Have you ever thought about the difference between Pinterest & the other social media sites – as it relates to Public Relations?

I had the honor of speaking to an East Coast PR Society group recently, and of course the events in Boston were top of mind for people. As I was preparing to present I asked myself the question,

Is Pinterest Useful For PR Work? “

There are two types of emergencies – A “rapid onset emergency” is one that, as the name suggests, comes about rapidly. A “Slow onset emergency” is one that develops over a much more gradual timeframe.

So as examples:

Boston Marathon: Rapid-Onset Emergency

North Korea Conflict: Slow Onset Emergency

I’m sure you get the idea.

So as a PR person, the question we wonder about is how best would we use Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube or Instagram in these types of situations.

Here are my observations & analysis as it relates to Pinterest & the other social sites:

1. Not Real-Time Focused: Whereas Twitter, Facebook & Instagram are built for real-time sharing, Pinterest is not. Most users pinning items in Pinterest related to the Boston event are items like “Pray For Boston” type memes – not minute by minute accounts of the situation.

2. Slow Search Algorithm Speed: In Twitter the Hashtag “BostonMarathon” went from something like 2,600 mentions on Twitter to over 288,000 (per topsy.com) almost immediately. And although you can search hashtags in Pinterest, when you search for that Hashtag in Pinterest (less than 24 hours after the bombing) there are no images presented associated with the event even though they’ve been uploaded. Several days later that was still true. Their search algorithm just isn’t refreshed rapidly enough (or something – I’m not a hacker so I don’t know exactly how to express this, but I know it’s true).

But fast forward one month and the boston marathon is out of the news cycle and is turning into a historical. Now ask yourself the question,

Which social media site has the best information about the Boston Marathon Bombing?”

Clearly it will be Pinterest. Look in Pinterest for Boston Marathon & choose the “Pinboards” option and you’ll see lots of curated content related to the issue. Here’s a screenshot:

The information is:

• Thorough
• Easy to find
• A mix of both images and video

PR professionals should consider how Pinterest can be integrated with their work. If you’re in the business of providing information and resources as emergencies occur – then Pinterest should play a part in your media mix.

Do you need to grow your sales? Do you use email marketing?

You should! We started using email marketing in the fall of 2009 with 125 email addresses, now we have over 25,000. Trust me when I tell you – sending an email to 25,000 raving fans can generate some strong sales.

And a few weeks ago we were told that Liberty Jane Clothing won the Constant Contact 2012 All-Star Award for our use of their Facebook Integration Tool. You can see the results here. The reason we won (we think) is that in January we added 2,395 new subscribers to our primary newsletter list – most of them came via Facebook. Most slow months we add 700+ names, many times twice that many.

According to the Constant Contact Team adding that many new subscribers in one month is fairly rare.

I know you’re thinking that I suck at email marketing for my work here at marketing On Pinterest. I rarely send emails out. Fair enough. But email marketing is about two things:

1. Acquiring New Names Effectively.
2. Marketing To Them Effectively.

We’ve seen huge gains in our primary business using email marketing because we do both of these things well.

And how did we learn this stuff?

Mainly from hearing Bob Bly do a webinar on effective email marketing. And as it happens – that webinar can be embedded – so I thought I’d share it.

All the best on your email marketing journey!

Here is a new interview Karen & I just did with the 33 Voices host Moe Abdou. We talk about Pinterest Power of course, but also about Pinterest marketing strategies. Listen to it here: http://www.33voices.com/karen-lacey-and-jason-miles/audio

Pinterest Power Interview

Have you been playing around with the new Pinterest look like we have? You can read about their redesign here. Their stated goal was to tighten up the navigation – read their thinking about that here.

They even outline “What’s coming soon” and it doesn’t include any statement like, “Hey – were about to introduce Ads”. But if you look at their design modifications – then you could see how advertising could be easily introduced. Let’s look at the before and after – and I’ll show you what I mean:

The Old Look:

Note: I added the Red Arrow!

Note the un-optimized space in the right hand column. That area needed a clean up. Also note how the user name “Lauren Jacobson” has a lot of prominence in the header section of the pin. Now look at those 2 areas on the same pin in the “New Look” format…

The New Look:

This is the new look of the same pin.

Note the improvements to the 2 spaces. Interesting how in the header section – the user has been “de-emphasized”. and a nice big chunk of real-estate has been left un-used – to the right of “website” and to the left of “Share”…Also notice how the right hand column has been utilized by bringing content up from below the pin. Also note – the “Other Pins From Flickr” box is a handy 280-ish by 240-ish. And when you focus just on the 9 image thumbnails – that space is roughly 225X225. See where I’m headed with this? …

(Warning: Pure Speculation follows…)

The New Look With An Imaginary Ad:

Note: I made this in photoshop for illustrative purposes – it is not from Pinterest directly…

Note (again) … I made this in Photoshop – I did not find it on Pinterest. But you could easily see how an ad related to the pin could easily be added in the right hand column. One could also be added to the top header section I suppose.

Could they have a better monetization team? … Given the fact that Ben Silberman worked at Google on the display Ad team before founding Pinterest – it stands to reason that this hypothetical future step would not be hard for them to engineer. Of course using their own advertising back-end – similar to Adwords or Facebook’s Advertising platform, (we use them both at Liberty Jane Clothing and love them and we’d use the Pinterest Advertising Platform as well). Especially since last year they hired Facebook’s monetization guru – Tim Kendall. Read my open letter to him about how an alternative to the traditional display ad system could be used.

Is it all going to happen as I’m speculating here? Probably not – but eventually Pinterest will monetize.

What do you think?

Ps. Hey, don’t forget to…

I thought you might like to listen in on this interview just posted on The Engaging Brand. Karen Lacey, my Pinterest Power co-author and I discuss the power of curation and how to use Pinterest for non-product companies…and lots more! I think you’ll really enjoy this interview…

Enjoy!

And just click the image below to jump onto the Engaging Brand’s Podcast channel…you’ll find it at this link: http://www.blubrry.com/engaging/1694502/podcast-424-marketing-on-pinterest/

Hey folks, Here is a (beautifully produced) Podcast for ya – all about Marketing on Pinterest.

It was an honor to be on the #1 Australian Marketing Podcast with Timbo Reid. Listen to us discuss social media strategy, how we got 6,600 visitors from Pinterest to our ecommerce site in December, and how we now have over 9,000 referral links in Pinterest pointing people toward our website, (plus more…)

And hey, don’t forget to …

When I tell people my recent book, Craft Business Power, has been an Amazon #1 best-seller, (proof on my Pinboard)… (and yes, I do do talk about it too frequently, even to complete strangers),

people always respond by saying, “I have a book I want to write, I should get started on that“. Sometimes I get a congratulations, but frequently it’s just the, “I should get started on that” comment.

They never ask, “how’d ya do it?“

I want them to ask, “how’d ya do it?“! They never do.

If they’d ask me how I did it I would tell them the following story…

My mentor, (although he doesn’t know me, or know he’s my mentor), is Guy Kawasaki. And Guy and I were talking (well, he was being interviewed and I was talking to my computer) about his new book APE, Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur. He gave me this…

Tip From APE: Always crowd-source a group of pre-readers.

So to start the project I sent out an email to the folks who follow our business and asked for volunteers to pre-read the book. (I had actually written most of the book several years ago). 388 people agreed to be pre-readers. I set up a blog, and made each chapter a page, and let them leave all the comments they wanted. Guy forgot to mention how brutal people can be when leaving feedback, but I’ll let that slide. Anyway, after 700 comments, we had lots of tweaking to do. We actually have an amazingly gracious group of customers, they are very nice folks.

We made all the revisions (with the help of an awesome editor-for-hire) and reposted all the chapters for a second round of feedback. More comments, but they were more kind the 2nd time.

We used a Fiverr gig to get a cover, then tweaked it a bit.

We also used a Fiverr gig to have someone place it in the .mobi format and put it together properly for Amazon.

We followed another one of Guy’s Tips from APE… Use the Amazon promotional option to make your book free occasionally.

So on the first day it was published on Amazon we made it free. It went to #1 in multiple categories and as high as #142 in all of the free ebooks. That’s crazy. You can see all the screenshots of proof here.

What we didn’t know was that there are Mommy, Craft & Coupon Bloggers who monitor the free Kindle categories and publish anything that looks interesting to their audiences. We got incredibly blessed by having Money Saving Mom post about Craft Business Power being free. Yes, she has 217,000 Facebook fans and a massive readership on her blog. Since then we have had other amazing bloggers post about the book, including Hip2Save.

I also sent a “Thank You” email out to all 388 pre-readers the night before it went live and invited them to get their free copy, and share the news with their friends that it was free. I also asked them to leave a review, and mentioned that, “Lots of 5-Star Reviews help the book get seen by more people”.

Over the course of the next week the book went to #1 in the E-Commerce, Web-Marketing, and Home-Based categories. As you might guess, this was crazy for us. Our little book is out selling against some super respectable authors. New York Times Best-Selling authors. It continues to do very well.

So that is how we did it. We listened to Guy and Shawn, (Guy’s coauthor).

If you are thinking, “I’ve got a book I want to write”, then pick up a copy of Guy’s excellent new book APE. He and his coauthor, Shawn Welch, are veterans at this stuff. If you really want to get your book out there – there is really no barrier. And it can do very well. Listen to what they say and do it.

So thanks Guy! You’re a great mentor!

All the best,

Jason

Ps. Yes, it is a total coincidence that my first book, Pinterest Power is paired up with Guy’s prior book, What The Plus. Or did Amazon do it because they knew Guy and I are so close? I’m not sure, I’ll ask my other mentor, Jeff Bezos, next time I see him.