From Pinterest to Reddit: Advanced Tactics For Hardcore Social Domination #SMX

Monique was up first, ready to blaze the trail with talk of social sharing darling, Pinterest. There’s a fair amount of discussion surrounding Pinterest now, especially among marketers. The numbers are there, it’s a valuable site. But Monique wanted to focus more on leveraging Pinterest as a marketing source, a place from which you can mine some serious demographic data.

Pinterest
Go here: http://pinterest.com/source/YOURWEBSITE.com. Or heck, go ahead and enter your competitor’s website. See everything anyone in the world is pinning from any site you enter. See what’s being shared from your site, see what people are sharing from your competitor’s site.

Fun Pinterst Tools

• Pinterest Bookmarklet – Export pins from a site, what’s being pinned, by whom. Very cool.
• PinReach – Enter a profile, figure out where they’re far-reaching pins are, what their popular pins are, and more.
• Wordle - Pull content from site into a word cloud, visualize what’s important to them.

Sleuthing with Pinterest
So, you’ve found people pinning your stuff. Do some detective work. What does this person care about? What types of things will he/she respond to? Understanding these answers will give you a deeper understanding of what kind of content to create, share, and most importantly – with whom.

Be devoted. Actually read pinners’ captions – how do they speak, what do they need? Visit pinners’ websites – what do they love, how do you fit into that scenario?

In other words, once you do your sleuthing, create personas – and create future content with your personas’ needs and pinning habits in mind.

Twitter
Monique’s take on Twitter echoed that of Pinterest, namely, how important it is to segment Twitter folks due to the fact that you’ll talk to them differently and share different content with them.

Fun Twitter Tools

• twtrland & Twitalyzer – Get a deeper look at any Twitter user by entering his / her username.
• Hoosaid – “Pagerank for people.”
• Follower Wonk – Twitter analytics, follower segmentation, social graph tracking. Good for identify influencers by KWs in bios.
• Topsy & Social Mention – Good for conversation mining.
• Twitter Search – Advanced Search Operators – An oldie but goodies. Leverage search operators to really hone in on tightly-focused convos.
• Friend or Follow – Check out who your influencers are following, vice versa.
• Hootsuite & TweetDeck – Monitoring topical KWs (brand, products, trend words, competitor brands, etc.) with individual columns

Segmenting with Twitter
Once you have a list of people you want to follow and engage on Twitter, create Twitter lists. Same as Pinterest – you’ll be talking to different groups of people differently, and sharing different types of content with them. Make it easier on yourself – segment ahead of time, stay organized.

Converting Twitter Prospects into Followers
Monique encourages literally… following up with people you wan to turn into followers – don’t just abandon them if they don’t convert after the first touch. Make a chart of your engagement tactics. Make it an intra-company contest – see who can get him / her to convert first.

Engagement tactics:

• Follow them
• Comment on their bog
• RT them
• @Mention them

… among others. In the end, it’s about creating a relationship. Add value to the conversations happening on Twitter- give people a reason to follow you!

Super Quick Facebook Tidbits
Monique briefly touched upon Facebook – here’s some high-level takeaways:

• Don’t forget, the new Timeline gives Page owners awesome new power! Rebrand your brand-feel with an awesome cover image, DM fans when appropriate, etc.
• Definitely check out FB’s open graph for more insight on people and content.
• Simply Measured – check out this cool FB tool for deeper insights!

Monique wrapped up and turned the mic over to Marty, who I did not even attempt to blog… but here’s the gist of it: Marty focused his presentation on leveraging the 1st and 2nd degrees of separation by way of Facebook Ad units, i.e. Page Post Ads, Page Post Like Stories, and Page Like Stories.

• Page Post Ad – 1st degree – fairly expensive, site & wall traffic, likes
• Page Post Like Story – 2nd degree – inexpensive, traffic to site, few like
• Page Like Story – 2nd degree – expensive, traffic to wall, many likes

Marty’s preso was truly killer, so I recommend checking out the full deck, available on the AIMCLEAR Facebook page. Next up was Brent, who talked at large about the significance and power of content marketing.

“Content marketing still works!”
Content marketing works better today than ever before… it’s harder now, takes more effort – but when you do it right, the results can be astounding… staggering statistics: lots of visits, pins, links, overall good traction across a variety of social sites (including, in some cases, blog comments).

Here are Brent’s tips for rocking content marketing and social promotion…

Tip: Be Prepared to Succeed
Sounds silly, but it’s very important.

• Don’t look at social media as a band-aid solution – look at it as a business plan.
• You should have a dedicated person / team or contractor at the helm of your social media plan.
• This person / these people should have an understanding of targeted social communities.
• You also should have established accounts in established networks. Don’t go in blind.
• Plan for what happens when you DO succeed – have a viral story on Reddit? How will you translate it to other sites?
• Be honest about the fact that you don’t know what’s going to work and what’s going to fail.

Tip: Monitor Your Site in Social

• We’re not talking about brand mentions, more about monitoring what’s being shared from your site.
• You might have some content that’s going wicked hot on Reddit – you better know what’s up so you can POUNCE!
• Find someone who is already sharing your content – pick it up, run with it. better than you sharing it yourself.

Tip: Reddit… For Realz 🙂
Here are Brent’s tips for feeling comfortable in Reddit…

• Don’t worry about accounts. In Reddit, accounts make you a target. When you get really big you get down-voted.
• A word on silent bans / filter triggers: You might get filtered / banned if you’re new to Reddit or new to a SubReddit. Pay mind to whether it’s an account filter or a domain filter. Might just be manual approval / disapproval.
  • Check what kind of ban you have while logged out- View profile for Page Not Found or check new section. If you’re not seeing profile / content, you’re banned.
• SubReddits are private – they’re not owned by Reddit, Reddit only acts as a dashboard for subdomains. Just an FYI.
• Understand where to submit. The biggest places are not always the best. Check out http://redditlist.com.
• Know the SubReddit rules– TIL has to be 2 months old, Best Of is only for Reddit links, NSFW needs to be NUDE 🙂
• Participate where it is active (again, biggest not always = best)

Tip: Focus On Your Accounts

• Know what’s what with your network. Reddit doesn’t care about accounts. Pinterest cares about the account – not your name, not your boards.

Tip: Success with StumbleUpon

• Very successful, still. Focus on a network tree / algo system
• Build your network appropriately. share w/ network strategically to get positive votes.
• Share very active. show up on /content/. choose categories & tags strategically.
• Run SU ad campaigns – help whitelist your domain, identify related tags, learn subscriber #s
• Tip – choose REAL StumbleUpon interests for tags

Brent turned it over to Vince, who rounded out the session with a closer look at content marketing, emphasis on Pinterest.

Why should you be on Pinterest?
Well, for one – there were over 11 million unique visitors in the US as of January, 2012. But moreover, Pinterest is all about content, and content is KING!

What kind of content, to be specific? Visual content. Pinterest has a huge focus on visual aspect of content. Interestingly, though, Vince noted from experience that infographics get no love on Pinterest. Pinners don’t really dig data.

Vince’s Tips for Primo Pins

• Size matters! A pin could get 36k repins, but when you check your analytics, the content page only has 3k views. What gives? Um, yeah – literally. SIZE MATTERS. If the image you pin from your website is a large, big, beautiful image, and users can get the entire experience simply viewing the pin on Pinterest, they won’t click on the item, i.e. they won’t visit your site. SO – when you’re pinning an image, make sure it’s small enough to entice the click, but large enough to garner attention.
• Content Format! Vince found that posting a brief look at a DIY, for example, works best with a large title overlay on a nice-looking image, and a smaller list of easy-to-read steps. Entice the click, don’t piss users off with illegibility.
• Make It Useful! Create and pin content that is helpful, useful, answers a question, satisfies someone’s needs.

Traffic From Pinterest
The type of traffic you get from Pinterest is important. This ain’t your mom’s old social media traffic, rife with high bounce rates, low time on site, and low conversions.

Vince noted that the type of traffic hopefully driven from Pinterest is truly quality… low bounce rate, high time on site, and ideally, high conversions. Not to mention, the content you share on Pinterest ideally generates backlinks.

More Tips from Vince:

1. Make your content relevant to your brand, but not 100% about your brand.
2. DIYs & how-to’s are the most successful. Move towards this content if possible.
3. Top 12 lists rock, literally… 10 is too few, 15 is too many.
4. Leverage tools to find out what people are looking for, such as Ubersuggest.
5. Create content with multiple categories in mind. One piece of content could get a lot of play by being tagged under DIY & crafts, people, photography, technology, AND weddings.
6. Pinning best practices: 2-3 times per day during peak hours (nights and weekends)
7. If something you pin doens’t get much play, don’t give up. Repurpose it, measure it, do it again.

Final thought: Rethink the hunt for linkbait… start thinking “resourcebait”- your goal is to get quality traffic, longer time on site, higher conversion rate.

Vince tossed the mic back to Greg the session came to a close. Big thanks to the panelists for a truly AWESOME start to what’s sure to be a most excellent event. Stay tuned here in AIMCLEAR blog for more coverage coming atcha!

photo credit: schachin