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Will Your Facebook Page Replace Your Small Business Website?

Facebook is making it easier for your small business to engage with customers on mobile devices. They recently announced some interesting new features for Facebook business pages. As they begin to roll out, some people think they could eventually replace your small business website. Others think that they are just a more effective way to drive traffic to your website.

Facebook reports that a billion people visit their business pages every month. And they also report that there are 45 million active businesses on Facebook. The numbers are huge. At the same time (as I’ve blogged about before) more that 50% of Google searches are now done on mobile devices. Also, about 25% of people search for local businesses on Facebook. Facebook is making it easier for your business to be found and accessible on mobile devices.

New features

Not long ago Facebook announced new messaging features to enhance communications with people who like and comment on your business page. Now, rather than having to reply publicly, you can private message the poster. Then last week Facebook announced additional new features particularly targeted at small businesses:

More prominent call to action button – They are testing new buttons for Call Now, Send Message, and Contact Us. The call to action button will also be placed just under the cover photo on a mobile device.
New sections for Shop and for Services – Retailers will be able to list and feature products for sale. Service providers will be able to showcase a list of offerings at the top of the page. Additional sections are still under development.
Mobile-oriented layout – The mobile display of your page will be designed for less scrolling and clicking. It will also introduce section tabs to quickly select what section you want to look at.

The features are starting to show up for some business page managers now and will be rolling out to others over the coming weeks.

Separately, Mark Zuckerberg also confirmed that they are working on:

A Dislike button – He says people have been asking for this a long time. He now sees it as a feature to enable people to express empathy with particular posts. But will it be available on business pages? And will it be an easy way for people to express a negative review?

Why Your Facebook Page Should Replace Your Website

If you are a small business person, you know it’s sometimes complex and time consuming to either build your own website on a hosting service like Wix or Squarespace or to hire a web designer to create and maintain a custom website. On the other hand, Facebook business pages are pretty simple to create, maintain, and update. Facebook pages are already integrated with messaging and with advertising. You don’t need a technical expert.

With the addition of the Shop section, Facebook may be offering an alternative to keep you from going to Shopify or other competitors. Depending on your target audience, Facebook’s Shop section may be as valuable to you as the integration of Shopify and Pinterest with Buy buttons. There is an evolution toward Social eCommerce and Facebook also wants to enable that.

Google and other search engines can index and rank your Facebook page. Then you don’t need to worry about the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of your website.

You don’t need to worry about the mobile display of your business, since Facebook will do that for you.

Why Your Facebook Page Should Not Replace Your Website

If you don’t use Facebook to drive traffic to your website, then you are giving up control. You are at the mercy of Facebook’s terms and conditions and future features. Do you want to be locked into their platform rather than pick and choose the best ways to target your audience? And will their features be sufficient to communicate the unique value proposition of your business and to express your business culture and values? Even with these new features, your options are still fairly limited.

Will the Dislike button be an asset for expressing empathy with your business posts? Or will it become the bane of your existence when misused by an unhappy client or competitor?

What if Social eCommerce on mobile devices doesn’t really work for your business? Can and will your customers make a purchase decision from a small photo and description on a mobile device inside the Facebook app?

Facebook still only displays your posts to 2-6% of your followers unless you have extremely engaged followers or you pay Facebook to boost your posts. You may be locking yourself into a lot of payments to get your content seen.

Risks Outweigh Benefits

I think the risks outweigh the benefits at this stage. While you could rely on Facebook with these new features, I still think the cons outweigh the pros.

What do you think about Facebook’s newly announced features? I know many small businesses who started with a Facebook page and then later built a website. But that was before Facebook became pay to play. Would you be willing to rely on Facebook moving forward for the simplicity instead of doing a simple, small business website?

If you haven’t already, please like us on Facebook!

Simple Reasons Why Your Social Media Marketing Fails

I heard from a business person last week telling me she has done social media marketing on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest and listed her products on a very large eCommerce site, but has seen no results. She said, “I’ve tried lots of things, but nothing is working.”

You may be like her or you may be in the group of people who used to do very well on Facebook, but not anymore. You were posting updates and interacting with your audience. New people were becoming aware of your business. People were sending you messages and coming by to buy products or services. But not any more. You are struggling to reach the people who liked your page. Your sales directly attributable to Facebook have declined. You’re not alone.

In my experience there are some simple reasons why your social media marketing is failing in today’s environment. Here are the most common, along with some things you can do about them:

Failing to segment the market and target your specific audiences. You may be doing what I call “spray and pray marketing.” You throw stuff out at everybody and hope that something sticks. You are spending time, effort, and money with low or non-existent results. Success in marketing, especially social media marketing, is to segment the market and create content to meet the needs and desires of each. Social media is “new,” but timeless principals of marketing are not.
Not creating buyer personas. Personas of your typical buyers in each market segment should drive the social media platforms, content, tone, images, ads, and value propositions to communicate with them. It is also the basis for very targeted advertising on social media to augment your organic reach.
Spreading across too many platforms or the wrong platform. In the evolution of social media we are seeing some maturation and segmentation. If you are only using Facebook or Twitter, you may be missing the platform where your target audience spends its most time and engagement. If you are only using Instagram, you may be missing audiences who only use Facebook or LinkedIn. But trying to be everywhere can also backfire. Your content and formats either won’t be optimized or you will spend an excessive amount of time posting natively to each platform.
Focusing on selling something immediately from social media. Marketing is about meeting customers needs profitably over time. I am incredibly annoyed when someone asks me to connect on LinkedIn and then immediately sends me a sales pitch. They know nothing about me or my business. I have expressed no interest in their product or service. They have ruined a potential future business relationship with me by jumping into sales mode. If you have sales people and they are doing this, stop them! They are hurting your business, not helping it.
Driving people to a landing page or web site that is not mobile friendly. As I have blogged before, mobile is where it’s at now. If people go to a page or site they can’t easily read on their mobile device, you have lost them as a potential customer.
Not promoting discovery of your content. You are not using the right hashtags on platforms where they should be used. Or you are using irrelevant hashtags. Or you are not doing keyword research for your personas and creating content that highlights those keywords. Or you are not reaching out to others and engaging on social media so that they may also come and look at your content.
Relying on organic reach. I’ve blogged about this previously. Facebook is now pay to play for businesses. Other social media platforms are moving that direction as they plan and experiment with ways to monetize their users. You must at a minimum pay Facebook to occasionally boost key content to your followers. And you should be considering highly targeted ad campaigns based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. You still have tremendous opportunity for your content to show up between photos of friends and family, but you will have to pay for that privilege to go beyond 2-6% of your followers.
Not being social. The mantra at Social Media Marketing World this year was, “Don’t be on social media. Be social!” Engage with your followers. Ask them questions. Thank them for following you. Reply promptly to comments or questions from them. Use a variety of posts. Remember that people are on social media to stay connected, be entertained, and be informed. They are not there for a hard sales pitch.
Not being visual enough. The posts with the highest engagement are photos and videos. I’m still amazed at how many tweets I see on Twitter without an attached photo. Your content is much more likely to be attention grabbing if you have an image or video. Great images are keys to success on both Instagram and Pinterest.
Driving traffic to a web site without an email opt-in or to a landing page that is not optimized. Despite the hype around social media, the data show that email marketing is still the most effective way to deliver personalized marketing to people over time. They are giving you permission to get to know you better even if they are not ready to purchase from you right now. They are more likely to look at your email after opting in than they are to see your social media posts.
Ignoring data analysis, testing, and adjustment. Digital marketing is unique in being able to give you a wealth of data about what is working, what is not, and whether it is cost effective. It is also fairly easy to do A/B testing. Conversion pixels are making it better to track exactly what converts and what doesn’t. Watch the data. Stop what doesn’t work and do more of what does. There is also research data available online to guide you in areas such as highest converting content, highest converting landing pages, social media post types with the most engagement, best times to post on different platforms to maximize engagement, etc. Your mileage may vary, but this data points to useful starting points so you don’t waste a lot of time and effort. And if you have a personal Pinterest account, convert it to a business account so you get data analytics.

Social media expertise is not the same as marketing expertise. Good marketing is still good marketing. But social media gives us new, cost effective ways to target audiences to drive our marketing objectives. Social media gives us some new tools and communication methods. Social media platforms will continue to evolve and change as more commercial, business features are added.

Have you identified any other reasons why your social media marketing hasn’t worked? Are any of these the reason your social media marketing is failing to produce the desired results?

Help all of us learn more by sharing in comments.

Top 5 Instagram Marketing Best Practices

Instagram is a social media platform that continues to grow in importance to marketers. Especially if your target audience includes 18-40 year olds on mobile devices, this is a place you want to be. But to be effective and generate a return on your marketing investment, there are some Instagram marketing best practices to follow.

Why Instagram?

If you haven’t looked recently at the statistics for Instagram, it’s time to look again. According to recent studies from Pew Research and Iconosquare:

300 million people use it and 75 million are active each day
70 million photos are added each day
more adults use Instagram than Twitter
53% of 18-29 year olds are on it
70% of users have looked for a brand on Instagram
37% of users follow 1-5 brands and 32% follow more than 5 brands
only 28% of marketers are on Instagram

I have to confess I got more focused on Instagram opportunities after two clients in their thirties shared with me how they are active on it, as are their friends. That caused me to re-evaluate my own marketing priorities.

Brands are seeing results from Instagram marketing

Search Engine Journal reported that big brands are achieving impressive results:

Chobani experienced a 7-point lift in people who considered Chobani at any time of day.
Mercedes-Benz achieved a 580% lift in site visits using Facebook and Instagram ads together.
Taco Bell gained a 29-point lift in ad recall, nearly four times over the control group.
Ben & Jerry’s saw 17% more people become aware of a new flavor.
Levi’s had a 24-point lift in ad recall, nearly three times over the control group

And it’s not only big brands reaping rewards. Many small businesses are also seeing value. Food trucks, restaurants, entertainers, artists, architects, coffee shops, clothing shops, jewelry shops, and many others are building a loyal audience on Instagram who help them to spread their marketing stories and messages.

Best Practices to Follow

As social media platforms continue to evolve and mature, there are a distinct set of best practices to follow on Instagram:

Set up a unique profile – Name is the only thing searchable, so use yours or your business. Make it engaging in 150 characters. What is your very succinct value proposition? Include a link. This is the only place you can include a hyperlink back to your web page or your landing page for an opt-in. Make it so people want to follow you, not just to like one of your random photos. Include something personal or humorous in the bio if possible. Consider using emoticons to make your profile more attention-grabbing and interesting.
Use high quality images and videos – Instagram is about visual content. A picture is worth a thousand words – literally! Use a photo to tell a story about your company, your products, or your services. But constantly posting photos of your products over and over again without telling a story won’t cut it. You’re not there to sell. You’re there to nurture a customer relationship. Post photos that people can relate to and that they care about. Consider showing a behind the scenes view of your business.
Use lots of hashtags – Unlike Pinterest, Instagram engagement is higher with lots of hashtags. One study claimed that posts with 11 hashtags get the most engagement. You may not need 11, but use quite a few so people can find your content and engage with you. It’s also a good idea to create a brand-specific hashtag or to create one for major campaigns and contests. Hashtags help you to get discovered. Look for trending hashtags that you may create relevant content for. Make sure you use relevant hashtags. Don’t be accused of #hashtagabuse by just latching on to a high volume one. Including your location can also help to boost discovery.
Post consistently and be interactive – Ask questions. Reply to comments. Like and share content from your followers.
Run a photo contest or offer special incentives – One way to boost engagement and reach is also to run a photo contest related to your brand. Use a unique hashtag and offer some prizes. Consider other ways you can reward your followers on Instagram with special discounts and promotions or by highlighting and sharing their content.

Note that you can link other social media platforms to your Instagram account, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and foursquare. You can easily cross-post from Instagram to those platforms. Note that Facebook owns Instagram, so expect to see more business and advertising features added over time. Also, it appears that Facebook may currently favor and give higher weighting in the News Feed to content shared from Instagram.

Hope you find these Instagram marketing best practices helpful. Is your business marketing on Instagram? Anything else you would add or tell others to avoid?

Create Engaging Social Media Photos in Less Than Two Minutes

I want to share with you one of my favorite social media tools for adding cool typography to social media photos. It’s quick and easy and inexpensive. Within two minutes you can add beautiful text to a photo and share it across multiple social media platforms. It’s also a mobile app that you can use anytime and anywhere. It’s called Wordswag. It replaces the time time and complexity one had to go through with Photoshop to do this in the past.

Fast and Easy

Wordswag has been available in the market for a while now and just keeps getting better. It’s extremely simple and easy to use:

Either take a photo or choose an existing photo (or choose one of their backgrounds).
Select the typography style and color that you want from the list of options. (Most are free, but a few require a small in-app purchase.)
Double-tap the default text and enter whatever text you want.
Use your fingers to resize and move the text anywhere you want on the image.
Select from different image filters (similar to Instagram) or keep the photo as is and click Done.

The app will crop your image to a square shape unless you tell it not to. If you tell it not to, then it will show you guide lines on the image for how the image will display in Twitter in their landscape format. Wordswag saves your image with the text to your Camera Roll so it can be accessed later.

The Typography options are modern, interesting, and engaging. They come in a variety of styles and sizes. They really help to bring interest to your text and make it visually appealing to read.

Add Watermark or Logo

Another great feature of Wordswag is the ability to add a watermark or logo before you save. While no watermark is completely foolproof, it at least gives you attribution for your photo when most people rampantly share it across the Internet. It also gives you a way to subtly insert your business name if you haven’t already featured it in the text.

Sharing Across Social Media

Wordswag also builds in the ability to easily and quickly share your new creation to:

Instagram
Twitter
Facebook
Tumblr
Pinterest
Text
Email

You can also follow Wordswag on Instagram for some examples. This is my go-to tool to quickly create a photo with text and post it to my social media platforms. You can literally do it in less than two minutes and from anywhere.

The Downsides

There are a couple of disadvantages:

It’s currently available only on iPhone, but also works great on iPad.
It costs $3.99 and there are optional in-app purchases for some typography options. (However, compare this to the cost of Photoshop which is how I used to do this.)

Alternatives

There are some alternatives, including one or two that are free. If Wordswag doesn’t meet your needs, you could also check out:

PicLab HD
Phonto
FrameMagicLite
Pic Collage
Moldiv
Instaquote

Have you tried Wordswag? What do you think? Or do you have another option that you prefer? Please let us all know in the comments.

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10 Tips for Social Media Marketing Success

When I speak with small and mid-sized business owners I frequently hear objections and questions about the business return from investing in social media marketing. Well, hiring college students to post things for you probably won’t drive results. They are very familiar with social media platforms, but it’s the marketing strategy and content that drive success. And just posting photos of products to sell won’t drive success either.

Consumers are not using social media platforms to be bombarded with sales pitches. They are there to be entertained, inspired, educated, trained, and assisted with some problem.

If your content is not engaging or you are spreading your resources too thinly across too many social media platforms, then you may not see good results. Social media platforms will come and go (remember MySpace?), but your marketing strategy and content should transcend the tools and platforms.

With that said, I have observed these ten tips for social media marketing success:

Focus on engaging content – The objective of social media is to engage your audience. You get the maximum business benefit when they share your content and spread your message for you or when they click through to your website. You also benefit if they like or comment. That is giving you opportunity to interact with them on a personal level. Have a catchy headline. Provide some entertainment, but better yet help your audience to see something in a new light, to get educated on a topic, or especially to solve a problem (what to make for dinner tonight, how to build a stone wall, how the use of social media tools can save them time,……..you get the idea).
Be social – Don’t just be on social media posting photos. Be social and interact with your audience and in social media groups. Add your comments and ask questions for the benefit of others. Share content that may also be of interest to your audience. Be sure to reply to comments promptly or thank people for sharing your content.
Focus on a few social media platforms – Different social media platforms have different audience profiles. For example I recently blogged about the Pinterest audience and tips for that specific platform. You don’t have to be on every social media platform. Some may become more important to you in the future, so you may want to reserve your account name there, but focus on 1-3 that are frequented by your target audience and where you can focus for successful business results.
Don’t sell – This may surprise you, but marketing is not sales. It enables sales. Marketing is about satisfying customer needs profitably over time. Consumers are not looking on social media for sales pitches of goods and services that don’t benefit them at this particular time. But helping them now or entertaining them may engage them so that they become your customer or do repeat business with you over time. For example, I get sales people trying to connect with me directly on LinkedIn to just send me a sales pitch for services in which I have expressed no interest and do not need now. They are wasting their time and annoying me for wasting my time. I wouldn’t be annoyed if they sent me some information that might help to benefit my specific business.
Be visual – The most engaging posts on Facebook now are videos that are native uploads to Facebook. The autoplay feature helps them to catch the eye in a cluttered News Feed. A picture is worth a thousand words. Using photos and videos on your selected social media platforms will get you more attention and communicate more information.
Use hashtags appropriately – Hashtags help people to find your content. A Twitter follower may not see your Tweet in real time, but may search a hashtag for relevant information. Be sure they can find your relevant content. It may also help people searching on Facebook. But be careful on Pinterest. That platform doesn’t like lots of hashtags, so limit yourself to one or don’t use them there. You can research hashtags to use with a tool like hashtagify.me
Make it easy to get more information – If your audience is engaged and wants to find out more about your goods and services, ensure that’s easy for them to do. Have a link to your website and invite them to click it for more information. But also have a landing page that takes them directly to the information they are looking for. That may not be your homepage.
Test and change – One of the benefits of social media is that you can test and change your content pretty easily. Analysis of data from each platform will tell you which content and post types are getting the most engagement. Do more of that and less of the ones not driving engagement. Or test multiple visual images with your content. Certain photos and videos will engage your audience better than others. Once you have posted, monitor the data and be prepared to make changes to be more engaging. I am frequently surprised by what content succeeds or does not succeed to accomplish my own marketing objectives.
Ask for feedback – If you’re not getting feedback or you want to find ways to benefit your audience, ask for feedback. This may be informally in a post or you may want to set up a short survey with a few questions. You may want to offer some incentive for filling out your survey. Surveymonkey.com is an easy tool to create a survey.
Advertise key content – I’ve blogged before that Facebook (and soon other platforms) will be prioritizing and restricting whether your content is shown to your fans/followers. Your business posts on Facebook now reach less than 6% of your fans organically unless you have a very highly engaged, established fan base. Social media marketing used to be completely free. Now and increasingly in the future, it is pay to play. If you have key content (news, a useful blog post, a great video, etc.), then pay to do social media advertising. If you’re just getting started, pay to advertise how your business can benefit people and make it easy for people to click through to your web site. Social media advertising is still relatively inexpensive compared to traditional advertising. And you can monitor results real-time to make adjustments or to cancel ads that are not working.

I hope these ten tips are useful to drive success from your social media marketing investment. Do you have any comments, experience, or other thoughts about these? Or do you have another tip to add to the list? Please share in comments below so we can all benefit.

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7 Key Success Factors for Social Media for Business

I recently got back from the Social Media Marketing World conference. Marketers from 49 countries gathered to network and learn from each other about best practices for social media for business. Some of the information was confirmation of things I am already doing and posting about. But there were also some new tips, tools, and techniques. Equally important was interacting with other marketers to understand their businesses and learn about their successes, challenges, and failures. The world of social media continues to evolve and change quickly. (It was also great to go to a conference for the first time in 25 years that I was just an attendee and not working!)

After some reflection on the conference and recent research I have identified seven key success factors for using social media for business:

Content is your hub: It’s your compelling content that will engage your audience and cause them to interact with your business or brand. (See our related blog post on compelling content.) And people will pay for your knowledge and expertise if you package it up and distribute it in ways they can easily consume it. It may be a product, but it also may be a service or other format. If you have content that answers a question or solves a problem that others have, you have a hub of knowledge to grow your business. Don’t just think about promoting your product or service on social media. Think holistically about your content. How can you help people? How can you answer their questions? How can you help them save time, be more effective, reduce costs, have more fun, etc?
Re-purpose your content for multiple platforms of distribution: Once you have compelling content, you can leverage, re-purpose, and package it in multiple ways for people to consume it. You may be using your compelling content to create a lead funnel for a product or service, or you may be a consultant selling your knowledge. Know your core message and let people experience that in multiple ways. You may use it for live events. You may use it for videos and webinars. You may use it for blog posts. You may share parts of it on social media platforms. You may re-package it into speaking engagements. You may write an e-book. You may create a guide or recipes. You may record a podcast. It’s NOT a sales pitch. It’s helping people to answer a question or solve a problem or be entertained in a way that they want to share with others. Think about how you can reach your target customers in various formats on various platforms.
Use videos and photos – Visual content gains attention on crowded social media platforms. The data show the most engaging Facebook posts are now videos, ahead of photos and status updates. Not only is visual content eye-catching, a picture really is worth a thousand words. People are looking to consume information quickly and easily. Sometimes that is seeing a picture or watching a short video or listening to a podcast while traveling or driving.
Don’t be on social media, be social: In recent years there was tremendous attention on increasing your number of followers or fans. That didn’t necessarily produce business results. While you want to increase the number of potential customers you interact with, the critical success factor is engaging your audience with your business and brand. Being social makes your business human. People do business with other people who can help them. When your audience interacts, they will see more of your posts organically. They also are more likely to share your compelling content with their friends and followers to extend your reach.
Participate and leverage others’ audiences: Beyond being social on your own Facebook page or Pinterest Board, host or participate in social media groups. Demonstrate your expertise, compassion, and humor. Your reputations and abilities become visible to the audiences of others hosting the group.
Email is still the most effective and the most direct: Social media is great for engaging your audience and extending your reach. But the people most likely to become your customers are the ones who are interested enough in your content to opt-in and give you their email address. Email is still the most personal marketing. People are more likely to see and open your email than they are to see your Tweets or Facebook posts. One of the mantras at Social Media Marketing World was “Content is King and Social Media is Queen.” Maybe we should add, “And Email is still the Ace.” Use your compelling content and social media to extend your reach, but also to give you their email addresses.
Don’t assume people will take action: This was an aha! moment for me when I heard from someone running a YouTube channel. He shared that in the beginning he assumed listeners would subscribe to his channel if they listened to the programs and liked them and got value. It wasn’t happening. So he added an explicit call to action asking his viewers to subscribe to his channel. Immediately there was a spike in subscribers. People don’t take action unless you ask them to! In past job roles I was sometimes amazed working with sales people. I would get the prospect engaged with some compelling content and the sales people would not think to ask for the order as the next step. Sometimes I had to prompt them and then the sale would be made. Don’t assume people will take action on their own. Always have a question, next step, or call to action – visit a web page, share the post, subscribe to the channel, etc.

A final thought: If I have just followed you on Twitter or liked your Facebook page or connected with you on LinkedIn, don’t immediately send me an advertisement or try to sell me something. If someone is just starting to engage with you on social media, it does not mean they are ready to purchase something from you right away. It means that there was some interest in learning more and seeing how you might be able to help them. I think this a key point for many businesses and marketers. The objective of social media for business is not direct sales – although stay tuned as Facebook and others add more ecommerce functionality.

Let me know your experience. Do any of these success factors resonate with you? Have you identified other success factors? If you would like to regularly receive updates, please follow Kauai Digital Marketing on LinkedIn or sign up for our email list on our web site.

Aspiring Women: 14 Pinterest Marketing Best Practices

Pinterest recently completed another round of funding that values the company at $11B. This is a hefty valuation for a startup that only began selling display ads in January. But growth and demographics have been very attractive. It had been a U.S. growth story, but the number of users outside the U.S. grew more than 135% in 2014.

Pinterest outperforms Twitter and LinkedIn in the time spent on each network. Bing includes Pinterest images in search results. Pinterest has become an important global marketing social media platform.

This is where women go to explore, express, and share their aspirations. 80-85% of users are women and this has been holding steady as the platform grows. 92% of all pins are posted by women. Also, almost half of Pinterest activity happens on tablets.

And Pinterest is one of the fastest growing platforms among millenials. While the average age of users is 40, this is the place to be to reach the desirable group of women buyers who are under 40.

The most pinned categories by women include:

Food and drink
DIY and crafts
Home decor
Holidays and events

So what are some Pinterest marketing best practices to optimize your investment?

Create and name boards using aspirational language of your target audience – Don’t just create a board for each of your products or product categories. Post interesting content. Use aspirational titles like Luxury Spa Bathroom or Dream South Pacific Vacation or Easy Ways to Delight Your Family that will match the searches and aspirations of your target users.
Show a human side to your company – Make it personal. Create a board about your team or your company values and culture.
Use unique images that will capture your audience’s attention – As the user scans over images, make sure yours stand out and catch the eye.
Find the images that capture the most attention and make them cover images for your boards – As you collect data about the most pinned items, look at which images are gaining the most attention and use them as covers for your board.
Don’t push sales, but do include a call to action in your Pins and link back to further information – Users don’t want a product sales pitch. They want interesting content. But be sure to have a link for further information that they can click.
Pin video and audio – 2015 is the year of video on social media. Try some video Pins to capture attention and to show a 3D view or further explanation.
Use “Pin It” and “On Hover Pin It” buttons– with a few lines of code from Pinterest inserted on your web site, users on your site can pin or hover over your images and easily share them on Pinterest. Pinterest provides the Javascript to do this easily.
Add context with Rich Pins – Add additional information to pins for apps, recipes, articles, movies, products, and places. For example, a place pin can include extra information like a map, address, and phone number.
Use hashtags – Hashtags can help you be found in searches, but limit yourself to one or two key ones. Don’t overdo it.
Be social – After all, it is social media. Be responsive and show appreciation to others. Reach out to others to follow them and comment.
Use Pinterest Analytics – Look at the data for which of your pins are most engaging. The images with the most re-pins and clicks are the ones to use for the cover of your boards. This also tells you where to put time and effort for creating new pins.
Join Group Boards – Participate in Groups, but don’t just self-promote. Too much of that will be a turn off. For help with which Groups to join, Pingroupie is a tool that can help to search and sort groups.
Run a contest to generate some buzz – A Pinterest contest can help draw attention and sharing.
Promote Pins with pay per click advertising – Pick pins to promote, specify a target audience, and pay per click for users that click through to your web site.

Don’t forget a couple of other marketing best practices:

You can use Pinterest for competitive research. What are your competitors posting and getting engagement with? How can you improve your value proposition and differentiation?
Cross-promote between Pinterest, your web site, and other social media platforms. Drive complementary engagement across the platforms where your audience can learn more, share more, or take action.

Are you marketing on Pinterest? Do you agree with these best practices? Have you found other Pinterest marketing best practices?

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