Using Pinterest for Business

“Pinterest is a tool for collecting and organising the things that inspire you.” You’ll see from the image-based site that eye-catching, highly visual pictures are what makes it so addictive for its users, and ultimately why using the platform for business is an absolute no brainer.

Pinterest is unique compared to other social media sites in the sense that it reduces the number of steps from discovery to conversion. What other social media site appeals to our visual nature quite so eloquently as Pinterest and convert visitors into leads faster and with less effort; sound like a platform that you want to be a part of?

Who should use Pinterest?

Pinterest users aren’t discussing the events of their week or how their day has gone, they’re actively building collections of images they find interesting and want to share. Users are displaying their buying aspirations for everyone to see, including marketers, which makes it easier for us to influence customers purchasing decisions.

What do I put on Pinterest?

Create a board and organise your pins by topic. Boards can range from projects that you’re working on, to images of the things that inspire you. Pin images or videos from a website, or upload your own images straight to Pinterest. All images link back to the source, so it’s a great source of traffic. Keeping a balance is key, so remember that the same rules apply here as with other social media platforms; don’t keep posting about yourself. Share, comment and communicate; be social.

How frequently should I post?

Fairly frequently. Remember that the people who follow you will see your pins in their feed, so refrain from posting too much at once as you’ll clog up their feed with all of your images.

Don’t do this...

• Don’t download photos from the web and then upload them as your own pins. You’re sharing someone else’s images, so credit the original source
• Don’t just repin other user’s images, pin your own content too
• Don’t pin more than 5 consecutive pins at a time (spread them out over time, otherwise people may begin unfollowing you)
• Don’t perplex your followers by pinning random things. Pin images to one of your corresponding boards. If a follower is following a board on kittens, and suddenly a motorbike shows up, they might unfollow.
• Don’t just pin images of your products or projects; expand your thinking a little. Show off your businesses personality by pinning images that express this.

Jargon buster

• Board – boards are a collection of images that are similar, or are about the same thing.
• Pin – a pin is an image that you have added to one of your boards.
• RePin – the when someone shares a pin from one of your boards.
• Comments and Likes – similar to Facebook, Pinterest lets you to like someone’s pin, or you can leave a comment.
• Pin it button – this can be added to your browser, which allows you to easily share something that you have found interesting, like a pin for instance.
• Follow – just like Twitter, you can choose to follow a user, or you can choose to follow a specific board that you find interesting.

Size guide

A few stats for you...

• pins with price tags included get 36% more likes than those that don’t,
• 69% of Pinterest users have found at least one item that they’ve bought or wanted to buy,
• 80% of users are women

Fat Shaming – Where’s the Love People?

Society pressures are with us everyday, and you may be surprised to learn that the celebs are no exception. Striving for perfection seems to be the aim of the day, and we all do it. We all create an illusive and unachievable image to struggle for, and it seems to be driving us all crazy

Newspapers, magazines, movie posters; they all feature photoshopped, airbrushed, nip tucked cover stars, with figures and flawless complexions achieved only with the aid of modern technology.

The pointlessness of striving to be THAT perfect isn’t a concept that most young teenagers can accept. The unattainability of this ideology can cause a twisted, self-prescribed image of ones self, and that in itself is a modern day travesty.

We know this really

We all know this really. Think about it. Who puts filter free photos on Facebook these days? Not very many people.

We’ve been doing this one for a while, but now it has a name. Fat Shaming. Pointing at celebs and judging. He without sin remember?

Look at it this way: how do you feel about your weight right now? Now picture this; thousands of people pointing at you and calling you fat while you continue your struggle in your battle to lose weight. How does that make you feel? Pretty sucky, right?

Celebrities aren’t bullet proof it would seem, and believe it or not, they have feelings just like the rest of us. Emotional abuse shouldn’t be tolerated by anyone, but just how are the celeb's even affected? Surely with all of their money and fame, nothing can touch them right?

Wrong. Do you remember watching ‘boy meets world’ when you were younger? The stunning actress, Danielle Fishel, recently got married to her long-term boyfriend Tim Belusko, but escape the taunts, she did not.

Celebs take to Twitter

She tweeted this on October 22^nd: "Ppl saying I was FAT at my wedding: You are the worst kind of people on the planet. I weigh 107 pounds and am 5'1". YOU are the reason anorexia exists."

She’s not the only one. We’ve all seen the images of Kim Kardashian in her third trimester. Granted, she did put on a lot of weight, but who cares? She was CARRYING A BABY. That’ll do that to you, you know.

Poor Kim spoke out, saying that,"every day I would hear people criticise me, and it would affect me. Little by little it would chip away at my soul."

And do you remember sweet 16 Mischa Barton from The O.C? (oh how we miss you O.C. Come back into our lives. Please) The constant weight remarks she received drove her to a breakdown. "It was a full-on breakdown," Barton said. "Straight out of ‘Girl, Interrupted.’ Story of my life. I was under enormous pressure. It was terrifying."

So if we can leave you with something to think about, it’s that the bitchy era of tormenting people for fun needs to be left at school with all of the other adolescent behaviours that we picked up, like rolling our skirts up, and plucking our eyebrows to nothing. There’s no place for it now.

Love yourself

Being a size 12 is not fat. Having some wobbly bits around your womanly areas gives you curves. It is not fat. Embrace a fuller figure; because as long as you are happy, maintain a healthy diet, and move your body regularly, you are fine. Obesity however, is an entirely different matter, of which you should absolutely do something about. Not tomorrow. Now.

Are you guilty of Fat Shaming?

7 Really, Really Bad Marketing Campaigns

Marketing is an interesting beast to tame. Some days it’s your best friend, working with you, ‘having your back’, making you lots of new friends; this is the good side. Then you catch it on a bad day and it turns into a raging animal of offensive, inappropriateness, and down right irrational behaviour.

When you’re a major brand, the levels of embarrassment caused by this unpredictable beast can reach an epic scale. There’s nowhere to hide when your disasters are displayed for literally the world to see, especially when they’re picked up by bloggers time and time again, for a fun and humorous blog post.

Pepsi Expands into China

When Pepsi decided to expand their presence in China, obviously their catchy slogan “Pepsi brings you back to life,” featured heavily in all of their marketing materials. And why wouldn’t it? The idea being that when you drink Pepsi, you become alert and awake; you’re brought back to life. Makes perfect sense.

Although little did Pepsi know, until it was too late, that their catchy international-market-breaking slogan, actually translated to, “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.” Oops.

Facebook is like…

A chair, apparently. Hang on, what? Facebook is like a chair? Really? Are you sure you’ve got that right Facebook? You’re saying that you’re like a chair?

With an increasing amount of media scrutiny and the whole IPO debacle, Facebook decided that what it really needed was a TV campaign that compared the worldwide social media platform to a chair.

Don’t Say the N-Word

Attempting to portray their sales staff as a generous and giving bunch of guys and gals, Renault rolled out their ‘don’t say the N-word’ campaign, and by the N-word, what they really meant was ‘No’ of course.

We guess nobody told them what everybody else believes the 'N-word' to be.

I Take a Sheet in the…

Now we all love a good, well thought through pun. They’re fun and they make your campaign memorable. Sometimes though, although the pun is very clever, it can be incredibly unsuitable and leave readers, especially those in the company of small children just old enough to read, feeling rather uncomfortable.

This is so hilariously inappropriate that you have to wonder; is this actually pure genius? I'm not sure. You decide.

Turkish Airlines are Going Down

Whoever placed this advertisement got it very, very wrong. Although the ad did go viral, the free publicity unfortunately didn’t get the airline an influx of business.

Oh well. On a positive note, before this, I never knew that Turkish Airlines even existed. 

And now I do? 

Nope. Definitely wouldn’t fly with them.

Starbucks Sucks

The main takeaway from this? Look at how your advertisement will look from all angles. We all know Starbucks doesn’t suck, but seeing this continually, we might start to believe it.

Unfortunate? Yes. Lazy? Yes. Funny as hell? Definitely. Put you off drinking Starbucks? Nah.

7-UP for Babies

There are no words.

Come on 7-up. Who came up with this? Shame. On. You.

Finding the Right Business Partner

Working with within a business partnership, as with anything, has both its advantages and disadvantages. The decision to go into business with another person isn’t something that should be taken lightly, and a fair amount of time must be taken so that you can carefully consider every implication that a partnership entails, and to be sure that you are making the right decision.

Working with a business partner may or may not benefit your business. Caution, coupled with strategic thinking and understanding that impact that introducing another key figure will have on your business, needs to be thoroughly understood before you make your final decision. Because it is so important, we’ve compiled a list of pro’s and con’s, together with reasons as to why you should and should not opt for a business partner.

Advantages

A business partner can help to develop your business, whilst giving you a strong teammate. Here are some advantages to opting for a business partner:

Double the manpower
Working with a business partner allows you to get more work done. When starting something new, resources can be limited, so a business partner that you can trust can be of great assistance and give you a much needed helping hand.

A difference perspective
Outside perspective is a marvellous tool to have. Objectively evaluating a new idea can save both time and money and help you to avoid costly mistakes with runaway ideas, which at the time may seem fantastic. When two or more people are involved in making a decision, the entire process becomes much easier, plans become more realistic, and concerns can be aired.

More skills to contribute
Having a business partner on board means that you’ll have use of an entirely new skill set; skills that you may possible not possess. Tasks can be divided according to the strengths that you both have, which means less time doing the things that you’re not so hot at, and more time concentrating on what you’re good at.

Double checker

Having a business partner means that there’s a barrier between a new idea forming, and that new idea becoming a reality. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Discussing ideas with a business partner can help you to realistically evaluate the idea, and help put it thoroughly through its paces.

No hiding from your mistakes
Business partners hold you accountable for the decisions that you make and can help you to stay motivated. Going it alone is tough; a business partner is there to keep you moving.

Disadvantages

Choosing the wrong business partner can lead to stress, frustration, and even bankruptcy. Here are a few disadvantages when working with a business partner:

Profit sharing
Splitting the profits is another factor that must be taken into consideration. The idea of a business partner is that they help you to grow the business whilst making more profits. Failure to do this could leave you asking why they are even there.

You’ll work differently
Working with someone who doesn’t share the same work ethic as you may cause problems. Not being fully committed and not following through on responsibilities can end up bankrupting a business. Make sure that you absolutely know the person that you are going into business with or it could be your reputation on the line.

Disagreements
Disputing about long-term goals may cause serious problems; if you’re not working together for the greater good, you may end up causing each other stress and wasting time. Make sure that your goals are the same and that you are both striving for the same results.

Lack of Experience
When working with a business partner, you need to be able to rely on your partner to deliver the results that your business needs. Failing to do this right could lead to disaster.

Your reputation at stake
Dishonesty and shady practices could leave your reputation in shatters. Your reputation is worth more than you may realise, and having a business partner that could negatively impact this, is not worth the trouble. Before deciding to take on a business partner, be certain that they add value to both you and the business.

Consider this Before Working with a Partner

Analyse the reasons why you want a business partner before making a decision. Below is a list of both good and bad reasons for selecting to work with a business partner. Make sure that you answer yes to the good list, and rethink your motives if you answer yes to any from the bad list.

The good

Create a business partnership for the right reasons. Good reasons for entering into a business partnership include:

1.      You need someone that possesses a different skill set to what you have

2.      There is more work for just one person

3.      You know of someone that can add value to your business and help it grow

4.      You work well within a team and will work much better in a team environment

The bad

Entering into a partnership for the wrong reasons can harm your business. Bad reasons for entering into a business partnership include:

1.      You want someone to agree with everything that you say

2.      You want to offload all of the responsibility

3.      This person is your friend

4.      You want someone just like you, who wants the same as you

What do you really want from a business partner?