The Social Media Mermaid

April 16, 2014

Pinterest vs. Tumblr

tumblr-vs-pinterest

image from x

When Pinterest came along, I remembered that I wasn’t sure if I had room for another platform in my life. A silly thought, but I guess it’s true. We only really use a social media network when we “get something” from it. So what does Pinterest have over Tumblr or vice versa?

According to Wikipedia:
Tumblr, stylized in its logo as tumblr., is a microblogging platform and social networking website founded by David Karp and owned by Yahoo! Inc. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users’ blogs, as well as make their blogs private. Much of the website’s features are accessed from the “dashboard” interface, where the option to post content and posts of followed blogs appear.

Pinterest is a visual discovery tool that people use to collect ideas for their different projects and interests. People create and share collections (called “boards”) of visual bookmarks (called “Pins”) that they use to do things like plan trips and projects, organize events or save articles and recipes. The site was founded by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp. It is managed by Cold Brew Labs and funded by a small group of entrepreneurs and investors.

 

As  a user, I was slightly confused in the beginning of using both platforms because the same image would pop up on both sites. However, if you realise the potential of both networks it becomes clear that they are not as similar as one would have thought.

Ryan LaSala has written a great article about the same thing, pointing out that both platforms underlie the principle of personal curation, which is very to the point. However, they should not be viewed as competitors.

When it comes to business use of both platforms, it has to be said that Tumblr has a bigger history of follower engagement. Yes you can leave comments underneath pins on Pinterest, but it’s just not the same. I have seen posts on Tumblr that went “viral” because of a certain comment and not because of the original post. It is also more multimedia oriented: You can post quotes, plain text, gifs, videos or just images. It allows for a real all round experience, while Pinterest is sort of limited to pictures. So this is definitely something to keep in mind.

As pointed out in my last post, target audience is something to think about. Tumblr has a very young audience and Pinterest has a more female and slightly older audience. Susan Guneluis described both platforms very well in her article on Sprout Social, so make sure to check that one out for more information.

There is a lot to say about the two platforms and some social media advisors say you can either chose one or go with both platforms (well what else is there?), but I would advise that it really depends on what you make of it.

As always, try not to do anything halfway!

April 10, 2014

Target audiences- wait what?

Posted by jdroese in Uncategorized  Tagged , , , , , ,    

How do you characterize social media platforms?

Mostly by their main use, I would say. Most of the people would describe Facebook as a platform to stay in touch with their friends, Twitter for current updates about anything that fits into 140 characters and Instagram is just pictures.

Not a lot would describe Twitter as a platform that is used almost equally by men and women, or that more Instagram users live in urban areas than in rural ones. So it may take you a little bit to actually realize the demographics and statistics when it comes to the the different social media networks.

So let’s think of Pinterest: It is probably not a surprise that more than 65% of the users are female. This changes a lot. Your business might be very visually oriented but your target group consists purely of men, which generally would render Pinterest less useful than you first thought.

Below is a very interesting and cool infographic about Pinterest users and their behavior on the site, that I found on this site but that was created by Modea.

pinterest infographic

So don’t just worry about the usual prejudices about social media platforms. Depending on their target group, you might find a creative and succesful way to integrate that platform in to your business even though it first didn’t appeal to you.

April 3, 2014

Pinterest for events?

Personally, I think Pinterest is great and hopefully this shines through the recent blog posts. It is useful in so many ways, not just personally, but great if you want to grow your business or organization.

Something I have stumbled upon recently is the use of Pinterest for events, or the promotion of events.

The different steps are something like this: Create a board for the event, pin the flyer graphic, link to a Facebook event, sometimes even create a raffle.

What annoys me about this is that I think Pinterest is not as “current” as Twitter or Facebook, which makes it very hard to keep your followers on things such as events. I have phases where I check my Pinterest dashboard every day, but sometimes it gets so overwhelming that I don’t check it for a whole week. Your event might as well be over by that time, if you have tried to promote it on Pinterest.

 

If you really think that Pinterest is a great way to promote your kind of event and that your followers will actually learn about it through Pinterest, keep this in mind:

  • Make it visible on other platforms and don’t solely rely on Pinterest. Create a Facebook event, put it in a tweet, show a picture of you organizing the event on Instagram. Try to get people excited!
  • If you make a board for the event, don’t just pin one picture advertising it.
  • Try to create buzz around the event, and show this off in your pins. Make it a whole thing and pin inspirations for the event, show who is coming, what food will be there, the city it’s in, the progress of making it happen…This way people will actually follow that board.
March 27, 2014

Advice from a Pinterest user herself.

pinterest

Now there is a lot of advice out there on how to master Pinterest, how to use it efficiently for your business and so on. A lot of it is common sense, some of it is related to marketing strategies. I think there is something important to add to this, something that I don’t see a lot of times: Advice from an actual Pinterest user.

I will take myself as an example here.My Pinterest account is only for private use, I use it to pin hairstyles, fashion pictures, travel inspiration and food stuff. I am an easy target for businesses that fall in to this category: If I see a beautiful necklace I will buy it, if I see a recommended restaurant pinned, I will go there. It’s really that simple for me. I am open to suggestions and act based on these visuals.

It’s obviously harder for non-profits to achieve that sort of outcome. What they want is different: They try to get followers that support their mission, are loyal and will hopefully act on their desire to help.

So here are a couple of tips from myself: A Twenty something that is open for suggestions and willing to make changes to her life.

1. Have really good pictures.

There is almost no other way of actually standing out on Pinterest. Kick their butts with your amazing pictures! This doesn’t really take that much, most of the smartphones take really good pictures and filters make pretty much everything look adorable.

2. Have a good description underneath.

I think a lot of us are very lazy on Pinterest and never really change the blurb underneath when repinning pictures. Sometimes it doesn’t matter, but it does matter if you wanna come up for certain searches! Try to mention your city, important keywords etc.

3. Be persuasive, empathetic and sympathetic.

This is a very general statement, I admit that. However, what I love to see on Pinterest is friendly pins, full of love and inspiration, creative ones and smart ones. Charm them off their socks with your pins and followers will definitely be interested!

March 20, 2014

How social media can get you in trouble

Social media is all great and good until someone feels like trouble. There is always the possibility that someone on social media can publicize wrong information or just hurtful gossip about your company.

 

socialmediafail

Make sure you know your social media! Otherwise you will end up like Charlie Sheen, giving out your phone number to millions of followers.

Because everyone and anyone can get on Twitter or Facebook and share their bad experiences with your company, be careful how you handle those things. Taking care of online customer complaints in a friendly way is probably the only way to keep your customers. You don’t wanna end up like United Airlines!

Be careful about sending private or confidential information to the wrong person. This is not just for social media, more for the Internet in general. Seems like common sense, but if information like this ends up in the wrong hands, it can damage your reputation! And once it’s out, there’s almost nothing that can be done about it.

Make sure you know who is speaking on your behalf. If you have employees who blog, tweet or engage in other social media shenanigans, talk to them about the kind of information you do and don’t allow about the company and that you are on the same page about this topic!

 

 

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