SILKFAIR Blog – February 2012

Pinterest is the latest addition to the social media network and is becoming more popular amongst individuals as well as businesses because of its eye-appealing nature. Pinterest has created a new network in which people can easily use its media to gain interest and speak out loud and still keep things simple. Rather than develop social networks through people, it builds connections between interests and shares it with others.

A new social network

Through this social network, you can follow others, and others can follow you, somewhat similar to Twitter, allowing you to create a more expansive circle in which you converse and share. But unlike other social media, it focuses primarily on visual appeal, pins of videos and pictures being the primary eye catcher. This means that you’ll need to ensure that pictures and videos you pin have a unique, attractive quality that others will want to stop and look at.

Pinterest is simple and easy to use, allowing anyone to basically create a message board with ideas, comments, and links. It allows you to pin different links and comments to different boards. These boards offer any of 32 different topics that allow users to socially engage depending on current interests. These are primarily focused around recipes, arts, and creative ideas, but with a little creativity of your own, you can find a topic in which your store or its products apply to. For instance, if you’re starting a project for some new designs in jewelry, you can pin your current interests to seek out ideas and publicity, particularly designs that interest you and others. Pinterest doesn’t have to be about selling directly. You can utilize it to gain traffic to your store as well.

This intriguing idea is just like the bulletin board at school. Teachers pin up important information, students pin up awards. Regardless of what you’re interest is, people can actively use this new medium to communicate ideas to one another without the hassle of networking directly. Videos and pictures are amongst the most popular of “pins” with comments available along with each pin. Once you’ve pinned your pictures to your board, the link back to your site allows for a direct traffic flow to your online store. This window can help increase your store and website’s traffic dramatically. It helps to keep your board neat and organized rather than cluttered to ensure a professional image for your store. Pinterest is designed around simplicity, so stick with the idea. Use the quality of your “pins” and comments to do the attention grabbing.

The Business edge

Fortunately, this gives businesses an edge for approaching customers with their ideas. As an individual store owner, this opportunity is extremely valuable. Between these 32 topics, you can find variable areas where you can highlight different aspects of your store. But, it is recommended that you refrain from only promoting or “pinning” products for sale. Perhaps you create your own clothing and are interested in what is popular - so post some ideas that you think are great, even if you don’t offer them directly, and see what the world thinks about them. This wide environment allows you to talk to anyone with similar interests. But if your board seems too self-serving, you may close windows to those who are just browsing for quality boards to follow.

Of course, the uses of Pinterest don’t stop on their network. You can also allow others to “pin” your blogs, articles, products, and store onto their boards with “Pin it” buttons for websites. This allows you to expand your online store’s advertising with ease. Buttons can be created and even customized to allow for use on particular items throughout your online store. Each person that “pins” a video or picture of your product expands your audience in an affordable way that is great for businesses. This is definitely a great reason to make sure that you’re creating unique videos of your own for your online store. By setting up “pin” buttons on your sites, you allow anyone to utilize Pinterest in your favor. Pinterest is definitely proving its value as the newest way to expand your online store’s image, so make sure you don’t overlook this.

A good idea to take into consideration is to follow the “big hitters” on Pinterest. This technique does raise awareness of your store and help promote you through familiarization. The same goes for anyone who is pinning your products as well. Follow them and it’s likely they’ll follow you right back. And don’t be afraid to utilize other social media to point other networks toward Pinterest to gain interest.
Currently, Pinterest is still basically available by invite only (go to the website and request an invite that should be emailed to you), but be prepared to make your business’ debut on this new social network. Pinterest is becoming more popular each day, so if you aren’t already pinning your store to the board, make a move to take advantage of this new opportunity.

As more businesses begin to expand themselves across the internet, we must change and adapt to succeed with our online stores. Because of this, we can’t afford to ignore localized internet marketing. With all the other businesses out there in the world, it can be difficult to compete with everyone, so we must include ourselves in our own general area.

Localized marketing for an online store might seem a little strange, specifically since your online presence would be your local area. But, consider localized searches for a moment. When someone is seeking a product, search engines take into consideration where they are searching from. This can make a big difference when it comes down to finding your online store. Don’t overlook your local market potential.

An effective site

As a reminder, when it comes to online marketing, don’t rely exclusively on word of mouth to market your store. Indeed, it is a powerful tool, but you need to empower customers who do not know you to be able to find you. This requires that you place your store in as many locations across the web as you possibly can.

First of all, it’s important to plan your website effectively. This applies to your online store as well. Don’t just “toss” one up just to have a store or site for customers. Most businesses won’t just put up some boards around a desk and shelf to open their store, so you shouldn’t either. For your online store, make quality use of your keywords to optimize searches across the internet. If you’re going to make a website, make sure that its architecture and structure are quality and easy for users to navigate. Make sure that your site can be localized to be searched through local SEO’s as well in order to increase your online presence.

Other social outlets

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons we neglect local marketing is that social media focuses on a broad and very extensive range throughout the world. Don’t just rely on just Facebook and Twitter for social encounters and business practices. There are many other different methods out there to put to effective use. Facebook and Twitter are wide-coverage social media, allowing you to talk and discuss with anyone, anywhere in the world. But, sites such as LinkedIn provide many useful tools for local businesses. You can easily sign up, enter your businesses data and get far more internet coverage in the process. LinkedIn will bring your online store up and increase your coverage in localized marketing. Here, you can also organize a professional portfolio for online reference.

The Local SEO

Perhaps one of the key points is to ensure that you utilize several search engines for your site. Take into account that even though Google is a prime search engine, there are many others out there where your sites can be found by- specifically local SEO. This is where knowing and understanding your audience will help you to understand what you need to do, especially for local marketing. Analyze and choose what subjects your customers are likely to search and find the best keys that they’ll be using when looking for you. But be wary of over emphasizing your keywords, as it can counteract your searches and potentially push customers away.

Though we often do get a break that brings us customers and traffic, we can’t rely on luck to do our work for us. When it comes to localized marketing, there are various ways you can potentially increase your web coverage by signing up with certain sites to boost your ratings on local search engines. Google Places is a big winner when it comes to localized searches. Yahoo! Local, City Searches, and Local.Com are also other sites that will increase your search engine awareness and make your online store available to everyone, especially those around you.

Your online store is one location on the internet in a world of many other businesses that also competes for face-time through customer searches. While it may seem difficult to compete with everyone else in the business world, by keeping up with research and practicing a few techniques, your localized marketing methods can help expand your store by ensuring that you cover all of your bases when it comes to marketing your online store effectively.