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The Pinterest Chapter, Part One: Using Pinterest To Promote Your Blog

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Disclosure: I am Vice President, Influencer Marketing at BlogHer. Advertising and social media marketing programs are a significant source of revenue for my company and for the bloggers in our advertising network.

When I wrote Professional Blogging For Dummies in 2010, I tried to make the advice as evergreen as possible. This was challenging at times, as the For Dummies style is very example driven; in tech, this is the very definition of an “annual plant.” Where possible though  I gave guidelines that could be applied to new tools based on the simple premise that regardless of how we communicate and share with others, we are still communicating and sharing. The why and what of that doesn’t change all that much, even if the how does.

So, if you pick up a copy of my book and read the chapter on social promotion of your blog, much of the advice I give for Facebook and Twitter could very easily be extended to Pinterest. But I thought it might be helpful if I delved a bit deeper. So here is the chapter on Pinterest that I might have written if Pinterest had existed in 2010. Except not completely in For Dummies style. That’s the publisher’s IP.

English: Red Pinterest logo
English: Red Pinterest logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Let’s start with a baseline. My lens is that of a professional blogger. This has a few ramifications for the discussion.

First and foremost, the professional blogger has an objective for her blog. It is story telling  with a purpose.

Second, this purpose is often to monetize. Even when the surface intent is to convince, as with political, charity and cause related blogs, there is almost always a fundraising component.

So I am not looking at the social graph as a way to connect with family and friends or create a personal scrapbook. It is sharing with intent to promote your blog, grow your overall influence and achieve your professional objectives.

Initially the ethos of Pinterest was to share others’ content, not your own, and in fact, commercial (ie promotional) activity was prohibited. This changed in November 2012 when it launched business accounts so there is no reason to not use the platform to promote your own content.

You just want to do it in the “right” way — welcomed by your followers and effective for the promoted brand, whether it is you, your blog or a product.

If this were a true “For Dummies” chapter, I would have to carefully explain what Pinterest is, how it works and how to use it. But it’s not, so I am going to assume that readers are familiar with Pinterest and understand three basic things about the platform —

  • Pinterest is visual. Images are everything.
  • It’s curation of content, not broadcasting a message.
  • It’s a long-term play. Something pinned today might not get traction for days, weeks or even months.

So let’s dive right into how Pinterest can support your promotional strategy with some suggestions for maximizing your Pinterest promotion.

  1. Convert your personal Pinterest account to a business account. Per the Pinterest Terms Of Service, you MUST do this if you are planning to use your Pinterest account for commercial purposes.
  2. Make sure your blog/website images are gorgeous, high quality and tell a story visually. If an image needs a caption or title, keep it short and incorporate it in the image so it stays with the pin as it is repinned. But subtly. If your caption is larger than the image, it won’t be pinned/repinned.
  3. Use (at a minimum) the tools Pinterest provides business accounts:
    • Make it easy for people to pin your content using the Pin It button.
    • Pinterest’s analytics are pretty basic, but a little information is better than none, so use them to understand the content that people like on your site. So you can create more of it!
  4. Give your boards names that clearly identify what sort of content folks will find if they visit the board.  Most folks engage pin by pin, not by checking out boards to see what’s new, but a clear name improves your chances that someone seeing a pin might check out and follow the related pinboard. And thus see subsequent pins. Maybe even dig around in the old ones; see above, Pinterest is a long term play.
  5. Pin when your audience is online and engaging with Pinterest. A recent survey of the BlogHer community suggests weekday evenings are when our audience of digitally savvy women is most likely to be engaging with Pinterest.
  6. Follow the 80/20 rule — 80% of your pins should be promoting other people’s content, and no more than 20% promoting your own. This is a best practice for any social platform, but it also has a benefit beyond simply NOT being a shill. Fully engaging with the platform shows that you are a knowledgeable and reliable source of relevant content, and helps build your influence. Brands are increasingly looking at influence across the social graph, and not just blog readership, to determine who they want to work with for sponsored opportunities.
  7. If your blog content fits one of the new rich pin categories – recipes, products or movie reviews (as of May 2013), I’d go ahead and set it up. While it is still too early to predict the long-term impact of rich pins, it is safe to say that:
    • they clearly make it easier for Pinterest users to access some of your content without visiting your blog, but
    • they will increase the value of pins from your blog/site within the Pinterest ecosystem, which should positively impact repins, your overall influence and traffic to your blog from folks seeking out additional content like the pin they found.
  8. Experiment with third party tools that offer additional metrics and support for your pins. Right now, I am experimenting with Pingage.

Next week, Part Two: Engaging with Brands on Pinterest and Sponsored Pins

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The Marketing Economy: Why advertising still matters in a social media, word-of-mouth world

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Disclosure: I am Vice President, Influencer Marketing at BlogHer. Advertising and social media marketing programs are a significant source of revenue for my company and for the bloggers in our advertising network.

Anyone who knows me, even a little, knows how passionate I am about word-of-mouth marketing and the amazing potential of the voice of the customer (blogger or simply happy camper) to move the needle for brands. It’s part of my professional DNA, and was even before the advent of social media. Back then we called them testimonials and put them in case studies and adverts, but the principle was the same. People like to hear from real people.

My passion for tapping into real voices, real stories is one of the reasons I joined BlogHer nearly three years ago. As part of this team, I am able to help connect brands and bloggers in mutually beneficial ways more than I ever could as a solo independent consultant.

No one is more passionate than I am about the real stories about life and about brands revealed by social content every day.

But I still believe in advertising. Just as passionately.

Saying that the digital banner is “dead” or no longer relevant in today’s marketplace is premature. The banner is only dead if we let it be so, and if we do, shame on “us.” The marketing economy needs advertising  just as much as it needs public relations and word-of-mouth marketing and sponsored content and direct response and every other element of the marketing mix. For a number of reasons.

First, consumers need and want to hear directly from companies about their products. Advertising is the most efficient way to reach a lot of people at a relatively low cost; the company can deliver a consistent controlled message to exactly the audience it wants to reach. Keep in mind — it is not that consumers don’t like ads; it’s that we don’t like BAD ads.

It’s incumbent upon the industry to develop creative, compelling digital ads that help brands move the needle. Should ads use more social content? Sometimes, and the IAB has addressed this with new units like the Portait (one of the Rising Stars). But abandoning the digital banner in favor of “native advertising” (whatever that is, and more on that in a moment) is a fatal error that will destroy the balance of the marketing economy. We need both.

Here’s the thing. Whatever you call it — “native advertising” or sponsored content (my preference) — it relies on the existence of publishing vehicles, whether mainstream media sites like Mashable and Forbes, or independent publishers like the bloggers in the BlogHer Publishing Network. And without advertising revenue, these publishers will be in a world of hurt. Why? Sponsored content revenue is active revenue; the publisher has to create this content, and that costs. Time at best, and in the case of larger publishers, money too. Advertising revenue is passive, and scales easily.

Bottom line, without advertising revenue, the blogs we depend on for word-of-mouth marketing might not exist. It’s no different than the long ago print days, when I managed marketing for tech firms; our policy was that if we believed a publication was appropriate for our press releases, we would at least consider it for our advertising dollars. Sometimes we just couldn’t afford the rates but we understood that the publications we relied on, relied upon advertising to pay their bills.

It is no different for bloggers.

Before I move on to my final point about why  advertising matters in the social marketing economy, I want to address the term “native advertising.” I wholeheartedly agree with Lori Luechtefeld, the author of recent iMedia Connection article, Why “native advertising” must die. She points out that we already have terms for the acceptable activities usually bundled under the term native advertising — to whit, sponsored content and advertorial –so why do we need a new term? The third concept, the misdirection, or deliberate masking of the advertising nature of the content, is a betrayal of consumer trust. She writes:

“But that third manifestation of native advertising? The Misdirection? If marketers and publishers have coined the phrase “native advertising” with the hope of legitimizing practices like that, then we’re all in deep shit. That’s a battle that reputable publications have been fighting since the dawn of journalism, and for good reason. If you blur the line — especially intentionally — between editorial and advertising, you will lose reader trust. And then you’ll lose readers. And then it’s pretty much over.”

Not to mention, this sort of misdirection would  be a flagrant violation of the FTC Guidelines for Endorsements and Testimonials.

Finally, in the social marketing economy, we need to stop worrying about whether content is paid owned or earned. What matters is whether it is shareable. Likewise, we need to get rid of “viral” as the Holy Grail of social marketing. In the real world, viruses are BAD, and by and large, when it comes to corporate content, bad news spreads far faster than the good. What we need to focus on is creating compelling content that speaks to our consumers, not at them. That they will want to share. That’s what creates the “network effect” we are looking for when we say we want our content to go viral.

What we really want is for our customers to share our story with their friends, whether they first saw it in an ad, or on our website or Facebook page, or in sponsored content on a blog or the social graph.

Or all three.

Because isn’t that what REALLY moves the needle, when our customers are engaging with us across multiple platforms, in multiple ways. It’s not about a single click-through. It’s the cumulative effect of all the ways the consumer can engage with us in the balanced marketing economy.

Ads are part of that, and we need their storytelling just as much as we need blogs and editorial, Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, and whatever comes next.

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FTC .Com Disclosures Guidance: What’s new for bloggers and social media influencers

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Disclaimer: Still not a lawyer

Earlier this week, the FTC released an updated version of its .Com Disclosures guidance for digital advertising, originally published in 2000. While there is some new information here for bloggers and social media influencers who produce sponsored content for advertisers (and I will get into that below), the document’s principal goal is to provide guidance for proper disclosure of advertising claims in digital, and especially mobile, advertising in light of new technologies. Much like the changes in the endorsement guides in 2009 that were prompted, in part, by the rise of social media and blogs.

Simply put,  the FTC is making sure that, as ad delivery technology changes, claims are properly disclosed and not “lost” in the translation from web to mobile displays.

From the social media perspective, most of the information related to accuracy of claims and disclosure of relationships is the same as is covered in the 2009 Guidance on Endorsements and Testimonials. In other words, there isn’t all that much new here. You still  need to disclose material relationships with brands, in a clear and conspicuous manner proximate to your endorsement, and both you and the sponsor have an obligation to be accurate in your claims about a product. Read my detailed analysis of the examples in the 2009 guide if you want more detail.

Is there anything new here for bloggers? Why yes. It’s not a lot but it’s very nice. The .Com Disclosures document includes new examples that will make it easier for people creating sponsored content to comply with the FTC Guidelines, as well as clarity on the proper ways to disclose additional required information about product claims.

The examples:

Where and how to disclose. As far back as 2009, the FTC was already publicly recommending that disclosures not be buried at the bottom of a post or on a separate page (Once More With Feeling: FTC guidelines, bloggers and companies). Now, however, we have an explicit example.

Takeaway: Do not put your disclosure solely at the bottom of your post.

Recommendation: Include a brief disclosure at the top and if necessary, provide additional details at the bottom.

Note that the FTC also explicitly stated that the form of the disclosure should match the content. If it is a video or sound file, the disclosure should be done in the native format — ie in the video or recording, not simply included in a post or annotation on a social site. The disclosure needs to travel with the content.

However, the exact words you use to disclose? Still up to you.

How to disclose in short-form environments like Twitter. The FTC has always said that the disclosure must be proximate to the endorsement. While common sense would indicate that this means in every sponsored Tweet or Facebook post in which an endorsement appears (and that’s certainly how we handle it at BlogHer), that’s not what was happening on Twitter. Not by a long shot. So, the .Com disclosures have a series of terrific examples of the wrong and right ways to disclose on Twitter. Key points:

  1. The disclosure must be in every Tweet. You can’t tweet a single disclosure that covers the whole conversation; there is no guarantee that readers will see the disclosing statement.
  2. The hashtag #spon is not sufficiently clear.
  3. The word “ad” is sufficiently clear, but needs to be in a prominent place. The FTC also suggests not using a #ad hashtag after a URL or shortlink as it could be overlooked.

Recommendation for a best practice:

  • Do include an “umbrella” tweet or post that explains the sponsored content you are about to tweet/post. It is good information for your followers, but as above, not sufficient in itself. For example: “So excited to be here as a guest of #BIGHOTEL at the Super Duper Event #ad”
  • Use #ad to disclose along with any hashtag the sponsor has requested, but NOT proximate to any URLs in your tweet/update. Make sure the disclosure stands out.

The .Com Disclosures also included one other tidbit that was clearly aimed at advertising disclosure of claims, but is valuable for bloggers as well. When an advertising  claim merits a longer disclosure than is practical for the format, a hyperlink to  additional information is acceptable, provided that anything material, or “triggering” is included in the original advertisement and  the link is clear and conspicuous.  In other words, you cannot bury CRITICAL disclosures in hyperlinked pages, but you can provide additional details.

“Hyperlinks allow additional information to be placed on a webpage entirely separate from the relevant claim. Hyperlinks can provide a useful means to access disclosures that are not integral to the triggering claim, provided certain conditions (discussed below) are met. Hyperlinked disclosures may be particularly useful if the disclosure is lengthy or if it needs to be repeated (because of multiple triggering claims, for example).
However, in many situations, hyperlinks are not necessary to convey disclosures. If a disclosure consists of a word or phrase that may be easily incorporated into the text, along with the claim, this placement increases the likelihood that consumers will see the disclosure and relate it to the relevant claim.
Disclosures that are an integral part of a claim or inseparable from it should not be communicated through a hyperlink. Instead, they should be placed on the same page and immediately next to the claim, and be sufficiently prominent so that the claim and the disclosure are read at the same time, without referring the consumer somewhere else to obtain this important information.” — from the .Com Disclosures Guide. Emphasis mine.

This could be extremely useful for sponsored programs for products and services in highly regulated industries. The sponsored post would still have to meet all the requirements for accuracy, with any critical product claims disclosed in the post, but bloggers wouldn’t have to include all the “fine print” in their posts.

So, some nice clarity for some critical areas. But nothing to get too worried about.

Unless you are creating deceptive mobile ads for weight loss products or jewelry!

Additional resources:

FTC FAQ on the Endorsement Guides (2010)

Eleven Urban Myths about the FTC Guidelines

Super Bowl ads, quick take

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Full confession: I did not watch the Super Bowl last night. I did not see the half time show during which I understand Beyoncé sang 😉 I couldn’t even bring myself to watch all the ads this morning on the Internet.

It’s not even that Super Bowl advertising has “jumped the shark,” although I largely agree with Deb Rox’s post on BlogHer, that the creativity of Super Bowl advertising continues to suffer, especially when compared to the creativity of good user-generated media. But let’s not kid ourselves, UGC isn’t all sunshine and rainbows either. Some of it is pretty awful too.

I also am not misty-eyed over the old days. There was plenty of cruddy advertising back then too. We just forget the awful ones.

Of course, one person’s trash is another’s treasure. With a few exceptions, — those truly outstanding adverts that rise above every year — there are as many opinions about which ads were the best as there are actual ads. For example, many people love the talking babies. I just think they are creepy. Always have. Always will. And I will not watch GoDaddy commercials. Period.

Overall, I thought last night’s crop was pretty uninspired. Here are a few that I liked:

My favorite ad of the evening didn’t even air during the Super Bowl, but was merely teased during the Iron Man 3 spot – an Iron Man extended look on Facebook: