4 Reasons Why Small Businesses Need a Social Media Plan

Small business owners and their employees wear many hats. Often, the day-to-day management of their businesses takes precedents over important but overlooked marketing and promotional strategies (among other things). While the marketing landscape is vast, budgets are often absorbed quickly, leaving business owners wondering how they can get the most out of their marketing dollars.

With social media evolving at such a rapid pace, businesses large and small need to consider their presence on popular social platforms and how this presence can amplify their brand, increase recognition, and support their overall marketing and sales strategy. In fact, considering its potential impact on sales, there is no business too small for a social media strategy.

Given the accessibility of today’s most popular social platforms, the integration of cost-effective advertising, and the availability of social media content discovery apps that mitigate the time-consuming process of sourcing content, social media should be a go-to resource for small businesses. But, time, as we all know, is a precious commodity and small businesses must approach their social strategy with efficiency and effectiveness in mind.

For entrepreneurs and small business owners looking to harness the power of social media, they must develop a plan before diving into the world of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat and the like. Otherwise, much of the time and energy put into social media will be for naught.

1. It connects you to your target market

Social media allows businesses to connect directly with core demographics. But, first, they must think about the social channel(s) their audience populates. If time and budget are concerns, businesses should start with the platform that connects them to their target market the quickest and scale from there. For example, interior designers may find Houzz is the go-to platform to quickly reach buyers who are interested in their services. LinkedIn might be the trusted tool for a logistics company or law firm. 

A wedding photographer may look to Pinterest as a top website referrer because of the searching habits of brides-to-be and their families. And a fashion label may invest in Instagram to reach their ideal buyer with branded imagery. No matter what the industry, understanding your audience and how best to reach them is an essential first step to any plan. Without said plan, most business owners find themselves making posts on the fly and underestimating the overall impact social media can have on their business, even if it is just one account to start.

2. It supports your growth trajectory

Yes, the power of the organic post on platforms like Facebook and Instagram is diminishing. But, with the onset of audience targeting and conversion tracking tools, social media can quickly become an online sales tool for a business. For example, today’s social selling services, particularly Facebook’s advertising platform, allow businesses to target and re-target audiences, measure the results and repeat if successful. In essence, a link to a product offering or piece of content from social media becomes a lead magnet that provides businesses with conversion rates and ROI, supporting brand awareness and company growth.

3. It allows you to build relationships with customers

Any good social media plan involves consumer relations. From the beginning, social media has continuously evolved into an external customer service department for brands and businesses. Without an overall plan supported by consistent posting and account maintenance, businesses miss out on important customer interactions, like responding to reviews as well as public and private messages, that build relationships, encourage brand loyalty and, over time, yield substantial returns for their business.

4. It keeps you relevant in a competitive market

The digital marketplace is vast and the competition to have content seen and heard is great. A social media plan allows small businesses to not only have a presence but to become a part of the online conversation. By defining an audience and overall goals, and executing against these goals with curated content, businesses can position themselves as a leading enterprise, a go-to resource for clients and customers in need of sought-after information and services. This builds loyalty and keeps businesses top-of-mind with customers, giving them an edge over industry competitors.

  Source: http://bit.ly/2an8Y4n

What Your Favorite Social Media Network Says About You

“You are what you eat,” or so the old saying goes, but I’m pretty sure it’s high time we update that adage to “You are what you tweet.” Whether you want to admit it or not, the things you get up to online say a ton about who you really are as a person. Read on to find out what your favorite social media network says about you:

Instagram

If you had to describe yourself in three words, you’d say: “Foodie. Adventurer. Storyteller.” You can’t remember the last time you ate a meal without organizing the items on your plate in a particular way. Your fantasize about quitting your office job, taking a cab to the airport, and never looking back. You know a lot about angles and lighting and teeth-whitening products. Your most overused saying is, “We should totally get together soon! I’ll text you!” You dream in shades of Perpetua.

Facebook

You’ve got friends in low places, high places, and downright bizarre places… And you always know where they are at any given moment because they’ve all “checked in” on Facebook. Duh. You believe that everyone has the right to hear your opinion. Your 2016 New Year’s resolution was to stop getting so invested in other people’s problems. You haven’t had much success keeping that resolution, unfortunately.

Snapchat

In your world, the weekend starts on Thursday night. You can’t remember the last time you turned down an invitation of any kind—you is an “up for anything” kind of person. You’re maybe a wee bit “much” for most people’s tastes, but you couldn’t care less, to be honest. You would describe your personal style as “Miley Cyrus meets Instagram model meets Blossom.”

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is your favorite social media network because it’s the only one you participate in. You simply can’t fathom why anyone would be so foolish as to have any part of their personal lives on the Internet for public consumption. Don’t they know that employers have Google, too?

Twitter

No one would ever accuse you of beating around the bush. You’re a straight shooter, and you like to keep things short and sweet. You aren’t afraid to call people out on their bullshit. There’s nothing you love more than a rousing debate, and you are well-versed in the world of Internet acronyms. You always have a dozen projects on the go, but you can’t seem to follow through with any of them. Your current undertaking? Writing a screenplay about a woman who stumbles upon a political cover up in action and live-tweets the entire thing.

 Source : http://bit.ly/1LmeWnj

5 Startup Assets That Will Get You Acquired in 2016

Going acquired is the dream of every startup. One of the major players want to sweep in and purchase your humble product. Of course, this is not easy and for the majority of businesses, this will never happen. A renewed sense of optimism has arisen as PayPal continues its acquisition spree by purchasing eCommerce platform Modest for an undisclosed free.

So how do you increase your chances of getting acquired?

This guide is going to show you five of the assets that you need to get acquired in 2016.

A Superior Team

With the boom in startups, there’s a serious shortage of talent in practically all industries. In the tech industry, for example, it’s a major mark of honor to have someone who is above average. That’s because the majority of the best are already working for the likes of Google and Apple.

The top corporations have quickly acquired startups in recent years partly because they want to acquire the talent working for them. An idea can never get off the ground without the right team behind it.

Make sure you are making inspired hires.

Disruptive Innovation

What is disruptive innovation?

This is the type of innovation that happens when companies discover new customer categories. They then create products or services to target this new category, thus leading to brand new markets. Big companies have big decisions to make when this happens.

They either have to hold on to their profitable markets or consider investing in new and lucrative markets. The tech industry tends to see companies acquiring startups so they can gain a foothold in these new markets. The more competitive the niche the more likely big companies are going to seek to acquire startups.

One of the most important assets you can have as a startup is a disruptive innovation.

Market Share

As always, market share is important. If a company is operating in a new industry and they own 35% of that industry, a large corporation realizes that the moment they can acquire that company they will also own 35% of the share. In the event that they are also part of the competition, a company can gain an effective monopoly via acquisitions.

Take a look at social media to see how this works. Facebook is no longer popular among teens. They are more popular among older demographics. Now take a look at Snapchat. Its main user demographic is teens. It’s no surprise that Facebook has attempted to acquire the company on many occasions, thus maintaining its market dominance.

If you own a significant share in a lucrative market, this is sure to attract big investors.

A Complementary Product

Startups don’t always have to forge new markets or produce something completely new. It happens where a startup discovers a flaw with a product and then they produce a product that solves this problem. For example, when Twitter first came to prominence startups began creating products to add new features not provided by the platform.

Twitter acquired a lot of them because they knew that they could add new features while also attracting users who already loved the new features.

Intellectual Property

Sometimes a company wants to create something but it can’t. Google may have a brilliant idea in mind, but they are prevented from making it a reality because the vital piece of intellectual property is owned by someone else. Even Google can’t break the rules and push on.

Instead, Google has no choice but to purchase the company and its intellectual property. This has led to a weapons war where larger companies will seek to acquire smaller companies with the sole purpose of making sure that other companies can’t acquire those intellectual resources.

As a startup, how do you capitalize on this, though?

You really have to gear your startup towards acquiring intellectual property if you want to operate this type of business model. You need to develop a strong insider knowledge of your industry.

For most people, this will be an added bonus of releasing an awesome product in the first place. You may discover that the company in question has no interest in your product. All they want is the intellectual property you actually own. Following acquisition, they will take your product and release a much-improved version, or even something new entirely.

Source : http://bit.ly/1RfEOnb

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7 Marketing Trends You Need to Know for 2016

Here are seven marketing trends to budget for in 2016 and to set up your team for success.

Mobile, video, and other marketing tactics that have been on the rise for years aren't really "trends" anymore. So, how many more trend articles do marketers have to read through that really just tell us what we already know?

Now, just because they're not current trends doesn't make them unimportant. Optimizing for mobile and including high-quality visual content and video in your strategy are still good practices. But to keep yourself and your company ahead of the competition, you need to analyze what's happening now, review your strategy from different perspectives, and prepare for what's to come.

To help, here are seven marketing trends to budget for in 2016 and to set up your team for success.

1. Writing skills and experience will be critical.

When the industry started shifting from print to digital, there was fear among English and journalism students that their craft was dying and no one with a degree in those fields would have jobs. And now with the rise in content, these research, writing, and editing skills are becoming increasingly important, especially when high-quality content is becoming the new SEO.

However, in its 2016 B2B Content Marketing report, the Content Marketing Institute found that only 19 percent of marketers would prioritize becoming stronger writers in the coming year. To keep up with other top content creators and publishers in your industry, encourage your HR team to recruit employees with these game-changing skill sets to build a successful content team, or start investing in education to help your existing team strengthen its writing.

2. Content marketing will enhance other areas of business.

Many people view marketing as the department that works solely to promote your company to your external audience, and while this is one of its key functions, it's not the only one. Content the marketing team produces will become an increasingly necessary asset to many other departments at modern companies, because those resources the team creates for external audiences are just as helpful for internal audiences.

For example, marketing team publishes a piece of content, our entire team is alerted. Because the content is created for your audience, including clients and prospective customers, your client-facing and production team members can use it to fuel their efforts, our sales team can send it to address common objections or questions, and your HR team can use it to train new team members about your processes. 

3. Personalization will prevail.

One of my favorite keynote speakers at this year's BOLO digital marketing conference was my friend and marketing trend expert Rohit Bhargava. During his speech, he talked about the growing importance of personalization and providing opportunities for clients and customers to feel like VIPs, and he used Disney's MagicBands as an example.

Instead of every visitor receiving the same band, each Disney MagicBand is personalized to that visitor's vacation experience. These simple gestures of personalization show that your brand cares about individual customers, and they're effective. In fact, my daughter didn't want to take off her band when we left Disney because it made her feel so special. Avoid generic templates and find ways-from simply targeting your messaging to sending personalized emails and gifts-to make each individual customer feel that special.

4. Industry authority positioning will become a must.

 Companies without thought leaders who provide voices and contribute to industry conversations are taking harder hits to their credibility than ever before. Executive branding and leadership positioning are no longer just nice to execute-they're becoming increasingly necessary. People want a connection to your brand, and they want to trust your leadership. The best way to establish this connection and trust is to create content that showcases your authority.

To effectively position your company, start taking advantage of your team's unique insights and expertise, and craft your messages into thought leadership content that establishes your company as the industry leader.

5. Add value for your audience and stop selling to them all the time.

Stop focusing only on making the sale, and start focusing also on delivering true value to your customers and potential clients. Whether this value is found in the quality of your content or in the experiences you provide, it's becoming more and more important for marketers to ensure that value is delivered to those who interact with their brands.

For example, on a recent call with Mura Experience Platform, a member of its team mentioned to me that a custom Cards Against Humanity deck designed for attendees of the Content Marketing World event with the Mura Experience Platform brand was one of their most successful marketing campaigns. This campaign was successful because it was original and delivered direct value to Mura Experience Platform's target audience. To keep up with competition, it will be important for marketers to take advantage of the rise in content to create and deliver value to customers.

6. Thought leadership is a new SEO driver.

Traditional SEO-using link building and keyword optimization to increase your pages' search results-is no longer your ticket to high rankings on Google. After Google's continued algorithm updates throughout the year, the search giant has begun rewarding higher-quality content with higher search rankings. Despite efforts by some companies and content creators to cheat their ways to the top of results pages, high-quality content prevails over the old keyword-stuffing tactics of the past.

For example, in my own writing during the past year or so, I've seen a dramatic difference in traffic to my own articles because my team and I have continued to perfect our content-creation processes to align with exactly what our target audience is searching for. Now when you search terms like "thought leadership speakers," you can easily find the article I published to my Forbes column. Because Google's updated algorithm recognizes that this piece of content was created to provide specific value to my individual readership, it rewards the article with a higher ranking to make it easier for readers to find.

As a marketer moving into 2016, your priority should be to provide the best possible content to your audience, not to publish junk content in hopes that it'll land you on page one. Trust me, when you create truly engaging, valuable, and relevant content crafted to serve members of your audience and what they're looking for, you'll earn that sweet spot at the top of the results page.

7. Full-service won't solve all your problems.

The best thing you can say to make someone lose faith in your company's credibility is "My company is great at everything." No single company is great at everything, and that's why full-service firms are becoming a thing of the past.

As the industry becomes more specialized, we'll see fewer full-service, best-at-everything marketing companies in 2016. Instead, focus your efforts on the one thing your company is truly great at and what your customers need and want most from you, and become the absolute best at whatever that is. You'll need to live and breathe that area, develop technology to support your efforts, and consistently innovate your products and services, but you'll ultimately serve your team and your customers better if you focus your efforts on the one thing that separates you from your competitors.

As this year draws to a close and your marketing team starts determining what initiatives will be valuable investments in 2016, a variety of content resources,marketing speakers, and other thought leadership resources will help point you in the right direction. Take the time over the holiday season to do the research and plan where your focus should be in 2016.

Source : http://bit.ly/21olt5h

THE 5 QUESTIONS SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE ROUTINELY ASK THEMSELVES

BEN FRANKLIN BEGAN AND ENDED HIS DAY BY ASKING HIMSELF QUESTIONS ABOUT THE GOOD HE WOULD DO THAT DAY. HERE ARE FIVE QUESTIONS THAT WILL HELP YOU TAKE STOCK OF YOUR GOALS, FEARS, AND FAILURES TO BECOME A BETTER VERSION OF YOURSELF.

While everyone has a different definition of professional success, the one thing all successful people share in common is a drive to be better than the day before.

Whether you’re looking for a new job, looking to make your company a success, or just reaching for the next rung on the career ladder, forward momentum is key.

In the hustle and bustle, we can often skip asking ourselves the big questions. These questions are necessary to ensure we’re keeping our goals in sight and moving in the right direction.

Once upon a time, another entrepreneur, leader, and inventor asked himself the tough questions. His name was Benjamin Franklin.

In the book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, author Mason Currey took a look at the daily rituals of some of the most successful and artistic people throughout history. Franklin, for instance, started and ended his day by asking two self-improvement questions: In the morning he asked himself, "What good shall I do this day?" In the evening, he wrapped up by asking, "What good have I done today?"

Bookending his day with these simple questions helped Franklin focus on his goals and point his efforts in the right direction. Similarly, the most successful people never stop questioning and never stop seeking answers.

Here are five questions successful people ask themselves in order to reach their goals:

1. AM I IN THE RIGHT NICHE?

Sometimes the career trajectory we chose years ago just doesn’t fit as well today. Often times we lose the passion we once felt for our business, job, or career path in general. It’s possible you haven’t even considered in quite some time whether you’re in the correct niche or following the right path.

Knowing your niche can help you set successful goals in your professional life. It can help you determine what niche job boards might hold your next big opportunity, what networking events you should attend, and even whom you should retweet on Twitter. Diving deep into your niche means you have sincere passion for your industry, and this passion will shine through everything you do.

2. AM I FAILING BETTER?

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better," said writer Samuel Beckett. When it comes to accomplishing your goals and getting where you need to be in your career, this is good advice to follow.

You cannot be so afraid to make mistakes that you never truly take risks in your career. However, you should also be learning from the mistakes you do make and the times you’ve failed. Look critically at your mistakes and see if you’re failing better, or just failing.

Write down three of your biggest career mistakes, and then come up with a plan to address these errors and turn your negatives into positives. Take a class, do some reading, or ask advice from a mentor. Mistakes are teachable moments in disguise; so don’t let these learning opportunities pass you by.

3. AM I DOING SOMETHING THAT SCARES ME EVERY DAY?

Without risk, there’s no reward. Only by facing your fears can you overcome them. In your professional life, you should be constantly challenging yourself and pushing beyond the limits of what you thought was possible.

Otherwise, you’re likely to become complacent in your job and disengaged with your career. If you’ve fallen into the 70% of the American workforce disengaged on the job, it’s time to tune back into your professional life, and this means facing your fears. Asking for a professional challenge is rarely a mistake, and can give you a new goal to strive for.

4. DO I HAVE A GAME PLAN TO REACH MY GOALS?

You wouldn’t try to climb Mount Everest without a map, right? So why do so many of us rush into battle with our career without devising a strategy to ensure victory? Before starting a job search, a business, or even a negotiation for a new deal, you need to sit with yourself and ask the tough questions.

What do you really want? Why do you deserve it? And, most importantly, what steps do you need to take to achieve your goal? Your goals might initially seem too big to conquer, so your game plan should be all about breaking it down into manageable pieces. 

Starting your own business might seem like a big goal, and you might feel overwhelmed before you even start. Instead, break it into more manageable pieces focusing on developing a vision for your company, putting together a business plan, and finding investors and sources of funding.

Now instead of one hugely insurmountable goal, you have plenty of smaller goals you know you can achieve. No one ever climbed Everest in a single bound, so carefully plan out the steps you’ll need to get to the top of your professional mountain.

5. DO I STILL BELIEVE IN MYSELF?

Before you can achieve your goals, you need to believe in your own abilities. You’ll never reach the finish line if you don’t believe you can run the distance. If you’ve lost the belief in your own talents and abilities, it might be time to take a look in the mirror.

Why don’t you like what you see? Have your skills gotten rusty? Have you become complacent in your job? Or are you just not having fun in your industry anymore? You have to be your own cheerleader if you want to get ahead in your career, which means you need to believe in your ability to get things done.

To reach our goals and succeed, sometimes we have to take a hard look at ourselves. The most successful people aren’t happy with the status quo and understand asking tough questions is a life-long process helping them to achieve more.

What questions do you ask yourself in order to reach your goals? Share in the comments!

Source : http://bit.ly/1Q4G2hU

7 Strategies This Loud Digital Marketer Used to Reach More Than 300,000 Subscribers

If you follow digital marketing, Derek Halpern needs no introduction. The insightful, intelligent posts he publishes to his Social Triggers website are so widely recognized that he’s able to boast of more than 300,000 subscribers who anxiously await his updates.

But I wanted to know more about him than just the stats of his success, so I brought him in for an interview. 

Here are seven of the best lessons that came out of our conversation:

1. Never lose your integrity.

Halpern’s first major success was as the owner of a celebrity gossip site that racked up an impressive 40 million visitors a year from 2006 to 2007. The problem was that he dreaded waking up and spending another day making fun of people.

Even though he received a pretty attractive buy-out offer for the site, Halpern eventually shut down the company just to keep his integrity (and his sanity) intact.

2. Own your work.

After shutting down his gossip website, Halpern’s next move was to a Fortune 100 financial company. He stayed on for two and a half years before struggling with the frustration that he wasn’t 100 percent in control of his end results.

Taking ownership of your work is the only way to ensure that it lives up to your standards. If you can’t do that, you’ll find yourself constantly plagued by discontentment and hard-to-overcome challenges.

3. Consistency isn’t key.

Halpern launched his popular Social Triggers website after leaving his financial job and working for a few years as a marketing consultant within a friend’s software company. Upon his entry into a crowded market, however, he quickly realized that the standard “publish often, publish regularly” advice wasn’t going to cut it for his new website. Instead, he decided to focus the majority of his efforts on content promotion.

“If you write a post that 1,000 people read, chances are there’s another 1,000,000 people in the world that could use that exact same article," Halpern says. "So instead of just putting a bunch of content together and hoping something hits, you should focus your time on creating the best article on a certain topic, and then on getting that resource into the hands of as many people as possible.”

4. Apply the 80/20 rule to content creation and promotion.

Ultimately, Halpern wound up spending 20 percent of his time creating content and 80 percent of his time promoting it -- a strategy that led Social Triggers to attract 70,000 subscribers in 16 months. That’s an impressive feat for any blog, but it’s even more impressive when you consider the vast competition he was facing within the noisy digital-marketing space.

For those who are following in his footsteps, Halpern recommends the following schedule:

• Publish one great piece of content every 10 days.
• Spend the next nine days trying to get that content piece into the right hands (what Derek calls the “drafting” technique).
• Spend three to four months building relationships with influencers before asking them to help promote your work.

5. Increase conversions with content upgrades.

Despite the reach of his site and the relationships he’s built, Halpern still invests tens of thousands of dollars each month to promote his content, which means he has to convert that traffic.

One of Halpern’s favorite strategies for increasing on-site conversions involves looking through his site’s analytics to find his most popular posts and adding a content upgrade to them (typically, a free downloadable file that complements the initial article). This helps him capitalize on the traffic he’s already getting with content he’s already created.

6. Be memorable.

Halpern is known for his big personality and his “take no prisoners” attitude. But while he concedes that part of that comes from his natural persona, he does play things up to make his interactions with his website visitors more interesting.

“You very rarely get attention from the public eye by being a little extroverted or a little introverted," Halpern says. "You gain trajectory by being loud and obnoxious and by going a full 10 on whatever it is you want to do to become memorable.”

7. Think beyond productivity.

Finally, when I asked Halpern for his favorite productivity hack, he actually surprised me by arguing that we shouldn’t be so focused on productivity, especially if you’re in a creative role. He sees the two as almost being mutually exclusive and argues that people need to go easier on themselves about their workloads.

“When you give yourself permission to do that, you don’t stress yourself out when you’re not productive, and it frees up time for you to actually be productive,” Halpern says.

Source : http://entm.ag/1WKoUUg

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Five social media hacks to make you a better boss

Social media can be a tool to help you better manage your employees.

When the words 'social media' and 'work' are used in the same sentence, it is usually in relation to one of two activities – self-promotion and time wasting. Either you're the one watching the cat video, or you're the one who filmed it (in the hope it will make you and your feline a viral sensation).

But, can social media also make you a better manager? I believe that it can if you're calm, calculated and compassionate when posting, pinning, liking and lurking.

Do you want to boost team morale, exert your authority or just spruce up the office? Then follow my top tips:

Show your trust

​I remember at the dawn of Twitter, many employers banned their employees from mentioning who they worked for in their social media bios. Or, if they did say they worked at [insert company name] they had to put a disclaimer saying, "views are my own". I take the opposite tack with my team members. Not only am I happy for them to proudly say they work for The Collective, but I encourage them to have strong opinions, because I trust their ethics and morals. Imagine sending a staff member to a party in the real world, but banning them from telling anyone where they worked.

Track their overtime

I've written before about the downsides of over-dedication in staff members. Although I applaud passion and adore anyone who goes the extra mile, I am also extremely aware of the dangers of burnout. Is a star employee uploading Facebook posts at 9pm on a Wednesday ("Location: the office")?

Are they posting Instagram snaps from their desk when everyone else is tucked up in bed? If you start to notice patterns that a staff member is neglecting rest and restoration, it could be time to sit them down and check they're not burning the candle at both ends.

Find a virtual mentor

Social media isn't just a way of boosting staff morale, but also your own. On Twitter I follow an inspiring army of business leaders and managers, including Sheryl Sandberg, Sir Richard Branson and Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos. They share wise words and insightful articles and what it's really like to run a company.

I also use social media to peek behind the scenes at other people's offices. No, I'm not just nosy! Pinterest boards like The Muse and Instagram accounts like Todd Selby (@theselby) give me ideas for how to design a creative and productive office space for my own team.

Give out gold stars

Do you name an 'employee of the month'? No, me neither. My employees are no longer 15-year-olds working in a burger joint. But I do think it's important to give credit where credit's due, publicly, and social media offers a subtle way to do this. I recently posted a picture on Instagram which just read, "Thankyou".

I gave a shout-out to my extraordinary team who make my big vision a reality. I also tagged all of them in the picture. It not only (hopefully) gave them a happy glow, but also reminded me how much I appreciate them all.

Send a postcard home

As a manager, you might travel – a lot. I am personally on a plane at least once a week, travelling to an event, speaking gig or far-flung meeting. As I head to another airport, I never want my team to think I'm just jetting off on a frivolous vacation. That's why I use social media like a postcard from my working holiday, to prove it's not all play.

Although I will sometimes post a photo taken by a hotel pool, I always try to make the point that I just had a quick dip before a conference or to unwind after a long day of negotiations. When you're remote-managing a team, don't let social media undermine how much work you're really doing.

Source : http://bit.ly/1LfHpsp

5 Pinterest Demographics Facts Marketers Should Know

Last week Pinterest announced that they have reached a whopping 100 million monthly active users. To put that into perspective these are the most recent user stats for other popular social media networks:

While Pinterest may not be the most popular social network , it is amongst the top 5 in the world. Pinterest is also the biggest social site being predominantly used by women.

Some marketers ignore its importance because their business is not targeted toward the female demographic. This is a big mistake. The social network has grown in popularity amongst other demographics, and is proving a valuable resource in many industries.

Here are 5 reasons to monitor Pinterest demographics so you can make an educated decision on whether Pinterest data is important for your market research:

Fact #1: Men Are Now Pinterest’s Fastest-Growing Demographic

In November 2014 Pinterest announced that men were their fastest-growing demographic. In fact, in emerging markets sign ups are an even gender split of 50% men and 50% women. (Techcrunch)

Fact #2: Pinterest Attracts Users From All Income Levels

In 2014 there was a significant increase in Pinterest users whose income levels were below $30,000 and above $75,000. The easy-to-use social media platform caters to people of all income levels. (PEW Research Center)

Fact #3: Pinterest User Numbers Have Doubled Since 2012

We  Pinterest had hit a 100 million user milestone. But did you know that in 2013 they had only 70 million? Alongside Instagram, Pinterest has doubled its usage since 2012, and now counts 31% of online adults amongst its user base.

Fact #4: Half of Pinterest’s Users Are International

According to an article published by Venture Beat, 45% of Pinterest users come from outside of the United States.

Fact #5: Popularity Boom Amongst Older Generation

Pinterest is extremely popular amongst young people. 34% of online 18-29 year olds, and 28% of 30-49 year olds use Pinterest. But it is the older generation of internet users who have most recently taken to using Pinterest. Between 2013 and 2014 Pinterest saw a growth of 14% in users aged 50-64. This places Pinterest behind just Facebook and LinkedIn for social media usage within the 50-64 year age group.

Want to know more about Pinterest?

Knowing Pinterest demographics gives you the power to target the right market during advertising campaigns. 

Source : http://bit.ly/1FLrNwo