Before you jump on the latest trend, stop and think about it. Do you really need to add one more social network to manage if you haven’t figured out your social engagement on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, your blog, videos and everything else you are already doing. I just found this cartoon on Pinterest and I love it. It pretty much says it all. Just because Pinterest has been so successful for so many brands, doesn’t mean it’s going to be a winner for you. Your thoughts?
This excellent collection of social media marketing stats, graphs and charts is brought to you by the great folks at Hubspot.
Highlights from the collection broken down by categories are:
Inbound Marketing
Search engines and SEO
To see the charts and graphs of these and many more stats as collected by Hubspot, check out the PDF document below. Enjoy!
Tahoe Thursday Series
I like it when I see a local Lake Tahoe business doing a good job with their social media marketing efforts. In addition to our Once a Month Who’s Doing it Best in Lake Tahoe in Social Media and Digital Marketing Series, I’m going to feature a local Lake Tahoe business in our Tahoe Thursday series. If you can think of any, let me know in the comments section or send me an email milena@outandaboutmarketing.com.
Today’s spotlight goes to Tahoe StandUp Paddleboards.
I’m not going to review their website today. I like what they have done with it. I’d like to concentrate on their social networks instead. Some of them are well linked from their website. (Good start) and some I had to look for. (Constructive criticism here – I had a hard time finding their youtube channel).
Let’s look at each one:
Active and engaged feed with good interaction with other companies.
Great custom profile photo.
Excellent use of the custom tabs. I particularly liked the Team Tahoe SUP custom tab with my friend Whitney Wall featured at the top. Great way to bring personality into your brand.
Other tabs worth mentioning are the 2012 boards, telling us what to expect, the welcome tab and the Explore Project.
Overall, a visually beatiful Facebook page. Great job! Can they get even more engagement and likes and perhaps introduce Facebook commerce? Do they have a well put social media strategy in place? If you want to check your Facebook EdgeRank score for free and establish a benchmark for the company, Facebook Edgerank Checker is a good free tool to use for that. For more detailed Facebook Analytics and intelligence, hit me up.
Twitter
Twitter is one of my favorite networks. The Twitter account for Tahoe SUP didn’t disappoint visually. Great custom background image carrying our the brand with urls to other social networks and website assets.
A quick check on Klout shows Tahoe SUP at 21 with topics of influence of construction, plastic and surfing. What is Klout? Klout has positioned themselves as the standard of influence on the web, a very interesting and controversial topic of conversation. They give you a score of 1 to 100 and the higher your score is the most influence you have on the web. They also analyze your conversations and tweets and assign topics to you they believe you are influential in.
With a fun sport like paddle boarding I would imagine that Tahoe SUP can do a lot better on Twitter. To see the entire Twittalyzer dashboard for Tahoe SUP, head over to the this link. Sure, Tahoe SUP can do better with their twitter activity but at least they are not cross posting Facebook to Twitter as many bigger brands wrongly do. (More on this in another post).
YouTube
The Tahoe SUP YouTube account is also customized with their brand. With 8 videos and 31 subscribers, I’d venture to say they can definitely improve their video presence. Although, they are fairly active with 8,635 views to their channel.
I loved their video on paddle boarding with dogs in Lake Tahoe with the dog whisperer as featured on National Geographic. Nicely done. Who doesn’t like going out on the lake with the dog and enjoying the outdoors.
and finally the Tahoe SUP Blog
Prominently featured right on the home page, Tahoe SUP has an active blog. One thing I couldn’t figure out was how to leave a comment on a blog post but maybe I just missed it. If I didn’t, adding comments to the blog will be a good improvement.
I particularly like the integration of photos, videos and the team within the blog. It makes it easy to look around and get a feel for the sport before you jump both feet into it. And as a passionate paddle boarder, I highly recommend it.
Overall, Tahoe SUP is doing a good job with social media. I’m sure they have limited resources to spend online and if their products are flying off the shelves already, then I’m sure they are analyzing what makes the most sense for the company. I see a lot of opportunities and potential to grow their business and connect with paddle boarders around the world.
I hope spring comes soon and we can all go out and enjoy the sport. I know I can’t wait to grab my Tahoe SUP and go out.
Photo credit: Flickr. Sean MacEntee
2012 is the year that you need to create a social media strategy for your business if you don’t have one yet. Just make this your goal and I promise you it will pay off.
Radian6 report recently released states: “Strategic users are almost three times more likely to execute activities for engaging prospects than informal users (53% vs. 19%)” — and they were likely to see increased revenues.”
A few critical items to include in your social media strategy are:
7. Review and Adjustments - a very important part of every social media strategy is the periodic review and adjustment. Once a month, take a look at what’s really going on, compare it to your plan and make the necessary adjustments to improve your social media effort. Drop the things that are not working and do more of the stuff that’s working. Only after applying your strategy in real life you will know what’s really sticking with your audience and what makes them engage with your brand.
If you need help with your social media strategy, give us a call. We’ll be glad to help out. And if you need more ideas for your social media plan, take a look at Radian6 30 ideas for your 2012 social media plan. I’m sure you’ll find some interesting nuggets of information that you can apply to your business today. Your turn – do you currently have a social media strategy and if not are you planning on creating one soon? Let us know in the comments below.
Do we need any more social networks in our daily lives? We are stretched so thin trying to stay connected 24/7 on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs that adding one more social network to our lives seems like a crazy idea. But I really like this one. And I think it has a big potential for travel destinations and companies. Meet Pinterest.
What is Pinterest?
It’s an online pinboard where you can pin things of interest to you. You can have different boards based on your interests. For example, I have a board called Places I want to visit where I have pinned various destinations, cities and natural landmarks I want to visit one day. It’s a visual board with beautiful images. Do you see how travel destinations can benefit from this?
Who’s using Pinterest?
Pinterest has been around for 2 years but only recently it gained a lot of traction to where it’s now ranking in the top 10 social networks. “Time magazine called Pinterest — a website where users post collections of images of their favorite food, clothes, places and everything else — one of the five best social media sites of 2011, along with Google-Plus and Klout. The company has raised $27 million in venture capital led by the firm Andreessen Horowitz, which several tech news outlets have reported as valuing Pinterest at $200 million” states this story in the USA Today on Pinterest standing out in a crowded social media space.
At this time, you still need to receive an invite to join Pinterest but if you submit a request, you will receive your invite within a day or so.
Retailers, like Real Simple, Land’s End, Nordstrom and Etsy are using Pinterest and for some of them Pinterest is driving more traffic than Facebook.
Demographics
80% of Pinterest’s users are women making it a very appealing place to showcase your destination, ski resort, city, hotel accommodation. Below are the detailed demographics from HotelMarketing.com.
- Largely women (a 80% to 20% ratio). So there’s some truth to Matt Buchanan’s post on Gizmodo yesterday that proclaims Pinterest as “a Tumblr for ladies”.
- Aged mainly between 25 and 44 (accounting for 55% of the group, 30% are 25-34, 25% are 35 – 44)
- Just 25% of users have a bachelors degree or higher
- The majority live off a household income of $25-75k
An attractive demographics group if you are in the travel&tourism industry.
To take advantage of Pinterest start compiling good photography that shows your spa, your destination, your ski resort, your town. People can pin photos from your website as well so having good photography on your website as always helps travelers make a decision faster.
Do you use Pinterest personally or for business? Let me know in the comments below. If you need a beginner guide to start using Pinterest, Mashable put one together. It’s very easy to use. Go on and try it.
