How To
How To Use Pinterest For Marketing
Pinterest, as a marketing platform, is used for multiple reasons. Started in the year 2010 with only 5,000 users, Pinterest grew over the years to amass over 250 million monthly users. What started as an idea for pinning images one liked to growing into becoming an image sharing platform, Pinterest is, today, one of the largest social media platforms for getting word out about your brand and drawing inspiration. Here’s why you should use Pinterest as a marketing platform:
1. Optimize your boards
Simply put, a Pinterest board is where you can “pin” images and draw inspiration from the boards of the people you follow. The names and descriptions on your Pinterest board are extremely important. From telling the viewer what the products on your board are about, to helping people find your products easily, descriptions are the most important things for your Pinterest profile! With a 500 character limit, the descriptions require details to specificity. Use the same keywords as you would for the board’s title and make your point in not more than 160 characters. This will help improve your impact just with the words that you use!
Picture credits: Pinterest.com
2. Make the most of the individual pins
When it comes to marketing on Pinterest, there are certain pins you can use to have the desired effects. These are known as individual pins and when used with the right kind of description, you can make your page stand out! While the descriptions are important in their own right, Pinterest as a platform works better if you write individual descriptions for the pins. Although they are often not looked at in the right way, the descriptions written for individual images can give your viewers an immediate understanding about what the product is. Further, these descriptions help in driving reaction for your post by increasing the likes, comments and repins.
Picture credits: bugger.com
3. Use Rich Pins
Unlike the regular Pinterest pins, Rich Pins help in providing context to the image you are putting out on your board. Easily identifiable, Rich Pins allow for extra information to be present above and below the image. While individual pins are one way of getting your page the reach it requires, Rich Pins streamline the process. Although Rich Pins made their appearance only in the year 2010, the impact they have had on the world of marketing grew strongly through the years. Rich Pins help because they increase the amount of information you put on your board. Rich Pins come in 6 types: Place, Article, Product, Recipe, Movie and App. Although the amount of work one puts into the Rich Pins is a lot more than a normal pin, the enhanced user experience makes the effort worth the while.
Picture credits: bufferapp.com
4. Add Buyable Pins
Take your Pinterest game one step further by syncing your web store and Pinterest account. Buying pins, or shop the look pins, help in letting you buy the pins which give you inspiration. You can buy more than one pin at a time and each time you buy a product, you can check out directly from the website without leaving the website at all! Buyable pins add a sense of authenticity to your website and through this, there is a larger chance of your page coming up ahead on search results!
Picture credits: bufferapp.com
5. Make sure you have a “Pin It” button
One of the best ways to make the most of your Pinterest page is by installing the Pin It button. While the other marketing ways mentioned here help redirect to your website, the Pin It button, which helps in pinning your content to the top of the page, increases the engagement from your viewers and users. The people who look at and know your website can pin the content at the top for you and once they do that, others would able to view the content immediately. The Pin It button ensures your content is most visible the moment it is put out.
Picture credits: Pinterest.com
Pinterest is the next most important social media platform after Facebook and Twitter and if you get the strategies right, then your plan is gold! If you think we missed out on any other methods which help your platform grow through Pinterest, comment and let us know!
In the world of entrepreneurship, people with strong self control seem to succeed and achieve great success. These are people who are able to do everything and excel at their life goals. Fortunately, the habit of self control is a taught one and one can master the skill with determination. Here are five tips which can help anyone master the art of self discipline.
How to master self discipline
1) Set a clear goal
It’s easy to get distracted or discouraged if you don’t have a particular goal in your mind. In order to master self discipline, one should have a clear idea about what your end result will be. It is always better to have an end goal in your mind and a clear set of steps which will keep you motivated to achieve the goal.
2) Remove temptations
An important step to master self discipline is to avoid temptations. Having temptations, however small or big, will always urge you to overlook your long term goals. The best way to improve your self discipline is to remove the greatest temptation from your environment. For example, if you want to improve your productivity at your work and get good results, turn off your phone or mute the notifications on it to concentrate on your work.
3) Small steps
The process of self discipline may seem difficult to achieve at the beginning. It requires you to find your weakness and working on improving it. It can be pretty overwhelming to let go of your weaknesses all of a sudden. Therefore, it is a good idea to start with baby steps. For example, if one of your goals is to save money to start your own business, start by cutting down unnecessary expenses, one step at a time.
4) Eat regularly
According to researchers, not eating regularly can affect your mood and willpower immensely. Skipping your meals results in low blood sugar, which weakens the resolve of a person. It also affects a person’s ability to concentrate as well. A weakened willpower will result in you compromising your progress, be it in your work or personal life. Hence, it is always best to keep yourself fuelled throughout the day with healthy food.
5) Reward yourself
Lastly, rewarding oneself for achieving one’s goal is a good way to stay motivated and move forward. Having a reward in your mind drives you to work harder to reach your set goal. Once you reach a goal and collect your reward, it will motivate you further to work on a new goal.
It is really important to have self discipline while starting or running a business. It gives you courage and keeps you motivated to achieve big things.
If you think we missed any tips about how one can master self discipline, comment below and let us know.
Entrepreneurship can be a very satisfying job. Owning your own business and working on your idea is fulfilling to many people. However, being in charge of a company comes with many difficulties, especially if you are just starting out. One of them is occupational burnout, which comes from unresolved, work related stress. Hard to diagnose, burnout is very common among entrepreneurs and if neglected, can lead to other serious problems like mental and heart diseases. Let’s look at some ways in which one can cope with entrepreneurial burnout and still remain productive at work.
How to avoid entrepreneurial burnout
1) Set realistic goals
In the entrepreneurship field, the result of a new venture is uncertain. Sometimes, setting very high and unrealistic expectations for oneself and one’s company can easily lead to disappointment, if the entrepreneur fails to achieve the goals. Disappointment leads to stress, which eventually leads to burnout. Setting some realistic goals is necessary to remain focused on the task and avoid disappointment. For example, launching a product in just 2 months when it requires 6 months to get ready is unrealistic and will lead to overworking and stressing out.
2) Maintain a balance between professional and personal life
Many new entrepreneurs fail to draw a line between their professional and personal lives, which results in them getting burned out pretty fast. Establishing a boundary between these two is important to work efficiently. A break from professional responsibilities helps in getting some relaxation. A balance between your professional life and personal life can be achieved by setting up some rules, specifics of which vary from person to person and following it religiously.
3) Change your routine
Following a similar routine day after day will inevitably lead to burnout. Having to deal with a similar task and similar people on a daily basis can sometimes become frustrating and stressful. Entrepreneurs can avoid this by making some minor changes in their daily routine, like working away from their normal setup or handing away certain tasks, which are stressing them out, to someone else.
4) Talking things through/venting out
Sometimes keeping all the stressful things bottled up inside can lead to more stress and frustration. Venting them out in a healthy way to one’s family, friends or therapists is a good way to cope with burnout. Venting your frustration out is good to take pressure off one’s mind and keep them relaxed.
5) Taking a break
While the thought of a break from work can be tough for many entrepreneurs, it is the ultimate solution to avoiding burnout. Sometimes taking a temporary break from your work and spending time doing things which relax you is a great way to avoid burnout. Read a book, play sports, or cook—whatever it is which helps you calm down, take a break from your work and do it to ensure you stay refreshed and are not burned out.
With burnout becoming increasingly common among entrepreneurs, it is important to cope with it or avoid it all together to remain interested in your work.
If you have any other tips about how to avoid entrepreneurial burnout, comment below and let us know.
With the rise of malwares nowadays, it has become very important to have a strong cybersecurity plan, especially for startups just beginning their journey in the business world. As a report suggests, almost 43 % of cyberattacks are focused on startups and small businesses as they are more vulnerable to security breach than big corporations. If your startup is working in such an environment and has limited resources to protect itself from security breaches, these tips can help you secure your data online.
Tips to strengthen the cybersecurity of your startup
1) Start with the right plan
It’s always easier to start with the right plan and to get your basics right to help you secure your startup. By identifying the important information valuable to your startup and keeping it separate from public information, one can avoid losing important information due to major security breaches.
2) Securing cloud storage
Startups use cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive to store important data about the company. Sometimes, they fail to recognize the risks of backing up data in this manner. Even though the cloud services take extra steps to secure all the stored information, it is not completely secure from hackers. Installing advanced and internal firewalls as well as intrusion detection system are some simple steps one can adopt to protect their startup’s data. Some of the best cloud firewalls in the market right now are CloudFlare WAF, Amazon Web Services WAF and Sophos XG Firewall, which are easy to use and offer multiple security features.
3) Use stronger passwords
Sometimes, instead of using advanced software to hack into a startup network system, hackers just type in passwords to get access. It is wiser to set up passwords with multiple special characters and to avoid using the same password for multiple platforms, to keep your network system protected.
4) Two factor authentication
Using multiple factors to log in to the system is a clever way to protect your account and information from security breach. Two factor authentication helps in verifying the identity of a user, usually through password and a second factor like SMS verification. Two factor authentication can be used anywhere from protecting your email accounts to your Dropbox account and more. Many Companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft provide this service, which can be used by any startup to ensure its online security.
5) Educating the employees
It is a good idea to put the employees of a startup through a cybersecurity training. The training can be about how cybersecurity works and in which direction it is headed and most importantly, how the employees can contribute to protect their organization from security breaches.
With the cost of data breaching expected to increase to $ 150 million by 2020, it is important to take every precaution available to save startups from losing money and time.
If you have any other tips about strengthening the cybersecurity of a startup, comment below and let us know.
