Below see how users are driving the conversation on Pinterest and how brands can boost audience engagement.

Now that we have a better sense for how often community interactions drive engagement to brands, the next step is to focus our content accordingly. First, it might make sense to understand exactly why consumers like to engage with content in the first place. Fans and advocates drive brand messaging. By better understanding the community brands have the ability to better frame their message and focus their story on the visual web.

PRESS COVERAGE

• Adweek: Only 30 Percent of Brands’ Pinterest Engagement Come From Own Pins
  
• Mashable: 70% of Brand Engagement on Pinterest is User-Generated
• Adotas: New Pinterest Research: Only 30% Of Engagement Driven By Brand
• Social News Daily: Pinterest Pins Examined: Post At These Times To Win Followers, Repins

There are two primary sources of this imagery: consumers and brands. Instagram is heavily biased toward user-generated content — photos taken in the moment by consumers eager to share their lives. For example, Instagram users tag Starbucks in images over 10,000 times daily.

Conversely, Pinterest is dominated by images supplied by brands. Over 85% of Pinterest engagement comes from consumers saving images from the Websites/blogs of the brands they visit. Taken together, these platforms represent a powerful continuum of the things people want (Pinterest) and those things in action (Instagram).

Pinterest, in particular, is driving substantial results for brands. Unlike Instagram, images on Pinterest link back to brands. Those links have enabled Pinterest to become the Web’s third-largest traffic referral source. For numerous retailers and publishers, Pinterest has actually become their top referral source. The traffic converts, with average shopping cart sizes over 75% larger than Facebook. That’s not surprising when you consider 70% of Pinterest users use the service to look for shopping inspiration.

Digital marketers will need to adapt to these new visual conversations in order to drive consumer engagement and revenue. But, like all things worth doing, this isn’t easy.

Despite their long histories, many big brands, particularly in the CPG, consumer electronics and financial services sectors, don’t have compelling repositories of visual assets readily available. In addition, visual conversations are hard to “hear.”

Most current social listening tools are built to recognize keywords. On Pinterest, for example, only 11% of conversations contain brand keywords, making almost 90% of engagement essentially invisible to brands. To help solve this problem, Curalate developed a unique digital image matching technique that exposes organic content from your website as it is being shared on visual networks. Another hurdle on the visual web is that, unlike Facebook and Twitter, there is no easy and scalable way to directly buy reach via media spend on emerging visual platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram.

So what’s a digital marketer to do to get started in this new world of marketing without words?

1. Leverage user generated content -Encourage fans and employees to share their brand stories and ask for permission to highlight these photos.

At Curalate, we stream content from Pinterest and Instagram into a Facebok tab.

2. Don’t do it alone – Cultivate relationships with those that engage with you frequently. Provide these advocates exclusive content to share and invite them to collaborate on your visual presence.

On Pinterest, Daily Grommet uses collaborative boards to visually engage with their fans.

3. Make your site shareable – Integrate “PinIt” buttons throughout your site. If you’re still using Flash, stop!

Fashion startup Everlane implements the “PinIt” button beautifully on their product pages.

4. Be authentic – Know your brand identity and your brand voice. Even if you don’t have your own content to share, make sure the content you do use fits your brand’s personality.

In addition to sharing food porn, Whole Foods, one of Pinterest’s most successful brands, shares content that matches their brand’s overall mission.

Every shift in consumer behavior brings with it both significant challenges and incredible opportunities. By adapting to this new behavior, you humanize your brand and migrate from transactional relationships with your consumers to emotional relationships with your fans. Finally, once you’ve made a genuine connection with you’re brand advocates you can take the conversation one step further by using visual storytelling to share your brands personality.

For smart, forward-looking brands, this transition holds the promise of something truly special – the ability to move a consumer from a transactional relationship to an emotional one. Emotional relationships help to humanize brands and form deeper and more durable connections between the consumer and the brand. A survey performed in late 2012 by rbb Public Relations found that these personal connections between consumers and brands payoff. 83% of consumers are willing to pay more for products when they feel an affinity to the brand.

Pinterest offers a particularly powerful platform for engaging consumers visually. Beyond its image-centric user interface, Pinterest is also a thematic rather than temporal platform. Facebook and Twitter are both time-centric. As new posts come in, older items get pushed down until they are essentially out of site. Pinterest, and its collection of boards and pins rely much less on time. While the order of pins on a board are influenced by time, numerous image posts can be seen simultaneously, diminishing the importance of time. In fact, unlike Facebook and Twitter which display a date next to every post, the contents of a board show no dates until you click into an individual pin. Rather than focus on time, Pinterest focuses on themes.  Images are grouped together based on an overall theme. For consumers, this theme may be named “Products I Love” but for brands, this could just as well be “Our First Store.” The thematic nature of Pinterest makes posts much less fleeting and gives brands new forms of creative expression.

As a starting point, many brands have chosen to express their creativity using some variation on a “lifestyle” theme. The brand curates a selection of images interspersing products with images that reinforce the brand’s identity and the product’s context. For instance, REI, a retailer of outdoor adventure gear, has a board called “Wanderlust,” which mixes in products with inspiring pictures of places to use those products.

If lifestyle boards were version one of brands engaging consumers visually on Pinterest, storytelling will be version two. Whereas lifestyle boards display a loosely related assortment of images, storytelling boards will weave a narrative through the images to string together a tight story. Consider this as the difference between a stack of pictures and a coffee table book. Taken alone, the pictures are beautiful. Compiled with a narrative, the images leave a lasting impression.

For instance, many brands that are household names have rich and interesting histories that can be expressed visually. Porsche has taken steps towards this by creating a “Porsche history” board with strong visuals and detailed descriptions that give us some insights into the brand. Their relatively new “50 Years of 911” board holds great potential, but practically begs for 50 images with a clear connection to each of the 50 years and descriptions that help us understand the evolution of this iconic vehicle.

Of course, storytelling doesn’t have to be only about corporate history. From concept, to manufacturing, to real-life use cases, products have great stories waiting to be told. The visual web provides a fantastic opportunity to bring the product and brand backstory into the visual age. In doing so, brands can couple the richness of a written backstory with the emotional appeal of imagery.

Finally, brands shouldn’t ignore the role of user-generated imagery. Sites like Instagram for instance, provide creative brands an opportunity to encourage consumers to share their brand experiences visually. The visual analytics dashboard in Curalate can expose organically generated brand messages that are being shared by fans and users. Once brands are aware of the these real-life stories, they can leverage a level of authenticity that simply cannot be found in their own efforts.

Brands are already finding creative and innovative ways to share their stories visually. The increasing shift towards a more visual web is giving brands entirely new ways to form more emotional connections with their consumers. The visual story is an important part of capturing the attention and affinity of consumers. To be effective, these stories need a narrative that brings the images to life and communicates the brand’s identity. Experimentation, creativity, and planning are key, but above all keep your content relevant and keep your story real.

Breaking new products on Pinterest

Even before the launch of official business boards on Pinterest, the social media team at Sony discovered how to use the platform to help launch new products. Because Pinterest users thrive on finding original images to repin, the Brand New Sony Products board quickly became a source of primary images geared toward gadget lovers. That board’s pins and repins drive measurable sales to Sony’s online store, while giving product managers a forum to interact with fans.

Reinforcing brand messaging

TOMS puts giving at the heart of its brand by donating shoes or sunglasses to people in need around the world. The company supported its holiday campaign with a pinboard that mixed photos of limited edition products with stories from TOMS employees and from recipients of donated goods. Over 24,000 followers participated in the promotion, positioning TOMS as a brand that lets you find collectible gifts that improve the lives of people you’ve never met.

Explore your audience’s lifestyle

Chobani hasn’t even been around for a decade, yet it already controls nearly a fifth of the American yogurt market. Taking on the establishment in a saturated market requires a deep knowledge of your target customer, which the company explores thoroughly on its Pinterest boards. Chobani’s social media team has gone on the record that they believe people prefer to “connect with people, not businesses.” By pinning interesting images and sparking compelling discussions (that don’t always have to do with yogurt), Chobani adds value for its followers. Watching those conversations unfold gives the company’s marketers vital insights that can shape future outreach efforts.

As we see internet users everywhere shift to the visual web, there will continue to be a larger role for Pinterest in your digital marketing strategy. With that in mind, your social team will need to continue to adapt, and the role of community managers will have to change.

Shippy, our Director of Image Matching, joined Curalate in April of last year, though he really remains behind the scenes. He and his scurry of 65,535 squirrel interns spend 23.25 hours a day foraging Pinterest and Instagram for your images. They then painstakingly review each one, pixel by pixel, to be sure that you receive the most accurate data possible. Sound nuts? It is!

I mean really, how did you think this was done?

IMPORTANT NOTE:

This information is extremely confidential, so we hope that you will respect that by not tweeting it out. No, seriously, DO NOT SHARE THIS!

]]> http://blog.curalate.com/the-secret-behind-curalates-image-recognition-technology-pinterest-instagram/feed/ 1 http://blog.curalate.com/three-best-practices-for-your-pinterest-marketing-strategy/ http://blog.curalate.com/three-best-practices-for-your-pinterest-marketing-strategy/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 16:44:57 +0000 Brendan http://blog.curalate.com/?p=390

As more businesses hop on the Pinterest bandwagon, you can take advantage of three best practices from the visual web’s most effective social media marketing campaigns:

1. Picture your ideal client

According to author Beth Hayden, you’ll struggle to measure any kind of success with your Pinterest marketing campaign unless you know exactly who you’re trying to reach. If you don’t already have a strong vision of your perfect audience, use personas with nicknames to kick off your brainstorming. Understanding your audience’s wants and needs can lead you to generate exactly the kind of original images

2. Set a measurable business goal

Unless you know how to measure your success, you won’t understand whether your tactics are having any real impact. Just settling for a high follower count isn’t enough, either. According to Leon Cho, you can pick just one or two metrics that really indicate whether your boards make a difference in your business. Sony, for example, measures the number of sales that Pinterest drives to its online store. Chobani measures how many new promoters it can create. Your company could count the number of new affiliate sales you generate, or even the increase in your core website’s traffic during your campaign.

3. Budget time for engagement

If you’re accustomed to traditional marketing channels, Pinterest could throw you for a loop. Instead of hurling a press release over the wall or signing off on an ad campaign that runs for weeks at a time, an effective Pinterest marketing campaign requires both scheduling and dedication. Set aside time to add original content to your boards at times when your target audience is most likely to view and share your images. That often means posting during work hours and later at night.

Now that these best practices are in place, let’s take a closer look at how brands like Whole Foods, Oscar de la Renta, and Ben & Jerry’s are successfully marketing on Pinterest and Instagram.

1. Social media managers must
build “art director” skills

Facebook may have taught you how to select great images to accompany your posts, but Pinterest and Instagram will force you to think about how to visually represent your products and services online. The strongest social media managers will learn how to express brand values without the benefit of very much text. If you sell a retail product, start thinking about how a package that looks great on the shelf can also look fantastic on a fan’s pin-board. Selling a service now means figuring out how to get your logo and URL into compelling pictures without resorting to inauthentic, staged stunts.

2. Social media managers must develop visual monitoring skills

You’ve probably set your listening posts to catch mentions of your company’s brands and product names on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Now, you’ll need a solution that picks up on the visual conversations your prospects and customers are already having on Pinterest and Instagram. Curalate’s suite of monitoring and analytics tools can show you how your branded photos spread across Pinterest boards, especially among people you’re not already following.

3. Social media managers must evolve beyond crisis communications

In many companies, social media managers handle company responses to urgent customer requests. As you find yourself stretched across five or more active online networks, you’ll need to develop stronger social media skills among your customer service and communications teams. Expect to see more companies rely on “player-coach” social media managers who rely on extended teams of specialists.

4. Social media managers must understand community development

If you’ve been diving into conversations based on keyword monitoring, you’re missing out on photo exchanges among your brand’s biggest fans. It’s no longer enough to validate a great Pinterest board by repinning it. Instead, smart social media managers understand how to cultivate new images and conversations that can grow audiences. The social proof of an organic, authentic conversation always trumps paid placements and promotions.

Your company and your customers expect you to evolve along with the rest of the visual web. Once your community team is prepared, it’s important to understand how Pinterest has changed the way brands are creating content.

Whole Foods: Cookie Swap Promotion

Imagine a cross between a potluck cookie party and the ultimate pastry recipe book, and you’ve got a pretty good idea about the Pinterest board that Whole Foods’ customers cooked up during the holiday season.

While the promotion started as a pretty standard Pinterest contest, users quickly evolved the cookie swap into discussions about recipes for vegan, diabetic, and gluten free diets. Discussions and repins enhanced community engagement, while driving traffic back to the recipe pages on Whole Foods’ website.

Oscar de la Renta: Live Pinning Fashion Events

Style bloggers debated whether the fashion house’s decision to “live pin” a bridal-themed runway show was a sly gimmick or a clever way to present new looks to potential buyers. There’s no reason a stunt like this can’t be both. While most brands rely on Twitter or on their own blogs for live event coverage, Oscar de la Renta’s use of Pinterest in real time made their nearly-live content immediately available for sharing and commentary, dominating discussion on social media for the duration of the event.

Ben and Jerry’s: User Generated Photos for Ads

Ben and Jerry’s asked their fans to “capture euphoria” by snapping Instagram pictures of the faces we humans make when we’re savoring a cone full of Chunky Monkey or Cherry Garcia. At first, brand managers used the #captureeuphoria tag to select images for publication in traditional print ads. However, the initial promotion has grown in scope, showcasing all kinds of joyous ice cream dreams. The company’s official Instagram feed published a new customer submission daily, along with sneak previews of new flavors like the “30 Rock” themed pint timed for release with the series’ final episode.

Rent the Runway: Turning the Visual Web into a Mirror

Fashion startup Rent the Runway offers a Netflix-style service for high-end dresses, enabling customers to sport iconic fashion brands without sinking into debt. It’s not surprising that the company’s fans post pictures of themselves in their high class garb, but Rent the Runway’s next move could help innovate e-commerce. The company asks customers to comment about their dress sizes and overall fit on a service called Our Runway. Prospective renters get a more precise idea about whether a particular dress will work, while existing customers enjoy a forum in which to celebrate their looks.

Peugeot: Playing with the Format

Down in Panama, marketers for French auto manufacturer Peugeot developed a contest that leveraged Pinterest’s layout and rewarded eagle-eyed viewers. Contest designers split images of featured vehicles across three horizontally-aligned boards, then replaced the middle piece of the image with something else.

Fans who scoured the rest of the company’s Pinterest boards or its Facebook page found clues to locate the missing pieces and earn contest entries.

Despite the popularity of traditional contests on the visual web, getting creative with a Pinterest and/or Instagram promotion requires a lot of flexibility and a little bit of faith. As you start to nail down your concept, here are four way to keep your contests engaging and ethical.

Custom photography trumps stock photo libraries

For years, probloggers have understood how to convert images into effective blog layouts. Even if you’re not the strongest writer in the world, a powerful image backed up by a strong caption can still get your message into readers’ minds better than just body copy on its own.

As stock photography got cheaper, more bloggers plugged images into their layouts just to keep pace with their competition. The habit spread to other types of sites, too. It’s not uncommon to see the same photo of a “headset hottie” plastered across multiple websites operating in a variety of industry verticals.

Today’s visual web penalizes you for using stock photography instead of compelling, original images. A stock photo on your blog won’t help you much if readers aren’t willing to share your links with each other. Today’s website visitor hunts for images worth sharing, pinning, and retweeting. Photos that show your unique products, your team, and your customers perform far better on the visual web than stock photos ever will.

High quality images dominate cameraphone snapshots

Your prospects and customers demand more from the images on your blog, because they want to share only the best photos with their own audiences. A professional photographer can add polish to your executive headshots, to your product photos, and to action shots from special events. A photographer who understands you and your brand can help you avoid cliches like “business people shaking hands.” Images from your Flickr and Instagram feeds can still reflect rawness and spontaneity, complementing the authenticity of well-lit, professionally framed photos on the rest of your site.

Images with calls to action drive traffic back to your blog

When developing an image strategy for your blog, think about visuals that stand on their own, while inspiring viewers to follow links back to your blog. Calls to action can range from very subtle (like including a logo or URL somewhere in the image) to the explicit (asking followers to “repin and win”). Don’t overlook your image’s metadata, either. You can load your images title and description with text and URLs that explain a photo’s origin and make specific viewer requests.

How has your brand adopted to this new, visual web? Are you optimizing your imagery? Please share your thoughts and learnings in the comments below!

Once your account gets upgraded, you’ll also see content from your News tab show up down the left side of your home page. It’s a great way to go beyond raw Pinterest statistics to discover more about the people who love your pins. This feature can help casual Pinterest users explore the network for kindred spirits. After all, we can predict that someone who repins our stuff will probably like many of the same things. However, we think that professional marketers and brand managers on Pinterest will use the News tab to meet three kinds of people:

1. Customers

Imagine getting to know some of your best customers by name, just because they chose to add many of your pins to their boards. When combined with Curalate’s best-in-breed Pinterest analytics platform, you can start to put repin statistics into context. See who else your fans are pinning, and get a sense of where you stand among your competitors.

2. Influencers

Contextual clues can also help you discover whether your image’s repin lands on a popular boards managed by a bona fide tastemaker. Explore their boards to see how yor image fits into their world view, and why they think their board’s followers need to see your pin.

3. Prospects

Even though you won’t see “secret repins” reflected in your Pinterest news feed, you can still see how your images and products stack up on users’ public wish lists. Use this new spotlight on boards to better understand how your prospective buyers make their purchasing decisions.

When Pinterest fully implements the News tab, you’ll still be able to receive notifications about likes and new followers via e-mail. You’ll see your board invitations in your News feed, but you’ll mostly see pins from people with whom you (or your brand) may want to connect. Use the comment section below to tell us how you intend to use the News tab, or what new boards you’ve explored thanks to this new social media discovery tool.