A Brief Guide To Pinterest Marketing

Pinterest is no longer the underdog after coming in third behind Facebook and Twitter in Experian Hitwise’s ranking of top ten social networks. With more than 100 million visits for the month of May, Pinterest has become the talk of the blogosphere and for good reasons. The site is less than 3 years old, having just dropped anchor in the Web in late 2009. Today, the site is visited daily by more than 1 million visitors who can’t stop pinning their favourite photos and images that depict style, recipes, craft, children, pets, recipes etc.

(Image source: marketoonist)

Pinterest is useful not only for personal usage, but also quite effective in business promotion. This visual-based social network drives a lot of referral traffic and is of a great value for marketers. Its members number in the millions despite being an invite only website (although getting in is not very hard) and the amount of unique visitors is increasing every day. So how do we tap into the potential market that is hiding inside Pinterest?

How Pinterest Works

Let’s look at the inner scheme of Pinterest. It’s a huge virtual pinboard that allows people to look through interesting stuff, pin them and and leave comments below what was pinned. But we have to look deeper to see the real significance of this technology. What is Pinterest famous for? The great selling point of Pinterest that wins people over are its cool and captivating pictures. We are visual creatures and we love to look at beautiful pictures of people, nature, food, scenery, etc. On Pinterest, we pin what we like to see, and other people pin what they like to see. The trick here is to let your visuals get pinned as often as possible.

Every pin is a link to the source of the image, usually an external site – in this case, a link to your site. So every repin of the image can lead readers in a straight road back to your site. Talk about a crowd puller. Users who are searching for data may click on a nice-looking image, arrive at your website and may be converted from a simple passerby to the future customer and hopefully loyal fan. Moreover, if your pins are eye-catching and worthwhile, they may be repined by other pinners or even be embedded on your fans’ sites or blogs.

Making Pinterest Work For You

To gain confidence and loyalty you should neatly build your following on Pinterest. First of all, you have to create a good-looking account. It doesn’t matter if you activate the profile with your own name or with your company brand. But remember, people are more inclined to believe and follow individuals, not so much for companies, unless they are very popular and well-known brands.

You can tie your profile to the email which is used for your Twitter account, so you can quickly share pins in both social networks. To increase visibility, on your Profile picture, check ‘Hide your Pinterest profile from search engines’ and be sure that it’s ‘Off’. This will allow your page to be indexed in a search. Don’t forget to add the Pinterest social media button to your website, blog or portfolio and your Pinterest signature to your email These two tiny, but significant gestures will help you in promotion and to build your fan base.

How To Get Pinned

In preparing your images to be pinned, check out its quality and overall design. Always remember that Pinterest doesn’t sell your products or services, you sell them using Pinterest via their technology and their social platform. The real value ofPinterest is in its pictures and shots.Hence, the appearance of the images that can link back to you has to be pleasant to the eye and, where possible, remarkable. However, don’t expect that it’s easy to do, that is don’t think that you will win over the fans only by showcasing photos and adding new images of your products and brand. To receive lots of repins and shares you have to follow these simple but effective tips.

1. Creating Unique Boards

Create boards, organize them in a unique way so they stand out in a crowd of common names such as "cool stuff" or "things I like". If the name of your board is unique, people will be curious to know what is hidden behind that crazy, unusual or unexpected board names. Don’t just brand your digital boards. Pinterest fans will follow your boards more often if they feature original content. Establish a separate board with images that make your followers smile and laugh or some other kind of shots that raises their mood at once and make them return to your pins.

2. Quality Images

Pinterest is a picture-based website, so the quality of your images is a must! Use only extremely high quality shots, their size should be about 600 or 800 pixels wide and 1000 pixels deep. The quality of the photos, images or artworks is part of your marketing strategy so take your time to choose them well. It will be worth your effort in the end. Always keep an eye on the size of the images: if the size is too small, pinners can’t share it, but if users can easily find the same image in another blog or website at the right size or resolution, they’ll pin that one, and you will lose out on the traffic generated from that pin.

3. Make Your Images Share-Able

Don’t watermark your images. That makes it exclusive, a property of an organization, and as a result, people won’t pin your images. It’s better to not also put any marketing pitches in there, like the price of your services or products on pictures or your company logo. This may backfire, making your images unpinnable. On Pinterest, you let your product sell itself by its appearance. Keep everything else that reeks of corporate marketing out of the images. Pinterest is not a promotional website where you share your advertising, it’s a place where everyone is connected through the things and stuff viewers find interesting. At most, you can mark your image with a price tag and pin it under Gifts which is a category that caters to this kind of images marketing.

4. Vamp Your QR Code

The Pinterest community loves cool images so if you can make a cool QR code that is worthy of being pinned around, the Pinners will spread the image carrying details to link back to your organization or to you. Make it beautiful with stylish designs so readers can take it for an artwork and repin it over and over again.

5. Detailed Descriptions

If you want your images to be noticed, it would help to write detailed descriptions. With the right keywords people will find your images more quickly and you’ll have more chances to be noticed, ensuring more traffic to your website.

6. Reward Your Pinners

If your budget permits, give a prize to the pinner who gets more shares, likes and tweets of your discount. In such attractive way you’ll make people like your brand and to get to know you better.

7. Interact With Your Pinterest Friends

One original pin can bring you traffic for several weeks or more, compared to a tweet that on average works its charms for only one day. When you just start pinning, don’t begin your Pinterest existence with commercial messages, get involved with emotional, fun and eye-catching pins. By repinning viral stuff you’ll draw the attention and people will start following and liking you. The best tactic is to reciprocate and follow them back, repin their artworks, but add your personal message to the repinned image.

Conclusion

The whole Pinterest Universe is based on the content that people share. Despite the millions of images being pinned now, it’s not difficult to get your photos noticed and repinned. Just showcase things that might be interesting and the network’s simple system and user-friendly interface will help drive traffic and to your page. Remember, people on Pinterest like looking for creative things and enjoy the process of finding and discovering new images. Let’s take advantage of all this and make Pinterest work for your business. Happy Pinning!

News from - http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/pinterest-marketing-guide/

Facebook for Android gets updated, new features added

The official Facebook application for Android has been upgraded to version 1.9 and this new update brings in a few new features. Firstly, there are a couple of performance related upgrades that have improved the feel of the user interface and have made it less laggy. It’s now smoother and faster. In case your phone hasn’t got the update option yet, you can manually go to the official Facebook application via the Google Play Store and click update. 

• Here’s a brief list of the improvements in this version of Facebook for Android:
• Improved performance and various bug fixes
• More messaging features like creating group messages and adding friends to existing group conversations
• Shortcuts to share photos and messages right from your home screen

  

We did the update last night itself and we got a new Facebook messenger icon that lets you chat with your Facebook. The camera itself loads up into a separate ‘Facebook camera’ app and not the default camera application. It lets you instantly post the photographs that you’ve clicked from your phone. What’s pretty cool about the interface is that it is pretty minimalistic and lets you instantly tag, upload and share your photos with location enabled (or disabled, based on your preference). Scrolling through the news feeds was feeling a lot smoother and quicker. Once the app got updated, it did take a while to load initially but once it did, things were pretty smooth. No force closes or freezes or crashes were visible so far, so it looks like a pretty stable update. The messenger application is pretty nifty as well and lets you chat with your Facebook buddies on the go. You can also differentiate between who is online and who is not. There’s been a major overhaul with the settings menu as well. However, if you’re not using the separate camera and messenger application then it might just add to the clutter in the number of icons on your menu. Anyway, we quite liked it because we do use the messenger app more than the main app in itself. 

Either way, it’s good to see that more and more features from their web version have started appearing on Android now. 

News from - http://tech2.in.com/news/android/facebook-for-android-gets-updated-new-features-added/300642

Windows 8 Release Preview coming this June

Microsoft has announced another preview edition of Windows 8 will be released to the general public in June, called Windows 8 Release Preview, which will be closest yet to the final version.

The Redmond giant has already released two preview editions of Windows 8 before this – the Developer Preview was released in September last year, while the Consumer Preview released at the end of February. Interestingly, more than 100,000 changes have been made to Windows 8 since the Developer Preview.

So far, Microsoft has also detailed the SKUs of Windows 8 that will hit the market, Windows 8,Windows 8 Pro, and Windows RT (for ARM), as well as a host of their respective features. The first two, meant for x86 systems, will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

Windows 8 has been called the “most significant redesign” of the operating system since Windows 95, and a lot of hopes are riding on the platform, a much bigger gamble than just a way into the tablet, and in the future, with Windows Phone 8, phone markets.

The new operating system is due to be released this October-November, and Microsoft's already at work on the Windows Store, a marketplace for both Metro-style apps, and regular Windows software. Our recent poll of our readers " What do you think about Windows 8 Consumer Preview?,"  showed much interest in the Windows 8 platform, with the majority answering: "It's great, I am excited!"

News from - http://www.thinkdigit.com/Software/Windows-8-Release-Preview-coming-this-June_9376.html

10 Most Asked Interview Questions: How to Tackle Them

How many of you had stumbled upon an interview question you haven’t prepared yourself for, and your mind drew a blank? Sensing that awkward silence, you blurted out whatever words you could find and desperately made sentences out of them. The interview ended moments later, and as you reflect back on what you had said, you dreadfully realized those words don’t make much logical sense!

Okay, if you are looking for a job now, then you’re in luck. This is a guidance post of ten most common interview questions that you might be asked for your upcoming interviews. Without further ado, here are the top 10 questions, let’s get started!

1. “Tell me about yourself?”
This is typically the first question the interviewer will ask once you’ve taken your seat. This is the opportunity for the interviewer to assess you as a person through what you say and how you deliver it. As they always say, first impression is at utmost important, so you’ve to make sure you’ve prepared yourself adequately to answer it. Keep it short and succinct, preferably within 2 – 3 minutes.

How should you reply then? Like I said, you should have done your research on what the company expects from the candidates before heading for the interview. Your answer then, is to address how your qualities (e.g. qualifications, personalities and work experience) are relevant to the position in question. Therefore, you should only convey information applicable to what is required for the job, but not irrelevant ones pertaining to your family or personal events, for instance.

2. “What are your weaknesses?”
At first glance, this seems tricky. On one hand, you can’t reveal that you lack what it takes for the job; on the other, it will be an obvious lie if you claim you don’t have any weaknesses. What should you disclose then?

If you have thoroughly gone through the company’s profile and such, you will by now understand what qualities are considered strengths, and what are not. Now, there are several ways to answer double-edged questions like this.
With your knowledge of what constitute as weaknesses that are frown upon by the interviewer, you can admit to those which you have that are impertinent to the job requirement. Secondly, you can mask strengths as weaknesses. For instance, you can say you are a very meticulous person who gets picky with details of a project (for this to work though, the job must be one that is particular about specifics). Last but not least, you can confess to past weaknesses but show how you had triumphed over them.

3. “What is your greatest accomplishment?”
Although the interviewer is asking you about your greatest accomplishment, you still have to choose one that is more professionally relevant. This is a good time to illustrate how you can contribute to the company if you are successfully recruited, so it will be to your advantage if you mention an achievement that applies to the position.

Let’s say you are applying for a position that requires a significant amount of problem solving and troubleshooting. You might want to talk about a time when you resolved a persistent problem that had plagued your company for years. You can explain how you initiated some research and made a useful suggestion that was eventually implemented to all departments. If possible, quantify your results in terms of savings made and increased productivity for instance.

4. “Why did you leave your last job?”
There are various legitimate reasons for leaving a job. Yet, when it comes to interview, try to answer positively rather than complain about what made you unhappy. Talk in relation to your career goals and how the job you are applying provides a better environment for growth than your previous job. As always, angle your reply in such a way that what you had learned in your previous job had enriched you with valuable skills for the current position.

Here, the interviewer is trying to gauge how much the job fits to your expectations. You had probably quit your last job because you were unhappy about something. The interviewer wants to make sure that you will be committed to the job and not leave because your expectations are not met again.

5. “Why do you want to work with us?”
More likely than not, the interviewer wishes to see how much you know about the company culture, and whether you can identify with the organization’s values and vision. Every organization has its strong points, and these are the ones that you should highlight in your answer. For example, if the company emphasizes on integrity with customers, then you mention that you would like to be in such a team because you yourself believe in integrity.

It doesn’t have to be a lie. In the case that your values are not in line with the ones by the company, ask yourself if you would be happy working there. If you have no issue with that, go ahead. But if you are aware of the company culture and realize that there is some dilemma you might be facing, you ought to think twice. The best policy is to be honest with yourself, and be honest with the interviewer with what is it in the company culture that motivates you.

6. “Why did you apply for this position?”
Even if it’s true to a large extent, don’t give them the vibe that you applied for this job because you were retrenched from your previous company. Or for that matter, don’t give the impression that you are here because you need to make a living. Any company wants someone who is committed to the organization and eventually developed a sense of belonging with it. It doesn’t help claiming that you’re here for the monthly paycheck.

In fact, the best way to answer this question is to spend some time examining what you like or would like about your work and the company. It is likely you will find something, such as the culture, work environment, meaning of your work, etc. If you didn’t find anything, then you should seriously consider if this is the right job for you. Once you know why you want this job, you can then answer them in a manner that’ll relate how well you fit with the position. For example, if you like the customer service work involved because you enjoy communicating with people, bring up that sociable personality of yours. Convince them that you’ll fit in very well here, and you’ll in turn convince the interviewer that you’ll be an asset to the company.

7. “What would you like to be doing five years from now?”
Again, this question is asked to find out whether you are committed to the job. The fact is that there are people who hop from job to job, and that is because they don’t really have a solid plan to follow.Another reason for popping this question is to see whether you are someone who sets goals in life. It’s undisputable that people who set long-term goals are more reliable than those who don’t. I mean, knowing what you want in life says a lot about your personality, perhaps as a person who can lead and stay motivated.

Your reply should assure the interviewer that your career progression goals are in line with the actual advancement route in the company. The interviewer wouldn’t want to disappoint you in the next five years and end up with you resigning. As such, it is crucial that you do your homework on the company’s prospects so that you know what to expect for yourself, and whether it will meet your long-term career objectives.

8. “Why should I hire you?”
This is the part where you link your skills, experience, education and your personality to the job itself. This is why you need to be utterly familiar with the job description as well as the company culture. Remember though, it’s best to back them up with actual examples of say, how you are a good team player.

It is possible that you may not have as much skills, experience or qualifications as the other candidates. What then, will set you apart from the rest? Energy and passion might. People are attracted to someone who is charismatic, who show immense amount of energy when they talk, and who love what it is that they do. As you explain your compatibility with the job and company, be sure to portray yourself as that motivated, confident and energetic person, ever-ready to commit to the cause of the company.

9. “How much are you expecting for the salary?”
Salary negotiation is a tough and delicate matter. Preferably speaking, you should avoid going into this topic until the later stage of the recruitment when you are being offered the job. That said, some recruiters might be hoping that you’d yield in to this question and be the first to give the number and set the benchmark. The repercussion? You might end up making less than what the position is worth!

Hence, research on the salary range in your field to have a rough estimate of how much you should be earning. Give a large range rather than a specific amount if you have to answer it. An alternative is to pose the question back at the interviewer by asking what kind of salary does the position warrants. At other times, interviewers might just be testing you to see if money is the only thing that matters. So, do emphasize that your priority lies with the nature of the job and not the salary per se. Remember that when the job is finally being offered to you, the interviewer would have to quote the salary. That will be the best time to negotiate your way because you will then become the one being sought after, and not the other way round.

10. “Do you have any questions to ask me?”
This is normally the last question posed to you, so it’s your chance to finish the interview elegantly. True enough, your doubts about the job position might already been allayed by this time when the interview is almost done. Nevertheless, you’ve got to say something other than replying that you’ve got nothing to ask. Doing otherwise might leave the impression to the interviewer that you are not exactly keen to get the job. Unless an employer is interested in recruiting a passive employee, the interviewer is likely to be attracted to proactive candidates who ask intelligent questions. If you must ask, do make sure that they aren’t those with obvious answers that you can get if you have done the research thoroughly. Yes, there’s no such thing as a stupid question, except those that you ask for the sake of asking. Try to incorporate your knowledge of the industry and the company into a question that will address a genuine concern of yours. That way, you get to amaze your interviewer and assess for a final time whether the job aligns with your expectations.

One of the best responses to this question is to find out about your chances of landing this job. Thank the interviewer for the opportunity and express your enthusiasm for the position before asking if there is any reservation for hiring you. This will be your final chance to address any concerns the interviewer might have of employing you. Stay calm and reply objectively rather than taking any criticism personally.

News from - http://www.fs4i.com/2011/10-most-asked-interview-questions-how-to-tackle-them/

Increase Your Iphone Battery Life With These Easy To Use Tips

If you are an iPhone users then you must be aware of the less point of Apple’s iPhone is its Battery. With every usage of it the %age of battery decreases. Iphone offers its users whole new world of features, apps, games which cannot be resisted from exploring. But the main concern for the user will be saving the battery throughout the day. Maximum iPhone battery is 100% and it rapidly decreases according to the usage.

But every problem has a fix to it and Apple has done that for the battery issue. So let’s explore these few simple and few little tricky ones to get that extra bit of battery.

When Not in Use Turn off Your iPhone All Wireless Applications

All the latest phones, being specific Smartphone come with inbuilt wireless applications like Bluetooth and wifi access. So it is advised to switch off such features when they are not in use. As these features tends to deplete your iPhone battery fast. So turning them off can help you extend the battery life for several hours.

If not required then disable the 3G as well. As the 3G technology survives on the battery of the phone. If possible to turn off it will give you long battery life for whole day.

Make use of the auto brightness feature of your iPhone. This will automatically adjust the back light of IPhone as required. This adjustment also helps in saving battery.

Manually Lesser The Screen Brightness

Although you have enabled the auto brightness feature but in some scenarios it does not dim the light as required. There you can manually lower the brightness of the home screen for saving of the battery. Preferred is to keep your brightness to 49% to make optimum use of the iPhone battery.

End Background Apps

According to Apple, the background apps are not technically ‘running’, unless they are front and centre, which means they should not draw any power.

The multitasking application for the iPhone continues to use resources of system more efficiently depletes your battery.

Applications, for example, Skype or even other VoIP can be especially benefit from the battery when you perform within the setting and so it is better to start launching the applications only when you need which can save the battery life.

Cool Off The IPhone Temperature

High temperature of iPhone also eats up its battery life. If you find that while charging your phone the temperature is increasing, then remove the phone cover before plugging in for charging. Let it also have a breath of fresh air so place it on a table or in open space instead of your pocket. The optimum temperature for iPhone and its battery is between 32°F to 95° F.

Make Use of Solar Chargers

Solar chargers give you freedom of charging your iPhone from anywhere. So if your battery is dying out, you can save it with solar power.

Also another advantage is that you can follow the motto “Go green” while saving the electricity which in turn protects the environment.

Frequently Use your iPhone:

We all know that iphone is a precious thing for anyone but that does not mean that you restrict its use to protect it from daily wear and tear. It is best valued with optimum use of it. Not using the iPhone for a long time can reduce its battery life. Therefore one should use it regularly and change iPhone battery at least once every 6 months.

Apple has also strongly recommends that you should charge your iPhone when the battery is completely finished i.e. 0%.

So follow these tips and you can easily save your iPhone battery life and enjoy it for long.

News from - http://www.techpraveen.com/2012/04/increase-your-iphone-battery-life-with-these-easy-to-use-tips.html