Your employees don’t have to do all of the work in executing your social media marketing and content marketing plans. As you build your band of brand advocates who are loyal to your brand and drive word-of-mouth marketing to their own audiences, each one of those brand advocates is a brand marketing opportunity.
Don’t ignore your vocal brand advocates. Embrace them by reaching out and connecting personally. As you build a relationship with them, which deepens their emotional connection to your brand, you can crowdsource brand marketing from them. One of the most visual and interactive ways to leverage your brand advocates for social media marketing and content marketing is through Pinterest.
Crowdsource Pins on Your Pinterest Boards by Inviting Guest Pinners
Did you know that you can invite Pinterest users to pin content to any of the boards in your brand’s Pinterest profile? Just navigate to the board that you want to crowdsource images for, click the Edit Board button, and enter the names or email addresses of the people you want to invite in the Who Can Pin? field. Click the Invite button, and your invitation is on its way! Keep in mind, invitations can only be sent to other Pinterest users and you need to be following Pinterest users or one of their Pinterest boards to be able to invite them to pin content to one of your boards.
Encourage People to Pin Content to Your Pinterest Pin Boards
When another Pinterest user receives your invitation, they can choose to accept it or decline it. Boost the number of acceptances you get by emailing invitees directly or sending them messages through Twitter or Facebook before you send the invitation with a personal note explaining why you value them so much that you’re going to invite them to pin content to your boards.
Set Pinning Guidelines but Don’t Be Too Demanding
Keep in mind, you need to monitor your boards to ensure invited pinners are pinning appropriate content. It’s a good idea to give them some guidelines, but don’t make your guidelines so detailed and strict that they become intimidating or frustrating to Pinterest users. You need to give pinners flexibility, or they’ll be too afraid to pin anything to your boards.
Don’t Ignore the Social Media Law of Reciprocity
Finally, be sure to continually acknowledge active invited pinners. Reward their loyalty and make sure they always know how much you appreciate them. Furthermore, don’t forget that social media is a land of expected reciprocity. You need to spend time sharing, liking, and commenting on your invited pinners’ boards and social media profiles in order to reap the biggest rewards from crowdsourcing for brand marketing on Pinterest.
Image: Dave Dyet
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
