Pinterest: Pinlet Magic for Small Business Marketing

Pinterest - Pinlet Magic

Pinterest - Ron PassfieldPinterest is a social networking site where people share images and photos by adding them to “pinboards”.  It has achieved phenomenal growth – growing faster than Twitter and Facebook during the same early stages of its growth.  Pinterest is now the 3rd ranked social networking site behind Facebook and Twitter and is ranked 39th in the world in terms of website traffic.

Some interesting facts for small business owners:

  • Pinterest is generating more traffic to blogs than Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn combined (www.mashable.com)
  • Pinterest users are 10% more likely to buy than users who arrive from other social media sites*
  • Pinterest’s percentage of all social media driven purchases is growing and is expected to reach 40% (while Facebook will drop from 82% to 60% and Twitter drop out of the purchase picture)*
  • Facebook bought Instagram for $1billion to ward off competition from Pinterest.

* Source: http://mashable.com/2012/04/29/pinterest-interest/

[Image source: Screen capture taken from my Pinterest site: http://pinterest.com/ronpassfield/]

Adding images and photos to Pinterest

Pinterest enables you to create pinboards on any topic and to add pins via upload from your computer or via a pinmarklet tool which is added to your browser toolbar.  So you can pin images from any website of your choice but what you have to watch here is the copyright restrictions of the source site.  Some websites owners are particularly aggressive about protecting their copyright.

 The pinning tool (pinmarklet)  is shown below together with the image it creates:

Pinterest

Pinterest - pinning example

You can see from this illustration that you have a thumbnail image taken from the website, the option to post to one of your established pinboards (using the drop-down menu) and the ability to add comments before you post.  Pinterest will automatically pick up the website address of the image source.  However, you can also add your website address to the comment section and it will be automatically hyperlinked (made clickable).

Some websites have the Pin Symbol to enable you to easily pin from their site.  Popular sites that people pin images from are:

Pins are shared by “likes” (as with Facebook) or by being repinned by another Pinterest member.  To build up your following on Pinterest, you should like pins and repin images that you are interested in and follow people you admire or who share the same interests/geographic area.

Pinterest, Pinlet Magic and small business marketing

Two types of Pinterest pinboards that are attracting heaps of traffic are quotes and inspiration.   What Pinlet Magic brings to Pinterest is the ability to create your own quotes, inspirations and affirmations by using a special purpose Pinmarklet which is also added to your browser toolbox:

Pinlet magic pinmarklet

When you click on the pinmarklet for Pinlet Magic you see the following image:

Pinlet Magic

Here are some of the features of Pinlet Magic:

  • you create your own quote or affirmation (in the left box)
  • you can decide the font, font size and font color
  • you can add an author name or your website address to the bottom of the quote/affirmation
  • you can preview the quote as you create and customize it.

Additionally, you can decide the color of your background, the border, add one of the preset colors/templates or upload an image to serve as the background.  This part of the Pinlet Magic tool is very flexible:

Pinlet Magic backgrounds

As you can see from the extract from my Pinterest site in the header image for this post, I have two pinboards covering Inspirational Quotes and Affirmations – and I create quotes/affirmations that are consistent with the nature of my offline human resource development business.

Here’s an example of an affirmation I developed using Pinlet Magic and my own photo (the emphasis is on active listening):

Pinterest: Listening affirmation

Here’s another example.  This time I have developed an Inspirational Quote using Pinlet Magic and my own photo of a Stradbroke Island view at sunset:

Pinterest: Inspirational Quote

Each of these images on Pinterest has a link back to my small business website, Merit Solutions Australia.

When you purchase Pinlet Magic you also receive other resources such as sources for quotes, updates, hints and ideas and free access to a closed Facebook discussion group where a growing community shares their quotes and willingly gives “likes”, repins” and “follows” for quotes they admire.

Pinterest has opened up a new arena for small business marketing and Pinlet Magic provides a great boost to building your personal branding, business brand and website traffic.

7 Ways Focus Improves Your Productivity

Improve productivity through focus

 Improve productivity through focus

I’ve been reflecting on how focus has helped me to improve productivity with respect to blogging.  Over the last 3 months, I have written 80 blog posts for my Small Business Odyssey blog (from 400 to 1000+ words each), while in the previous three months I wrote only one blog post.  This improved productivity is the result of focus. 

One of my early posts on this blog was about the benefits of focus for small business marketing.  In this current blog post, I want to discuss how focus improves productivity – as it has obviously done for me with regard to blogging. 

[Photo credit: Close Focus Lens by SqueakyMarmot]

7 ways to improve productivity through focus 

There is no doubt in my mind that focus was one of the key means that helped me to improve productivity.  In reflecting on this, I identified 7 key ways focus contributed to my productivity improvement: 

1. Focus builds momentum 

Early definitions of ‘momentum’ described it as ‘the power residing in a moving object’.  You know yourself that once you get a heavy object moving, it gains momentum and is a lot easier to push (e.g. trying to push a broken-down car).  For me, momentum is the key benefit of focus.  Once I decided that I would focus on writing a blog about small business marketing, I began to overcome the resistances (the heavy objects) that were residing in me – the barriers to productivity.  Once I started writing blog posts with my new-found focus, I began to gain momentum – writing blog posts became easier and I looked forward to writing them. 

2. Focus is motivational 

Once you become focused, you start to achieve things that seemed impossible before.  You become more disciplined, avoid distractions and build sound habits that help to improve productivity.  The sense of achievement you gain is motivational – it provides the intrinsic reward, a sense of satisfaction, that keeps you going.  Extrinsic rewards, in the form of increased traffic and revenue usually follow, but it is the inner sense of achieving a worthwhile goal that provides the initial impetus.  Focus enables you to gain this sense of achievement and the resultant motivation that leads to improved productivity

3. Focus channels energy 

Focus brings an alignment of your energies (mental, physical, emotional) so that you are able to pursue a single goal or direction with increasing energy.  You know yourself that a lack of focus dissipates energy – you are ‘all over the place’.  Focus, on the other hand, results in harnessing energy towards a single goal.  I think of the analogy of using a magnifying glass to focus the energy of the sun’s rays to burn a hole in a piece of paper (as we used to do as kids).  The sun’s energy is there all the time, but it is unfocused unless you capture it with a magnifying glass (or nowadays with solar panels to produce electricity).  It is the focus (or the focusing instrument) that channels and concentrates energy.  This channelled energy helps you, in turn, to improve productivity. 

4. Focus creates a new significance 

Lou Tice, famous organizational psychologist, used to talk about the power of organization vision to ‘create a new significance’ – visioning is about focusing on a desired future state that you want to work towards achieving.  He explained that the process of visioning, focusing of some desired future, activates a part of the brain called the RAS (reticular activating system) which is responsible for arousal and activating the conscious mind.   So, for example, you may be driving to work in a ‘mindless state’, almost on remote control.  Then suddenly you see the rear lights of the car in front of you turn read (the brake light).  It is the RAS that tells your body to take evasive action (your brain has recognised the significance of the red light – you are going to crash if you don’t stop or swerve away).  TheRAS brings you back to a heightened state of consciousness.  And so it is with focus in any arena of life, especially in small business marketing.  The consequence is that you start to see things you did not notice before, new resources come to your attention, and you recognise new resource people – your brain has created a new significance around your focus and this new consciousness helps you to improve your productivity because you become better resourced and informed. 

5. Focus attracts productive people to you 

Other people value focus because it demonstrates commitment and achievement – a goal that many people aspire to but cannot achieve.   People who have achieved in life are attracted to other productive people and recognise their expertise.  Here’s a simple example from my own experience.  I decided a few years ago to spend a year acquiring expertise in Squidoo and eventually attained the level of Giant Squid100 (100 excellent Squidoo lenses determined by Squidoo itself).  This enabled me to write many blog posts about Squidoo and create an e-book on Squidoo Marketing Strategies which I sold via Paypal.  As my expertise developed I came to the attention of Mari Smith, Facebook expert, who asked me to run a webinar for her on Squidoo for her Social Media Certification Course.  This gave me increased exposure and access to resources and contributed substantially to my visibility, branding, motivation and productivity.  Mari is a great example of how focus attracts others, builds expertise and increases personal productivity.  

6. Focus improves efficiency 

Efficiency is about achieving more in less time – the hallmark of productive people.  With focus you are able to avoid distractions and use your time better.  You can overcome information overload because your focus gives you the basis for ignoring, or attending to, the endless bits of information that you are bombarded with.  You can sift through information quickly and attend to only those things that further your goal (your primary focus).  As you become more time efficient through your focus, you improve your productivity in terms of achieving your goal. 

7. Focus taps emotional energy 

It is very difficult to sustain a focus unless there is some emotional attachment to the goal underlying your focus.  So in my case, the focus on small business marketing contributes to two key goals of mine – the promotion of my own HR consultancy business and the development of a future stream of revenue when I wind down from running workshops.  I have a very strong, emotional commitment to both these goals which are interrelated and intertwined.  This enables me to tap into the emotional energy involved in my focus and to improve my productivity.  The positive emotional energy sustains me when the going gets hard – writer’s block, downtime on my computer, the pressures of my offline business and illness.  A key lesson here is to align your focus with a goal you find emotionally energizing and your focus will help you to sustain and improve your productivity. 

For further information on ways to enjoy the benefits of focus and learn to improve productivity in your small business marketing, subscribe to my free e-course on how to be productive

 

Leverage Your Blogging: Create a Small Business Ezine

Mooloolaba rocks

Mooloolaba rocks

One of the easiest ways to leverage your blogging, is to create your own small business ezine.   An ezine is basically an email newsletter where you share articles, news and blog posts with members of your mailing list (customer list).  This approach to small business marketing serves multiple purposes and achieves leverage on a number of levels. 

Your regular small business ezine enables you to maintain contact with your customers, educate them about your products and services and offer free information and advice.  Most email service providers offer ways to further leverage your ezine via RSS feeds and automatic posts to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. 

If you are blogging regularly, you are creating the content for your ezine.  If you blog daily, you will be able to provide a small business ezine of considerable substance. 

How to use your blogging in your small business ezine

If you blog regularly, you can easily create an ezine from your blog posts.   Since I blog daily, I send a weekly ezine to my mailing list covering a number of posts around a theme, e.g. Squidoo or LinkedIn.  You need to decide the frequency of your small business ezine based on the regularity of your blog posts, the nature of your business and the kind of information you are offering.

Most autoresponders will replace the blog links in your email with their own generated links (if you specify that you want open rates and click-through-rates measured). 

Another option is to use the URL shortener bitly.com to shorten your blog links.  The advantages of this approach are that you can share each individual shortened link automatically with your Facebook and/or Twitter account and you can also get statistics on click-through-rates on the Bitly link.   It is a good idea to add a comment (like a status update) before you share your link on Bitly.

Blogging has lots of benefits, not the least of these is that it provides you with content to share with your mailing list via your small business ezine.

Squidoo Has a Special Relationship with Google

tropical rainforest walk

tropical rainforest walk

Let’s talk about  Squidoo and its relationship with Google.  Google and Squidoo have some goals in common.  For example, they both want original content on websites (lenses) that are frequently updated.  They both want quality and not spam.  They each want to see the searcher satisfied when they use their respective platforms.  One of the goals of the founders of Squidoo, for example, was to create a quality search engine.

Squidoo and Google also have some differences.  While both want to generate a profit, one of Seth Godin’s goals in creating Squidoo was to generate $100 Million for charity – hence, the option for Lensmasters to donate their advertising revenue to approved Squidoo charities.

The Professional relationship between Squidoo and Google

Some time past, Seth Godin provided strategic advice on a consultancy basis to Google.  As one of the world’s leading Internet marketers, Seth was well placed to do this.  He has a million readers a day for his blog, Seth Godin’s Blog.  He has also written 10 New York Bestsellers on the topic of Internet Marketing.

However, the relationship is on a professional basis.  When Squidoo was attacked by a lot of spammers, Google had no hesitation in downgrading Squidoo to protect their own revenue base derived from quality search results.  You can read about this ‘Google Slap’ story on my Squidoo Marketing Strategies lens and see way Squidoo responded to improve its overall quality.

The relationship is back on a sound footing with Google re-establishing Squidoo’s high ranking and value in search results.

How can you help the relationship between Google and Squidoo?

Fundamentally, you contribute positively to this relationship when you create quality lenses that have original content and are updated on a regular basis.   When you join Squidoo you effectively sign up to the Originality Pact which I discussed in an earlier post.

The challenge is to maintain the quality and currency of your Squidoo lenses in the face of many other time consuming tasks.  This is a tall order if you have a lot of Squidoo lenses.  Developing techniques to improve your online productivity can help here.  You might like to visit my lens on improving personal productivity for some ideas.

The reward of Squidoo’s relationship with Google

The core benefit from this relationship is that Google values quality Squidoo lenses highly.   So once you create a quality lens and update it on a regular basis, you will be rewarded with an improved page rank, higher positioning in search engine results and improved web traffic.   I have found that it is much easier to achieve a high page rank from Google with a Squidoo lens than it is with a blog or a website.

It has also been my anecdotal experience too that, since I became a Giant Squid, I have been indexed more quickly by Google.   

One of the interesting things is that Google accords each Squidoo lens a page rank different from that of the Squidoo platform itself.  Here’s some examples of my lenses:

A. Keyword: squidoo marketing strategies

Lens: http://www.squidoo.com/squidoomarketingstrategies

Google Results: Position 1

Google Page Rank: 4

squidoo marketing strategies lens - page rank

 

 

 

 

 

B. Keyword: improve personal productivity

Lens:  http://www.squidoo.com/improve-personal-productivity

Google Results: Position 2

Google Page Rank: 2

page rank - lens - improve personal productivity

 

 

 

 

 

C. Keyword: tropical rainforest walk

Lens: http://www.squidoo.com/tropicalrainforest

Google Results: Position 7

Google Page Rank: 3

squidoo - page rank - tropical rainforest lens

 

 

 

 

 

These results come from screenshots taken of Google search results with the added information provided by SEO Quake – a free plugin & toolbar for use with Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.

The quality of the relationship between Squidoo and Google is dependent on the quality and originality of Squidoo lenses – if you create excellent Squidoo lenses you can expect good page rank and high positions in Google’s search results for targeted keywords.

Squidoo is a Marketing Platform

squidoo marketing

squidoo marketing

Squidoo was designed for marketers by an Internet marketer, Seth Godin.  So Seth Godin’s Internet marketing principles are embedded in the Squidoo platform design.

In this post, I’ll explore some of the characteristics of the Squidoo platform design and how you can best make use of these features to further your small business marketing.

[Image Credit: teamstickergiant]

Inbuilt coding for indexing by search engines

If you know any of the technical jargon about guiding the indexing of your website by the search engines (search engine optimisation), then you will have heard of meta tags – basically signposts for the search engine bots that crawl your website for indexing purposes.

These meta tags tell the search engines what your site is about (site description) and what keywords (search terms) you are focusing on.  Normally, you have to create these meta tags yourself.   However, with Squidoo, they are built into the Squidoo platform.  So to take advantage of this you need to do the following:

  • ensure that the name of your Squidoo lens (lens URL) contains your targeted keyword
  • include your primary keyword in the lens description
  • ensure that your primary tag is the same as the keyword in the lens title and description
  • use your keyword, or variations of it, in your module headings
  • ensure your keyword features in your introduction
  • use tags that are clearly relevant to your primary keyword.

Above all, avoid ‘keyword stuffing’ or overuse of keywords to a point where what you write is meaningless.   Primary keywords, and related words, should occur naturally throughout your writing. 

Each lens is a single web page enabling deep indexing by the search engines

The way the Squidoo platform is structured means that each lens is seen by the search engines as a single page, even if the lens is more than 45 modules long as is my primary Squidoo lens:

http://www.squidoo.com/squidoomarketingstrategies

The net effect of this is that the Google search engine bots can readily engage in deep indexing of Squidoo lenses – which means that your Squidoo lens gets indexed from top to bottom (including comments).  Many webmasters and bloggers engage in all kinds of activities to get Google to index beyond the first page of their websites.  With Squidoo this activity is unnecessary as the Squidoo site is designed to facilitate deep indexing by Google and the other search engines.

I have written about this deep indexing in an article on the article directory, Ezinearticles.com, and explained how this takes place:

Squidoo and Search Engine Indexing

In a another article, I elaborated further on how to make the best use of the fact that the search engines index the whole of a Squidoo lens (deep indexing):

Top 10 Tips to Encourage Deep Indexing of Squidoo Lenses

Squidoo lenses are indexed for multiple keywords

One of things that I discovered through building many Squidoo lenses (100+) is that Google indexes Squidoo lenses for multiple keywords.  One of my lenses on Digital Storytelling was found through more than 300+ search terms (over a 3 month period) on Google’s search results.  This means that Google had indexed my Squidoo lens for more than 300 keywords and searchers were able to find my lens through multiple search terms.  The net effect of this for small business marketing is that by creating Squidoo lenses you are increasing the chances of people finding your website/blog because of the way Google indexes the lenses.

This whole process is illustrated in a PDF document I produced as one of the bonuses of my Social Media Training Program.   This PDF demonstrates how Google indexes Squidoo lenses, shows you how to check your own lenses for indexing by Google and explains how to maximise the chances of your Squidoo lens being found on Google and other search engines.  The core strategy in relation to the last point, is the use of  ‘long tail keywords’ (keywords containing three or more words).  The PDF can be downloaded here (includes a listing of the 300+ keywords for my digital storytelling lens):

http://www.squidooroo.com/Downloads/DeepIndexingofSquidooLenses.pdf

This multiple indexing of Squidoo lenses is not something to be taken lightly.  I have subsequently discovered that another of my lenses, Tropical Rainforest Walk, has been found through Google via more than 600 search terms.

Small business marketing can get a real boost from the fundamental design of Squidoo lenses as the Squidoo platform encourages indexing by search engines, facilitates deep indexing  and creates the opportunity for indexing of multiple keywords from the one Squidoo lens.