4 Ways To Reach Out To Bloggers On Pinterest

by Shelly Gustafson

Visually inclined bloggers have found a home on Pinterest - where they have an outlet to easily post their favorites photos and videos as well as interact with other like-minded bloggers and fans.

But can PR and marketing teams use Pinterest directly to effectively reach out to these influential individuals?

The answer thus far is both yes and no.

Yes, because Pinterest simply gives more insight to the blogger’s world and interests rather then simply reading their blog. Perhaps you’ll find through combing through the various pins and boards that an influential mommy blogger has a secret love for gardening or is on the search for healthy recipes for her kids.

However, reaching out to a blogger through Pinterest should be handled with extreme care. Pinterest thus far has developed as a very simple concept, much like Twitter did, and marketing and commercialism is still finding its place among the shuffle.

This, of course, does not mean you can’t utilize Pinterest to get you and your product noticed by these bloggers in a more subtle way. Below I’ve listed a few ways to slowly integrate yourself into these blogger’s world via Pinterest:

1) Get involved yourself. Join Pinterest and start your own boards with your interests and ideas on display.

2) Follow, Follow, Follow Similar to Twitter you can follow too many people on Pinterest and end up being overwhelmed by your feed. When you are starting out its incredibly important to start following the right people and for PR and marketers the right people are often the influencers in their field.

But don’t limit yourself to following a couple bloggers – look at who they follow and what interests them as well. Do they have favorite companies that they follow and interact with or perhaps other bloggers that you can add to your influencers list?

3) Repin / Like / Comment Pinterest offers three options for someone to show agreement or appreciation for another users contribution and all three of them end with you being listed in the individuals Pinterest update.

• Repin 
• This option should be used when you really like someone’s pin and want to add it to your own personal boards. It will remain there until you remove it however so use with caution.

• "Like" 
• The pinterest equivalent of the “retweet” a like on Pinterest shows a little less commitment that a repin but will still add you to the bloggers daily pinterest feed. 

• Comment
• Commenting on a pin will allow you to be associated with any repins that other individuals may do, so it can give you an even bigger reach. 

4) Contact Via Email 

Once you’ve establish yourself on Pinterest and feel you have a good feel for the bloggers style and interests reach out to them via email. Mentioning that you enjoy their boards on Pinterest can only help your cause and may even jog their memory back to some of your repins/likes/comments. 

April showers...make for a great time to watch online videos!

by Nick Egner

How does this have over 5 million views?

With Youtube being as vast as it is, it can be hard to find good content. With social media being saturated with an overwhelming supply of content, how in the world are you going to find the good stuff? Lots of video sharing sites and social media channels are basically just user generated filters that allow people to update and share the videos they find most interesting. Are you yearning for more high quality, on-line video content? Well, I can’t promise you that, but here is a look at a few places on the net you might find yourself lost in a sea of cute cats, laughing babies, and Tupac’s ghost at Coachella.

Pinterest.com
I know Pinterest at first glance looks like every girl on Facebook’s place to pin their dream wedding dress, or those cute shoes she saw at Neiman's, oh and I know that purse Sally just pinned would look great with them too. Being a guy on Pinterest is like going to the department store with your girlfriend/wife every single time you log in. But there is hope. Pinterest has taken strides to be a player in the realm of video sharing. In fact they just added Vimeo to their pinning prowess. Pinterest has also added a hot link on their opening page to go directly to a page of recently pinned videos. With Pinterest becoming an on-line market place, is it gearing up for marketers to add more content? For now it is just a nice addition to an already addicting website. Take a look at a (very manly) video pinboard I created to get an idea: http://pinterest.com/nicholase/videos-to-show-you-are-cool/.

Chill.com
I was just introduced to this site. It has a very similar feel to Pinterest, but is strictly for videos. You are able to follow people (like Pinterest) whom you feel have similar tastes as you. Through creating “collections” of videos, users are able to group videos together. There is even a “chill” button you can add to your bookmark bar for easy sharing. Ok, no joke, this is Pinterest. It is exactly like Pinterest for video content. And really, that isn’t that bad of a thing. I could see falling into a time warp on this site. Nice big thumb nails on the home page, user comments are easy to access, and it seems to be quite a streamlined style even though there are a ton of little icons that I have no clue what they are for. I don’t know, I say give it a shot.

Reddit.com/r/videos
OH MAN! It’s the holy grail of time you will never get back! This is the Steven Hawking level of accelerated time. Honestly, if you haven’t heard of reddit, you might want to think twice about checking it out. The idea is that people post videos they like. The reddit community then up or down votes the content depending on if they like it or not. So all the best posts rise to the top while all the worst fall to the floor. Rebeca Black is hanging out in the basement of Reddit. This is a tried and true method of discovering really top notch content out there in the depths of the interwebs...and some cat videos.

With Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter being the crowned juggernauts of social media sharing, it is nice to step away and explore some alternatives. And when I say “step away” I mean sit in your chair and be as unproductive as possible! Enjoy your total waste of time!

Pinterest is Proof that Visuals Work for Social Media Success

By Natalie Bell
@nebell90

Pinterest was introduced within the last year, but it has already beat out other social media outlets for average time spent on the site per month. The online bulletin board's member count has exploded in the past few months even though potential members still have to wait to be invited. Below is a visual of Pinterest's significance online; time spent on Pinterest is over four times the amount spent on Twitter alone. So why has it beat other social media sites? Visuals, my friend. Facebook, Pinterest and Tumblr are focused on being aesthetically pleasing. As we were revamping Axiom's Facebook page this summer, our big focus was how to make it eye-catching. The biggest thing was adding visuals to pages; in fact some pages are entirely visuals.

Pinterest has made their site a candy store for curious eyes. Not only do visuals attract attention, but they maintain a user's attention. This aspect of Pinterest has made it extremely popular despite it being the baby of the social media world.

Not only are photos a great ways to catch attention, but they can quickly communicate with viewers. A one-line tag can give the user all the information they need to understand what it going on. Precise and concise are keys to social media. Combine visuals with these factors and you have the perfect trifecta for a great social media site!

Using Pinterest for Market Research

by Ashley Haugen

@AshleyKaia

We all know that Pinterest has hit the social media scene with a boom. It's only been a couple months into 2012 and already marketers are claiming it as the next big tool in their arsenal of branding tools for this year. However, there is a step yet to be taken with much of Pinterest. Not many have tapped into the insights of using Pinterest for market research. Here, I will show you some tips to utilize the site for a better understanding of your market.

1. See what's pinning. A cool trick I learned from Adam Helweh at socialmediaexplorer.com is to enter your website URL into the Pinterest URL tag. Type the following into your browser and replace “yourdomain.com” with your own web site: http://pinterest.com/source/”yourdomain.com”. For example, try www.pinterest.com/source/nytimes.com. Here you will find all of the images that Pinterest users have taken from nytimes.org. This gives a nice display of what users find visually appealing/interesting on your site. Pretty cool huh? Have you tried it with your URL yet? 

2. Look for themes. Is there a certain image that shows up consistently? That means Pinterest users have found that image to be very appealing and/or interesting, and have re-pinned it to the site. Look for any patterns or themes within your search. Popular images will tell you the type of article or product that is resonating with viewers. 

3. Get a little closer. Is there an "image ambassador" among your pinners? By that I mean, are there one or two people that have consistently re-pinned your images, or keep showing up? Click on their profile and check them out. See what boards they are pinning to, how many followers they have and what other products they seem to like. If they've added links to other social media profiles, you may even want to connect with them further.

I'm excited to see how Pinterest will continue to expand, both as a fellow pinner and as a marketer. One thing is for sure, it's not leaving our radar anytime soon. What do you think? Have you been using Pinterest? Do you follow any brands? Contribute to the conversation below in the comment section! 

Video Post: Quora's Success is a Question that Remains to be Answered

In today's Daily Axioms video post, Steve discusses how the Q&A site Quora overhauled itself in 2011 by borrowing elements from other social networks:

Pin It!

Guest post by Kathleen Hennessy.

I can’t get enough of Pinterest! This virtual bulletin board is literally replacing my computer’s “bookmark” feature. Find a great idea for organizing your home office? Pin it. An inspirational photo pops up on a web site I frequent? Pin it. That new recipe you want to try next weekend? Pin it!

According to the site’s About section, “Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.”

This social media site also allows you to browse your friend’s pinboards. Stranger’s pinboards are free game too.... making new ideas and inspiration virtually limitless.

According to SHAPE magazine, Pinterest may even be able to change your life! In this article (http://www.shape.com/lifestyle/mind-and-body/can-pinterest-change-your-life) Pinterest fans created “vision boards” to help them focus on loosing weight. Definitely life changing.

Rumor has it the site is doing a big capital push, so un-doubtably, more fun things are in store.

Now our challenge as marketers is to figure out how to make our product visual, inspirational and pin-able.