Pinterest has become the fastest growing social network ever. In fact, Pinterest currently has over 11 million visitors who are actively in engaging on the site. Reports say that the average Pinterest user spends about 89 minutes interacting, sharing, and posting on the site.  It is easy to see why having your brand available on Pinterest is beneficial. Let’s take a look at how to get started with Pinterest and how to use it to leverage your brand.

Getting Started

Here’s how Pinterest works: Users (a.k.a. Pinners) post “pins” (usually photos) to boards that they organize by topic or theme. Users can create boards about anything and fill them with photos from around the web using a special bookmark. They can follow other users or just browse topics and “repin” specific items. You don’t need an account to browse Pinterest, but you do need it to interact and “pin” items.

Despite the success of Pinterest, getting a login for the site is still invite-only. Luckily, it usually only takes a day or two to get your invite to create an account. Once you receive it, you have the option to create a standalone login or to connect using Facebook or Twitter. If you don’t want to connect via Facebook or Twitter just yet, that’s okay. You can connect the to your account later.

Tip #1: When setting up your account, add descriptive, keyword-rich text to the About section. This will help your account show up in search engine results. Be sure to add your company’s URL.

Next you’ll want to create a board. This is where it all begins for your brand. Rather than just pinning photos of  your products, you really want to use these boards to show off you values and culture. At it’s heart, Pinterest is about promoting lifestyles and personalities. People are inspired to pin items based on how they think it reflects them. So you want your presence on Pinterest to be less about your products and services, and more about the life your products promote. For example, let’s say your company is an Austin-based retail clothing company. You may want to create boards like: Austin Style, Fair Trade Fabrics, Going Local, etc. You’ll want to make sure that the names of your boards are creative, compelling, and accurately describe the pins contained within.

Tip #2: Name your boards after your business type, products, and services. For instance, if you sell products for athletes and fitness enthusiasts, create pin boards for such topics as best running shoes or favorite workouts.

Pinning Your Assets

Regardless of whether you are in a product-based business or a services based business, you likely have som visual assets that will work great on Pinterest. You may have a video that you can take stills from, or visuals from a recent blog post, or even images of customers using your products. You need to make sure that you are using these visuals on your website, on other social media outlets, and in your newsletter so that users have the ability to pin them.

Tip #3: Develop an infographic related to your industry or area of expertise and distribute it on Pinterest. Infographics are extremely popular these days and creative ones tend to get reposted and shared widely.

Build Your Followers

On Pinterest, like on Twitter, the best way to get followers is to be a follower. Or more specifically, an engaged user. Start pinning and re-pinning content, create boards, post comments, and follow other users. If you have good content, users will start to follow you back. You can also visit: http://www.pinterest.com/source/yoursite.com to see what has been pinned from your site and who has pinned it – make sure to follow these users back in order to build up your audience.

You’ll also want to add a Follow button to your website so that users can easily pin material from your site. This is the easiest way to encourage users to pin your content. You can also encourage others to follow your Pinterest feed via newsletters or other social media sites.

Tip #4: Post pictures on your own website and then pin those pictures on Pinterest. The pinned images will link back to your site, which helps drive traffic and increase your search engine results.

Tip #5: Follow other Pinterest users in your local area and/or field of expertise. Comment on and share their pins; they’ll often return the favor. 

Other Creative Ways to Engage Users

#1. Create a guest board and allow visitors to add videos and photos that fit in with your niche. You can also use a board to run a contest for the most interesting, unique, useful, etc. pins on a topic. Offer a prize to really drive traffic.

#2. Have you recently given a presentation or webinar? Maybe you got some publicity recently? These are great items to pin on Pinterest!

#3. Allow your employees or team to contribute. They likely have some similar interests in your industry with a view uniquely different than yours. These boards can further promote the culture of your company.

#4: Create a coupon graphic and give potential clients a promotional discount on Pinterest. Use the description to further the goods/services being offered.

Arvo

Kreon

Handlee

Oleo Script

PT Sans

Quattrocento Sans

Google has created a directory of open source web fonts and they provide an API service so that anyone can bring quality typography to their webpages.

Benefits of using the Google Webfonts API include:

• Embedded fonts are more SEO friendly.
• The fonts and API are lightweight and unobtrusive.
• There is a large variety of fonts to choose from.
• The API service runs on Google’s servers which are fast, reliable and tested.
• Google provides the service free of charge.
• It is possible to add Google Web Fonts to a website in seconds.

In the Internet age, content has to be relevant to your audience and search engines. Especially now that we have so many outlets to share it on – website, blogs, podcasts, and social media. So how do you distinguish your message from your competition?

Write for the customer first

While it certainly makes sense for your content to be keyword-rich, search engines don’t buy products and services. Customers are the ones who need to be compelled by your message on both your website and your online outlets. Think about what you education your customers about in person and add that to your content calendar.

Get involved with the community

Consider some of the most successful small businesses in your area. You may notice that good portions of them are in some way involved with the community. Whether it is through hosting events or participating in community activities, local businesses who have the pulse of the community tend to do well.

This can also be translated to online channels. Engage your followers and site visitors with information on community events, industry trends, and news stories that impact your business or industry.

Tell stories

It’s been proven that comprehension is greater in most people when they are remembering a story versus a list of facts. In addition to being more entertaining, storytelling allows you to portray a feeling to your customer. Telling the story of your business is a great way to make a memorable connection with a potential customer. Also, sharing customer success stories are a great way to show audience what your business can do for them.

Play nice with your pseudo-competition

All businesses are unique and even though almost all have competitors, there are always those businesses that are similar but different. These businesses are a great source for content sharing. Maybe a business that serves a different market or location, or has a different specialty than yours would be willing to share content with you. For example, you could guest post on each other’s blog or share tips and advice on your Facebook pages.

Don’t just say it – show it!

It’s a great idea to try and make the online experience of your company as vivid as the offline experience. Use multimedia elements like videos and photos where you can because multimedia tends to rank higher in a search. If your videos, podcasts, or photos contain your customers or partners, make sure to tag them or let them know so they can broadcast it on their networks which helps you expand your audience.

Make the content easy to digest

No matter how engaging your content is, if it is presented in huge blocks of text or full of non-conversational SAT words, then it won’t be read. Make sure to break up paragraphs or use bulleted lists and use reasonable vocabulary to increase readability.

Make the content easy to share

What makes a website or blog post shareable? People tend to share items that are either informative or entertaining. Make sure your content has one of those elements and then add share buttons to it so your audience can easily share it with their network.

Unfortunately poor reviews can be shared also. Many companies now use monitoring services from Reputation.com to monitor for negative and positive interactions with their brand.

Many of our clients do not have the budget to hire an expert photographer or travel to multiple shoot locations to create a series of images that fit their concept. iStockphoto.com solves this problem by allowing us to search their vast library of images to find a photo that fits our client’s needs. Here are a few of the reasons why we find iStockphoto.com to be the best resource for this…

Great Selection

iStockphoto.com has huge library of stock photos, vector illustrations, video and audio files. Rarely do we find ourselves at a loss for an image to illustrate a concept. In fact, sometimes finding an image is difficult because there are so many to choose from.

High Quality

The files at iStockphoto.com come in a variety of different sizes and resolutions and there is always a high quality version available so we can use it for print, web, large format, etc.

Reasonable Price

There are some places online to get free images, but it is important that you have the license to use them. That’s what is great about iStockphoto.com. All of the images you purchase are licensed from personal and commercial use. Other sites like Getty Images or Corbis tend to charge 10 times what iStockphoto.com charges.

A slab serif typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serifs are semi-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols. On a slab serif, the serifs may be either angular (like Rockwell), or rounded (like Courier). Slab serif typefaces generally have no bracket connecting the strokes to the serifs. Because of their bold appearance, they are most commonly used in large headlines and advertisements but are seldom used in body text.

We believe slab serif fonts are a more modern version of serifs and we love to use them in the heder tests of our designs. Here are a few of our favorites.

PF Centro Slab Pro

Dada Sans Pro

Inlove

Monroe

Regan

Theorem

1. Do not forward chain letters
Whether it is dirty jokes, cute pets, or naive hoaxes, chain emails are simply inappropriate. Who wants to receive an email from a professional contact that is full of funny cat photos? Or a chain email that threatens that something bad will happen if it isn’t forwarded? These emails serve as nothing but a distraction. While some of these emails seem cute or funny, they aren’t professional and more importantly they make you look unprofessional too.

2. Respond to group emails appropriately
We’ve all done this at least once on accident. There is a difference between the “reply” button and the “reply all” button when responding to an email and if you’re part of a group message which one you choose can make a huge difference. If you do hit “reply all” make sure the email is relevant to the entire group. Otherwise you may end up writing something you wish a few of them never read. In addition to the “oops” factor, replying to all can generate a lot of email replies which junks up everyones inbox.

3. Use actual English
Text message or chat room short hand is almost never acceptable via email messages, especially in a professional environment. While this shorthand may save a second or two in typing, it can come off extremely unprofessional and even make you look childish or illiterate. Emailing from your mobile should be no exception.

4. Utilize CC and BCC properly
Using these tools can save time and serve as proof a message has been sent. Carbon copy (or “CC”) sends a copy of your message to this third party and blind carbon copy (or “BCC”) will send a copy to the third party but without the other recipients being able to see that. When sending an email to a group of people that may not know each other, us BCC in an effort to keep the names and email addresses private.

5. Be careful what you say
Every email is saved, even if the recipient deleted the message from their inbox. Emails also tend to get forwarded and replies are saved in an email thread. So be careful of what you say because it could come back to bite you! Also, it’s easy to forget that there is an actual human being on the other end of the computer. Anger and frustration are can still come accross through email messages. Take an hour or a day to respond to an upsetting message so you don’t say something you’ll regret.

6. Don’t be a spammer
Bulk email messages can be impersonal or uninteresting. If you are sending out information such as a newsletter, be mindful of frequency and always allow the user to unsubscribe.

7. Respect Recipients’ Time
It’s a good idea to minimize the time it will take the recipient to process and respond to your email. Sometimes this requires more time on your end to send the email, but doing so will ensure that you get a timely and relevant response.

8. Clarify
Effective communication is difficult enough, but when you detract the physical human interaction and remove the subtleties of spoken language, meaning can be extremely confusing. Use crisp, muddle-free sentences. If the email has to be longer than five sentences, make sure the first provides the basic reason for writing. It is also a good idea to avoid strange fonts and colors for legibility.

9. Keep signatures simple
Using an automatic signature for your email messages is encouraged. However, long email signatures tend to muddle up a message thread. Typically your name, basic contact information, position, and maybe a website link are all you need.

10. Lose the unnecessary attachments
Let’s face it, professionals and business owners love to see our logos. But in email logos in your signature appear as attachments. Time is wasted trying to see if there’s something to open. Also, sending text as an attachment when it could have been included in the body of the email, increases the amount of time it takes to read.

The rules of email etiquette are fairly simple, but sometimes they are easy to forget. Just remember to always respect the recipient and stay professional!

ISIS

The Isis mobile payment application made it’s debut at SXSW. This mobile payment system brought to you by T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon and is launching this summer in Austin and Salt Lake City. The Isis application gives you the ability to pay for real goods without taking your credit card out of your wallet. You simply wave an NFC-enabled phone at a reader, enter a PIN on your phone and then complete the transaction. It’s not the first of it’s kind though, it’s direct competition is Google Wallet. Find out more about Isis at http://www.paywithisis.com.

Highlight

Highlight was one of the most buzzed about new services as SXSW. Highlight automatically pushes users’ basic information to other users nearby when they have something in common. If someone standing near you also has Highlight, their profile will show up on your phone. You can see their name, photos of them, mutual friends, and anything else they have chosen to share. When you meet someone, Highlight helps you see what you have in common with them. And when you forget their name at a party a week later, Highlight can help you remember it. Highlight has competition from other startups such as Glancee and Sonar. Learn more at http://highlig.ht.

TaskRabbit

TaskRabbit gets you in touch with friendly, reliable people who can help you get just about anything you need done, and put some free time back into your life. Simply post a task and and one of the carefully screened and trained TaskRabbits will take care of it. Then simply pay for the service on the TaskRabbit.com website. To ensure the safety and security of the TaskPosters, each and every TaskRabbit goes through a multiple step application process which includes an essay, video interviews and a background check before being selected to run Tasks. TaskRabbit has some competition from Zaarly. Learn more about TaskRabbit at http://www.taskrabbit.com.

Lavina

Petite Fleur

Ritornelos

Samantha Script

Trochera

Weingut

Mobile marketing offers companies, agencies and marketers the opportunity to connect with consumers outside of traditional and digital media directly on their portable devices. In this article, we outline some ways small businesses can use these mobile strategies to deliver more meaningful brand engagement and interaction.

Strategies:

Communicate via text message.
Depending on your business model, you may want to consider communicating with your customers and potential customers via text message. Text/SMS messages are cheaper than direct mail and the communication is instant. It also provides a higher readership (about 75% more than email, and 95% more than direct mail). Text message communications are better for time sensitive matters and it encourages an immediate response or action.

Some ways you can use text messaging to communicate with your customers include:

Getting information out quickly.
For example, if you are a real estate agent, you can set up an auto-reply text message shortcode. When texts that shortcode plus the address of one of your listings, they can receive instant information about that property. This is great for realtors because it allows customers who may not be near a computer to get your listing information.

Reminders for time-sensitive situations.
An example of this may be encouraging renewals, reminding customers about appointments, or just confirming delivery times.

Offer exclusive promotions and measure success immediately.
For example, if you have the text message equivalent of a mailing list, you can text a special promotion to your mobile users. If you enable SMS responses, you can monitor the success of that promotion.

Use discounts to reward participation via check-ins.
More and more mobile consumers are sharing the the things they care about online and they look to their social networks to learn about what their friends and contacts care about as well. Because of this, it is easy to see why a business could benefit from having a mobile consumer check-in to their location via Facebook, Foursquare, or Gowalla. That check-in instantly becomes viewable on their network. A great way to encourage these check-ins is to offer a promotion or special for those customers. For example, let’s say you run a bookstore that offers a $5 coupon to anyone who checks in to your retail location on Facebook. By doing so, you may have encouraged a mobile consumer to make a purchase that they may otherwise not have made. Even if the consumer doesn’t make a purchase, the possibility of a discount may have been enough incentive for them to check-in, which effectively means they advertised your bookstore on their Facebook page.

Deliver crucial, relevant information and/or entertainment via a mobile website or app.
This is how most small businesses can effectively use mobile marketing. Just having an easy to use mobile website or mobile application can engage mobile consumers. Offering relevant information in this way can be as simple as providing a map to your store that user can access on their mobile. Or it can be more sophisticated. For example, let’s say you run a small training center that has frequent training seminars in different locations. Your customers may have forgotten to look up where a seminar is being held before leaving their home or office. It is essential that you have a list of your seminars, their venues, and directions to the venues on your mobile website. Let’s also assume that your students tend to arrive early to the seminars. Having a class syllabus and instructor bio posted online could be helpful information for them to read while they wait for the seminar to begin.

Engage customers with QR codes
You may have seen these weird black and white square barcodes in all sorts of places. These QR codes allow mobile users to scan them and be taken to more information about the ad or location from which they saw the code. There are so many great uses for QR codes.

Use QR codes on advertising for more info.
For example, say you place an ad in a local magazine, billboard or on a bus bench. If you include a QR code, potential customers can scan that code and be taken to a special landing page that funnels to your website. This landing page allows you to track the effectiveness of the campaign and offer special promotions. You can also use QR codes on product packaging where full product information may not fit.

Use QR codes to increase Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter followers.
You can include QR codes on your promotional materials that will drive traffic to your social networks and increase your following.

Use QR codes to encourage purchasing.
You can include a QR code on your product packaging or store signage to send consumers to your Yelp or Citysearch reviews. If you have good reviews, this will likely encourage purchases.

Tips:

There are many creative ways to market to mobile consumers, but there are also some guidelines that are crucial to encouraging commerce without risking alienating customers. Here are the most important things to remember:

Access to information easily and quickly is critical.
Remember, mobile consumers are out and about and are usually not in a area where they can spend time waiting for information. It is essential that you know what your customers are looking for and find easy ways to deliver that content. One of the best ways to do that is to implement a search feature on your mobile website.

Engagement should be meaningful.
Customers and potential customers need to feel important. If they are going to engage with your company, they should feel good about the outcome. Make sure that any information or correspondence you offer is relevant and has value for the customer.

Always ask permission and manage frequency expectations.
When it comes to communicating with your customers, make sure you have permission. Don’t overstay your welcome by communicating to frequently or you may find many potential customers jumping ship.

These are just a few ways to begin engaging your mobile audience. If you implement a mobile strategy, make sure that it makes sense for your business model and your goals as well as providing value for your customers. Have fun with these ideas and be creative. Creativity is the best way to engage your audience!