Email Collection Best Practices

Hosted by Justin Shoup and Vince Ventura

What not to do:

• Don’t say “Can I have your email?” or “What’s your email?”
• Don’t disguise the reason you are asking for their email address. I see so many businesses say they are asking for an email to send a receipt and then they send you marketing emails. There is a difference between transactional emails and marketing emails and different laws that surround it.
• Don’t just have a signup form or tablet and think people will sign up without asking

So, now that you know what not to do, what should you do?

• Ask and Tell: Would you like to sign up for our email list, so you’ll receive coupons and be the first to know about the latest products? You are asking them to sign up, but telling them the benefit of signing up for your list. Your benefit may be different.
• Consider creating a sense of belonging and exclusivity to your email list. Send exclusive email-only offers and let customers know about that benefit at time of signup. “Can I sign you up for our email list?” You’ll receive special offers that we don’t tell people about in store or on social media”
• Consider setting up a welcome email that includes a coupon to use on their next purchase. At the time of sign up let them know they will receive this. “Would you like to sign up for our email list?” If you sign up, you’ll receive a coupon in just a few minutes that you’ll be able to use next time you are in the store.”

Collection practices

• Have the customer sign up on a tablet or other mobile device. If they type it in on their own it will make it more likely that it is spelled and entered correctly. If they are relaying it to your sales associate it makes it more likely that it will be input incorrectly.
• Avoid handwritten forms. Handwriting can be difficult to interpret sometimes and this could cause unwanted email addresses to get on your list.
• If in-store, you have customers signing up through a form on your website or Facebook let them know that they’ll receive a verification email in a few minutes that they’ll need to watch for and click Confirm to be added to your list and receive your emails. Tell them to check their junk/spam if they don’t see it. “Thanks for signing up, just be on the lookout for an email in just a few minutes to confirm your subscription to our list, you’ll need to click confirm on it to receive our emails. If you don’t see in your inbox look in your junk or spam, sometimes the verification email will go there.

Quality over quantity

• Don’t worry about the number of email addresses you have. It is more important to have email addresses that actually want to receive your emails and are opening them.
• If you have a contest, drawing, or giveaway to collect email addresses make sure you are giving something away that is related to your store, so that you don’t attract email addresses that will unsubscribe or never open an email. This is especially important online.
• If you have a website email collection form add a captcha to it, so that you do not have bots flooding your email list. This will skew your numbers and make it difficult to make heads or tails of if your marketing efforts are working.

Boosting Holiday Sales
Hosted by Justin Shoup and Vince Ventura

We’ve covered Black Friday and Small Business Saturday in previous podcasts, so this episode is going to focus on what you can do during the home stretch in the month of December to boost holiday sales.

• Find ways to differentiate yourself from the big box retailers and the competition
• • Offer services like free gift wrapping
  • Create a welcoming atmosphere on social media to encourage people to come in, so you can help them find a gift.
  • • You can do this by posting pictures or videos of your employees with their gift suggestions.

• Offer extended shopping hours and make sure customers are aware of what those hours are.
• • Add those hours front and center on your website.
  • Create a post about the extended hours on social media and pin it to the top of your profile.
  • Send a dedicated email about your extended hours

• Choosing a gift can be hard!
• • Create a gift guide email with a few choices to narrow down the options.
  • In SnapRetail, you’ll find gift guide email templates for every member of the family. Just search the word Guide in the email template library and you’ll find gift guides for food lovers, teacher, grandparent, pet lovers, fashion, grandfather, grandmother, brother, mom, dad, etc.

• Consider having in-store product demonstrations
• • Customer seeing the product in action will make them more likely to see the value rather than it just sitting on the shelf.

• Upsell

• Have your staff make additional recommendations and ask questions to see if there is anyone else they are shopping for.Pay incentives or have a contest with your employees to motivate them to sell:
• http://specialtyretail.com/issue/25-ways-to-boost-your-holiday-sales-and-profits/

• Spend some money on Facebook ads/boosted posts
• • It’s your most important time of the year, so making sure your fans see your important posts on Facebook is critical. Don’t rely on organic reach this time of year.
  • Target the ad/boosted post at your existing fans and/or upload your email list as a custom audience and target the ad/boosted post at them.

Holiday Open House

Goals

We will discuss how to plan a successful Holiday Open House.  How to market that event.  What to do during the event. And how to follow up with your customers so that your next events are successful as well. Be sure to listen to Episode 24, our Event Marketing Podcast

How to Plan

1. Timetable
   • Weekend afternoon
   • Wednesday or Thursday Evening
   • Avoid beginning of the week and Friday or Saturday evening
   • Set a date and time (and end time!)
   • How Many emails?
   • How Many Social Posts
   • Plan Menu (if serving food) and a potential partner (see below)
2. 4-6 weeks ahead of time.

Theme

1. 1. Holiday
2. • New Product Premiere
   • New Product Line
3. Incentive
   • Free Food
   • Samples
   • Door Gifts
   • Goodie Bags
   • Deep Discounts or Sale
   • Kid’s area to give parents time to shop?

1.  Consider Potential Partners
2. Street wide Open House
3. Shared Print/TV/Radio Marketing
4. Food Partner
5. Free Printing from a print partner
6. Offer Logo placement on marketing materials

 Marketing the event

1. Tease the event on social media
   • RSVP
2. Add event to the calendar on your website
   • RSVP
3. Create a Facebook event
   • www.tagboard.com
4. Create a unique hashtag
5. Announce the event on social media, website, and email
6. Pin to the top of Facebook and Twitter
7. Update cover images on all social media networks
8. Send an email to your customers
   • Bag stuffers
   • Postcards
   • Posters
9. Print material
   • Can you mail them?
   • Will your partners distribute them?
10. Posters in store
11. In partner locations
12. On community boards
13. Newspaper
14. Radio
15. TV

During the Event

1. Take photos and videos
2. • Facebook live
   • Post photos and videos to social media
   • Use your hashtag

  After the Event

1. Save some images to post after

• Tag customers
• Create a Pinterest Board, Instagram Story, Facebook Story or Photo Album
• Thank your customers for attending

Key points:

• Planning is key
• • 4-6 weeks away
  • Plan date and time
  • Plan social campaigns
  • Plan print campaigns
• Consider partnering
• • Better exposure
  • Help running the event
• Make sure to market your event on every channel available to you
• During the event take and post lots of images and video
• Save some for after the event
• • Create stories
  • Tag your customers
• Make sure to say thank you!

Image Editing Tools

Hosted by Shelby Klick and Vince Ventura

A huge part of marketing is visual content. This is true for businesses selling a physical product, so a customer can see what they are purchasing. Visual content  is also important for services because it can create a personal connection or show results of a service.  A huge roadblock for a lot of business owners is gathering, editing, and resizing visual content and properly editing content to use across different platforms.

Today, we will be talking about Image Editing Tools. You don’t need to be a graphic designer or need a fancy program like Photoshop in order to use or create great visual content.

Stock Images

An easy way to hit the ground running is to look for free (or paid) stock images you can use in your marketing.

• Licenses
• • Not everything you see online can be taken and used for anything, anywhere.  Each image has a license which allows you to use the images in different ways. We have a handful of sites that we recommend for free stock images that have Creative Commons Zero license, meaning the images are free to use even for commercial use. We recommend to always double check licenses and permissions because they can change in the future.

• Sites
• • Unsplash
  • Pexels
  • Pixabay
  • StockSnap.io
  • Realistic Shots
  • Kaboompics

We will link to each of these sites in the transcript below.

• What to Look For
• • Look for images that fit your brand. This can be the colors used, the smiling people featured, the style of clothing the models wear, the orientation of the photo, the position of the focus of the image.
  • These things can help you when laying out images on your email, website, or when you are overlaying text. Think about what the image is going to be used for and it will help you narrow your search.  
  • If you stumble upon a stock image that you love and fits your business, you can always tweak your editing or layout to make it work.

Tools

• Canva & Design Bold
• • These are two sites that are very similar.  Start your design work with a template sized perfectly for email headers, Facebook posts, Facebook Events, Pinterest, and more. They even have templates available for print marketing materials.
  • Both have free and paid stock images available right within the tool to incorporate into your designs.
  • Free and Paid versions of these tools are available depending on your business needs.
• Pixlr
• • If you want to test your hand at “photoshopping” an image, Pixlr is a good place to start. This is an advanced editing software that allows you to work in layers, make backgrounds transparent, resize, and much much more. They also have an Express version that allows you to make quick changes like filters, adjust colors, add text and more.
• SnapIt
• • While SnapRetail is one of the most powerful digital marketing tools in your arsenal, the SnapIt Tool & App help you gather all the images relevant to your business. Use the SnapIt tool in your browser to quickly snap product images from your vendors (with their permission) and save them to your SnapRetail account. Download the SnapRetail app to your smartphone using Apple App Store or Google Play.
• Snap App
• • Use the SnapRetail app to upload images from your smart device or take your own images. Your images will be waiting for you in your SnapRetail account when you are ready to sit down and do your marketing!  To find the app, search SnapRetail on Google Play or the App Store.

Think about what platform you are creating for

• Your language may differ per platform, especially with a character limit.
• Images sizes requirements are different for each platform.
• Products or stock images may perform better on platforms like Pinterest while smiling faces or in store displays may resonate better on Facebook.

Branding, Consistency, Professionalism.

• Overall you want to make sure your visual content is on brand, consistent with your messaging, and always professional.
• Lack of professionalism, such as using blurry images, may lose your customers’ trust.
• When visual content is attention grabbing and communicate a clear message is when you will see your best results.
• Stay on branding to build brand recognition. Check out Episode 36 to learn more about the Basics of Branding.
• And as always - consistency is key. If you have too much going on in your email, on your social media, or even on your website, you will distract from your main messaging and confuse the customer of what they are suppose to be looking at and what action they should take.

Takeaways

1. Find stock images that will compliment the pictures you take yourself.
2. Find tools that you like and don’t be afraid to play around with them. The best way to learn a new skill like this is to try.
3. Be mindful of what you are looking for and how you will use images. This will save you time in the long run.
4. Stay consistent, on brand, and always professional to see the best results from your marketing.

Small Business Saturday Tips  

Hosted by Vince Ventura and Justin Shoup

Goals: Nov 25th 2017 and Small Business Saturday is just around the corner.  The closer we get to November 25, the more important it becomes to get the word out, if you plan to have a Small Business Saturday Sale.  Today we will talk about how to prepare for a competitive and successful Small Business Saturday online, in print, and in store.

• It’s your turn for profit

• Stay out of the way of Big Box stores, online only stores, and non-profit organizations.  You can have sales on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Giving Tuesday, but don’t pass up the resources available, and the space left for you on Small Business Saturday

• Many customers report customer service as a high priority.  Customers care about the experience as much as the price.  Small business is uniquely positioned to provide personalized experience and top notch service.

• Start Early

• It’s never too early to start marketing for a big Holiday sale.  Your competition and big box stores have already started Christmas displays.  Now is the time to start planning if you want to have a successful and profitable 4th quarter.

• Check out www.shopsmall.com.  This will redirect you to the official Small Business Saturday site where you can find images, and a lot of other useful materials to plan for a successful Holiday sale.

• Prepare your marketing materials.  Do you have Small Business Saturday on your website?  Are you planning an email?  Get an early start and either publish now, or if you have to work out the details, save a draft to come back to.

• Don’t forget about social media.  Talk about your sale early and often.  It takes quite a few reminders for people to take action, even on a sale.  Plan to talk about your sale a few times a week within your social media mix.

• Plan to send at least 3 emails between now and November 25.

• Ask for reviews on Facebook, Yelp, and Google. For consumers under age 35, who’ve always had easy access to peer reviews online, brand loyalty matters less than it does to older consumers. They trust friends and family the most — and have little use for traditional advertising as a source of product information. They are looking for real insights about products; they have no patience for stories that don’t speak directly to them.
• According to a recent study 64 percent of consumers indicated they will begin holiday shopping before the start of Black Friday week. And 29 percent will have completed most of it by then.

• Join Forces

• Become a small business Neighborhood Champion through The Small Business Saturday Website, and organize a street wide event

• Create a street wide passport, and encourage stopping to each and every store.

• Set up a Welcome Station for street visitors.

• Signage and Print
• • Sign up for custom marketing materials on the Small Business Saturday Site
  • • Free custom posters, flyers, bag stuffers

• Request a Shop Small® Kit* full of merchandise with items like tote bags, stickers, and more.

• Place signage inside, outside, and even stuff bags.

• Website Email and Social

• Plenty of custom images
• Custom Video
• Custom Website Badges

• Remember to tell your story!

• People want to support YOU!

• People want to support Small Business

• Often we can’t compete with the Big Box Discount, so make the community, your service, or your values the center of attention.

• Key Points

• It’s Your turn
• Prepare, and use the materials provided by Amex and Small Business Saturday
• Get the Shop Small Kit and market in print and in store
• Send email, and don’t forget social
• Tell your story

Preparing for Black Friday

Hosted by Shelby Klick and Vince Ventura

Black Friday in 2017- including the days leading up to and after Black Friday - is expected to be the biggest shopping pull of the year with sales higher than 2016.  Black Friday has definitely changed the way retail functions during the fourth quarter and leading up to the holidays.  Consumers now are after deep price cuts and discounts that some argue make the day “unprofitable and unsustainable”

Small Businesses everywhere are attempting to compete with the big box stores starting with Black Friday. Here’s our tips for having a successful Black Friday.

• Be Profitable

• If your business or pricing structure can’t compete with the extremely steep discounts typically seen on Black Friday, don’t do it.  There are many ways to get traffic in the door without unprofitable discounts.

• Gifts Cards or Gift Certificates

• Send out an email just about your gift cards.
• Visual Displays & Signs - People won’t purchase gift cards unless they know about them and can see them, just like any other product in your store.
• Upsell at the register - this is a technique that may take some training of your cashiers and maybe even incentivize to see which employee can sell the most gift cards.
• Special Deal - free gift with purchase of gift card, or a discount on the gift card itself.

• 75% of people how use gift cards spend 22% more than the value of the gift card.

• Join Forces

• Black Friday can be scary when you’re in it alone. Join forces with other local businesses. .
• A lot of consumers head to big box stores or shopping malls because they can shop a larger variety of products or visit a lot of places in one trip.  Partnering up with other local businesses can be a bigger draw for your customers if they see a lot of businesses in one central location having deals at the same time.
• Have an event: Example: Sip and Stroll where customers can stroll to each store to shop and enjoy snacks and refreshments.
• Joint advertising: Hand out fliers talking about your joint sales or event. Use a punch card to encourage people to visit each store and enter completed punch cards into a raffle.
• Creative partnerships - Pair up with businesses like local restaurants, coffee shops and the like to give discounted drinks, appetizers, and when they present a receipt from your store or give them a special coupon.  Or vise versa.

• Late Hours
• • Open your doors for late hours.
  • Advertise it for those who are busier or for those who want to avoid the madness
  • Talk about it - A lot!

• Product

• Focus on your product. Talk about what makes you different than the big box stores and the value each of these products give.
• Some people struggle talking about their products. Remember that you are the one that purchases the merchandise for the store (If you’re not, talk to your buyer). Talk about each product’s value and why you chose to sell it in your store.
• People sometimes go to big box stores because they don’t think they will be able to find things for everyone on their list at a small store. Give examples or gift guide for everyone. This is a great way to showcase unique items and let people connect with your business.

• Bundle

• Gather gifts that go great together. Consumers are after those big ticket items as well as trying to get as much bang for their buck as possible. By bundling, you can place smaller ticket items in a new light or save customers the hassle of finding products that go well together.
• Allow you to sell at a slightly higher price point OR incentivize buying all items with a discounts when all are bought together.

• Don’t focus on one day

• Try having progressive sales
• • Start November off with smaller sales every week that give a “Pre-Black Friday” or a “Taste of Black Friday” or “Black Friday Comes Early”.
  • This allows you to put discounts on things you can afford to discount and draw in different customers with each new sale.
  • On Black Friday, create a splash by focusing your sale on your big ticket items only because you will most likely be able to put the steepest discount on these and still be profitable. It would also make your progressive sales end with a bang on Black Friday and flow into the shopping weekend.

Key Points

• Join forces
• Stay late
• Focus on product or bundles
• Don’t get overwhelmed because you can be successful by spreading your sales out

The Basics of Branding

Hosted by Vince Ventura and Justin Shoup

Goals:

According to Nielson’s Global New Product Innovation Survey, 59% of consumers prefer to buy new products from brands familiar to them.

Your brand is defined by a customer's overall perception of your business.

You must be consistent in communication and experience, across all formats and customer interactions:

• Storefront and sinage
• Print, posters, postcards, and even packaging and bags
• Website
• Social media
• TV, Radio, and Print Ads
• Sales & customer service

Be patient and consistent.  Good branding doesn’t happen overnight.

1. Determine your brand’s target audience.
2. 1. Check out our podcast
   2. Know who you are talking to specifically
   3. Know your audience's tastes and sensibilities
   4. Speak their language
   5. Show them WHY you exist
   6. Show them how you will help them

1.  Define a branding mission statement.

1. Knowing WHY you exist isn’t enough.  You must state it
   1. Short, sweet, to the point
   2. Actionable
   3. Present a clear goal that you plan to achieve or problem that you plan to solve
   4. A mission is not a tagline
   5. A mission is not a vision statement - that is the how
   6. A mission is not your values (but it’s close)
2. A good mission should be able to be recited by any staff member

1. Don’t imitate Big Box Stores
   1. Facebook has a pages to watch tool
2. Look at your competitors
3. What do their customers respond to
4. How can you offer a similar experience with your values and voice

1. Create a logo and tagline

1. Be memorable
   1. Takes 6 times seeing a logo to remember it
2. Have a consistent logo that people will notice and remember
   1. Make sure it is catchy and memorable
   2. 1. Just do it
      2. Got milk
3. Write a short tag line that sums up your mission and values.

1. Determine your brand voice

1. How do you talk to customers
2. 1. Formal
   2. Conversational
   3. Professional
   4. Friendly
   5. Service-Oriented
   6. Informative
3. Don’t forget to let your personality shine through!
   1. Up Energy
   2. 1. Passionate
      2. Driven
      3. Fun
      4. Whimsical
      1. Credible
      2. Reliable
      3. Professional
      4. Trustworthy
   3. Down Energy
4. What is your brand Energy

1. Let your brand connect everything that you do

1. Put your logo everywhere
2. Don’t deviate or change logo or colors
   1. Main color
   2. Accent 1
   3. Accent 2
3. Have a consistent color palette
   1. Be your brand on paper and in print
   2. Be your brand in action
   3. Be your brand’s biggest advocate
4. Be your brand!

Key Points:

1. Plan, research, and be decisive
2. Choose a Logo, Tagline, Mission, Vision, and Values
3. Live your brand

Instagram Part 2

Hosted by Justin Druga and Shelby Klick

Goals

-Posting and engaging Instagram business page that will drive customers to your store and/or website.

-Best practices for posting to Instagram and what kind of posts to do for your page

1. Types of posts
2. 1. Daily posts dealing with a consistent theme
   2. 1. Throwback Thursday, Customer Friday, etc.
      2. hashtags and how to use them
   1. Direct traffic to your website through posts
3. Put your website URL into the profile of your page
   1. keep the same clean cut look and feel of your posts, customers should be able to look at a post and be able to tell it is yours
4. Be consistent with your themes, filters, etc
   1. link in profile to bio for new products, events, store news etc
      1. keep it interesting so customers look forward to viewing your story
      2. keep engaged and comment or respond to other customer stories
   2. show day to day activities and exciting things going on at the store
5. Instagram Stories and what to show
6. Keep up to date on all the new additions to Instagram and update frequently

Key Points:

• What to post on your business page
• Instagram stories and engaging with customers
• Keep up-to-date with new additions and updates with Instagram

Halloween Marketing Ideas

Hosted by Shelby Klick and Vince Ventura

It’s clear that Halloween is one of the most popular holidays in the country and it’s clearly an important holiday in retail as it is the first major holiday in the 4th quarter.  In 2016, Americans spent about $8.4 Billion for Halloween.  This includes everything from decorations, candy, costumes, to  trips to haunted houses.  

Unlike recent holidays like Labor Day and Memorial Day, Halloween has a major lead up and is basically celebrated starting October 1st and sometimes even earlier. So you have more time to take advantage of this holiday and spice up your marketing to fit a theme that everyone can enjoy.  

1. Choose a theme
2. 1. Spooky Monsters, Pumpkins/Jack-O-Lanterns, kid-friendly, magic, etc.
   2. This can fit your business, your audience, or just what your favorite part of Halloween is.
   3. Keep it consistent! Halloween can be pretty broad, but if you choose a theme. You can tailor all your holiday marketing to match.
   1. Everyone gets excited when they see a Halloween display. You can dress up your store to create a fun or chilling atmosphere that customers will want to experience! A well decorated store can keep customers exploring for longer or tempt them to buy something just because they are in the spirit!
   2. Extend your theme beyond the storefront by updating your social media profile images, cover photos, website images or theme and more.  You can even take your current images and spruce them up by changing the colors to be black and orange or adding graphics like pumpkins and spider webs.
3. Get Spooktacular.
   1. Make sure that every week you are posting a few things that relate back to the theme.
      1. Halloween quotes (movies, books, etc.)
      2. Halloween jokes and puns
      3. Team members, yourself, pets  in costume
      4. Emails
         1. Depending on your goals, contents can be used to get a better following on social media or revenue (Spend X to be entered to win).
      5. Contests (Think about giving away tickets to a haunted house, fair, or local Halloween themed play as incentive)  
      6. Special Discounts and Coupons
      7. Ask questions
      8. Encourage user generated content like pictures, recommendations, voting, and more
      9. Share advice and tips related to your industry (Recipes, decorating tips, safety tips, etc.)
      10. Rise old product from the dead by promoting themed bundles or finding a new use for products.
   2. Some content ideas:
4. Content
   1. The Lead Up - Now until Halloween
   2. 1. Promote everything that will prepare your customers for Halloween.
      2. Give special deals
      3. Talk about the value of your products, monster sales, and more.
      4. This is the time to get people in the spirit and celebrate Halloween with your business.
      5. Talk about community events, local trick or treat times, parades, etc.
      1. Have special events like happy hour, trick or treating, special shopping hours, or more.
      2. BooGo sales, Tricks & Treats, Scary Good Deals, Black Cat Bargains, and more to celebrate the reason for the season.
   3. The Holiday (week of or day off)
      1. Lots of people wait for the discounts to stock up on decorations, discount candy and more.
      2. Send email to encourage people to. stock up for next year, recover from the candy with a good deal, or celebrate that the scary season is over.
      3. If you did have a special events, take this time to thank everyone who attended, close the loop by announcing contest winners, and make sure you switch all your marketing images from the Halloween theme to either your regular branding or something appropriate for fall, autumn harvest, or thanksgiving.
   4. Aftermath
5. Schedule Your Content

Takeaways:

1. Pick a theme and be consistent
2. Plan out you content now so it you can worry about running your business when the time comes.
3. Schedule your sales, content, emails and more in SnapRetail so you can enjoy the holiday.
4. Just because Oct. 31st is over doesn’t mean you can forget about Halloween. Follow up on loose ends and thank customers for celebrating with you.

Pinterest Basics Part 2

Hosted by Shelby Klick and Justin Druga

We covered in our Pinterest Basics episode what Pinterest is and how to get started on this platform.

Today we will be talking more about tips on how to be successful on this platform.

The first thing that I want to mention about Pinterest is that is a completely unique social platform and can be time consuming if done correctly. Pinterest, like all social media platforms, should not be thought of as another place to push your business agenda.  In fact, Pinterest is not about your business at all.  Pinterest is at it’s core a place for users to explore and find content that benefits and inspires them.  The reason that businesses use Pinterest is for Brand Recognition, to position themselves as an expert in their industry, and drive referral traffic to their website.

1. The businesses that perform the best on Pinterest are those that are highly visual and link to beneficial resources like an ecommerce website or a blog. Some industries that perform the best are fashion, food, photography, beauty, home decor, wedding, jewelry, and craft.
2. Pinterest boards are not meant to be filled with products and left untouched.  

Your Content

1. Fill your boards with content that you think people will benefit from like blogs and have visually appealing graphics.  These can be products or graphics that you make yourself overlaying text on images.
2. 1. PicMonkey or Canva are two great sites that will give you templates to create eye catching graphics.
   1. This will give you an idea of what others are talking about in your industry, what kinds of content is doing well.
3. Follow Boards related to your industry
   1. About Us - show your company culture,
   2. Store Events and Newsletters
   3. Employee - Post pictures and bio, info on employee favorites and more.
   4. Highlight customers using products or testimonials
4. Expand your website and brand awareness
   1. Hashtags can only be used in Pin descriptions. They cannot be used in board titles and board description.
   2. Stick to 2-3 per pin and only use keywords, do not try to create hashtag phrases.
5. Hashtags
   1. Be wise about where you are linking.  When posting products, link directly to the page the product lives and where a customer can get more details. If the product does not have a place on your website with at minimum a description, this content shouldn’t be on pinterest.
   2. If customers want to browse your website, they will.  If you link them only to your homepage, they will exit your website immediately because they did not see what they were looking for.
6. Links
   1. Take time to revisit your boards and pins.  See what content can be reused or repurposed to fit a different interest or a different board.
   2. Refresh your old pins be either changing titles and descriptions to include updated keywords, more specific descriptions or updated hashtags.
   3. Usually, you can find that people will look for current or seasonal content “Fall fashion 2017”, “Gifts for Mom for Christmas”, etc.  Create new boards each season or holiday and reuse, repurpose and create new content to fill it.
7. Revisit, Reuse, Refresh

Community

1. Don’t set it and forget it.
2. Comment and respond to people who reply to your pins. Comment on other people’s pins.
3. Follow those who follow you. You don’t have to follow everyone, but if you know them or if they post content that is similar to your industry or what your customers are interested in, it could be wise to keep up with what they are pinning.
4. Talk to your customers and ask what they use pinterest for and ask them to follow you.

Consider Ads

1. With a Pinterest Business account you have access to a lot of analytics and even an ads manager just like Facebook.
2. 1. If you are an ecommerce website, think about creating ads to promote your content to people in a certain geographic region or who have certain interest.
   2. They ads a little easier than Facebook, but very similar.  However, it will promote your pins when people are actively searching for keywords and interests, not just to those who have expressed an interest in the past.  
   3. If you are not an ecommerce website, you can use ads to promote resource content like blog posts, infographics, ebook downloads and more to get new leads into your sales funnel.

Takeaways

1. Like all social media platforms, they do take time and work. Go about this platform as a place for content instead of a place for advertisement.
2. Don’t set it and forget it - plan time to revisit, reuse, and refresh your pins and boards
3. Be personal - comment, reply, and follow those who engage with you. Use boards to show your company’s culture, employee faces, and customer’s great experiences.
4. Don’t be afraid to do ads. With the right content, investing in it can take you a long way.