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How to double Pinterest followers in 5 minutes – Infographic

Do you wish you could build a stronger presence on Pinterest? What if you could double Pinterest followers in just 5 minutes per day?

While Pinterest is primarily used by women (80% vs 20% for men), it can do amazing things for your business when done right!
Here are a few reasons to consider using Pinterest.

Benefits to using Pinterest

Drive website traffic
Increase sales
Generate leads
Build your brand

Brands on Pinterest

While Pinterest can help grow your website traffic and your business, just because the primary audience on Pinterest is women doesn’t mean your brand can’t benefit.

In fact, here are a few brands that do extremely well on Pinterest.

Fashion: Nordstrom
Books: Random House
Home improvement: Lowe’s
Electronics: Sony
Food: Ben and Jerry’s

Some of these are big brands and you would expect them to have a strong presence on any social network that they join.

Fortunately, you don’t have to be a big brand to develop a large following.

You just need to be consistent with how you use Pinterest.

Growing your following on Pinterest

By performing just a few simple actions in just five minutes per day, you can start to engage with other users and help grow your businesses presence on Pinterest.

Items you can do right now to double Pinterest followers.

Repin others – 80% of pins are repins on Pinterest
Be active and comment on pins you find interesting
Follow other Pinterest users who share similar interests
Pinterest produces 4X more revenue than Twitter and 27% more than Facebook
Display Pinterest boards on your Facebook Page

While these are just a few of the ways you can double Pinterest followers and to make your effort on Pinterest count.

The team at Who Is Hosting has put together an infographic featuring even more actionable items to help you double Pinterest followers and develop a stronger presence on the site!

How to double Pinterest followers in 5 minutes

Continue reading How to double Pinterest followers in 5 minutes – Infographic

Maximizing reach with Instagram hashtags

How many of you include hashtags with your Instagram photos?

If you have been avoiding using hashtags on Instagram, it is time to re-consider.

Why you need to be using hashtags on Instagram

For those of you who need a refresher on how hashtags work, if you do not include them, photos you share are limited to the size of your network.

This means that while you may have a great photo, if you have a small following, not many people are going to see your photos.

When you include hashtags on Instagram, you increase your chances that someone else following the same hashtag will see your photo and engage with it.

Hashtags are to Instagram what blood is to the body.

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Do hashtags really work?

While using hashtags on other social networks like Facebook do little to help with exposure.

Instagram users see higher engagement and get more interactions when using hashtags.

For example:

Instagram accounts with less than 1,000 followers and 11 hashtags receive 78 interactions.

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Source: Buffer

Instagram user stats:

While Instagram triggers higher engagement and more interactions, they also have a very active social network.

This means if you are looking to get more exposure and to grow your brands presence, this is a good way to go.

So how do you know which hashtags to use to increase your interactions on Instagram?

While some users will use random hashtags for giveaways and specific social media campaigns, it is best to try to stick with the more popular hashtags.

These include: #food, #beauty, #makeup, and so on.

This is so that you can insert your photos into the larger conversation and increase visibility with other Instagram users.

To help you get started, here is a list of some popular Instagram hashtags.

I have also included tools you can use to help identify the right hashtags to use.

Identifying relevant Instagram hashtags Continue reading Maximizing reach with Instagram hashtags

Changing your affiliation with the Facebook Pages follow button

Facebook has been making a lot of updates to Facebook Pages over the past few months. Not only did they roll out the Facebook reviews button, which let’s fans leave a review about a business, but now they have now rolled out the Facebook Pages follow button.

While the follow button was a feature they were testing for Facebook Pages in October, it’s finally here.

What this means is that instead of liking every Facebook Page, fans and customers have a choice. They can like a page or choose to follow Facebook Pages.

I consider this to be a major announcement because it changes the level to which fans and customers can engage with a Facebook Page.

Changing interactions with Facebook Pages

Previously, the Facebook follow button was a feature only reserved for Facebook Profiles.

This gave people the opportunity to friend people they knew personally and to follow people they didn’t.

For example, most people would send a friend request to a family member and follow a celebrity or public figure. This way they would be able to see updates from both people in their news feed without being friends with everyone.

Now, instead of liking a Facebook Page by becoming a fan and liking their page, you can choose to follow a page instead.

Following vs. Liking a Facebook Page

As I mentioned, this is pretty significant. Here’s why.

Previously, in order to interact with a Facebook Page, you could add them to an interest list or if you wanted to see their updates in your news feed, you had to like their page.

This is great if it’s someone you know and you support their business. But what if you want to see their updates in your news feed, but you don’t really want to endorse them (because that’s what liking a page essentially does). There really was no other option.

With the follow button for Facebook Pages, now you can selectively choose which pages you like and which ones you follow.

In both situations, this solves the problem of seeing their updates in the news feed and it let’s fans and customers be more selective about which pages they endorse to their friends.

How to use the Facebook Pages follow button

Continue reading Changing your affiliation with the Facebook Pages follow button

7 Ways to drive Instagram engagement

It’s one thing to push a lot of content out through your social media channels like Instagram. Anyone can do that.

It’s another thing to drive Instagram engagement.

So what is the secret to getting higher engagement on Instagram?

According to Curalate, a research firm, they analyzed some 8,000,000 Instagram photos and looked at 30 image features such as background ratio, dominant color, lightness, and saturation and here is what they found.

When posting images on Instagram, be sure to share images that are predominantly blue, spaciously cropped, bright, and slightly desaturated.

Facts on achieving higher engagement on Instagram:

Here are seven examples of photos you want to share to drive Instagram engagement.

7 Ways to drive Instagram engagement

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Take Google+ further with Google+ Embedded Posts

Google Plus recently rolled out Google Plus embedded posts. Now before you think they’re copying Facebook, Twitter, or Vine, hold that thought.

What Google Plus embedded posts do is they let you take a status update from Google Plus and share it on your favorite blog or website. Big deal, right?

Why use Google Plus embedded posts on your blog or website?

When I first saw this feature from Google, it got me excited. This is because with Google Plus embedded posts, you’re not just including an image of a post from Google Plus.

Instead, you get to do the following with Google Plus embedded posts:

Embed a Google Plus post
Circle the author
+1 a post
Share a post
Comment on a post
Follow the entire conversation outside of Google Plus

This is kind of a big deal (and an advantage), because now you have a way to share content on Google Plus – where you can engage with one set of users.

If you want to take things a step further though, you can take that content (and the entire conversation) off to your blog or website by using Google Plus embedded posts to engage with a different audience who might not be connected with you on Google Plus.

This also allows your readers to do the same on their blog or website, which in-turn can help spread the word about your content and allow those readers who haven’t yet connected with you to add you to their circles.

Penchant for Google Plus

For anyone who has spoken with me at length about Google Plus, you’ll know that I also see this having huge SEO benefits. While this isn’t happening now, it’s coming.

The more you embed and engage with Google Plus content, the more likely Google is to boost the SEO ranking for that website.

Still not sure if Google Plus embedded posts are THAT valuable?

Here is an example of using Google Plus embedded posts within your blog or website. Notice all of the touch-points that you can interact with.

Follow these instructions to learn how to embed Google Plus posts on your blog or website.

Using Google Plus posts to grow your social presence

Continue reading Take Google+ further with Google+ Embedded Posts

5 places to network

Your business is up and running. You have a few regular customers. And your business is setup on a host of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. But business is growing – rather slowly.

In this situation, what do you do?

The answer is simple – network! Not only is networking (online and offline) a great way to meet new and interesting people, but there are lots of places to network. In fact, you have lots of opportunities to network each and every day, we just overlook them.

If you’re not seeing the results you would like with your business, you can’t just sit there – you need to look for places to network.

5 places to network

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Gaining engagement by being engaging

A lot of people think that in order to build engagement, you need to be in a big market – cities like New York, California or Washington DC. While this will guarantee you’ll have more people to reach – and traffic and people to compete against, it won’t guarantee that you’ll be able to engage better. In fact, your best opportunities are right around you and here’s why.
Continue reading Gaining engagement by being engaging

5 reasons why your blog or website needs a Facebook Like button

At one point or another, you’ve probably clicked a Facebook Like button. They’re not only everywhere, but they’re also a very powerful tool for promoting content and can greatly help broaden your reach. Here are 5 reasons why your blog or website needs a Facebook Like button.

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