Image Selection: Choose larger images with white backgrounds as that looks better in thumbnails.

What to pin? Pin about what inspires you and what you like to do:

• Add How-To boards about your favorite activities.
• Use color coding to pin abstract pins.
• Take followers on a journey of your delights and you’ll find the community will thank you.

SEO Tips

Keywords: Use keywords in board titles, descriptions and link anchor text.

Use tags: To increase visibility of your pins for relevant searches, use #tags in your description and @tags of other relevant pinners to bring your posts to their attention. (i.e. for products – Product Name is a great anti aging product with #keyingredient. Recently featured on Good Morning America @GMamerica) (i.e. for service – Establishment Name is the ideal location for #sundaybrunch in geo location.  Recently voted by #newssource as the best brunch in geo location)

Stay Orangized and Unique: Make sure that your relevant, engaging boards are well organized and on top. Hook your visitors with unique content that differs from your competitors.

Pinning Products: Pinterest users expect to find unique content about your services and products that they can’t get on your website. Use that to your advantage. Include a fact or feature about your product or service that isn’t found elsewhere.  Give as much information about the product to encourage Click Through; such as, postage details and price tags with the $ symbol.

Get Engaged: Make it easy for people to follow you on Pinterest by adding the button to your website.

The Business

Pomona Valley Mining Co is a charming restaurant and banquet facility that serves up dinner and dancing, Sunday brunch, and panoramic views of the valley.

The Challenge

While famous among the local residents the company had a very limited online presence in organic search results. Pomona Valley Mining Co hired SEO Relations to increase visibility through for a number of keywords.

The Solution

SEO Relations performed extensive research to discover keywords that will generate the most relevant traffic for the services offered. Together with a development team we optimized Pomona Valley Mining Co’s website layout and navigational structure to facilitate better content indexing. We published keyword-rich, user-engaging copy to position the Company in the top 5 results for the 10 selected keywords.

The Results

Within 3 months Pomona Valley Mining Co was ranked #1 on Google, Yahoo and Bing for the selected keywords. The traffic grew by 700% and the user engaging content significantly increased customer conversions. As a result the Company requested optimization for additional keywords.

Give Something Away

Roughly 60% of individuals using  social media platforms today have said they would be willing to post about a product or service if they were offered an incentive or deal.

People naturally share content for 3 reasons:

1. To share information with friends
2. To express an opinion
3. For humor – people love to laugh

1. Facebook. 3 out of 4 social network users are on Facebook, making it the most popular social media network in 2011. Facebook accounts for 15% of the time spent online globally.
   
2. YouTube.  Online video consumption and engagement continues to grow.  Every business should consider how to use videos to engage customers in 2012 both on YouTube and on their website.  Videos get extra love from Google in search results.
3. LinkedIn.  As of 3Q2011, LinkedIn had 131.2 million members, an 63% increase from last year.  Use LinkedIn advertising to target specific segments to match your marketing personas.  Provide regular business updates and share useful information.
4. Twitter. Twitter continues to be where people go to for the latest news, for what’s happening with people, sports, businesses etc.



5. Google+. With over 90 million users, Google+ will continue to affect search engine visibility for every business. The Search Plus Your World (search+) algorithm customizes the results based on the Google+ user to deliver a more personal experience. It’s safe to say that Google SERPs will give more weight to businesses that actively use Google+.



6. Blogs. Relevant, sharable company blogs have the ability to feed social media and build trust with customers, all in addition to aiding SEO efforts. Nonetheless, blogs remain underutilized by many companies.
7. Social Media is for everyone. Every age group spends time communicating via social media. Interesting to note that women are spending more time online than males.



8. Mobile. Smartphones and tablets support social media engagement and keep you connected to customers. Across mobile operating systems and age groups, Facebook is the #2 site or app accessed. With Google Search being the #1 site visited can you afford not to have a mobile website?

Blogs provide a strong marketing platform that supports your social media campaigns, drive traffic to your website, establish your brand and personalize your company.

Here are 5 Reasons why you need a blog:

1. Strengthen your brand’s presence online. Search engines love content and Google’s new algorithm update proves it. Consequently, posting relevant and engaging content frequently will help increase your company’s visibility in front of your target audience. Research tells us that we are 33% more likely to click on a result when we’ve seen it more than once. So why settle for just one search result on the first page when you could have 2 or more unique results appearing for relevant searches?
2. Drive more traffic to your site. In addition to strengthening your existing rankings in search engines, keyword-rich content and good internal linking will help expand your reach, driving more traffic to your website.
3. Power social media interactions and engagement. One of your primary goals with social media campaigns is to generate engagement between you and your readers. Your blog content should provide readers with unique, useful, and beneficial information they will in turn want to share and talk about. So be sure to share your content regularly and include social sharing options on each post to maximize your reach.
4. Control the message. Your blog is a branded social media environment where you control the message. As a result, you’ll be able to get in front of the social media chatter with accurate information to promote your product or service, provide customer support, announce the latest news and let your followers share this information.
5. Give your company a personality. Remember those Mac vs PC ads? A blog enables you to give your company a voice, a personality that your customers can identify with and recognize. The conversational tone, unique perspectives, even the design elements of the blog help to “humanize” your company brand.

In summary, blogs support your overall marketing strategy by feeding your social media channels, increasing brand awareness, attracting new customers, and increasing sales. They do so by providing product or service-related content, answering customers’ questions, attracting new prospects, and helping your readers become fans.

Fashion – Thursday. Contrary to what many think engagement tapers off Friday, Saturday & Sunday.

Food & Beverage – Tuesday, Wednesday & Saturday.

Healthcare & Beauty – Thursday. Engagement rose by 40% on Thursdays.

Sports – Sunday. Engagement peaked at 110% above average on Sundays with few companies online.

Travel & Hospitality – Tuesday, Thursday & Friday. Engagement rose 20% on Tuesdays with the highest engagement on Thursdays and Fridays.

Effective Content Tips

Ask a question – The easiest way to get fans talking is to ask them a question that requires a response. But the trick is to ask question that are easy to answer. Questions that require just one-word responses tend to get the most engagement.

Effective words – “Like” and “Post” have positive engagement rates, so use these words when asking Fan’s for comments. Replace traditional marketing terms like “contest, promotion, sweepstake and coupon” for softer selling terms. Fans want to receive promotions but don’t want to feel like their being sold to.

Highest interaction rates – “Where” “when” and “should” get the highest interaction rates.

Words to avoid – “Why” “did” “what” “who” and “how”. These resulted in the lowest engagement rates.

Conversion optimization is a process of optimizing your website so that each page leads visitors to take an action that you want them to take, effectively converting visitors into customers. Our user experience (UX) experts employ traditional and behavioral analytics to provide an enjoyable, intuitive and effortless experience for the user. Our goal is to connect with the visitors’ decision-making process that will lead to higher conversations.

Behavioral Analytics testing has proven that the page layout, images, colors, call to actions, text formatting, length and placement directly affects conversions. We use behavioral analytics tools to figure out what customers do once they land on your page, what links work, which images catch their eye, what text they are reading and which form fields are hindering conversions. We then suggest and implement design, layout and content changes that will facilitate the conversion process for the user.

Conversion optimization is used in each step of the sales process:

• Analyze and evaluate traffic sources to drive quality traffic to your website
• Analyze visitor behavior to optimize landing pages and direct visitors through the conversion process
• Maximize goal completion rates to help customers convert successfully

Research has revealed that engagement is highest on Thursdays and Fridays; generally 18% higher than other week days. Here are some tips on which days show the highest engagement per industry:

Automotive – Sunday. With an average of 110% higher engagement rates few companies in this industry are posting.

Business & Finance – Wednesday & Thursday. Interesting to note is that engagement is lowest Friday through Tuesday.

Entertainment – Friday, Saturday & Sunday. People are more engaged and competitors often neglect social media advertising on the weekends.

Media – Saturday & Sunday. Saturday has shown an average of 15% higher engagement.

Retail – Sunday. Research has shown approximately 25% more engagement on Sunday while few brands in retail are actively marketing on this day.

Check back next week to see tips on more industries for Fashion, Beauty, Sport and Hospitality.