Understanding Pinterest For Business

Pinterest came to life in March 2010 and was founded by Evan Sharp, Paul Sciarra and Ben Silbermann. As all unique startups go through their rough patches Pinterest was no indifferent! Initially, the founders and a few programmers conducted operations out of a small apartment until 2011. A few leading publishing houses at that time turned down the offer to even meet the founders to discuss business. Soon the years progressed and so did the visual discovery platform – Pinterest.

Pinterest Co-founders (L-R): Evan Sharp, Paul Sciarra & Ben Silbermann

Nine months after the launch Pinterest had 10,000 users and Silbermann got in touch with these pinners personally to exchange good wishes. The app was also listed in the “50 Best Websites of 2011” in Times magazine. As days, months and years passed by, Pinterest community fondly known as “Pinners” increased in size and this eventually inspired the marketers to make space for the platform in their marketing strategies. Here are some stunning Pinterest statistics to pay attention to:

• The platform hosts nearly 175 billion pins today
• 60% pinners refer Pinterest for purchase ideas
• 72% pinners say Pinterest inspires them to shop when they are actually not looking for anything
• 55% pinners sat they use Pinterest to shop for and find products

Key terms used in Pinterest:

• Pins: Images uploaded on Pinterest
• Boards: Folders created to categorize pins
• Pinner: Pinterest user
• Repin: Sharing someone else’s pins by saving them in your boards
• Followers: Pinners who follow you on Pinterest for inspiration
• Following: Pinners you follow on Pinterest for inspiration
• Feeds: Pins you see on your dashboard once you log in

Pinterest’s Official Profile

How Does Pinterest For Business Work?

1. Signup or upgrade to Pinterest for business
2. Fill all required business details – profile picture, bio, website URL, etc.
3. Choose your interests (art, dance, writing, science, quotes, music, styling and more)
4. Create boards and add relevant pins with descriptions and links to redirect

Benefits Of Pinterest For Business

If “why should I including Pinterest for business in my marketing strategy?” is the question hovering in your mind then, we have listed down the key benefits of Pinterest for you below:

1. It’s free: You can create and manage your own Pinterest for business account easily and for free. Just follow the “how it works” steps above and you are good to go.
2. Visual communication: In the era of too-many-things-to-do-and-so-little-time, a picture is worth 1000 words! Pinterest communicates to its audiences in a direct, immediate and creative manner.
3. Highly inspiring: 60% pinners refer to Pinterest for purchase ideas. Pinterest is an inspiring haven for DIY artists, crafts and art lovers, writers, designers, stylists, shoppers, and many more professionals.
4. Very Decisive: Pinterest helps 90% of people to decide what to buy. Which means, before making any purchase Pinterest is highly regarded as an influencer to make purchase decisions.
5. Site Redirection: For any business redirecting people to their website directly, this is a super benefit. Pinterest does this right! Thus, boosting your site traffic and brand awareness.
6. Common Interests: All social media platforms have mixed audiences by default as it is available globally. Pinterest specifically brings these assorted audiences with common interests at one place to find ideas.
7. Run Ads: This is optional. You can as money to “promote” a pin which you can analyze as the best performer on your Pinterest business account. Pinterest has recorded that, it delivers $2 in profit to every $1 spent on ads. Note: Ad feature is currently available in select countries (limited audience targeting) and hence currencies for ad spends are listed and accepted accordingly (high ad spends in foreign currencies).
8. Follow People: Follow and interact with relevant pinners to gain visibility, follow backs and more repins. This helps to promote your business organically and form a strong base on the platform.

Though Pinterest is a very easy to use and manage app, as a business owner or marketer it is essential that you expose yourself to a few marketing tactics that work really well on Pinterest for business. These tactics that can bring in virality for all the content you pin on Pinterest are listed below:

1. Make Your Pinterest Business Profile Attractive

What contributes to an attractive Pinterest business profile? Apart from the images and description, you need to make sure that the theme of your profile speaks what you sell. Your Pinterest business profile needs to be diverse where all kinds of people definitely find something of their choice!

Eg: Your business centers around selling Indian traditional wear so, you can choose a particular color (pink, green, purple, etc) or a particular pattern (dresses, sarees, lehengas, etc) as your theme. You can use a festive theme as well as inspiration to post (Diwali, New year, Christmas,etc.).

2. Post Creative Images

As Pinterest a visual platform, you cannot afford to go wrong with the main essence of the app. It is important to keep a profile picture which is relatable or recognizable. Eg: If you are a company then you can put your company logo as your profile picture, as people’s recognition levels are high. But, if you are an individual blogger, artist, etc, you can put up your own image as your profile picture are people are likely to relate better to it.

When it comes to regular Pinterest pins, make sure your images or videos are high in resolution, clicked well and are genuine images. You can repin someone else’s pin, take pictures from other sources, click your own, edit a picture and pin it on your Pinterest for business account. However, it is always a good idea to give due image credits if outsourced.

PayUmoney’s Pinterest Business Profile

3. Add Convincing Bio/Description

Yes, a picture speaks volumes! Here’s a hypothetical scenario: You are an interior designer and mainly pin about the destinations you travel (maybe because your job demands travel, it’s your hobby or you natural interiors inspire you, etc). People might mistake you to be an avid traveler or a photographer instead of an interior designer. Putting a relevant description is to set people’s or rather followers expectation right about you and your profession. Never skip your bio.

4. Redirect To Website

The fourth essential aspect of Pinterest marketing is adding appropriate links to your business profile. This is because when people crawl through your profile, they need to know you better which is when they’d want to see your website as well. Apart from this having a website projects a very professional image of your work.

5. Add Rich Pins, Widgets & Plugs

• Rich pins: These pins are more informative than the regular pins. They provide more context to your pin or idea by showing extra information above and below the pin once clicked on or opened. Rich pins are a free feature for anyone using Pinterest and definitely, it’s a must use!

PayUmoney’s Rich Pin On Pinterest

• Widgets: You can add a Pinterest widget to your website or blog directly so that when people are skimming through your content at these destinations, they can check your Pinterest business profile out for more work testimonials.
• Plugs: Once you install or make Pinterest plugs available to your Pinterest business profile, you are allowing your audiences to shop for products they are looking for or are highly inspired by available immediately. This satisfies their desire to buy and yours to increase sales.

Image Credits: Pinterest

6. Pinterest For Distribution

If you are a blogger like me, you can make the best use of Pinterest to promote your articles or blogs. Put up infographics, gifs or videos of your articles and link them you to your blog. This will help you increase your organic traffic and readership.

PayUmoney’s Content Distribution On Pinterest

7. Best Time To Pin

As Pinterest for business is a global platform, there are no standard pinning or search timings on the platform. However, these days and timings change as per the location of both the pinner and the business. However, in India:

• Best time to pin: 2pm-4pm
• Best day to pin: Saturday

Pinterest For Business Analytics

Efforts seem best when they score well! You should know how your Pinterest business marketing strategies and campaigns are performing. Some key analytics to check are:

1. Impressions: Refers to the number of times your pin is viewed
2. Clicks: The number of clicks your pin gets
3. Demographics: It is the type of people you reach on the basis of location, gender, etc.
4. Interests: DIY crafts or travel? Makeup tips or scientific facts? Measure what are your audiences interested in

Are You Using Pinterest For Your Business Yet?

As successful takes time to knock doors, build a strong brand presence on Pinterest for business takes time too. However, the highlight of the platform is: it is creatives, visual and highly engaged at all times. So, say goodbye to all your doubts about Pinterest for business and start pinning all your content for marketing and generating high soaring sales for your business now!

With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all-in-one payment solution in place as well. Now to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

The post Pinterest For Business: Interesting Tips For Businesses To Market Well!  appeared first on PayU Blog.

As per research, festival spending begins in October itself and not November.

So be smart and think through these 7 festive season marketing strategies (for B2B and B2C businesses) right away in order to binge on more sweet profits this festive season!

1. Email Customized Festive Season Greetings

Consider your favorite brand in the world sends you a beautiful bouquet of flowers, hamper of exotically flavored chocolates and a handwritten note greeting you festive happiness. How would you feel? Special, won’t you?

Treat customers and partners like your extended family! Draft a beautiful email, pampering them with customized season’s greetings, gift hampers or a voucher sitting in their inbox (if not to their address). This makes your customers sensitive to your business presence and also shoots word-of-mouth appreciation in their neighborhood and amongst friend circles. Thus, increasing your customer base and profit too.

Here’s a precise resource on how to write effective emails for sales. But if you think you need to enhance your email writing skill then read these 5 ways to improve emailers for your business.

2. Be Creative On Social Media

Social media and website are the places where your customers and partners first find and know you. Keep your online presence especially social media updated and creative.

• A simple seasons’ greeting post can also make a lot of difference to your followers. It gives a sense of consideration.

Image Sources: PayUmoney’s Facebook

• Run contests to improve engagement and to interact with your audience directly. If you think “contest” means giving prizes to the winners, then yes, that’s what I am asking you to do. Prizes don’t have to be pricey. You can invest a minimum amount but what you win back is priceless! Remember this is a one-time expense.
• If still ‘contests’ seem like a not-so-great idea, then make testimonial videos and post them across your social media channels. Testimonial videos include your customer’s or partner’s experience and what they have to say about your business. This will bring a lifelong value to your business. You can tag your costumers or partners in the video, description or comment as a cherry on the cake!

3. Offer Samples & Discounts

Today we live in a trial economy, where everything needs to be tried before the actual purchase. In supermarkets, you must have noticed a couple of salespersons selling tasters of a particular food item for free. This allows people to experience the product first and then make a purchase decision. Basically, by introducing trials for your products you are inviting people to judge your product. This, in turn, helps you to understand the true need of your customers and create apt products.

Discounts and sales during festive season are marketer’s favorite strategies during festivals. E-commerce businesses make the most of this: Big Festive Sales, Festive Dhamaka, etc is introduced in order to gain more traction. Also, consumers usually pile up their piggy banks for ‘Sales’ during the festive season. Make the most of this strategy for your SMB.

1. List down all the festivals (big and small)
2. Mention the products you want to put up on sale
3. Spread the word about these products via email, social media, phone calls, SMS
4. Allow your consumers to try your product first
5. Follow the points listed below

4. Participate In Online & Offline Community Markets

Community marketing is a very prominent part of digital marketing. Earlier offline communities were set up in the form of flea markets, exhibitions, town hall markets and so on. Today, all these communities have settled down online as well. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest have people from all walks of life and countries grouping up to form a common interest community.

Eg: Communities like the social pop shop or social crafts are created for people who want to sell or showcase their talent related to the community interest.

• The social pop shop – Lifestyle
• Social Crafts – Craft/ Art

5. Plan Simple Costumer Journey

Journeys are the ones which decide what goes next to your customer in the form of communication. This could be an engaging post on your social media channels, a follow-up email or SMS, new product updates as push notifications or simple banners or pop-ups in your website. This journey needs to be a part of the entire campaign, where the consumer is notified about your products simultaneous on different platforms.

Make sure you don’t bombard them with messages because this can increase your spam risk instead of your business. Pick the best channel and select the right time to send updates to your consumers.

6. Cross & Upsell Your Products Smartly

If your consumer wants to buy a notepad, then what is the harm in pushing them to buy a super smooth and fine quality pen? Cross and upselling is one of the keys to unlock the shackles of increasing sales. You are well versed with BOGO (buy one get one) or BOGF (buy one get one free) concepts. This is nothing but upselling. Cross-selling is selling a pen along with a notepad. You consumers are always looking for convenience. Sell your products conveniently to them.

7. Make Ad Spends Wisely

• Myth: Advertising is expensive and meant only for big businesses.
• Myth busted: Small businesses can make the most of advertising as well with cost as low as Rs.100 – 500!

Digital advertising is not expensive as traditional advertising (newspapers, radio, hoardings, etc). You can spend wisely by running test ads with a minimal budget at first. Depending on the response increase your budget to its best (according to you) and increase your business awareness as well.

Eg: if you spend Rs. 500 (keeping this as high value) you can reach out to approx 1000 – 2000 audiences in one go.

To maximize your marketing efforts on social media, discover the commonly made Facebook advertising mistakes you should avoid now.

Competition is on an all-time rise with multiple businesses offering similar products with enhanced price, quality or feature. In such scenarios, festivals are a hot season for marketers to push their products forth. In this crowded economy, these 7 festive season marketing strategies prove to be subtle but leave a high impact on your audiences in the (near) future. Gorge on these festive season marketing strategies to improve your marketing efforts and sales this festive season!

With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all-in-one payment solution in place as well. Now to enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

The post 7 Unique Festive Season Marketing Strategies For Small Businesses appeared first on PayU Blog.

61% marketers believe that improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing strategy (source: Hubspot)

We have highlighted 6 SEO trends which are buzzing in 2018 and seem to go deeper in 2019 as well!

1.The Good Old Trends For SEO 2018

We do know that old is gold and hence, the basics of SEO are never running out of stock. Setting your keywords, meta tags, descriptions, images, and more right, is an evergreen formula that contributes to high search engine ranks. Search engines algorithms enhance every fortnight (almost). To meet the minimal requirements of these algorithms, having the traditional SEO system in place is vital. You can quickly run through these techniques in our ‘How to skyrocket your traffic by 500%’ now to avoid any mistakes in the basics.

2. Backlinks

Lately, on social media platforms like Instagram, you must have come across abbreviations such as S4S, L4L, C4C and so on. What are these exactly? These are terms used by prominent personalities or businesses to get more followers, likers, and commenters on their handles.

• S4S – Share for share
• L4L – Like for Like
• C4C – Comment for Comment

For example: if you own an online business and you want to grow your followers. You will identify similar players like yours in the market and ask them to share, like or comment on your post and in return, you do the same for them. This way you are sharing your followers with each other in order to gain more visibility.

Why I am putting this concept forth under “backlinks”? This is because, when it comes to content, backlinks work the same way as S4S on social media. Backlinks are basically, mentions of other blogger or influencers in your blog and vice versa. Backlinks are a big hit in SEO 2018, as it automatically builds brand credibility for your content. It seems easy, but it may get difficult if you belong to a very niche genre of business, where getting readers or visitors to your website is a task. However, do not skip this trend as it will get you places in the longer run!

3. Guest Blogs

Guests are always welcome. Be open and invite them to write for your blog. Guest blogs are basically in sync with backlinks. A blogger or an influencer writes for your blog to reach out something specific to your audience. Guest blogs work best if the person who writes for you or the blog you are writing for has high DA (domain authority), PA (page authority) or credibility in the industry (CEOs, independent bloggers and so on). Because of all the privileges that tag along with guest blogging, it is a mainstream SEO trend and component.

4. Smart Magnet Method

This method is where you need to bid for keywords smartly. The smart magnet method is about identifying the most used ad keywords and using them in your content or copy.

For example: I write marketing and payment blogs for PayUmoney. Here are the smart steps I will take:

1. Get into the incognito mode
2. Type my intended search. Eg: best payment gateway
3. I am sure all the top searches with have 2 letters for sure: AD
4. Now, I will see all these ads and pick the keywords. Eg: payment gateway India
5. I will this keyword in my article and make it strong enough to rank high

So, the smart magnet method is nothing, but identifying keywords from the ads and attracting more visitors by ranking high.

5. Multiple Content On Multiple Platforms

Multiple content connotes, repurposing content. Content is a vast field and carries multiple facades: long form, copy, videos, presentations, audio, gifs, infographics, memes, stories and so much more. But it is not necessary that all forms are consumed equally. Today’s fast-paced, less patient world demands something short and sweet. So it’s another smarter way to rank: create long-form content and break into small content verticals for better results and views. Try this experiment out:

1. Go to Google.com
2. Type “Instagram content strategy” in the search bar
3. You’ll see PayUmoney’s blog + video ranking on top of the second page.

Thus, having multiple forms of content published on multiple platforms is a plus point in the age of SEO 2018! You can checkout PayUmoney SlideShare and PayUmoney YouTube channel for a live demo on how to create optimized repurposed content.

6. Voice Search

This is the future! 2/3 people use their smartphones less often because of digital voice assistants such as Amazon Echo or Google Home (source: CNBC). Also, [bctt tweet=”at least 37% population uses Siri, 23% uses Microsoft’s Cortana, and 19% use Amazon’s Alexa monthly. ” username=””]

These statistics are enough to underline the fact that voice searches are the way to go for marketers. What people say is not what they type. For example: you want to learn “ways to collect payment online” but while typing you might go ahead with “how to collect online payments easily”. Hence, coating content with what people might voice search than write search is brimming up.

These 6 trends may seem very obvious. But it is always recommended to have a close view at it and explore new detailed horizons when it comes to topping up with SEO 2018. Before I close this session up I would like to provide a cheat sheet to the latest SEO tools which all businesses must have!

• SEMrush – for detailed content analysis
• Sumo – for clean email listing and subscriber forms
• Google Keyword planner – for accurate keyword volumes
• Yoast – for crisp SEO content recommendations

With all your marketing efforts for your business in place, it’s a good idea to have an all – in- one payment solution in place as well. Now enjoy the best payment gateway experience and grow your business effortlessly!

The post SEO 2018: Leading Trends and Tips For Marketers appeared first on PayU Blog.

Social media is not all about posting, circulating and consuming news or current trends across the world. Analyzing your content and audience plays an equally important role in optimizing your core objective (create awareness, get more followers or likes, double your charity, get more clients, create a viral circuit of your videos or images and so on). 

The infographic below points out to some interesting social media analysis along with the reasons to believe and breathe in social media today.

There are many organizations, businesses, and services who have gained tremendous recognition and empowerment due to social media. For example, Lifebuoy’s “help a child reach 5” campaign on social media has created a huge noise and captured the attention of millions to the cause of extending a village child’s life beyond 5 years. Thus to begin with let’s deep dive into the main components of social media analytics that you should be aware of. 

Components of Social Media Analytics

Reach

 Remember the time when Facebook was unveiled and all that mattered on your profile was: 

1. Number of likes on your pictures 
2. The exhaustive “friends” list? 

PayUmoney Instagram Handle

Gathering fans and followers for your business is the first step towards forming your tribe. Once people have taken this first step, you will get a better learning about them and this helps you to tune your posts or engagements and communication towards them more finely. While the number of followers and likers is an important metric to count on, it is only the first step.  

Just knowing the people is incomplete without being aware of where they come from and who are they. Location and demographics also play a vital role in determining your reach. Considering the above use case of Mr. Modi in mind, he did use social media as an effective tool to reach out to the youth in the metros extensively. But, to penetrate deeper into the country he personally visited a few places like Varanasi to reach out to the people there.   

Engagement 

Engagement is about how well you have retained your followers or likers. It includes: 

1. Likes/Hearts/Favorites 
2. Comments 
3. Tags 

Facebook Business Page Insights

Engagement basically refers to the exact number of people who have accepted and are in agreement with your content. Many times it so happens that, you might receive 100’s of likes within just minutes of publishing a post whereas some other posts may not even be looked at. Keep a constant tab on the content and reaction pattern is a must.  

Amplification 

Amplification is nothing but the virality of your social media content. This includes the number of retweets and shares. This metric indicates the number of people who got your message and by sharing your content they are just drilling their engagement with your business deeper.  

Conversion  

Last but not the least, after reaching out to your relevant audience, engaging with them appropriately and getting them to share your content, the number of people who actually bought your service or product. The conversion rate is more or less related to engagement wherein your audience have absorbed the content you have put up on social media channels.  

Top 5 Social Media Analysis Tools: 

To ease out the entire process of analyzing your social media profile, here are some great tools to look out for: 

1. HootSuite 
2. Sprout Social 
3. Tweet Deck 
4. Crowd Booster 
5. Social Flow 

These tools are developed not only to track your social media presence but also to help you create, schedule and distribute your content on various channels. View their official sites for more details.   

Social media is all about establishing a good virtual connect with your well-wishers, social media analysis help you figure out the success rate of that agenda. For more information on scaling your online business stay tuned to PayUmoney blog.  

The post Social Media Analysis For Your Online Business appeared first on PayU Blog.

Below, we break down the ways which can help drive your social media strategies on different platforms.

Facebook Marketing

With large customer base, easy-to-navigate interface and reasonable cost, Facebook can help your business grow with full potential. It also ensures that your budget is spent wisely while targeting specific group according to age, location and interests.

Twitter Marketing

Marketing on Twitter is quite simple, probably even more so than Facebook. You can run your campaigns according the trending hashtags and create a buzz about your brand instantly. However, targeting options are slightly limited when compared to other social media channels.

LinkedIn Marketing 

LinkedIn is more professional channel when compared to Facebook and Twitter. It is because of this reason the cost to advertise is much more excessive. However, here you can create thought leadership for brand by specifically targeting audience.

The Social Road

Set Business Goals: Your social marketing strategy should serve business goals.  

Set Marketing Objectives: Define and execute marketing strategies that can serve set goals. It can be generating leads, driving sales or establishing brand identity.

Create Measurable Goals: Make your objectives specific, measurable, achievable and time-bound.

Research Competition: Research your competition as it keeps you apprised of their marketing strategies.

Effective Content Strategy: Create an engaging content strategy that boosts your social channels. Content and social media are synonymous to each other. And if implemented effectively, it can do wonders for your social media marketing

Choose channels wisely: SMBs sometimes create accounts on every social channels without researching which channel will bring the best conversion rates. Choose the best social channels by using information about your customer base.

Also read four reasons to sell on social media. Grow your business with PayU Insights and Knowledge platform.

The post Top Social Media Marketing Tips For Your Business appeared first on PayU Blog.