen Heuvel

6 Tips for Generating Leads on LinkedIn

February 17, 2012 in Business, linkedin, sales, sales social media, Social network

Of all the social networks you could use for marketing, LinkedIn is the most inherently business-oriented. What I mean by that is, it’s features are clearly meant for business development, it tends to attract the ideal target audience for many businesses, and its sole purpose revolves around networking for business professionals. If you haven’t found a place in your social media marketing strategy for LinkedIn yet, the time has come to bite the bullet and get on board. Here are 6 ways to leverage LinkedIn to generate leads.

1. Re-Purpose Content

LinkedIn is the perfect stage from which to project your expertise and claim your status as a thought leader in your industry. You can do this by sharing valuable content with your LinkedIn connections. If the thought of coming up with even more content makes you light-headed, take a few deep breaths and relax, because there’s no rule that says you have to come up with original content to share on all of your social networks. For example, you can share little tidbits from your latest blog post, with a link to the article for further reading. The act of content sharing is a subtle, yet effective way to reach out to prospects.

LinkedIn Apps

LinkedIn also offers a number of different applications that allow you to embelish your profile. For example, there’s a WordPress app that allows you to sync your blog with your LinkedIn profile, so that any time you publish a new post, the entire blog post gets posted to your LinkedIn profile too. There is a similar Twitter app, which automatically shares your Tweets with your LinkedIn connections. Have a killer presentation that deserves to be shared with the world? There’s also an app that allows you to upload and share your Google Presentations on LinkedIn.

2. Solidify Connections

Try not to get into the habit of “collecting connections.” Having hundreds of LinkedIn connections that you never correspond with is not nearly as beneficial as having a smaller group of connections that you engage with on a regular basis. After you make a new connection, take the next step to further get to know that person. Taking an interest in people is a great way to show that you care, thereby earning the person’s trust and respect. You will also learn more about that persons needs and find out if there’s a qualified lead in that particular person.

Don’t worry if you don’t get 100% reciprication in your efforts to reach out to people. Not everyone will share your enthusiasm for making solid connections, but those that do will appreciate it and respond whole-heartedly.

3. Get Involved in Discussions

Become a contributing member of the LinkedIn community by joining in the discussions happening every day. Seek out discussions by joining groups relevant to your business. Within these groups lies active, lively discussions just begging for your input. As you contribute more and more helpful comments, people will start to realize that you really know your stuff and you will gain exposure within the LinkedIn community. That exposure and expertise will eventually translate into inquiries, and finally, sales leads.

4. Use Group Stats to Find Your Target Market

Did you know that LinkedIn generates a nice little statistical run-down of the members of each group? The stats include valuable demographic data so that you can more easily find groups that are made up of people in your target market. Once you find a few groups that fit into your target, focus your energy on those particular groups for better chances of bringing in leads.

5. LinkedIn Answers

Demonstrate your expertise and gain exposure by answering questions on LinkedIn. There is an advanced search feature that allows you to seek out questions on a specific topic. Answering questions really helps you gain exposure on LinkedIn. Your answer appears under the question that was asked, on your profile, and in the news feed of all of your connections. Plus, any time the questioner picks your answer as the best answer, you gain expertise points.

6. LinkedIn Ads

If you want to go with a more direct approach to generate leads, there’s always LinkedIn ads. The advertisement plan on LinkedIn is quite user-friendly and is accomodating for any budget size. You have the power to pick the placement of your ads so you can seek out your target based on job title, geographic location, or even group (here’s where those group statistics come in handy). Your advertisement will link back to your website, so you’ll want to make sure to have a specific landing page set up for those who click on the ad.

Generating leads on LinkedIn doesn’t happen by bombarding your connections with sales pitches or by having the most connections. It happens by gaining exposure and offering helpful advice to the people who are proned to buy from your company.

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by Dana VanDen Heuvel

A Review of 5 Free Social Media Dashboards

February 16, 2012 in CoTweet, facebook, HootSuite, HootSuite - Social Media Dashboard, linkedin, TweetDeck, Twitter

Looking for a way to simplify your social media marketing process? Social media dashboards are a great way to more efficiently manage multiple social networks in one place. I’ve touched on social media dashboards in the past; however, until now, I’ve never really gone into much detail about what’s out there, how they work, and the unique features they have to offer. Here is a list of some of the veteran applications that have been around almost as long as Twitter itself, as well as a few fresh dashboards on the scene.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is an application strictly meant for monitoring your Twitter accounts. It was recently purchased by Twitter, so you know this one’s not going anywhere anytime soon. TweetDeck has a very user-friendly interface and allows users to set up multiple feeds. For example, you can set up separate columns for your home feed, @mentions, retweets, and direct message all for one Twitter account. Plus, if you manage multiple Twitter accounts, you can recreate this setup for each account. You can also schedule your Tweets if you’re going to be out of the social scene for a while and need to automate your Tweets. My favorite TweetDeck feature: The audible “chirp” when someone mentions you in a Tweet.

HootSuite

HootSuite incorporates Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter into one dashboard. Most people would agree it’s nice to be able to view all of your social activity from one application. You have the ability to monitor all of your feeds, send Tweets, and update your Facebook status, right from the dashboard. Like TweetDeck, HootSuite also has scheduling abilities if you ever want to automate your social media posts.

One minor limitation of the free version of HootSuite that I have come across is that only one person can use HootSuite per Twitter account. So for example, if your company has several people using the same Twitter handle, only one of those people can use HootSuite for that Twitter account. If you’re willing to pay for the professional version of HootSuite, this problem is easily solved.

Seesmic

Seesmic is an alternative to HootSuite for compiling all of your social media feeds into one dashboard. Seesmic allows you to monitor Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare. Similarly to HootSuite, Seesmic allows you to update your Facebook page directly from the dashboard. However, I have read articles claiming that Facebook posts made from a third-party application such as HootSuite or Seesmic are subject to a lower EdgeRank than if you were to update your status directly from Facebook. Since nobody knows the algorithm Facebook uses to determine a post’s EdgeRank, it’s hard to tell if that is in fact true.

CoTweet

The free, or standard version of CoTweet is a Twitter dashboard with a focus on a more team-oriented approach to Twitter. For example, many companies want everyone within the organization to be able to participate in social media, but giving employees individual Twitter handles could be counterproductive in building one large following. CoTweet’s collaboration tools allow multiple users to Tweet under the same Twitter handle in an organized way. CoTweet also has scheduling capabilities and e-mail alerts for @mentions. You can add Facebook accounts to the dashboard if you’re willing to upgrade to the enterprise version of CoTweet.

MediaFunnel

MediaFunnel is another great social media dashboard with an emphasis on collaboration. If you’re looking to outsource your social media marketing plan, you may be a bit apprehensive about handing your company’s message over to someone who is essentially still a stranger. MediaFunnel has different user capabilities, which are broken up into administrator, publisher, contributor, and guest. So if you want to keep the social media ball in your court, assign the role of Admin to yourself, and set up your dashboard so that your manager can submit Tweets and Facebook posts, but they have to be authorized by you before they go live. MediaFunnel also has a monitoring feature so you can keep track of what’s being said about your company online using specific keywords.

Of course this list could go on for days, but I chose the social media dashboards that are the most reputable and offer the most useful and diverse functionalities. Everyone will have their own dashboard preference based on interface preferences and what they want to accomplish with their social media marketing plan. Feel free to try out a couple of these dashboards before you settle on one. You want to make sure that the dashboard meets all of your needs and that you feel comfortable with the one you choose.

A Review of 5 Free Social Media Dashboards

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by Dana VanDen Heuvel

Social Media: Obligation or Opportunity?

February 15, 2012 in facebook, pinterest, SlideShare, social media for sales

This past weekend my team had the pleasure of working in the midst of about 200 sales people, helping them with their social media questions, putting on mini-workshops for them, walking them through tedious steps of getting started and of course, as is the case with many groups just crossing the threshold into the social media space, dealing with a fair share of skepticism on to the topic of whether or not social media can help them sell.

Let’s step back for a second and just look at the data. According to reports from HubSpot (they’re good for these sorts of data points), not only is LinkedIn one of the best channels in all of social media for generating leads that benefit sales people, in a survey of thousands of businesses, over 50% have generated sales from their blog and from LinkedIn. That alone is pretty powerful information that would get me off the fence.

Alas, that’s not enough for some, and the main challenge that we still see is the “obligation vs. opportunity” mindset that resides within certain people. Now, this doesn’t mean that everyone has this mindset. In fact, there are many people who are bullish on social media. And let’s be honest here, if you’re in sales or marketing, you’re always working toward the future, selling to the future customer, seeking the next project or working on the next idea – we’re paid to think ahead and to be more optimistic…it’s how we keep ourselves going in the face of closed doors, unreturned calls and unsuccessful marketing attempts. Nevertheless, we heard plenty of “oh my, how am I going to fit this in with everything else I have to do?” Well, let’s address that.

Obligation or Opportunity?

In his book, Today We Are Rich, Tim Sanders talks about turning your “Have-Tos into Get-Tos”, meaning that we should simply be thankful and have the gratitude for what we “get-to” do especially in the face of so many people out of work and all. However, I’m not sure that everyone would be sold on the concept of “yeah! I get-to go and search for prospects in LinkedIn today.”

The prevailing attitude toward social media then is that it’s this onerous obligation stacked on top of dozens of existing obligations that we don’t already have time for. For those people, perhaps they see everything in their life as an obligation, and that’s unfortunate, as there are so many opportunities hidden by the thin cloak of obligation. For the record, I see the world of social media one of unprecendented opportunity. Such as:

An Opportunity to build a wonderful community of customers in a place that they’re already spending time. (Facebook)
An Opportunity to stay up to speed on the real-time conversation in my industry, making me better informed and more useful to my customers. (Twitter)
An Opportunity to be notified of upcoming projects, ideas and changes in the market before any of my competitors. (Google Alerts)
An Opportunity to network with like-minded professionals in my area and position myself as a helpful resource. (LinkedIn Groups)
An Opportunity to connect with old friends, key influencers and others for whom I can make a difference (LinkedIn)
An Opportunity to take in some stunning visuals and to add my own touch of style in social media (Pinterest)
An Opportunity to share my knowledge, insight and research with anyone who’s seeking the information I have from recent presentations, talks, webinars and so on. (SlideShare)
An Opportunity to share my unique point of view and start a conversation with people that holds mutual interest. (Blog)

I think you get the point. Opportunities are everywhere in social media, and we can start to see them when we look at this new world through the lens of opportunity rather then through the bars and shackles of obligation.

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Ideas for Restaurants

Health and Wellness

Ideas for Health and Wellness Businesses

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Ideas for Auto Dealers

Action Summary

Pinterest Contests

Pin it to Win it

Drive E-Commerce Sales

Price Your Products

Unique Uses for Pinterest

Show Company Culture

Electronic Portfolio

Interact

Follower Boards

Action Summary

The Benefits of Pinterest

Pinterest for the Service-Based Business

Let’s Get Started

Request an Invite

Set up Your Profile

Add the Buttons

Create Your Boards

Promote

Action Summary

Usage Stats

Pinterest Defined

How it Works

Repin

Pin It Button

Action Summary

1. Apologize

2. Make it Right

3. Set the Record Straight

4. Embrace It

5. Agree to Disagree

6. Watch out for Trolls!

1. Re-Purpose Content

LinkedIn Apps

2. Solidify Connections

3. Get Involved in Discussions

4. Use Group Stats to Find Your Target Market

5. LinkedIn Answers

6. LinkedIn Ads

TweetDeck

HootSuite

Seesmic

CoTweet

MediaFunnel

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