I live in the Midwest. Luckily for me, I have family and friends on both the East and West coast. So when I’m visiting the coasts I can see what trends are likely to occur in the next 3 to 5 years in the Midwest. This is kind of like a mini time travel advantage that I can use to help clients. For instance, we recognized the importance of websites and began building them before any of our competitors in this region.
One of the things I’ve noticed is that Pinterest is gaining popularity on both coasts. Because of this, you may want to consider opening a Pinterest account and allow it to help promote your business. Pinterest for business is a growing trend that you may be able to take advantage of.
Image Sharing
As far as collecting images, you may want to collect images of advertising campaigns you like and may work for your company. You may want to collect what the competition is up to. You may want to collect ideas of things you want to implement at the office, or ideas collected for blogging about. On thing that is really neat about Pinterest for business is that you can have private and public boards. So you can choose what you share.
Business Sharing
Sharing images can help build your business. You can share product photos, focus on services you provide, show work you have completed, or illustrate your processes. It can provide clients with an inside peek of how your company operates. This allows potential clients to become more comfortable with you and more likely to contact your company when they are ready to buy.
Call To Action
Speaking of contact, don’t hesitate to include a call to action. What do you want people to do? Call you? Come by? Like your post? Make it simple for people to text, call or email. Use Canva or some other free image building software to build colorful graphics to share on your Pinterest page.
Pinterest is great for collecting and sharing ideas — just don’t forget to implement. Coming up with ideas is fun and creative, however you have to implement to get results.
Open a Pinterest account and play with it a little. You’ll probably think of other ideas of how to promote your business. If you do, mention them below and help other business owners.
©2018 Poole Communications
Here is a quote from Jeffrey Gitomer:
In your business:
Video is the new brochure.
Video is the new testimonial letter.
Video is the new proposal.
Video is the new training manual.
Video is the new instructional manual.
Video is the new letter and email.
Mr. Gitomer is right. Cable television is coming on strong. Businesses are creating their own networks on YouTube. Websites that sell effectively are using video to increase viewership and cement sales. We’re becoming more sophisticated viewers and are expecting more. We want to be informed and not sold to in the traditional way.
Video is growing in our business. We used to mainly create 30-second commercials and now we are asked to put video on the web, in emails and create YouTube stations for clients that are using technology to the fullest. Even radio and newspapers are using video. Video is a critical part of your business when you need to show how something works or want to educate a customer.
Because of this schools are using video more frequently in the classroom and as an online learning source.
Right now most of the quality you see isn’t that great. As time goes by, you’ll see more need for better quality video production.
You might want to start thinking about how your business can use video to help your customers (not necessarily sell them). High definition video cameras have dropped dramatically in price. Folks are even producing decent video from their iPhones. Grab a camera and start producing. You might as well get started now so your video looks great – and you have a leg up on the competition.
