Offer Closed
***
In just over 3 hours as I write this, today at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) and one hour before the Olympics start, I’m kicking off a weekend sale for a very powerful little plugin.
In my email and post yesterday, I said that I’d realised that with the advent of some very big changes at Google how important it was to kick up your social marketing.
It couldn’t be simpler.
Not so very long ago, ranking was decided by backlinks and then by social indicators (likes, pluses, follows).
It seems that it’s the complete opposite now, and I’ll talk about this another time as it’s very important to both your business and your clients.
What I have for you today is a plugin that leverages the power of the fastest growing social network out there.
Pinterest.
The reason it’s gathered so many users is because… dare I say it?
It’s EASY and it’s FUN.
The interface (unlike G+) is nice and simple and can be picked up in minutes. It works how you expect it to work (unlike G+ – I’ll shut up about that now) and is a very nice experience all round.
You sign up, add the pinmarklet to your browser and off you go.
When you see an image or a video on the web that you like, then you can pin it to one of your pinboards. People can repin and comment on what you’ve found. You can follow people and they can follow you.
For many people it’s addictive and they want to show their friends what they’ve done.
How does this affect us?
Well, it makes it easy for us to start using the Pinterest system to market ourselves, our products and our clients.
Every time someone pins something from our site (or repins it) then you get a backlink. People will then click those backlinks to get to the original sites the image or video came from.
Because people are pinning your stuff, then all you need is a few images or videos on the site you want traffic to. It helps if they’re colourful or interesting and these pinnable items can be photographs or videos.
“But I don’t have any videos” I can hear you say. (Make some!)
But YouTube does. On every topic imaginable. And you can embed most of these on your site. 😉
The Pin-It plugin allows you to set things up so that you can add videos to any of your sites, and then add a “Pin It” button that when clicked pins the media to one of your visitors pinboards.
Pinterest believes it’s been done by the Pinmarklet in your browser.
However, the button can link to ANY URL you wish, not just the originating page. 😉
The plugin also allows you to add various styled “Follow Me” buttons to your blog so that you pick up more followers.
So what you’re doing with the plugin is reminding and encouraging people to use the “Pin It” button and add it to one of their pinboards.
You can even get the whole ball rolling by pinning the media to your own pinboards and then go commenting on and liking other peoples pins on Pinterest. Many people will click through your link to look at your pinboard as a result and may well follow you or repin some of your stuff on their pinboards. Every re-pin is a link back to the site you decided.
Apart from YouTube, the Pin-It plugin also supports Vimeo videos too, which is something the browser pinmarklet doesn’t yet do.
Okay?
Sound complicated?
It isn’t. It’s REALLY simple to do – I guarantee you that.
And if you get it right you’ll start seeing traffic back to your sites from buyers.
Because it seems that by many accounts, Pinterest is crawling with buyers. Some businesses rely solely on Pinterest traffic alone for their entire income. A click through from Pinterest is far more likely to result in a sale than from any other source. – there’s lots of reasons why and I’ll cover that another time.
All I’ll say in closing is I’m switching BIG time to social marketing.
I like to tell myself that it’s not because I’m a bit slow, it’s just that it’s only really now come of age due to the changes in Google search algorithms. Ahem. 😉
I think you should too if you haven’t been doing so already. Backlinks aren’t enough any more.
Today at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) I’m kicking off a weekend sale for the Pin-It plugin. When it’s over the price will go up immediately and I’ll be doing some updates to the plugin which you’ll get for free when they’re done.
This is your chance to get the plugin at the lowest possible price if you go for it now.
I’ll add a video later today to show you how it all works.
It’s fun and easy. 😉
-Frank Haywood
