Debunking the Pinterest Myth

Neal Schaffer: 0:04

Welcome to maximize your social actionable 10 minute advice on how your business can maximize your social media presence. Now, the host of maximize your social social media author, speaker, consultant, and founder of maximize social business, Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody, this is Neal Schaffer. And welcome to a another episode of maximize your social, I hope that you've all been keeping up with the latest updates on analytics that are being provided by Twitter, which is now open to everybody. It used to only be open to those who advertised on Twitter. And we also have Instagram analytics that are coming very soon, they just released them for their big brand and advertising partners, which I don't know how many of you would be in that group. But it may be a little bit longer for all of us to get access to it. But it is an exciting move, nevertheless. And then we have the enhancement of Pinterest analytics, which is really excited me. And that's really what I want to talk about today and sort of debunking the Pinterest myth. And well, what is the Pinterest myth? I'll go on to that in a second. But it's been interesting that with the new analytics, it's really exposed a lot of detail about Pinterest users who are following you, that can lead to a lot of interesting surprises. So let's get started with why Pinterest. And if you read my blog post on maximize social business, which you should all be subscribing to, obviously, I wrote about six social productivity tips and 23 tools to help you and one of the sections or one of the tools I talked about, I share a lot of tools that I use for different social networks. And really what it comes down to is, you know, I'm going to be talking about this the Social Media Success Summit, which I hope you'll be at as well as where to find your target audience. What social network is your target audience on? How do you figure that out? So you know, when we talk about social media, one of the things is yes, we want to engage with people, we want to engage with influencers, we want to engage with brand advocates, with potential customers in social media. But we also want to bring them back to our website. So this notion of using social media to generate traffic back to our website is an important one. It's why I have lilac Bullock, someone who I have immense respect for blogging every month on maximize social business on the topic of using social media for website traffic generation. And hopefully, once they get to your website, if they're relevant, you will convert them, you know, soft or hard, convert them in whatever, whatever way you're trying to. So I always go to my analytics on a regular basis, I have this weekly task set up where I look at my analytics and i i get a sense as to I'm spending all this time in the various social networks, what is delivering time, what isn't? There are certain tasks that I can pre schedule, there are certain tasks like engagement that involve real time. So at the end of all that, what is the time I'm spending? And what is the result? You know, the interesting thing is, if I look at my Google Analytics for maximize social business for the last month, I'm finding for the first time in a long time that Facebook is actually the number one provider of traffic to my site, which is probably surprising to a lot of people, including myself, you know, this podcast is going to be about Pinterest. But before I get to Pinterest, I just, I like to share the data with you all, I'm all about best practices. And I enjoy sharing my findings and hope that it may help you. This is why maybe some of you have seen I embark on a Facebook ad campaign on a regular basis to try to increase the user base of my maximize social business fanpage. I know a lot of people are saying, Well, Facebook, organic reach has gone down. And you know, Facebook is still where we all have our profiles, it's been a weakness of maximize social business has not been a traditional source of referral traffic, even though I've seen other similar social media blogs where it's generated a ton of traffic. So for that reason, I use a little bit of paid social just a little bit at a time, I'm trying to reach a target number. And if you've read maximize your social, you understand I talk about these targets, and to use paid social to help augment your organic growth. So that's sort of the first aha moment of this week's podcast. So after Facebook, Twitter comes in. And number two, Twitter has really always been number one. Twitter has been the social network that after I wrote my first book on LinkedIn, I finished the rough draft in March of 2009. I said, I'm gonna I want to spend more time in another network sort of got bored of LinkedIn. And it was either Twitter or Facebook, and I just fell in love with Twitter. And it really is the site where I spend most of my time on a daily basis ever since then, and maybe that's partly why it's become a number two site. It's also where people search for news and information right, but coming in at number three is Pinterest. And when I look at the bounce rates, the average paid sessions Pinterest has actually performed mean better than my other social networks. And you'll be interested to hear that LinkedIn comes in after that. And Google Plus is actually pretty close to LinkedIn, believe it or not. So we have different social networks that generate different traffic that require different investments of time on a weekly basis, on a daily real time engagement basis, and on a paid social basis. And it's really bringing all this together in your mind or on a dashboard, thinking holistically as to where am I going to invest my time and I do this on a weekly basis, right? So you know, today I want to talk about Pinterest. Because to a lot of people, that's a big surprise. This is traffic being generated from Pinterest, which we all tend to believe is 70 to 80% Female according to the data, and it's mainly, you know, if you look at the popular categories, Business, Social Media definitely ain't up there. Right. Why is this happening? And I got my first clue with this new Pinterest analytics, because what the Pinterest analytics, it's always shown about your, you know, your Pinterest profile, you know, generally growth of people following you and, you know, repin you gotten a certain day, what have you. And then we've always had activity from maximize social business.com Because I have a business account. Now, I also if you read that blog post about social media tools, I also use tailwind. And in fact, the founder and CEO of tailwind. Daniel Maloney is a contributor to maximize social business as well. And he's he's contributed a lot of great content. tailwind is the definitive analytical platform for Pinterest. So even though Pinterest augmented the analytics, there's still a need and a use for tailoring. And indeed, I use tailwind on a weekly basis to tweak my own engagement and content strategy for Pinterest. And, well, that's gonna have to be a subject of another podcast someday someone's gonna have to write a blog post on Neil, you promised me all these podcast topics, and you haven't podcasted on them yet? Yes, there is that much to learn in social. So what I like about this new analytics that Pinterest provides us now is that now we have this your audience tab, your audience tab includes demographics and interests. So we get a feel for the average monthly viewers that have come to my profile, and seen a pin aboard what have you, and how many of them are actually engaged. And well, you know, the average engagement rate is about 2%. And if you look at your Twitter analytics, because now everybody can, and if you're looking at your Facebook analytics, 2% is is almost average. In fact, if you think of email marketing, or if you think of pay per click 2% is not bad. Actually, once you think about it, obviously, you already have people that have that have opted in, that have an interest in you, which is why that number should be higher than a lot of pay per click campaigns that I've seen, but nevertheless, you know, that's sort of a number to compare yourself to how I've been doing, and I'll report back on that number on a regular basis. But then it gives me and you know, Facebook has always had this what countries are driving people, what cities are driving people? What genders are driving people, and then you know, languages. So yes, the gender if I look at the audience, and I'm just going to do a very, very rough calculation, but 75% of my audience is female. But when I go over to the interest tab, and this is what I tell people, right? When I talk about Pinterest, when I speak and everything, and I'm excited to be speaking in San Diego, this next week at a Comerica Bank event. I know one of my LinkedIn connections already reached out to me and said, Neil, I'm gonna be there. So I don't know how many of you are listening to this from San Diego. And I'll be speaking with Comerica Bank, again in Los Angeles the following week. So if you do business with them, make sure you contact them and let them know you want to hear Neal Schaffer speak. It's private invitation only event. But getting back to the demographics. So I tell people, Look, there's an interesting conversation in LinkedIn group about does Facebook work for b2b, if I only had one hour in a day, and I was b2b, I'd be spending it on LinkedIn, you know, and our Twitter and or content creation for blog. However, the same people that are on LinkedIn, also have profiles on Facebook. So even for b2b as as Paul Gillan, who is a noted author on b2b, social media marketing said in this conversation, that b2b on Facebook, it's not good necessarily for customer acquisition, but it's great for customer retention, because those same people, you know, b2b people do business with people inside businesses, right? Businesses, do business with other businesses, but it's really people inside those businesses doing business with people inside the other business, right. So at the end of the day, it's people people you know, Brian Kramer h two h, I can go on and on about the concept, but it's the same thing with Pinterest, you know, sure. You have all sorts of people on Pinterest, but the same female demographic that's on Pinterest, they're also female executives, female business owners, maybe female VP as a marketing females that are decision makers that can influence the decision as to whether or not they want to buy your product or service. So if you think about it that way, Pinterest, regardless of the demographic or what people post a lot of is very, very, you know, relevant to I think every business out there. Now, if you're a consumer brand, it's pretty easy as to how you can engage on Pinterest. If you're a b2b brand, like maximize social business in many ways, we provide information that that is useful for businesses as well, as professionals, you know, it begins to be a little bit harder. And I've been spending the last three months really trying to crack the code. And I think I think I have, and I think I've been very successful. And I'm looking forward to sharing what I've learned with everybody in the future. But until then, getting back to Pinterest, and I'm sorry, if I'm, if I'm going around the boat here, because there's just so much information to share. And I, I wanted to throw out that LinkedIn nugget because one of the other things I found as I write my free book on LinkedIn coming out very soon, and as I've been investing a little bit more effort in LinkedIn recently, is that there's still tremendous potential in LinkedIn groups. And just that one comment, that one conversation on b2b, you know, I found that the CMO of people links who, who co wrote the employee advocacy book with me is on there, I found plug in another social media author on there truly is a magical place that a lot of people have forgotten about because of the spam, I urge you to reinvest time in it. And I'm going to talk about that on a future podcast as well. Hope you're taking notes, and you'll remind me if I don't if I don't come through, but what Pinterest has now given us with the analytics with this your audience is the interest. The demographics are great. 75% female, I'm not surprised. But the interests are interesting of the people that are following me, right? What are they into? And if I look at the top six, makeup is number one, hair is number two, healthy eating is number three. Well guess what life quotes is number four. Now I have a thing about quotes. I have a pet peeve about quotes. I know that quotes are very engaging. And I will sometimes throw out a quote on on a business page. But I do not do much of this on Pinterest. I do do social media quotes and I have a board and I'll be writing a blog post on my favorite social media quotes very, very soon. But number five, just in front of fall outfits, which is number six, DIY home decor which is number seven nails. Number eight hair colors. Number nine DIY ideas. Number 10. Love quotes number 11 Is Social Media Marketing at number five. And in fact, social media comes in again, at number 12. All it takes the same people that like makeup and hair are also interested in social media marketing. And you don't have to conquer Pinterest. It you know, I have 7000 followers on Pinterest is not a large fan base. But it's enough to generate a heck of a lot of traffic once you understand how Pinterest works. So that was really an aha moment that there are enough people interested in social media for what I do to be able to generate interest. The other thing that Pinterest analytics to your audience interest tab gives me which is similar to the kind of content you get from tailwind is the audience boards with lots of my pins. So it's it's like saying these are the people that are pinning a heck of a lot of your stuff. Not only should I want to follow them and engage with them, but I can also get incredible insight as to what are some of the other things that they're pinning? If I wanted to create an infographic, what should I create it on? What sort of content should I be blogging on? So we get an incredible amount of insight. And then for a lot of brands out there, these are the brands, the businesses that your audience follows, which was really, really interesting as well. I see et Cie, which I'm not surprised I see wordpress.com, which was surprised I see Twitter and YouTube. So now I know that those are very, very relevant topics. I see hello society, which is a big time Pinterest blog, I see digital information world which is a big provider of infographics. So right here, I can start to analyze what is it that is interesting about these brands? What are they posting that now I can utilize for my own Pinterest marketing strategy? Wow, I went pretty long on this one. I tried to keep these under 10 minutes. But I was so excited to see this insight. And every social network provides their own analytics for business pages. And I've never really been happy with most of what they provide. I think up until now Twitter probably provided the deepest stats, I mean, Facebook and LinkedIn have some are provided stats, or analytics, I should say Pinterest has provided some but Pinterest has really raised the bar here. I think it's an exciting development. For those of you that are already on Pinterest, I hope that you're going to start looking at the analytics and really, we need to take more time and unplugged from our daily editorial our engagement and really go deep into the analytics and use the data to further increase the effectiveness of all that we do in social you know I try to do it on a weekly basis. Sometimes it can take up an entire day. And not just the analytics but also the my weekly tasks and I'm trying to find a way to become more effective a way to hand off more to my employees and really use the 8020 rule and decide you know what, you know in the top 10 StumbleUpon did not come through well Should I be and I don't spend a lot of time on StumbleUpon. But maybe I should be, you know, not spending as much time on there or what have you and spending more time on other sites. So that's really what I wanted to talk about today. I hope you found the information as I reveal sort of my own my own stats, my own data and my own way of thinking and dealing with, you know, making sense of all the data, and really putting that to work for me, to help make my social media more effective. I hope that all makes sense to you. It sounds like a lot of work, it doesn't have to be you need to come down, you need to create a routine out of all this, and pick and choose the data that you're going to use, and pick and choose how you use it and make a process out of it. I'm really excited to announce that I've already accepted the opportunity to speak at Social Media Marketing World in March. And it's all going to be about how to create processes around your social media. It's something that I've been very passionate about building my own. And I think that's really the magic. Or I should say, the magical missing ingredient that a lot of businesses have, unless you outsource to an agency and then your processes just working with your agency. But if you're doing it in house, it's the need for process, a rational process that is aligned with a social media strategy with tools with best practices. You'll be hearing me talk a lot more about that over the last month. Wow. This has been an exciting podcast, I hope you'll share my excitement that I have for the subject and how I just think a lot more businesses and professionals can be maximizing their social. That's it for today. If any of these topics resonated with you, hey, reach out to me, I want to know, and I want to talk more about that in future podcasts. But until then everybody, wherever you are in the world, make it a great social day and wishing you a strong close to your third quarter. Bye bye, everybody.

Unknown: 16:52

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