The Uniquely Engaging Pinterest Community Boards

Neal Schaffer: 0:04

Welcome to maximize your social actionable 10 minute advice on how your business can maximize your social media presence. Now, the host of maximize your social social media author, speaker, consultant, and founder of maximize social business, Neal Schaffer. Everybody this is Neal Schaffer and welcome to another episode of maximize your social hope you've been enjoying the World Cup as much as I have. It's been very unfortunate for Japan. But I am very much looking forward to see how far if they go at all, the United States will go obviously recording this before it has been published even before the USA versus Portugal game. So as the USA fans do have lots of hope. But it's really great to see so many countries of the world participate and do well countries like Uruguay, which only have 3 million people become formidable powers of their own. So what a great way to bring the world together, just like social media is think about it social is about people and engaging with people and the social signals that you send to people. And when you share someone else's content, it is an amazing thing you are putting your brand on the line to share with someone else said there are brands like Taco Bell that use this to their advantage to the extent that most of the tweets seem to be retweets of their fans. And I think it's a great way of really sharing the passion that your fans have about your brand. And then they're really happy that you actually shared their message to your followers. It's really a very, very simple technique. It's something that if you've ever shared, you know, a friend's funny quote, or photo or, or tweet, you often get thanked for that. It's something that shows up in Notifications. It's really a great social signal. Now on Twitter, we have a retweet on Facebook, we have a share on LinkedIn, you can share things as well. Pinterest, you can also repin and when you repin someone or when you like a pin, it shows up in the notifications that hey, you like to repin. Now a community board goes way beyond that. And I think it's really unique in social media. I really can't think of any other social network that has a collaborative platform, maybe a Twitter chat or a Google Plus Hangout comes closest. But in essence, on Pinterest, you create boards and you have a business objective or personal objective and you pin images that lead you to sources of content on the web. Often, ecommerce stores we have product images, or blog posts or pictures of where you want to travel or what clothes you want to buy or what hairstyle you want. But it's usually these boards that are arranged by subject matter where you organize things. Now, I use Pinterest very differently. I use Pinterest as a resource to organize my content. Whenever I present, I say, Hey, if you want to get the background as to the data I presented, please go to my Pinterest account. And you can find the graphs and the images and the infographics that I covered in my presentation right there on Pinterest. So I use it as a visual social bookmarking site, which was the original intent of Pinterest, right. But obviously, I use it as a quasi Neal Schaffer maximize social business site. So it's definitely business oriented, although I have my electronic gadgets that I use, and my Japan board and some other things. But it's primarily business. It's really all about social media, as I really am all about social media, right. So I knew that community boards were already around, and I'd gotten invited to some and I really didn't see the value. I didn't see the value of opening up my boards to a community. Now if I was a Nordstroms, or an LL Bean, and I had a few very, very influential contributors, or influential fans that were already active contributors on Pinterest. And I wanted to create a VIP influencer program or brand advocacy program and wanted to invite them in to pinning a board together, or to showcase what their favorite things were of my brand. These are things were creating a community board, if you're a brand that already has an established user base that's engaging with you on Pinterest is really at this point, I think a no brainer. And there are brands that will create special boards and invite special people in for influencer program of hey, these are some ideas I have for clothes. You know, which of these do you think I should develop, you know, for r&d purposes to get feedback. They're they're really great things. And you begin to see that we really don't have anything like this throughout social media with the exception of Pinterest community boards. So I had an aha moment when I decided you know what, I have a Pinterest for business board. I also have a Pinterest for business contributor on maximize social business, Julia Campbell. I have an Instagram for Business board. I also have an Instagram for Business contributor in maximize social business. In Jen Herman these are people that I have the highest respect for I trust. So instead of me carrying the burden of you know, whenever I see things, I will organically pin them. Why not enlist their help as well. And when I enlist their help, that means I allow them to pin to the board I invite them to pin The board. And I trust that what they pin, and I set basic rules, hey, no more than one pin a day, what have you. But if you want to self promote what you do, that's what I'm about, I want to help promote those that help promote maximize social business. So I opened up the community boards to them, they accepted. And we've been pinning together in essence. And you know, along the way, I've realized that when someone else pins to your board, when the board, you know, gets promoted out there in the timeline, and people go to it, they're gonna see that it was my board, although someone else pinned. So the board is still Oh, my Neal Schaffer. And the benefits of me are it allows them to scale in that when they pin it to their followers, it's going to be seen, but my board is going to be seen by their followers, right. So you can see the advantage. And a lot of people that have amassed a lot of users or followers on Pinterest, like in the 10s of 1000s, have leveraged this to the max. So that's sort of the advantage of me, I've opened up my board to others, if I really trust those people. And I really respect that the content that they're going to post is aligned with what I would post. And I do with these and with some others that have gotten the known on Pinterest that I've opened up my boards to as well, I don't do a random open up the board to anyone and everyone I think then it sort of has the potential to become a source of spam. And if you ever wanted to do an audit on a weekly or monthly basis, it's going to require a lot of your time in order to do that. Now, on the other hand, what about the Jen, Herman's and Julia Campbell's, why would they want to post to my board? Why would they want to accept that invitation? Well, it's very simple. Whenever they post, it goes out to all of my followers that's coming from my board. So I have what 6000 Something followers, they get to leverage my platform for their content. And whether they're curating other people's content of their friends and followers and things that they like are their own content, there is a win win for both parties. So when Mark Traphagen, who was the contributor for Google Plus reached out and invited me to his SEO board, I thought, you know, I don't even have my own SEO board. And he's an SEO expert. And if on occasion, I find something that adds SEO, I'll be more than happy to post to it, it made sense for me to accept the invitation. And I went back and actually looked for a number of group boards related to social media, where it made sense for me to accept the invitation and post, especially if they have more followers than I do, because it's going to help scale the reach of my content. Now, if you're just being self promotional, some board managers will kick you out. So it's not you know, it's the same rules that you have on Twitter or anywhere else in social media. It's also about sharing content. That's, that's good for the board that's relevant for the board. And I do that on a regular basis without just pure self promotion, really, in the spirit of community and promoting those boards that I've been invited to post to. And you know, for every given subject matter, there is a board and the way you know if it's a community board or not, is if you go to a board. And on the left hand side, if you see multiple faces, it is a community board. There are community board, I won't say search engines, but there are apps, if you do a search or go to my Pinterest marketing for business board, you will see that a pin a few of these blog posts that give you advice on how to find community boards. So that's really the interesting thing of the community boards. It really allows you to scale. It also allows you to support others I created maximize social business as a platform to support our bloggers that everyone benefits from. And really the Pinterest community board is the next best thing to it. So I threw this out there on Facebook and Google Plus, but to the listeners and maximize your social. If you're real active on Pinterest, and you'd like to pin to one of my boards, you let me know we're all in this together. And I want to support you, you even though you may not be blogging, I maximize social business. We're all part of this extended family of supporters. And I think social media is about mutual support for each other in a very, very genuine and authentic way. And maybe one way that I can help you is through the Pinterest boards, if that's something that you're into, and you don't even have to be a content creator, I would just love to share your perspectives in respect of you listening to this podcast. Now I attach a new column. And I hope I pronounced your name right. She just wrote a LinkedIn post on her favorite five social media podcast and this one was included as one of them. And I'm really thankful for that NorCal girl in Scotland, sort of a great bio that's very memorable. And she said that she usually listens to podcasts that like you know, 1.5 or two times a speed. I sort of sound like a chipmunk, if you can imagine that. But if you just go back and listen to the last five minutes of me describing Pinterest community boards, you begin to feel that they are something that is very, very special in the world of social media, a special way of of extending your reach for your content, a special way of creating and extending relationships within Pinterest. So my offers out there, feel free to contact me if you're interested in Hey, keep enjoying the World Cup. I think it's going to be a very, very unpredictable one. I have a feeling that we're going to see Germany Netherlands and France and the final form just I'm just doing wanted out there along with Brazil. A week from now my next podcast, my predictions are probably going to change. But that's it for today, everybody. I look forward to speaking to you next time from Vienna, Austria. And wherever you are in the world, make it a great social day. Bye bye

Unknown: 10:18

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