It’s not the newest arrival onto the social networking scene, but Pinterest has seen a steep increase in visibility and use over the past few months. Once downplayed as an online playground for stay-at-home moms, food bloggers and artists, Pinterest is now catching the interest of businesses as well. In Seattle, the usual response to the topic of Pinterest is, “I’ve heard of that, but what is it, exactly? Everyone is talking about it!”
If you are a small business owner using social media, chances are you keep yourself informed and are learning new things about social networking all the time. It is a constantly evolving genre and those business owners who keep themselves up-to-date online fare best when the end goal is customer engagement.
As Pinterest continues to grow in popularity, you may be wondering how your small business can capitalize on this social trend. Before you blindly join Pinterest (don’t be a sheep!), consider how you can integrate this specific tactic into your existing marketing strategy.
Here are a few ideas to help you get started:
Content Marketing: Take a look at your existing content marketing plan. How you can add more visual interest to your blog or website? For example, can you add more images to your blog posts? Can you convert some of your content into short videos? You can pin videos on Pinterest!
Blog Plug-Ins: This is one of the easiest ways to integrate Pinterest into your existing marketing strategy. There are several Pinterest plug-ins available currently and more are being added as the site continues to grow and develop. In addition to “Pin This” and “Follow” buttons on your small business blog, you can add plug-ins that allow you to share your most recent pins. It’s a great visual way to motivate visitors to pin your images and also to follow you on Pinterest.
Social Networking: Pinterest is intimately connected with Facebook and Twitter. In fact, if you don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account you can’t sign up for a Pinterest account. And, you can post any pin onto your Facebook or Twitter profile. You can also add buttons to your Pinterest profile so Pinterest followers can easily find you on Facebook or Twitter.
Want to know more? Follow Divahound on Pinterest! Or, just contact us!
La Cage photo courtesy of Sara Krulwich - The New York Times
It’s like regular listening, but with a slightly different bent.
As Albin famously drawls in La Cage Aux Folles, “We live life on an angle.” Approach listening from an angle, and you’ll soon find that you are better able to understand your customers’ needs. Remove your “I am a small business owner” hat and instead, approach the next conversation with your customer as if you are a customer as well – in other words, listen as though you are in their shoes. If they have a compliment, there’s little need to employ “different listening”. If they have a complaint, however, this listening style can be helpful in forcing you to focus on the criticism itself from a more objective viewpoint rather than by getting defensive (which is the natural course for most of us human beings). When defensiveness is taken out of the equation, you as the small business owner are more likely to be able to objectively process and act on this feedback for the future.
Here are some tips on how to listen differently:
Listen as though there’s going to be a pop quiz when the song is over. Have you ever liked a song and bopped away to the beat without ever really hearing the words? I am guilty of this, and though “life in the Vaseline” seemed to be a strange lyric, loved the Eagles nonethless. Years later, I actually tuned in and focused on the lyrics when I heard the song and clarity hit me like a ton of bricks. “Life in the fast lane…” A-HA! That makes much more sense! I had a totally new view on the song I’d loved for so long.
Klingon image courtesy Paramount Pictures
ta’ SoH jatlh tlhIngan (translation: Do you speak Klingon?) Ever learned a new language, or listened to someone speak with an accent different from your own? In the initial moments when you’re listening to the new language, you don’t always comprehend the words being said. If you wait a moment and let the words sink in, you will generally find that you gain clarity and are then able to understand what is being said.
Come in through the side door. Try a slightly different angle (like Albin) and metaphorically come in through the side door instead of the front door. The slight change in perspective will allow you to see things in a whole new light.
It began a couple of days ago. The local meteorologists began predicting a snow storm to rival the 1996 storm. Then, several hours later, it grew to a storm to rival the 1969 storm! A little while later, it became a storm to rival the 1880 Big Snow! Sixteen to twenty inches expected at the lower elevations on Wednesday! It was official: the molehill had become a mountain.
Everyone began preparing to be snowed in for days (or, at least according to most of the weather reports, Thursday)…the shovels and snowmelt disappeared off the shelves of our neighborhood hardware store. Ken’s Market had a run on everything folks thought they might need in a storm: peanut butter, crackers, wine (they do have an amazing wine selection at Ken’s…); all the necessary incidentals. I believe one neighbor even made a run on the Fran’s caramels and Theo chocolate bars. Amazon Fresh even announced that they were halting all deliveries on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Kids everywhere brought out their sleds and prepared for a school-endorsed snow day. In our neighborhood, our street becomes the sledding hill and on a snow-laden afternoon you can see kids lining up at the top of the hill, awaiting the “go-ahead” signal from the parents lined up strategically along the route to protect the kids from hitting the parked cars (major flaw in the logic of that strategy, but that’s another story altogether).
Fast-forward to this morning. Looking out the window, there was a fresh blanket of snow as far as the eye could see – not too many tire tracks in the road, which meant that most people has actually heeded the warnings and stayed home. Local news station King 5 pre-empted the Today Show and ran snowstorm commentary all morning. The occasional pair of brave, bundled folks would walk by on the street, but otherwise all was quiet and white.
Back in the house, it was time for the greyhounds to go out for their morning constitutional. The pack loves to frolic and bounce about in the snow, they couldn’t wait to get out and play. Turnout looked something like this:
The greyhounds approached the snow day with gusto and glee, rather than gloom at the idea of being cooped up at home all day. I realized then that I was approaching the day with the wrong attitude. I had thought to just batten down the hatches and make it through the day, but then realized that I could make the most of the snow by using it as my inspiration.
Tips for increasing productivity when you’re forced to stay home:
Take advantage of the change of scenery. Sometimes, a change of venue is all it takes to create inspiration and flesh out new ideas. Staring out the window at a blanket of snow really did kick my brain into high gear and allowed me to develop some ideas that had been floating around in my head.
Be productive, but take short breaks to enjoy your surroundings. Being out in the snowy, chilly day allowed me to fully appreciate the day and seeing the sheer joy of the hounds running amok in the snow reminded me that seeing things from a more child-like (or in this case, dog-like) perspective can add new depth to your ideas.
Embrace the clichés. In this case, take ten minutes to make yourself a homemade mug of hot cocoa and lounge in front of the fireplace. Or go outside and make a snow angel or snowman. Or try to catch snowflakes on the tip of your nose. Just don’t try touching your tongue to a metal pole.
You might be surprised at just how productive you can be.
If you are a small business who is completely new to social media, the best place to start might be with a website. Here’s why:
This one almost goes without saying, but your website is your online storefront. Example: if you want to sell cupcakes, you must have a brick-and-mortar storefront in which to showcase your luscious morsels; if you want your business to be found on the Internet, you must have a website as it acts as your online storefront.
Content is King! Killer content will drive customers to your site. Make sure the content is absolutely relevant to your customers and also be sure it is your own (no pilfering from anyone else!). Provide helpful information that they’re already online searching for anyway and you’re golden.
Your website will help to establish you as the expert in your field. Great, relevant content will add credibility to your venture and when customers have a need, they look to experts to fill it.
Want help with your initial foray into the world of online media?
I was gathering information for an upcoming blog post featuring ways that Seattle small businesses were implementing QR codes into their marketing plans. While looking for images, I kept coming across QR codes for Dave’s Killer Bread – most were temporary tattoos that happy customers were wearing to showcase the brand.
Intrigued, I mentally filed Dave and his QR codes as something to look into in the future and continued in my Seattle research. Later, I came back to Dave’s Killer Bread and began looking into the company in earnest. What I found was that this was a local, Pacific Northwest business that was capitalizing on web marketing and capturing its loyal fans’ taste buds with a product that was simply stellar. In other words, they were killing it with social media and then backing it up with a phenomenal product – a sure formula for success.
Even more interesting is Dave’s history and how bread-making fits in:
Dave’s Killer Bread began using social networks like many small businesses do: a bit haphazardly, trying different things to see what worked and what didn’t. And while they are still fine-tuning it, they have found a plan that works well for them. Here’s my interview with Dave:
I was researching local Pacific Northwest companies that have done a great job with QR codes and social media. In my image search, I kept seeing Dave’s Killer Bread QR code temporary tattoos. While I was focusing mostly on Seattle for this particular post, I circled back later and found that DKB was doing a great job utilizing social media overall.
Social media is something that we do feel very strongly about. Back in the day, I used to bring our bread to the local farmer’s market to meet customers and get feedback – to find out what people want and to better connect with people. Initially, that is the only thing we used social media for. I am a big believer in the Internet for the business, and we’ve learned some lessons along the way. There are a lot of things I would do differently if I could start over, but it has been very successful; it just keeps growing. As far as the QR codes for Dave’s Killer Bread, we got started awhile back on them but we fizzled out – at this point, we have them printed on the back of our bread bags and have intentions of implementing them more in the future. It hasn’t really developed into something worth pursuing. We’ve tried to do promotions with them but most people ignore them, except for the real techies.
How did you get started using social media? What steered you toward online marketing in the first place?
The first thing I did was a newsletter. Next came our first version of the Dave’s Killer Bread website. I’ve always wanted to have a connection with people. I wanted to develop a DKB forum where customers could ask questions and we would give them answers. That never really materialized.
It was not easy to get established. At that time, MySpace was dying but for me it was new and we used MySpace and connected with Dave’s Killer Bread customers that way. There was a reasonable positive effect as far as building the brand. It was a place where you could log on and see pictures and past events that we’d done. You could learn more about the bread and our story, creating the bread; it was great to communicate with people that way. MySpace had its effect but it was not until we got onto Facebook that things really started taking off. We created a Dave’s Killer Bread Facebook business page and started out real slow. Once we started adding new items to the DKB Facebook page, I gave out the link to our page everywhere I went and it became a bigger and bigger phenomenon. So, it was pretty cool. People would go onto our Facebook page and talk about whatever they wanted to talk about. Usually, it was praising the bread or asking questions about the bread, “When the bread is going to be in my town in California,” and so on and so forth.
So you’d consider Facebook the biggest driver in your social media plan, more so than Twitter and YouTube?
Twitter is more hit or miss for us. We make sure that any posts made to our Facebook page are also posted to Twitter, with the link going back to Facebook. Twitter’s kind of secondary.
How many hours do you spend on social media per week?
For the brand, I would say on average probably 15 to 20 hours a week. Sometimes it seems like more than that but between all of us probably 15 to 20 hours. I originally did it all but now I have two guys helping me with it and I plan on having another one soon. We’re all a bunch of amateurs, you know, and we have a lot of material to share. So, it gets pretty fun.
Can you tell me about something that you tried that did not work or something that you thought would not work that ended up working really well?
You just never know when something is going to work. I can tell you that certain kinds of contests are really amazing on Facebook. They just really get people going. I remember one time I had talked about my daughter’s wedding. I just mentioned that I was going to my daughter’s wedding and she was getting married that day and, wow, it got 400 responses. Other times, you post something that is meaningful to you and you think it is meaningful to people and nobody seems to notice. It’s good to share videos of events. People love to hear about our promotions and deals. They like to hear about a new bread variety that I might be working on. Overall I’m giving information, occasionally telling a wry joke, trying to keep it so it appeals to everybody.
I have different guys posting to the Facebook page with me. I devised a strategy for posting to ensure that all of us kept our individual voice. So now the rule is that when you post, you sign your name. When I post, I sign my name. Because when you have different people doing your posting, your voices are different. Your writing is different. The way you see yourself is different. It is important to me too that people get the authenticity of the brand. You know, “We have a lot of people that help us with this and these are the guys (in their own voices) and this is how they talk.”
How did you go from incarceration to bread? What made you decide not to go the CAD/CAM (drafting) route?
I look back and remember that at the time, I thought, “There is no way I am doing anything but continuing on this road that I am on with CAD/CAM to see where it leads me.” I was enjoying it so much. But then I had a chance to go to a drug program and it was going to get me out early - so long story short that is what I did. I got out early and saw that I had an opportunity. I contacted my brother and asked him if he might be interested in letting me come back. He let me come back and work my way into the baking business again. It’s a family business; my dad started it in ‘55. I had a lot of bad blood to overcome. So, it was kind of tricky but I always knew that I could make a difference in the company and that’s why I thought it was a good opportunity.
What makes Dave’s Killer Bread special?
I set out to make the very best bread I could. I didn’t think about cost, I didn’t want that weighing on the product. I was focused on how to make it better than everything else on the market. It’s pretty hard to make a better bread without putting more money into it, and good ingredients cost more money. I was making the very best bread and when I took it out of the oven and tried it myself I thought, “This is good stuff,” and customers agreed with me. Of course, there were some people complaining it was too expensive and I’d have to say, “I understand that, but if you really feel that way then don’t buy our bread.”
You get what you pay for.
Definitely. If you do not like our bread, you have the freedom not to buy it. You have the freedom of choice and the market will decide whether the bread is worth the money or not – and it has.
Any words of advice you can give to other small businesses that are trying to figure out social media?
Well, I would definitely say be authentic. Be yourself. I have done that throughout my whole business. I have told it like it is. I don’t try to fake anything. We do a lot of good things in the community only because we believe that it’s our world too. Dave’s Killer Bread wants to make it a better place. I do believe that when you do the right thing, it’s from the heart. It’ll come back to you, you know. So that’s what I am using social media for.
One last question for you. In your video, you called your former self a jackass. What would you call yourself now?
A happy, honest, man with integrity – always growing. Always growing.
The Dave’s Killer Bread Twitter tagline reads: “Just might be the world’s best-known ex-con baker. Why? Try the bread.” – I couldn’t agree more.
Just a note: Divahound is not professionally affiliated with Dave’s Killer Bread in any way. We’re simply raving fans of Dave and his product and we think he’s doing a great job promoting DKB through social media channels.
Want to know how your small business can implement social media in your overall marketing plan? Contact Divahound Today!
The number one question our medical and dental clients ask is, “How do I get more patients to come through our doors?” The answer, of course, is going to be different for each practice; however, in a larger sense the same key elements are effective for our medical and dental clients.
The great thing about marketing online is that if there is a particular type of patient you are looking to attract, your web marketing plan can be tailored to attract that type of patient.
Some of the more overlooked places to engage with prospective patients are on forums. For example, podiatrists would do well to log on to runner’s forums and be available to answer foot pain questions that arise. The key here is to be helpful…you want to simply provide handy insight and suggestions, not directly sell yourself and your practice. You should, however, include your name and practice website at the end of your posts in your signature. Of course you’re not dispensing medical advice, just offering tips and tricks that might be helpful to someone looking for relief.
A more mainstream idea? Do some basic keyword research and create content based on those keywords (or let us do that for you). Continuing with the podiatrist example, you could publish a blog post covering “foot pain after running in minimalist shoes” or something along those lines. This is a laser-targeted approach that will surely attract the attention of athletes running in minimalist shoes who are experiencing foot pain. Once they find you online, they’ll most likely do some additional research and from there are much more likely to make an appointment.
Sound intriguing? Contact Divahound today for helpful hints on getting more patients through your door!
Oh, still here? Okay, let me tell you WHY content is so very important in your online marketing strategy.
Killer content drives people to your site (read: killer content drives customers to your small business site and creates profit for you). The more interesting and relevant content that you add to your site over time, the more your customers will keep coming back, thus generating more revenue for your small business. Great deal, right? Right! However, please keep in mind some of these tenets:
Your content must be original. As in, YOUR OWN. Do not even think of plagiarizing someone else’s content as this is not only very bad business form, it hurts your search rankings and just leads to bad things such as ants infesting your next picnic and coming back to bite you in your nether regions.
Your content must be relevant to your message. Are you a small business selling fuzzy pink bedroom slippers? Don’t go off on a tangent and write content about dog food. Or what happened to you in the line at the supermarket. Because as your customer, I do not care. Just tell me everything I could possibly want to know about pink fuzzy bedroom slippers. I will love you for this and will make sure to tell all my friends who are also looking for a pair of pink fuzzy bedroom slippers.
Your content should be easy to read and digest. Even if you sell cloud-based-algae-widgets-exclusively-for-rocket-science, please write so that most of the general public can read and understand it. It you can use a one syllable word in place of a five syllable word, please do so.
Another reason? Two words: Google Panda. In late February of this year, Google rolled out what they are calling a “high quality sites algorithm”. We call it Google Panda and the goal is to improve the overall quality of content to be found online. For those of us who are not content farms and just want to publish great content, the update is a positive one. With this new update, Google is essentially looking for top-quality content on your site and the sites that link to you. So as a small business, if you follow one of the key rules in online marketing (product quality content) you are already ahead of the game.
