How to drive traffic through Instagram & Pinterest without spending large amounts of money

September 5, 2018September 5, 2018 / marissapick / 1 Comment

Often at conferences I discuss the power of visual social media. We’re living during a social media revolution and as Aristotle stated well before social media existed, “There can be no words without pictures.”

The human brain process images 60,000 times quicker than text (Click to Tweet) and 59% of executives would rather watch video than read text (Click to Tweet). Having a visual social media marketing strategy is essential and in order to cut through the noise and succeed we MUST take advantage of specific strategies, tools, tactics and tips to have a competitive edge.

Visual media has always trumped the written word when it comes to winning people’s short term attention. This guest post is from Vin Clancy who recently launched his new book Ace The Game: The 100 best growth hacks in the world right now” which is a can’t miss book this year. You can learn more about Vin by visiting his website or blog and joining his growth club to receive strategies and tips to get ahead as a marketer. I found his tips to be very helpful in leveraging Pinterest and Instagram to generate traffic and I hope you’ll find it valuable as well, enjoy!

How to drive traffic through Instagram & Pinterest without spending large amounts of money

Pinterest and Instagram are two seriously powerful platforms.

Visual media has always trumped the written word when it comes to winning people’s short term attention.

Pinterest

Despite mainstream opinion, Pinterest is no longer just a site for the female, mom demographic.

It’s a pool of regularly engaged traffic that is just ripe for the taking.

In fact, it is the 2nd biggest referrer of traffic online (after Facebook)

First you need to set up a profile with a niche in mind.

Make it fairly general to your niche, then use various boards to hyper target your audience.

Use IFTTT and deploy the “Repost from Instagram To Pinterest” feature (good Instagram content translates good Pinterest content)

Make your profile look awesome and schedule 20+ pins a day of viral content that has done well on Instagram (use non-copyright images without logos)

Use software like followinglike to auto follow people who would be interested in your product/service and let it run.

A word of warning though, this is against Pinterests terms and conditions so proceed with caution. Use proxies if you’re handing it to an intern and be conservative with the amount of people you follow/unfollow in a day.

Once you start seeing a spike in traffic work out which pins are performing the best then make your own that direct directly to your blog/website.

Using this method it’s not uncommon to see anywhere between 10k-250k shares!

If things aren’t going right straight away here’s a few things you need to do.

1) Do more research into what successful Pinterest accounts are doing

Use the search function to stalk influencer accounts and just copy what they’re doing
Find board name inspiration by searching boards
Look at the accounts that have 5000+ followers and reverse engineer

2) Optimise your profile

Make sure your account name as relevant keywords
Do the same to your description
Make sure you have 10-20 boards in your niche. Be hyper focussed.
Fill your board description with keywords
Create unique covers for all your boards

3) Repost A LOT to see what works well

From my coaching classes to my private consulting clients, everyone is trying to optimise the very little traffic they’re getting
It’s extremely difficult to work out what works if you’re hardly getting any visitors. Work on reposting a lot of popular pins 30+ a day if that’s what it takes to see what gets the best traction. Then optimise from there.

4) Engagement automation

Keep following/unfollow until you reach 500+ followers
If you don’t have any followers no one is getting alerts when you’re reposting all this content, thus no one is sharing it
Follow the followers of your identified influencers (unfollow when you’re following 10k)

5) Content Seeding with group boards

Group boards are boards you can request to contribute to.
Joining means you can repin content to an existing audience
This can greatly increase your follower growth and decrease the amount of time it takes to work out which pin style is the most shareable.
Find group boards in your niche and follow the boards steps to become a contributor. This may be email, commenting on a specific post, sending them a DM etc.
See if your influencers are part of group boards, it’s a good place to start.

6) Identify Content That Resonates

Now comes the waiting game, to figure what works and what doesn’t takes time unfortunately. So be patient!
Once you get a gist of what’s working and what isn’t start posting less of the bad stuff and more of the good stuff

Once the ball gets rolling that’s when you start making your copycat Pinterest content with your logo, and then you can start directing the traffic to your landing pages or ecommerce stores (from there it’s up to your websites to convert the clickers!)

Instagram

Moving on now to the platform some of you may prefer, Instagram.

In this section I’m going to explain the simple hashtag ladder strategy that you can use to drive up followers and build an awesome account.

Now a lot of you may be thinking that this will be a huge secret that is safe guarded by big brands and influencers alike…

Well it’s not.

It’s actually hidden in plain sight!

You know those long lists of hashtags some people put in the first comment of their photos? Well if used properly these lists can draw in followers from outside of your current audience.

Hashtags make up one of two main discovery mechanics on the site (the second being the explore page)

Hashtags are the mechanic that anyone can nail from the start, making them great to focus on for small accounts.

Each post you put on instagram can have up to 30 hashtags (and you guessed it, we’re going to use all of them!)

So we need 30 hashtags, but which ones?

To break into the ‘popular’ section of any hashtag search result you need fast and massive engagement on your post.

If your account has a lot of followers, this is pretty simple (especially if they have notifications for your account on).

The trouble is a lot of you don’t have a lot of followers or even what is considered ‘great’ engagement (+5%) so you’re unlikely to rank on this page.

Example: Say you’ve got 5,000 followers, so a 5% engagement rate would be 250 people liking one of your photos. Using a classical hashtag strategy, that 250 likes is unlikely to get you to appear in the popular results for most of the hashtags you’re using, they’re just too competitive. For the tags you do rank in, you may be an extra 10–20 likes, but it’s not enough to get any crazy growth.

So you need to ladder your hashtags so that you rank for the easier ones first.

The likes you receive from the easy to rank hashtags will then allow you to rank for your second hashtag.

The likes you generate from this will help you rank for the third (and so on and so forth)

Now this won’t fire on all cylinders every time, so maybe think about deleting the posts that don’t quite as well.

But if you have 10 posts a day and perhaps 3 or 4 it the jackpot, then you’ll be in for a few follower spikes every day.

So how do you make these ladders?

I’d suggest that for an account below 10,000 followers, you want to find a range of RELEVANT hashtags (check the popular results to make sure there’s content similar to your in them) that have been used between 10,000 and 250,000 times.

You may even want to find multiple sets of 30 hashtags, each with a roughly even distribution of hashtag uses across this range, using different sets for different posts.

The key here is that your posts normally couldn’t rank in the popular results for the hashtags that have been used 250,000 times, but they could easily rank for those that have been used 10–20,000 times. So you get some engagement from those, which pushes you into the results for the 20–40,000 tags and so on.

Of course, the more you post (to a degree) and the better the content quality, the more success you’ll have. The key point here is that if you don’t have this hashtag ladder in place, it’s much more difficult, if not impossible to get any viral results from your Instagram posts.

What do you think of this guest post? Please leave a comment below or send me a tweet @marissapick.

Authority, Impact, and the Future of Influence Marketing

April 14, 2015April 14, 2015 / marissapick / 1 Comment

Influencer marketing is the most powerful tool in getting a brand’s message to an interested audience in a relevant and authentic way. Whether launching a new product or just trying to raise brand awareness, it’s effective in driving engagement, visibility,quality traffic, and more. Last week I spoke at ClickZ Live New York on Authority, Impact, and the Future of Influence Marketing.

The future of influence marketing is up and coming as marketers are trying to hone in on how to develop relationships with key influencers with hopes to lift awareness of their brands. It’s not enough to market through influencers, now it’s crucial to find a way to collaborate in partnerships with influencers.

Within my speech I discussed the four rules of influencer marketing:

1) Popularity Does NOT Equal influence.

2) To be influential, a person has to be actively writing on topics which matter to your audience.

3) To be influential, a person has to have authority.

4) Influencer’s drive action.

Platforms like Instagram and YouTube have led to the rise of a new generation of influencers that have amassed huge followings on niche subject matters. A research study by Nielsen showed that buyers trust experts and influencers over branded content. It’s important start a campaign with a precise set of goals, and understand the purpose of your influencer outreach plan. Whether its to get them to be a brand advice, guest blog, or vouch for your brand you must begin by defining concise targets and have various KPI’s for various social media networks.

So how can you find Influencers? Great Question, here are some of my favorite (and free!) tools:

1) Follower Wonk Enables you to find, analyze, and optimize for social growth, and search bios of those influencers you’re after (especially very niche topics!).

2) Twitter provides free analytics which outlines top followers, influencers, and also gives a nice overview of your impressions, mentions, and more. I also find using twitter lists to be an excellent way to tap into and influencer and “digest” twitter in a more streamlined manner.

3) BuzzSumo allows you to find the most shared content and see what content performs best, as well as discover key influencers.

4) Topsy is one of my favorite tools to search all tweets and measure social trends, but they’ve also got an influencer option which has proven quite helpful.

5) Klout is the original tool to rank influencers based upon social networks and reach, they’ve started a content first approach, but hey, I still get free perks, and i’m still a fan!

Once you’ve found your influencers it’s important to get closer and engage with them using social media. Being socially active you’ll be one step closer to your influential audience. When reaching out to an influencer you’ve got to recruit, initialize and grow your relationship, and then nurture. Make sure your outreach is relevant. Taking time to research your target influencers interests, and understand who they are and what they like is crucial. Engage on social media by sharing an article, providing an opinion, and engaging when them in conversation without an ask. Once you’ve built your initial conversation pitch free it’s important to reach out offline to discuss next steps, and if possible remind them of your discussion and engagement to spark the conversation.

My slideshare from ClickZ Live is below, and remember Jay Baer’s quote, “Content is fire. Social Media is Gasoline.” When done right tapping into this new generation of influencers can put your brand on the map, increase traffic, engagement, and so much more.

What do you think of the presentation, send me a tweet @MarissaPick, or leave a comment below.

Ten Eye Opening (and Tweetable) #Instagram Stats

February 13, 2015February 13, 2015 / marissapick / Leave a comment

Data from the Pew Research Center shows that among social media networks, Instagram has surpassed Twitter in popularity among United States Adults. The research states that 26% of online adults in the U.S. used Instagram in 2014, up 17% from the previous year, and 13% from 2012. As a comparison 23% of online adults in the U.S. used Twitter in 2014. The data finds that Facebook remains by far the social media site, however over the past year Instagram has made a splash, and engagement on Instagram is 15 times that of Facebook’s!

One of the most interesting aspects of Instagram is that it’s not a site, but lives only on the mobile app. Numerous brands have begun to use Instagram as businesses are seeing results from showcasing more visual images. With over 300 million monthly active users, Instagram executives think the network will eventually hit 1 BILLION monthly active users!

If you’re still not bought into Instagram, here are Ten Eye Opening Stats:

Instagram is the eighth most popular mobile app in the U.S. (comScore)- Tweet This
Instagram is projected to reach 45.8 million U.S. users in 2015 and 50.6 million in 2016 (Statista)- Tweet This
More than 30 billion photos have been shared on Instagram since it was launched in 2010 (Instagram). – Tweet This
An average of 70 million photos are shared through the app each day (Instagram).- Tweet This
53 percent of Internet-using adults age 18 to 29 are on Instagram (Pew Research Center). That’s up from 37 percent in 2013.- Tweet This
76 percent of American teenagers use Instagram, making it their favorite social media network (CBS News).- Tweet This
49 percent of all Instagram users use the app each day (Pew Research Center).- Tweet This
94 percent of Instagram users are on Facebook (Pew Research Center). Facebook owns Instagram.- Tweet This
58 percent of Twitter users also use Instagram (Pew Research Center). – Tweet This
52 percent of Instagram users also use Twitter (Pew Research Center).- Tweet This

In less than five years Instagram has gone from it’s infancy to a social media rock star, and i’m excited to see what the future will hold!

Is your brand on Instagram, would love to know your experience, and how you are succeeding, or the challenges you face, leave a comment below, or tweet me @MarissaPick.

Four Critical #SocialMedia Mistakes to Avoid

May 15, 2014 / marissapick / Leave a comment

Social media can be of a great benefit to a brand, however it can be detrimental if not handled property. Still many companies are flocking to social media platforms for the one simple reason: not incorporating social media into their marketing strategy would be a loss to connect with potential customers while strengthening bonds with existing customers. As social media has become the most popular online activity, companies need to be careful and mindful of how they’re using social media to avoid simple mistakes which can lead to the demise of customer engagement across their social media platforms. Here are four critical social media mistakes for brands to avoid:

1) Using social media for selling, not conversing or engaging: Social Media is a place to build a personality and enhance a deeper relationship with your audience. Social media users often don’t respond well to a hard sell. Make sure your social media is a channel for starting a conversation, and engaging with your audience. Building up trust and a repertoire is crucial and from there the only thing you need to sell your customers on is that you’re going to include them in the conversation.

2) Avoiding Controversy and Complaints: Let’s face it, social media is the perfect channel to vent and let our frustrations out. Mistakes happen and as a brand you need to own up to them and let your customers know what you’re going to do to ensure they won’t be repeated. Ignoring complaints shows you’re going to do your own thing, and that as a brand you are backing away. Own your mistakes and man up! Make sure you have a plan in place for worst-case scenarios, and a social media disaster, it can’t hurt to be prepared!

3) #Getting #Hashtag #Happy on #SocialMedia: Using hashtags is a handy and effective tool, however sometimes they need to be used in moderation. Using too many hashtags within a tweet or an Instagram post can come off too pushy. We’re already limited to 140 characters on Twitter so utilizing an image and text should speak volumes and stand alone, with a hashtag as a supporting entity. Hashtags are fantastic for running promotions and enhancing searchability, however when used too often they can limit your ability to really amplify your message.

4) Lacking a Strategy with Clear Business Objectives: If you’ve ever read my blog you’ll understand that i’m a firm believer in understanding that what you decide to do is JUST as important as deciding what you’re not going to do. Make sure your brand has clear objectives set for utilizing social media, with a strategy for each social channel to help you achieve your goals. Creating a strategy should include having distinct and measurable goals, thinking through your brand’s voice, and planning out a content calendar with clear goals in mind. Setting a strategy and agreeing upon clear business objectives are the first two step’s in social media success.