9 reasons why marketers should use Pinterest
9 reasons why marketers should use Pinterest.
If you are a community manager, early adopter or social media enthusiast, then the business value of Pinterest may be obvious to you.
However, everyone else in marketing may not share your enthusiasm. But how do you go about convincing them they should jump on board? Here are nine reasons your business should consider marketing on Pinterest.
1. Shift in consumer behavior from search to discovery – Search is great for finding answers. Discovery is great for finding inspiration. Pinterest taps into that phenomenon. As Samil Shah explained on TechCrunch back in November, Pinterest is bringing some of that discovery online…which could lead to a revolution in how we purchase items. Right now we are trained to go to Amazon or Google to find what we want. Pinterest starts before that search, before we even thinking we want to buy a particular product. For example, if I wanted a sound system for my laptop, I might hop on to Pinterest, browse a category devoted to sound systems and then land on a product. Within that discovery phase, however, I may never end up at Amazon since Pinterest drives traffic back to a retailer’s site.
2.Little interaction needed for brands – A legitimate concern for any brand considering jumping into a new social media platform is the resource question: do you have it in the budget to staff? The nice thing about Pinterest is there isn’t a lot of overhead. Outside of pinning, categorizing and tagging images, you don’t have to worry about managing comments or playing the follower game. You can push content at your own pace.
3.Connect with the visual segment of your audience – Pinterest is visual. So it attracts an entirely different crowd…those who may have an appeal for an image over written words. Why is this important? Consider how content marketers typically engage their audiences…through words, videos or audio podcasts. You can open the doors to a new segment of buyers who may be interested in your product…but not know about it…by building a community around the images you pin. That can draw others in who are inspired by your account and lead to referrals.
4. Inspires the shy content creator – Pinterest is allowing another segment of the online market get into the action. That segment is the lurker…the person who is too shy to create their own blog, comment on other social sites or contribute in any way online. Pinterest is best compared to Tumblr, where most Tumblrs do not create original content…but share, or “re-blog,” other content. Pinterest is a great way for people to express themselves without having to do anything original.
5. Amplifies the content of original creators – The average Tumblr post gets reblogged 9 times. That means it’s reaching far more people than if it remained on its own site. While there aren’t numbers on Pinterest, you can assume the same thing…content is re-pinned and shared across a wider audience. So if you are an original content creator, sharing that content on Pinterest will amplify its reach.
6. Repinning is the new “retweet” –It’s quite possible that you can build a community from simply sharing other people’s pins…the same way some Twitter power users have built a following off of retweeting or Tumblr users who’ve reblogged.
7. Tap into niches – As I mentioned above, Pinterest will allow you to pick up on a different segment. You can take this idea of niche marketing further by creating boards specific to particular segments. For example, Crutchfield might create boards around “dream man caves,” “cool clubbing” and “ladies’ lounge,” which include reader-generated home-based sound systems in these themes.
8. Build your expertise – Even if your brand doesn’t work seamlessly on Pinterest like a lifestyle company’s might, you can still use it to share your experience and build your expertise in a particular location, industry or relationships. A web strategist like Jeremiah Owyang might create boards around “must-have social media equipment for road warriors,” “top people to know in the web analytics business” or “places to eat when you attend Conference X.”
9. It’s beating out Facebook referrals – Finally, perhaps one of the best reasons for using Pinterest in your social media marketing plans is that it is outperforming Facebook. The general manager of digital for the print magazine Real Life said that Pinterest was a huge source of traffic in October 2011…more than Facebook. Time to re-tool our marketing strategies, don’t you think?
Source: Quicksprout.com
Link to full post: http://www.quicksprout.com/2012/02/06/the-marketers-guide-to-pinterest/
Charity Navigator Gives…And takes Away
Charity Navigator has a somewhat controversial rating system for charities awarding stars to measure the financial health, viability and transparency of charities.
A new updates rating system has resulted in ratings changes for over half of the 5,500 charities rated. Charity Navigator considers whether the charity is making easily available information regarding its governance practices, ethical practices, financial information, effectiveness and results.
Our friends at e Jewish Philanthropy have just posted a blog lists changes in the ratings of many large Jewish Charities. Here is a list of Jewish organizations that have lost the coveted 4 Star rating (new ratings appear in parentheses following the organization name).
- Agudath Israel of America (2)
- Aish New York (3)
- Alexander Muss Institute for Israel Education (3)
- American Committee for Shaare Zedek Medical Center In Jerusalem (3)
- American Friends of Nishmat (1)
- American Friends of Shalva (1)
- American Friends of the Israel Museum (3)
- American Friends of Yad Eliezer (3)
- American Israel Education Foundation (3)
- American Pardes Foundation (3)
- American Society for Yad Vashem (2)
- The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore (3)
- Birthright Israel Foundation (3)
- Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School of Greater Washington (3)
- Combined Jewish Philanthropies (3)
- Fuchs Mizrachi School (2)
- Gross Schechter Day School (2)
- Jewish Community of Louisville (3)
- Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton (3)
- Jewish Federation of Omaha (3)
- Jewish National Fund, United States (3)
- The Negev Foundation (2)
- Yeshiva University (3)
- American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
- The Federation, Jewish Communities of Western Connecticut
- International Fellowship of Christians and Jews
- Jewish Communal Fund – NY
- The Jewish Community Center of Greater Columbus
- Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
- Jewish Family & Career Services of Atlanta
- Jewish Federation of Cincinnati
- Jewish Federation of Orange County
- Jewish Federation of Rhode Island
- Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago
- MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger – CA
The Power of the Brand
Facebook is tremendously popular in Israel.
Check out the statistics here. Almost half of the county uses Facebook.
And if you want further proof of popularity, here it is:
Ha’aaretz reports that Lior and Vardit Adler of Hod HaSharon have named their newborn baby girl Like.
She joins her older siblings Dvash (honey) and Pie 
Dayenu, Coming Home – The Fountainheads Passover Song
Dayenu, Coming Home – The Fountainheads Passover Song
This Week on Twitter
Jerusalem_Post Jerusalem Post News Grad rockets fall on Beersheba neighborhood: Katyushas cause extensive damage, are first Grad launch since Cast …http://bit.ly/iamdv9
DoGooder Awards Promo 2011
NextMark’s Mailing List Search Tool
“There’s big demand for postal mailing lists lately. Despite its traditional nature, postal is still one of the most powerful channels for driving both offline and online traffic (and sales!).The key to driving quality traffic through postal is using a quality mailing list. In fact, experts agree that your choice of mailing lists is the single most important factor in driving your results.There are more than 60,000 mailing lists available. Without the right tool, it’s unlikely you’ll find your ideal lists. Fortunately, NextMark provides a Mailing List Finder tool. It’s easy to use. And, best of all, it’s free.”
Search updates on LinkedIn with the new Signal feature!
Chris Paradysz – PM Digital – Top Entrepreneurs | Crain’s New York Business
Chris Paradysz – PM Digital – Top Entrepreneurs | Crain’s New York Business
Paradyz Matera makes Crain’s NY business.com top entrepreneur list of 2010.
PM is a company we are proud to have been working with for some time now and we wish Chris all the success that he deserves.ry
NextMark Releases 4Q10 Data Card Quality Reports
From the Nextmark website, Nextmark releases the last quarter of 2010 data card quality reports.
Full reports by clicking here.
Checks out # 16 (out of 60)! Way to go Negev Direct for keeping our data cards clean and up to date!!
Top List Managers For Data Card Quality ( 100-249
| Rank | Score | Last Qtr | Change | List Management Company | # Titles |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 100.0 | 100.0 | +0.0 | W.S. Ponton, Inc. | 203 |
| 1 | 100.0 | 100.0 | +0.0 | Complete Medical Lists | 181 |
| 1 | 100.0 | 100.0 | +0.0 | eTargetMedia.com | 165 |
| 1 | 100.0 | 99.0 | +1.0 | List Service Direct, Inc. | 152 |
| 1 | 100.0 | 100.0 | +0.0 | Political Fundraising Lists | 134 |
| 1 | 100.0 | 100.0 | +0.0 | MCH Strategic Data | 130 |
| 1 | 100.0 | 100.0 | +0.0 | Direct Market, LLC | 100 |
| 1 | 100.0 | 100.0 | +0.0 | Charles Moore Associates | 100 |
| 9 | 99.0 | 99.0 | +0.0 | Yankee List Marketing | 224 |
| 9 | 99.0 | 97.0 | +2.0 | Infocus Marketing, Inc. | 179 |
| 11 | 98.0 | 97.0 | +1.0 | Q5 List Marketing | 188 |
| 11 | 98.0 | 98.0 | +0.0 | InfoDirect, Inc. | 187 |
| 11 | 98.0 | 98.0 | +0.0 | Key Marketing Advantage | 134 |
| 11 | 98.0 | 98.0 | +0.0 | Marketing Advisory Group, Inc. | 109 |
| 11 | 98.0 | 98.0 | +0.0 | Leon Henry Inc. | 100 |
| 16 | 96.0 | 96.0 | +0.0 | Geon Media Group | 230 |
| 16 | 96.0 | 96.0 | +0.0 | Negev Direct Marketing, Inc. | 209 |
| 16 | 96.0 | 75.0 | +21.0 | Response Solutions LLC | 196 |
| 19 | 95.0 | 71.0 | +24.0 | Global Addresses Inc. | 199 |
| 19 | 95.0 | 96.0 | -1.0 | American Name Services | 147 |
| 19 | 95.0 | 78.0 | +17.0 | The Rich List Company | 140 |
| 22 | 94.0 | 93.0 | +1.0 | Trinity Direct | 246 |
| 22 | 94.0 | 84.0 | +10.0 | JR Direct | 155 |
| 24 | 90.0 | 87.0 | +3.0 | Marigold Technologies | 222 |
| 24 | 90.0 | 93.0 | -3.0 | Atlantic List Company, Inc. | 124 |
| 26 | 89.0 | 76.0 | +13.0 | Hilite Direct Marketing | 199 |
| 26 | 89.0 | 72.0 | +17.0 | Data Direct Solutions | 146 |
| 28 | 87.0 | 92.0 | -5.0 | ACTON Direct | 129 |
| 28 | 87.0 | 86.0 | +1.0 | Rickard List Marketing | 102 |
| 30 | 86.0 | 100.0 | -14.0 | Global Village Marketing & Data Services, Inc. | 211 |
| 31 | 85.0 | 83.0 | +2.0 | Firstmark | 240 |
| 31 | 85.0 | 88.0 | -3.0 | Regency Direct Mail | 121 |
| 33 | 84.0 | 80.0 | +4.0 | Mardev-DM2 | 159 |
| 34 | 82.0 | 83.0 | -1.0 | Estee Marketing Group, Inc. | 164 |
| 35 | 81.0 | 83.0 | -2.0 | Impulse Media Inc. | 177 |
| 36 | 78.0 | 91.0 | -13.0 | World Innovators, Inc. | 129 |
| 37 | 77.0 | 77.0 | +0.0 | ListSolutions | 228 |
| 37 | 77.0 | 79.0 | -2.0 | Adrea Rubin Marketing, Inc. | 206 |
| 37 | 77.0 | 83.0 | -6.0 | Direct Communications Corp. | 105 |
| 40 | 74.0 | 78.0 | -4.0 | American Christian Lists | 236 |
| 40 | 74.0 | 75.0 | -1.0 | Infogroup Reseller | 173 |
| 42 | 73.0 | 74.0 | -1.0 | Names In The News | 196 |
| 42 | 73.0 | 97.0 | -24.0 | Interactive Marketing Solutions | 117 |
| 44 | 72.0 | 74.0 | -2.0 | Country Marketing Ltd. | 190 |
| 44 | 72.0 | 72.0 | +0.0 | GlaserDIRECT, Inc. | 115 |
| 46 | 71.0 | 71.0 | +0.0 | Beach List Direct, Inc. | 179 |
| 46 | 71.0 | 71.0 | +0.0 | Datamatrix Lists | 102 |
| 48 | 69.0 | 69.0 | +0.0 | ConsumerBase | 195 |
| 48 | 69.0 | 69.0 | +0.0 | Myllymaki & Company | 128 |
| 50 | 68.0 | 68.0 | +0.0 | Professional Direct Marketing & Mailing Lists, Inc. | 211 |
Non-Profit Event: NextGen: Charity
Where: November 18th NYC
Who: 2010 Presenters
Seth Godin: Bestselling Author, Squidoo
Jonathan Greenblatt:Ethos Water, All For Good
Scott Harrison: charity: water
Nancy Lublin :DoSomething.org, Dress For Success
Soraya Darabi:Foodspotting, NYTimes
Scott Belsky : Behance, Making Ideas Happen
Joanne Heyman: Heyman & Co, Urban Zen
Matt Mahan : Causes (Facebook)
Nate Westheimer:NYTechMeetup,AnyClip
Rachel Sklar: Huffington Post, Charitini
Adam Smolyar: Jewish Federations
Ari Teman: JCorps, Vh1 Comedian
David Saltzman: Robin Hood Foundation
Jason Fried, 37 Signals, Marketing by Sharing
“Jason Fried is the co-founder and President of 37signals, a privately-held Chicago-based company committed to building the best web-based tools possible with the least number of features necessary.”
Video Source: YouTube.com
Social Media Yet to Bring in (The Big) Money to Charities
A recent survey of top charities by the Chronicle of Philanthropy has revealed something that is possibly surprising.
The survey showed that while most major non-profits do have a presence on social media sites, they have yet to bring in the higher dollar donations typical in more traditional fundraising methods.
An excerpt From the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s article:
“Of the 177 organizations that answered the survey only 110, or roughly 62 percent, reported that they were using some form of social media as part of their online fund-raising efforts.
Of those, a much smaller number reported the amount of money that they raised through social media.
And the groups that did raise money reported modest totals.
Here’s a thumbnail look at the results:
• Thirty-six groups raised $408,000 on Facebook, with a median total of $1,000 per organization.
• Sixteen groups raised $36,000 on Twitter, with a median amount raised of $500.
• Six groups raised $245,000 through blogs, with a median amount raised of $11,500.
• Two groups raised $500 on MySpace.
What does this mean?
Not surprisingly, it means that the nation’s largest charities haven’t yet figured out how to raise large sums of money through social networks.
But a bigger question looms: Can charities effectively raise money through tweets and Facebook profiles?
The answer depends on your goals. If you’re looking for short-term results, the answer is probably no.”
Social media however is about building relationships, so it stands to reason that some of those relationships could flower in the future and result in higher levels of donations sometime down the road.
For now the levels of donations via social media still appear low.
What’s your experience raising funds through social media?
Grader.com is a FREE tool that lets you know how you can improve on your website!
 |
| logo from the grader.com website |
I just tried out grader.com and I feel like I’m back in school again, but in a good way!
Whether you have a non-profit website or a business website, I highly recommend giving this free and useful web tool a spin.
At the very least you’ll be able to see where your website stands, and even better you’ll be able to see how you can improve on your site.
You can even check out the grades of competing websites!
What are the criteria grader.com uses to give your website a grade?
Content, presence and grade of your blog, Google indexed pages, metadata, domain info, MOZ rank, inbound links, Twitter grade, Google Buzz count, and traffic rank among other things.
So how did our company site, negevdirect.com fair against the competition?
negevdirect.com – Website Grade: 95 (out of 100)! Hooray!!!
listcodirect.com – Website Grade: 36
prospect-direct.com – Website Grade: 61
abdata.com – Website Grade: 55
grader.com also has some other free grading tools for Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs which I also tried out. Those grades however don’t seem to pull accurate data. The LinkedIn tool grader showed that I have zero connections when I actually have well over 200.
Have fun trying out grader.com and feel free to post your website’s grade in the comments area of this post if you feel like sharing the good news!
BTW, this recommendation was unsolicited, I just really like the site so I thought I would share!
Featured Cause: JChoice.org
Every once in a while we’ll feature a different Jewish cause here on the Jewish Donor Blog so you can get an idea of the wide variety of Jewish organizations and causes that thrive today.
Today, I’d like to introduce you to a cause that’s more of a window of opportunity for you to view and support a variety of different causes that you may or may not have known about before.
Today’s featured cause is JChoice.org
“JChoice.org is the website of Jewish causes of Choice, Inc, a US 501(c)(3). This innovative social networking platform aims to encourage young Jewish giving through the Jewish tradition of Tzedakah. The site features carefully selected non-profits and allows users to find, evaluate and support meaningful Jewish causes while connecting with a like-minded network of young Jewish donors.”
“Members of JChoice can create personalized accounts where they can blog about their favorite causes, email and invite friends, view and upload photos and videos, and share their Divrei Torah and Mitzvah Projects. By promoting Tzedakah to Jewish youth, we believe that this mentality of giving will be carried forward for the rest of their lives.”
“The Barmitzvah Registryis another key component of the site which allows Bar and Bat Mitzvah guests to purchase donation gift cards. The platform also allows the honoree to create a registry with charities of his/her choice where guests can give their gift directly online! All donations are 100% tax deductible.”
“Join JChoice.org today and experience the Mitzvah of Tzedakah!”
I really like this video featuring The Jewish Heart for Africa cause, one of the causes that you can give to through the JChoicep.org website.
It does a nice job of giving you a first hand look, through video, of the people who benefit from giving to this cause as well as some of the technology that is given to help the cause. That is something a lot of non-profits actually miss in their fundraising appeals and something that is well addressed in the format of a video or in this case on the JChoice.org YouTube Channel.
New Features Added to The Jewish Donor Blog Today!
You may notice some new changes starting today with the blog!
The updates include:
- New retweet button at the end of each post for easier re-tweeting to your Twitter account.
- New Facebook Like button at the end of each post so you can easily like our posts on Facebook.
- New featured video area on the sidebar with YouTube videos we think you’ll enjoy.
- Brand new easier to use and feature packed comments area at the end of each post to facilitate conversation and discussion on the each post topic. Just click on the comment button at the end of a post to see the full comments area.
We would love to hear your thoughts on these new features and we will happily listen to any suggestions you have on changes that we can add to the blog going forward!
Facebook it. Tweet it. Tag it with #ish.
In all fairness I actually know a fair amount of Jewish mechanics, but this is still funny and I can relate.
Facebook it. Tweet it. Tag it with #ish. Every #ish earns .25 cents towards the #ish fund.
What’s your #ish?
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