Male-focused "Pinterest" Offers Way to Promote to Potential Male Customers

Pinterest has long been taken over by women. Recipes, jewelry, home décor, and anything with glitter have graced the boards of over 48 million users. Business owners, brands, and online sellers have been searching high and low for a way to market to men on pinterest – but do they even use it? Enter manteresting.com. A man’s version of pinning, called Manteresting. Instead of pinning items to a board – users are nailing and bumping images to their workbench.

Marketing to men may be easier now that you can have their full attention. With a tag line like: “Interesting. Man. Things.”, the question is, what are they “nailing”? From a first glance, here are most popular subjects:

Bacon: anything revolving about how much they love bacon

Models / Actresses: pretty faces, round bottoms, and lots of breasts

Tree Houses: for adults

Comedic Quotes: about beer, or dogs

Movies: Star Wars, the Dark Knight, Chuck Norris, Liam Neeson

Use those subjects to create your own boards. Then create some promotions, here are some examples by seller type:

Kitchen goods: Post recipes with bacon. Win a “baconator” skillet.

Media sellers: Nail images from any Chuck Noris or Liam Neeson movie. Win a signed movie poster.

DIY: Build your own adult tree house, or shed. Win a full set of tools.

The promotion options are endless and the prizes can be as big or as small as you can afford. To create a large audience make sure, with each entry nailed, users are following you. Marketing to men just got a little easier, as long as you embrace Manteresting.

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It's Not Too Early To Market for the 2013 Holiday Season

Is it too early to start thinking about the 2013 holiday season? I don't think so. The holiday seasons are one of the most crucial times for an online business that wants to obtain higher sales. It's not enough to send out a post every now and then, or to tweet a few things every couple of weeks. Bringing in the holiday sales through social media means being persistent and carefully guiding traffic towards the sales page or website and not just at the end of the year.

While major retail chains are bringing in the holiday dollars both online and offline, there's still plenty of room for businesses to wrap the rest of consumers in through social media outlets.
For those that plan to actively seek customers for this coming holiday season and want to put their best sales foot forward, or for those who are not sure where to get started, here are a couple of steps that can be taken to ensure your business receives the most profit:

Engage Your Customers As anyone whose put their business out there in the online world of social media already knows, it can take some serious time and effort to gain a loyal and consistent following. Be efficient by finding an online tool that allows you to send the same message through each social media outlet, maximizing marketing capabilities and minimizing time spent doing so. Be honest with each message that's put out there, and stay away from looking like a company that just wants the customers cash. If possible, try and promote or talk about other relevant ventures or topics, to appeal to a larger audience.

Build The List Building a list of emails and names should be the first thing on your mind considering the upcoming holidays. These emails and names could easily be converted into conversions, sales and returning customers. And because customers who have already purchased from your business are valuable resources, it can be a good idea to offer them generous discounts or savings.

Website Revamp A part of being well prepared for this busy time of year means making sure the website that is associated with the social media account, contains all the necessary elements to bring in the most sales. Try to add as much new content as possible. This is a great time seek out product reviews and recommendations. Later in the year, you can try to give the website a temporary holiday cheer by adding in Christmas colors and reminding everyone that Christmas is near. Meanwhile, make sure there's a designated spot on the website for the opt-in email box, and make sure it's clear and visible for everyone to see.

Go Mobile Many webmasters continue to underestimate mobile shopping, and it's causing them to lose out big. For those trying to squeeze in every possible sale, it's vital that their content be visible through mobile devices. Be sure to measure and track the performance of sales that come through mobile devices. If things turn out better than expected, then this would be an excellent indicator that it's time to stay just as focused on mobile devices and mobile optimization. eBay and Amazon have versions on their websites that are designed to be easily viewed on mobile devices. If you have another online store, check with your provider to see if it is mobile-device-friendly.

Building a customer base and successfully marketing your business is something that cannot be achieved during the last few months before the holiday season begins. Start now. Deploy a few of these tips or all to help build your customer base for the upcoming holiday season. Over the next few months, I will share more details and other tips to help you and your business be more successful!

Let's have an incredible 2013!

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Pinterest Is Now Open For Businesses

Image courtesy of TicketBud

Up until recently, the online social community, Pinterest, has only granted personal accounts on their website, banning commercially-driven accounts that promote business and brand. Pinterest is now open for businesses and allowing commercial websites and companies to legally join the site to help with boosting their success and showcasing products, new content and even services that they have available to offer and provide.

What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a free online social networking community that allows members to post and share various links, photos and websites with their followers and to save for their own future references as well. By creating various virtual "pinboards", users can easily store recipes, DIY projects and even tips on saving money all depending on their own interests and reasons for becoming a member of Pinterest.

Who Uses Pinterest?
Pinterest is used by everyone ranging from stay at home parents who enjoy bookmarking and saving recipes to frugal and savvy members who prefer stockpiling tax tips and how to save money guides. Pinterest is also useful for prkmoting your listings or stores. You can drive traffic to your individual items to help drive sales.

How Does Pinterest Help Businesses?
Pinterest allows businesses and websites alike to post photos and links to specific content or even to various products and services that are currently being offered through the company itself. With Pinterest, business owners can also add keywords and tags to each item that is virtually "pinned" to help other members of Pinterest locate what has been uploaded and shared. The more virtual "pins" a post receives on Pinterest, the more popular it becomes and the more visibility it receives site wide with the members of the community. Using Pinterest saves money and time when trying to reach a new audience or even when looking to expand your current one.

To sign up for a business account, click here.

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How to Market Your eBay Store/Listings

Jenn Cangelosi of Boutique Bargains brings us today's posting:

It takes time to become established on eBay as a reputable seller, but begin with a plan and that time can be shortened. Here are a few marketing ideas to help you get started.

Get the word out - Start with word of mouth or viral marketing. Tell everyone you know about your new eBay business venture. Send out emails with links included to your auctions so they know what it is your are selling.

Use your email - Now there is another use for your email. Set up a signature that goes out with every email you send. Include a link to your auction listings or eBay store, with a short tagline like "Come and see what is new on eBay!"

Get some business cards - Vista print is a great place to order some inexpensive business cards. Include your business card with every package you ship. If you sell electronic informational products like eBooks, just include a business card box on the last page of the product.

Ask for customer feedback - After an item is shipped send an email thanking the customer for their purchase and ask them to leave you positive feedback. Most people will leave feedback, but the email is a good customer service and reminds them to leave the feedback.

Reward repeat buyers - Offer a coupon or other promotion to repeat buyers. Offering them an incentive helps ensure that they will buy from you again. The most popular incentive is a shipping discount on multiple items purchased.

Add something extra - Everyone loves getting something extra for free. For example: you sell a girls dress, add a cute matching bow or inexpensive jewelry. If possible include an item with your web address or logo.

Combine these ideas to start your marketing plan. There are numerous other marketing strategies that you can implement, especially if you have a separate website. Try several different marketing strategies until you find the ones that work best for you.

Jenn, thank you for the tips! They are great ideas to include in marketing your eBay or Amazon business!


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How to Use Pinterest to Market Your Business

By now, I am sure you have heard about the news social media tool known as Pinterest. Pinterest is a way to bookmark (or pin) various items you like around the net. The pins are arranged in what is called a pinboard which is basically a webpage that shows the images of the items you like. It is something like a virtual vision board. Once pinned, your Facebook friends and people you may not even know will be able to view your pinboards and see what it is you like.

Did you know you can use this new tool to promote your business? CopyBlogger recently posted many ways to use Pinterest to market your business. Here are a few ways that will help you get the word out about your eBay or Amazon business:

• Add your business URL to your profile when you create your Pinterest account.

• Feature your business name on your profile. You may even want to use your business name as your username.

• Pin lots of stuff. Do this a few at a time on a regular basis instead of pinning lots of items at one time.

• Use lots of images on your blog so you have items to pin to link to your posts.

• Pin other Pinterest users by using “@username” (example: @ebaycoach) in your descriptions.

• Like other people’s pins.

• Create seasonal boards that relate to your business or brand.

• Add the “Follow Me On Pinterest” button to your website.

These are just a few of the ideas Copyblogger has shared. To view the entire article, click here.

You can find me on Pinterest here! I'd love to see what you have been up to.

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How to Use Twitter for eBay Marketing - Part 3

Are you getting active on Twitter? Make this a daily activity. (15 minutes or so a couple of times a day. Don't get sucked in for hours.) When using social media for business, they key is to do a little bit every day. Keep following people. Some will follow you back. This segment will focus on how to "tweet" correctly.

One of the biggest things to keep in mind about Twitter is that it's a conversation. The fun is talking to one another. Reply often and be a real person with VALUABLE information to share. Everyone knows something they can share. Be nice, be professional, be sympathetic, be funny, and just be REAL. You don't have to just talk about your eBay store, I mean, you have other interests, right?

Don’t post updates from your eBay store, or otherwise, non-stop. Maybe a few a day, scattered here and there. I try to post mine at least an hour apart. Twitter users will stop following you if you update too often. Don’t be annoying. You can use TweetDeck to automate tweets at future times.

You want to entice your followers to click in your links and check them out. But make sure that your links are to quality information or something they can really benefit from, or people will stop following you.

Talk TO people, not at them. Interact with people by giving them an @ when you see something interesting on your feed. Maybe you will see a question you can answer. Maybe you will see a local news story that you can comment on. Or something makes you laugh. Give the user an @ reply and talk to them.

Click here to see the rest of the posts in the Twitter for eBay series.

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