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5 Great Ways To Use Pinterest For The Holidays

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The holidays are coming up, and marketers are scrambling to find ways to get more followers from the outburst of online traffic and sales. Pinterest is a social network that’s all about organizing pictures into boards. The unique way Pinterest is set up allows it to stand out from the crowd of other social networks. The average consumer on Pinterest spends $180 which is mammoth sized compared to all of the other social networks. It’s important to utilize the powers of Pinterest during the holidays, and I’m going to show you 5 ways to do that.

  1. Christmas lists are better told than hidden. You won’t get everything you want on your Christmas list if no one knows what to buy you. Friends don’t want to play the guessing game, and we want what we put on our individual Christmas lists. Imagine a way that you could tell all of your friends what you wanted for Christmas or other holidays while getting more sales. On Pinterest, there’s a way for that to happen. You can find pictures of the products that you want and pin them on a special board containing everything you want for the holidays. If you can, stick in some affiliate links. LinkShare has good options since Amazon Affiliate Links don’t effectively work on Pinterest.
  2. Use Pinstamatic. Pinstamatic allows you to turn text into pictures. If you want to turn the words of a motivational quotes into a picture, you can use Pinstamatic to get that done. Pinstamatic also allows you to write lists. If you want to write a list of your favorite authors or favorite books, then Pinstamatic is the right place for you.
  3. Host a giveaway on Pinterest. People are looking for any kind of deals they can find. Hosting a giveaway on Pinterest is a great way to get exposure. Better yet, you can giveaway one of your products. Even better yet, you can charge $5 to be eligible for the giveaway and give that money to a charity of your choice.
  4. Tell people about great deals. People want to know about the discounts. Some people will buy something just because of the discount. If you create a Pinterest board that displays the biggest discounts for a narrowed down selection of products, you will be able to get more sales.
  5. Create an Advent board. Create the board on the first day of December, and pin one thing on that board every day until Christmas day. Make sure all of the pins are connected to a main idea that flows as you add pins to that board. You can have an Advent board for some of the best books, the most inspirational quotes, tidbits of information, and so on.

Some Of My Social Media Videos

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I did a lot of videos over the summer, and my goal is to come out with one video every week about social media, blogging, and business. Right now, there are only videos about social media and blogging, but I can guarantee you that videos about business will show up as well. If you want to learn a lot about social media and blogging, these five YouTube videos will help out a lot.

In addition to those five videos, you can subscribe to my blog where I will give you free access to the Mastering Pinterest Video Tutorial where I share my knowledge about Pinterest and becoming a power user.

You can see all of the videos here.

5 Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid

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There are millions of users on Pinterest, but since Pinterest is the newest social network of them all, it is easy to make mistakes. Pinterest is different from other social networks based on the way Pinterest was designed to work. Here are 5 Pinterest mistakes that you need to avoid:

  1. Don’t be afraid of sending out a lot of pins in one blast. If you can send out 50 pins in 20 minutes and then send 10 more for the rest of the day, that’s okay. On Twitter and other social networks, posting 50 times in 20 minutes and then only posting 10 more times throughout the day would annoy followers. It doesn’t annoy Pinterest followers as much. In addition, the more pins you have, the more likely you are to get thousands of followers. Almost every user with over a million followers also has over a thousand pins. Some of them are approaching 100,000 pins.
  2. Don’t pin exclusively about your business. It’s okay to pin about different things as well. I don’t only pin posts from my blog, but instead, I pin about baseball, 3D printing, Legos, and a lot of other things as well.
  3. A big mistake is to make your blog unpinnable. If you are using Pinterest, you have to start adding pictures to your blogs and a Pin It button. My traffic has gone up by 200% just by adding pictures to my blog and a Pin It button. Pinterest has taken the web by storm, and if you want your blog posts to be shared more, make sure people can easily share them on Pinterest.
  4. Make sure you like a lot of pins. The people who have liked thousands of pins also have millions of followers. Liking a lot of pins will help you towards getting more followers.
  5. If you pin a lot in one blast, people make the mistake of pinning from the same board the entire time. If you have a board about tips for your niche, and you send out 50 pins about tips for that niche, chances are some of those tips are going to be repeats. If one of your followers doesn’t like that niche, they may unfollow that particular board. Make sure you send out 5 pins from one board, 5 pins from another board, and so on until you reach your desired number of pins.

 

For more tips on Pinterest, you can subscribe to this blog to get free access to the Mastering Pinterest Video Tutorial.

People Spend A Lot Of Time On Pinterest (And Why It’s Important To Know)

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Pinterest users spend an average of 90 minutes on the social network for each of their visits. Pinterest has rapidly grown, but why is that statistic important for you?

Since millions of people are spending more time on Pinterest than most social networks, that means your followers will be looking at your boards longer. That means the more pins you have, the better.

The more pins you have, the more times you will get repinned. The person with 1,000 pins usuallly gets more repins than the person with only 100 pins (assuming they both have the same number of followers).

People will repin your pins, and eventually, they will find your products. Pinners turn into clients, and then Pinterest will earn you a big revenue and increase the traffic on your blog. My traffic has gone up by 33% ever since I added a “Pin It” button and pictures on this blog.

Pinterest doesn’t have many teenagers yet (I’m one of the exceptions). 80% of Pinterest users are women, and most of them have children. That means they will use Pinterest as Christmas approaches. That also means they and other users will want products that fit their needs as well. 80% of Pinterest users are women, but there are still millions of men on Pinterest as well.

People are spending a lot of time on Pinterest which will allow you to grab their attention for a longer amount of time.

September 1

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The countdown starts. I’ll be going back to school soon while I know others have already started. Although you may not be going to school, changes are you have a lot of things to do during this span (September to June) compared to the summer as well. This is why systematizing your business or at least finding some areas to systematize is essential towards the growth of your business.

Find ways to make things happen automatically. Scheduling tweets isn’t exactly a systematized process because I schedule tweets every day. However, when I’m in school, I don’t have to take out my phone to send out a tweet. HootSuite does that for me.

That’s why I did 52 videos in August for YouTube because I publish 1 video every week. Those videos are scheduled, and now I don’t have to go back to YouTube until next summer. I have the choice of whether or not to use YouTube throughout the entire school year.

I wrote a majority of my books over the summer because I won’t get as much time when school starts. All of the books I mentioned in blog posts were finished in summer. I have from now until June to write an entire book.

I have scheduled blog posts days in advance in the event I got a test that I needed to study for throughout the night. I am scheduling even more blog posts just to make sure nothing happens.

I have only attended business expos in the summer. If I had to attend business expos on a weekly or even a monthly basis, I would be faced with a schedule conflict.

I read books (not given as summer homework) over the summer so I won’t have to worry about them when school starts. I will be reading every night when school starts, and reading 2 books simultaneously never works.

If scheduling pins were free, I would have scheduled pins for a long amount of time. I’ll have enough time to send out 10-30 pins a day despite there not being a free way to schedule pins…yet.

If I didn’t systematize my business at all, having to maintain school, track, and my business would have been difficult. However, I have been able to systematize many aspects of my business. The only things I have to do throughout the school year are tweet, pin, write 1 book, and write blog posts.

Going into summer, I knew some ways of systematizing my business. I knew writing books and scheduling blog posts (only to a certain degree) could be systematized going into the summer.

I didn’t read any books this summer until the middle of July. I didn’t even bother doing YouTube videos until the middle of August (a lot of videos have been done in the process. They’re all done though).

Last year, I had nothing systematized. This blog didn’t even exist last year. I kept on doing the same amount of work day in and day out. I wrote books during the school year, and as a freshman at the time, the school work was the easiest. I got lucky.

When I go back to school, I will know that parts of my business are systematized. Doing a YouTube video doesn’t have to be a part of my schedule until June. I only need to write one book, and if I finish that by the New Year, I won’t have to worry about writing another book for 6 months.

Not all of the parts of my business are systematized, but enough of them are. Next year, I will be able to systematize even more parts of my business. I only started systematizing YouTube less than 15 days ago. Next summer, I’ll have 3 entire months to do that. I may be able to systematize my pins (by then, some kind of Pinterest scheduler will have launched). I may have more days scheduled on this blog. I may read 20 books next summer that weren’t assigned by my teachers (20 books in a summer is setting the bar high, but I would rather set the bar high than set the bar low).

Last year, nothing was systematized. This year, some parts of my business are systematized. Next year, a majority of my business will be systematized. What can you do today, tomorrow, this week, or this month to systematize your business? Start systematizing now!

20 Social Media Statistics That You Need To Know

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It’s always difficult to decide which social network you should use. All of the social networks have millions of members. I use Twitter and Pinterest every day. I will be using other social networks every day as well (Instagram, Tumblr, and Google+).

I am not jumping right into those social networks because it’s better to focus on an individual social network. Once I reach 3,000 followers on Pinterest, I’ll incorporate another social network into my business plan (UPDATE: I now have over 3,000 followers on Pinterest).

You may be juggling around social networks, or you don’t know which social network is right for you. These are 20 interesting statistics that will help you decide which social network to use.

  1. Pinterest users spend an average of $180 per purchase which is far greater than any other social network. Facebook users are second at $85.
  2. The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55-64 age bracket.
  3. Companies that generate over 1,000 likes also receive nearly 1,400 visitors on their website a day.
  4. 50% of Twitter users are more likely to purchase from brands they follow.
  5. 80% of pins are repins.
  6. 40% of marketers use Google+.
  7. 45 million photos are uploaded to Instagram every day. That’s 521 photos every second!
  8. Instagram has grown very fast in less than 3 years.
  9. 24% of teenagers who use the web also have Twitter. Some of them are moving from Facebook to Twitter.
  10. Facebook has 665 million users who are active every day.
  11. Over 6 billion hours of video are watched every month.
  12. Companies with over 1,000 followers generate more than 800 visitors to their website every month. I can vouch for that.
  13. Pinterest hit 10 million unique U.S. visitors per month faster than any other website in history. It’s growing, and it’s growing fast.
  14. One out of every 7 minutes spent online is on Facebook.
  15. The average Pinterest user has 171 pins, 229 followers, 3 boards, and 28 likes.
  16. 720 million minutes were spent using Pinterest’s mobile app in 2012.
  17. 60% of Google+ users log in every day while 80% of Google+ users log in every week.
  18. Every minute, 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter.
  19. There are 2.1 million LinkedIn groups.
  20. Over 400 million tweets are sent every day.