Day 20 Assignment, Bootcamp #4 - Pinterest, G+ & others

[iCraft Admin]

Well, today is the last Bootcamp Assignment. Sad sad day, right? Ha ha..  
We are almost done, so hang on there and do your best!  

Today we are going to explore Pinterest, Google+, Youtube and learn more about Social Media Marketing in general.

Today's Assignment - Part 1, Pinterest

Pinterest is a simple site that allows you to organize and share interesting photos you find on the web. Basically, you can add to Pinterest any webpage that has a photo on it. You can install a Pinterest browser button that will make it easier for you to pin images, while browsing site. Or you can use "Pin It" buttons that are added to many pages on the web, including our website.

People use pinboards (themed collections of images on Pinterest) to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes. There are many interest-based pinboards created by other people that you can share, comment on or re-pin images from.

• List your Pinterest link in this post. (Register Pinterest account, if you don't have one yet.)
• Find & follow each other on Pinterest. Here is our Pinterest account http://pinterest.com/icrafthq
• Start following as many popular and interesting Pinterest users. Same idea as with Twitter and Facebook - the more people you follow - the more will follow you back!
• Create a few themed Pinboards. Examples - Sea Glass Jewelry, Soap I Love, Best Handmade or by Holidays "Best Halloween Decorations" etc. It's really up to you.
• Add all blog posts from Bootcampers to your appropriate Pinboards. You can use "Pin It" button at the top right corner on our blog pages. Make sure to add catchy comments along with the photo.
• Add a few product pages from your fellow Bootcampers to your Pinboards too. Make sure to add those 3 optimized pages using primary keywords for those products in your comments. In case you forgot, those Keywords are usually placed in the beginning of the Product Title.
• Research "Pinterest Marketing" on Google. Here is some good reading:
  7 Ways to Use Pinterest to Promote Your Business
  Articles about Pinterest on SEOmoz

Today's Assignment - Part 2, Google +

Google Plus is Google's new social network. Why it matters to businesses? Simple. Because Google + will build your search traffic. Even though Google+ doesn't have the same amount of users, as Facebook or Twitter, any reasonable level of usage will lead to a disproportional impact on many businesses, due to Google’s influence via search.

• List your Google + Profile link in this post. (Register Google + account, if you don't have one yet.)
• Create a Business page. Choose "Product or Brand" option.
  In addition to you personal Google + Profile page, you can also setup your company page where you could place updates from your store and personalize that page with your product screen shots and a custom banner.
  Here is iCraft's Google + Page.
• Share Blog posts from Bootcampers on your personal or your Business G + profile. (whichever you have setup)
• Connect your iCraft Blog with your G + account
• Click on +1 button and Share posts from your fellow Bootcampers. (Those 2 buttons are placed under each post in your G + stream of updates. Click on "Home" section on the left, if you are not sure how to return to that page.)
• Add Bootcampers and as many other crafters to your Circles.
  You can group people you follow or share with into “Circles.” When you share something, you can either share with all – or restrict to a particular circle, only allowing those people to see what you have shared.
  Your Google + Profile has AuthorRank, which will most likely be used to inform PageRank, therefore enabling Google to rank high-quality content more appropriately. So the stronger your Google + Profile (more people add you to their circles etc.) the better your page rank will possibly be for the pages that are associated with it.
• Research "Google + Marketing" on Google. Here is some good reading:
  Everything You Need To Know About Google+ (Including What The Heck It Is)
  12 Google+ Marketing Tips From the Pros
  What is Google+ and do I need it? (Video)
  Google+: There's more to explore (Video)
  

Additional Good Reading on Social Media

Since this is our last assignment, and because we didn't really spend much time on Social Media promotions in this Bootcamp, I thought I'll leave you with some additional reading.  

• Do you Understand Social Media?
• How social media can benefit small businesses
• 10 Common Sense Social Media Marketing ‘Don’ts’ Some Brands ‘Do’
• 8 Ways to Maximize Your YouTube Marketing Results
• Consumers view 91 percent of ads in long-form video content

[Jewelry by Kat]

I am so frustrated.  I understand  the importance of using facebook, twitter and pinterest but I don't understand how to work the site.  My pin boards are frozen and they say reserved name??  I will keep trying.............Kat

[Jewelry by Kat]

I tried to pin a cha cha bracelet and somehow got a man....hee hee.............I am still trying. ............Kat

[Jewelry by Kat]

I managed to make a board........yeah.............Kat

[Jewelry by Kat]

The only one
i could find is delightful suds on pinterest..........Kat

[Jewelry by Kat]

on google I found fairy cardmaker and jajejems.............Kat

[Red Rock Designs]

On Pinterest I'm RedRockDesigns1........without the 1 was already taken..
I'll join google + later today.

[JaJeJems]

Here are my social media links:
www.pinterest.com/jajejems
www.vimeo.com/jajejems
www.twitter.com/jajejems
http://www.facebook.com/pages/JaJeJems/176831249094460?ref=hl
https://plus.google.com/b/102689026591771745042/102689026591771745042/posts#102689026591771745042/posts

I have spent most of today trying to figure out Pinterest and Google + and I actually think that I might be getting somewhere with it!  I have added Kat, marta and Lisa to my circle on Google Plus

[Jewelry by Kat]

I added followers on 3 websites, found 2 bootcampers on 3 websites,found icraft on all , added 2 blogs on all 4 websites,made a board on pinterest and I am still adding followers on all.......Kat

[Red Rock Designs]

Had an issue with Google +........it wouldnt let me join with the name Red Rock Designs..so I joined with my own name...Bibi Ramzan.
I'm not sure if I can change my username?  or how to do it.

[iCraft Admin]

Hi Kat,

Just take your time learning new sites and tools, and don't stress too much. The more you use them, the easier things will be.

boards are frozen and they say reserved name?

I've never seen this happen before, so I am not sure what to recommend. Maybe someone can comment on this problem?

I tried to pin a cha cha bracelet and somehow got a man

When you share from Pinterest, sometimes you need to scroll to the right or to the left, using arrows below the image, to find the right one.

And congrats on figuring out how to make Pinboards! Did you try "Repin" button yet? You can use it to add images you like in someone else's Pinboards to your own Pinboards and start building your own collections of cool images. Oh... and you can also "Like" and "Comment" on everyone's photos on Pinterest.

[iCraft Admin]

Had an issue with Google +........it wouldnt let me join with the name Red Rock Designs..so I joined with my own name...Bibi Ramzan.

Hi Bibi, I think when you register a Google + profile you have to use your own name, but then you can create Business pages and that's when you use your Business Name.
Can you please post your Google + Profile URL here? I couldn't find you there.

[Jewelry by Kat]

.   Admin
My reserved boards were ones I started and couldn't find.  I have since found them....By the way   thank you for teaching boot camp, I have learned sooooo much and it is so useful to help my shop............Kat

[JaJeJems]

Can't sign off for the night withour saying a big thank you admin for all the hard work that you have done in the past four weeks for us. I too have learned so much.  It is a whole new world for me.  There were moments when I wondered how I would ever make it but the time has really gone fast and here we are at the last day.

Thanks also to a great group of fellow boot campers who shared so much knowledge and sometimes frustrations!  Going to miss our daily chats. Take care everyone!  Happy blogging and tweeting and pinning etc!

[iCraft Admin]

So here are the accounts we have so far:

Pinterest:
iCraft - http://pinterest.com/icrafthq/
Jewelry by Kat  - http://pinterest.com/jewelrybykat/
Silver Workshop - http://pinterest.com/silverworkshop/
Red Rock Designs - http://pinterest.com/redrockdesigns1/
JaJeJems - http://pinterest.com/jajejems/
Delightful Suds - https://pinterest.com/delightful-suds/

Google +
iCraft - https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107064505335326844017/107064505335326844017
Jewelry by Kat  - https://plus.google.com/b/107064505335326844017/101814751773013099994
Fairy Cardmaker -https://plus.google.com/b/107064505335326844017/105082717520718377568/
JaJeJems - https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107064505335326844017/102689026591771745042/
Red Rock Designs - https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/101317948585000609784/101317948585000609784/op/iph#101317948585000609784/posts

[Red Rock Designs]

Here's my Google+ ..https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/101317948585000609784/101317948585000609784/op/iph#101317948585000609784/posts

I'm having issues uploading photos.

[Jewelry by Kat]

Admin,  How do you make a friend request on facebook so I can connect with people?........Kat

[iCraft Admin]

Oh, thank you guys!   I tried to make this work for everyone
Please let me know if there is anything we could do differently next time to make things better.

I hope you will still chat on forum and make even more friends on iCraft.
As you see now, there is a power in a collective work and strength in numbers.
 
For the Next Steps:

• Please don't stop and keep following instructions for building your social media profiles.
• Blog, tweet and share thinks on various social media sites whenever you can.
• Comment on each others product pages and blog posts
• Review the rest of your pages and craft Keyword-rich Titles and Product Descriptions.
• Keep working on getting backlinks to your store, your product pages and your blog from external sites, forums or groups.
• Maybe even try to create promo videos or tutorials... Too bad we didn't spend any time on this topic. Videos are quite effective promo tool as well.
• Feel free to ask questions on forum under website questions whenever you are not sure how to optimize your pages or how to go about building backlinks.
• Please note - all the work we've done so far, will not bring immediate results. This is just a part of the foundation. Just keep doing this over time and you'll start seeing results.
• I feel like we just started doing the real work and then ran out of time.
  Technically, we could've spent on each social media site a couple of days. Instead, we rushed through those last few assignments.
  So... maybe we could take a break (let's say a month or so) and then continue with the same group? Next time we'd focus on SEO, Promotions (incl. social media), Rank monitoring, stats etc. There is a lot more to cover. Would you guys be interested in that?

Thanks for all your hard work! This group was awesome!!!  

[iCraft Admin]

Hi Kat,

There is a button in the top right corner that says "Add Friend", like on this FB Profile. When you don't see that button, you are probably looking at FB pages or groups and not on individuals' profiles. You can only "Like" or "Subscribe" to their updates. Hope this helps.

[iCraft Admin]

I'm having issues uploading photos.

Hi Bibi,
Can you please elaborate? Do you have difficulty replacing your G + banner or avatar? Or did you try to upload images?
When you want to share something on G +, you just have to paste URL of a page or an image in the "Share what's new..." field. There are also buttons beside that field to upload a photo or a video.

[iCraft Admin]

One thing I forgot to mention in regard to Google + is that you should also click on +1 button to vote for pages that you like/support. So make sure you click +1 on all Bootcampers' blog posts from your Google + accounts. Those are the social signals that Google counts when ranking pages (the more votes you have the better!).

We have G +1 buttons on most pages of our site too, so you can click on this button from iCraft as well, when viewing product or blog pages. Please vote on your own and each others pages! Thanks.

[Silver Workshop]

For some reason I just saw this post! I will work on this today, sorry about that! I also need to leave comments on people's products so I'll do that too.

[JaJeJems]

Yes, I would be interested in a continuation of the present bootcamp in the near future.  Didn't I would survive this one but its amazing what a good night's sleep can do!  Will keep in touch at least with the group and see what everyone else thinks.

Admin, I have a question.  I need to continue to work on my photos and pages.  I remember you saying that you don't need to optimize all of your pages but my question is this: about what %should you aim for?  I know that it probably isn't possible to come up with an exact amount but would I be looking at 50% or more?

[iCraft Admin]

Thanks Silver Workshop!
Everyone else who couldn't participate on some days, I'd appreciate if you could complete your tasks even later. 

[Delightful Suds]

A thank you from me as well for all the lessons and support!

I'm trying to wrap my head around Pinterest and Google +, but those 2 really confuse me and I must say I don't really understand them. But I'll do some reading on them when I get a chance. Thanks for providing the links.

I think I followed everybody back on these 2, but I'm not entirely sure as I didn't see any confirmation. My links are:

https://pinterest.com/delightful-suds/

Hmmm....I can't figure out my link for google+ 

[Red Rock Designs]

Hi, I've learned lots during the bootcamp, how to do certain things and how to do them better than I was.

I would also be interested in some continued lessons...but I think since the holidays are coming up and craft shows to get ready for...perhaps January would be a better time to continue ?  Since the bootcamp is focused on online selling and promotion and our in-person sales will most likely be slower giving us more time to focus on homework...what do you think? 

[Fairy Cardmaker]

I think my google + is all messed up.  Everything goes through my personal page instead of business.
Oh well... I'm there at least.

[JaJeJems]

Hi Fairy C I have the same issue, even though I set up a business page ,everything seems to go thru my personal page.

I like Red Rocks idea of waiting until January given that Novemeber and December will be busy.  I will however be happy to do it any time that suits the group.  I would hate to see the group lose its momentum with too long a break.  That could be a problem too.

[Fairy Cardmaker]

I am interested in continuing, but also prefer afer the rush.  January should be better, in theory.  As a Chartered Accountant still working in a firm, our busiest season is Feb to April (although my office seems to be Sept to June!)

I feel like the business of an online store can be broken in to parts:
The store: things you can do behind the scenes in the store itself: SEO page optimizations, photos and descriptions, policies, etc.  We covered this with critiques and keywords (learned a lot!)
Target Market: Let's face it, your marketing efforts are wasted if you are marketing to the whole universe.  This is not online business centric but important none-the-less and there are tools and exercises we could employ to help each other define a market.  A target market is not your ONLY market, but your primary one which you must keep in mind when: designing products, marketing products, choosing keywords, choosing blog topics, choosing where you want to develop backlinks, choosing where and how to advertise, even choosing what your promotion or sale or coupon details will be when/if you have promos.  It's like your keywords for your store page: you have to pick one main on to optimize for and make the rest secondary.  Same with a target market (in my opinion, anyway).
Marketing: Link building, blogging, video stream (youtube/vimeo), photo stream (flikr, picasa, etc), and social media (twitter, FB, pinterest).  We covered blogging well, but we only scratched the surface of social media and didn't get to the more visual media (except pinterest, which is visual).
Customer Service/Engagement: Besides learning how the marketing tools function, how do you connect with customers and create actual engagement?  This is not unique to selling online, but there may be different steps to acheiving this online than in person.
Monitoring: Stats!  Traffic Stats.  Keyword searches used to find you.  Online mentions (backlink monitoring). Geographical stats. Time stats. Etc.  Most popular____ (product, blog post, etc.)

I'm sure there's other stuff I'm not thinking of.  This list was just off the cuff.  I'm not suggesting there be a bootcamp that does ALL of this, but it's something we can pick and choose on.  I'm also not suggesting all bootcampers should do ALL marketing.  There are limitations and fit to consider in my opinion.

[iCraft Admin]

Hi Delightful Suds,

Yes, please read more about Pinterest and Google +. Those 2 are quite useful in terms of promotions and driving traffic. I wish we spent more time on them during this Bootcamp. Your Google + Profile URL would look something like this https://plus.google.com/b/107064505335326844017/101814751773013099994

[iCraft Admin]

I think my google + is all messed up.  Everything goes through my personal page instead of business.
Oh well... I'm there at least.

Hi Fairy Cardmaker,

Just make sure to share your Business Profile URL: https://plus.google.com/b/107064505335326844017/105082717520718377568/  and not your personal one. I think because you didn't mention it in the post earlier, everyone found your personal profile by searching for you on G +.

[iCraft Admin]

Admin, I have a question.  I need to continue to work on my photos and pages.  I remember you saying that you don't need to optimize all of your pages but my question is this: about what %should you aim for?  I know that it probably isn't possible to come up with an exact amount but would I be looking at 50% or more?

Excellent question, JaJeJems!

Here is the thing with page optimization.
If you can optimize all pages, great! If not, focus on those that are most important to you.

Second part to optimization is link building.
Realistically, you will be only able to do that for a handful of pages, because you should also track success of those pages over time (part that we should've discussed during Bootcamp, but didn't have time for this time).

So for now...  focus on optimizing a few more of your pages, and keep building links to those 3 pages (and other pages), using social media sites, external forums, blogs and groups.

Search for "Link Building" on Google. There is a lot of helpful info written on the web on this topic. Feel free to ask me questions too. Thanks!

[Silver Workshop]

Ok, I got a google + page together but for me, this is the most confusing one, hopefully my link will work: https://plus.google.com/u/0/113516156722651927906/posts . I'll continue to try to figure it out thought.

I definitely like pinterest though, I could waste a lot of time on there.

Thank you so much admin for all your assistance, your very patient and I learned so much! I'm looking forward to keeping on working on my icraft store and I can't wait to see the direction icraft will go in in the next few months!

[iCraft Admin]

Ok, I got a google + page together but for me, this is the most confusing one

Hi Silver Workshop,

You are not alone!   Everyone agrees that Google + is the most confusing social media site and it even got worst ranking on the Global Brand Simplicity Index this year.

The link you shared is not for Business user. Business Users have (b) not (u) inside their URL.  
https://plus.google.com/u/0/113516156722651927906/posts
Did you use this page (with the option "Product or Brand") to create your page? https://plus.google.com/u/0/pages/create
Actually I see you have both pages. But they are switched - you have your Business name under Personal Profile and Personal Name under Business Profile. 

[Jewelry by Kat]

I cheated when I made my google   I was confused so I made my first name kat and last name jewelrybykat and it worked but I guess I am on a personal page but everything is working. I  am putting all my products on and blogs and eveything...............Kat

[Fairy Cardmaker]

I definitely like pinterest though, I could waste a lot of time on there.

If I had a dime for everytime someone said that... ! 

[Silver Workshop]

Ok, thanks for having a look at it admin. I'll look into it tomorrow and try to make it better .

[iCraft Admin]

Just found this good article on Pinterest Optimization: A Marketer’s Guide with a lot of useful tips, like how to add Pins to the “Gifts” Section.

Adding Pins to the “Gifts” Section

Adding the price, including “$” sign, to a pin’s description will automatically add that pin to Pinterest’s “Gifts” section, which is sorted into categories based on the items listed. A gray ribbon with the exact price of the item will also be added to the upper left of the pin.