Two great ways to win on Pinterest

April 3, 2016

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Achieving Pinterest popularity requires a different strategy than on Instagram or Facebook.

Here’s two great tips.

  1. Focus on lifestyle, not products. Unlike Instagram, where product posts generate the most engagement, Pinterest is more about visual storytelling. Brands do best by casting themselves as  purveyors of a complete lifestyle. In Activewear, that often means sharing content related to outdoor activities: for example,  Quiksilver’s feed includes surfing and snowboarding imagery. While the average Activewear brand has only 239,000 followers, Quiksilver has 2.7 million.
  2. Appeal to women. 85% of Pinterest users are female. Outdoors heavyweight L.L. Bean is trying to engage female audiences with curated style boards and gift guides geared toward women. The brand has 5.1 million followers, so their strategy is working.

Need to brush up your social media training? Email Furthr now.  

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What happened yesterday was Hillary Clinton was elected president. Now we have eight months of hyperventilating before it’s official

March 16, 2016

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That is the opinion of Tony Fratto, White House spokesman for George W.Bush’s Administration.

Furthr agrees.

On Tuesday March 15, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton extended her lead with wins in Florida, Ohio, Illinois and North Carolina.

Florida and Ohio are important because they return the most delegates.

Meanwhile Trump still needs 54% of the remaining delegates to secure the nomination outright. It’s going to be a long road to the GOP nomination for a man not used to putting in the hard yards. One suspects even Trump is starting to realize there are not enough racists in America to see him to the White House.

Meanwhile, a group of leading conservatives are planning ways of stopping Mr Trump from winning the nomination – including rallying around a third-party candidate.

“Please join other conservative leaders to strategize how to defeat Donald Trump for the Republican nomination,” they wrote in a letter to attendees, according to Politico.

He won’t make it. Hilary will be president. Next!

Need digital training? Email Andy P now

 

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Brands and advertisers! Here’s how to work it on Snapchat

March 16, 2016

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Snapchat now has more young users than Instagram.

The platform’s user penetration among the 18-24 demographic soared from 24% to 58% in 2015, just beating Instagram, which reaches only 55% of those US users.

To target those young consumers, brands on Snapchat are adopting more casual approach.

Unlike the obsessively edited photos that generate lifestyle envy on Instagram, brand Snapchat posts aim for an authentic vibe.

Many feature emojis or hastily scrawled text, attempting to replicate the impromptu style of Snapchat users.

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Nail brand OPI illustrates the differences between branded content on the two platforms.

While the brand uses Instagram to post editorialized product images, it engages Snapchat users with more casual content.

As Snapchat becomes an integral part of social media marketing, chances are other brands will also need to master the casual style requisite for success on the platform.

Need digital marketing training? Email Andy P today.

 

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If a decision is unanimous, it’s wrong, says new study

January 14, 2016

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If a decision is unanimous, it’s probably wrong. The chances of everyone being correct is very small indeed, says a new study.

In a new paper to be published in The Proceedings of The Royal Society A, a team of researchers, Lachlan J. Gunn, et al., from Australia and France has investigated the “paradox of unanimity.”

Getting a large group of unanimous witnesses is so unlikely, according to the laws of probability, that it’s more likely that the system is unreliable.

I’m interested in making beautiful and effective infographics with Furthr.

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Furthr’s new business guidelines – explained!

May 12, 2015

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1. PICK A TARGET

This can be a tip off from your network, or a job ad, or a repeated visit to the Furthr website, a direct enquiry or someone checking your profile of LinkedIn.

These can all be buying signals.

Try to stay inside the target: finance.

2. CREATE IMPACT

To achieve cut through you need impact so your target notices you. At Furthr we write a letter or organize an event.

The crucial point is that impact must occur offline.

The you follow up online…

3. GET A SIGNAL OF INTEREST

It’s easy to guess people’s email addresses. So once you’ve sent them a letter, a week later send them a LinkedIn contact request.  Mention the letter you wrote them.

If they respond, that’s interest. So now you can…

4. CALL THEM

It’s the only way to get people warm. But don’t sell. Use this script instead:

 

ACT ONE: Exposition

Hi!  how are you?

My name’s Andy Pemberton. I own a company called  Furthr.  We help large companies with their comms.

I sent you a letter last week –  have you seen it yet?

ACT TWO: Rising action

We work with  RNLI,  the  United Nations’ World Food Programme,  CISCO and AVIVA.

ACT THREE: CLIMAX

 Can I show you some of our work…?

ACT FOUR: FALLING ACTION

So when’s a good time for a coffee? 

ACT FIVE: RESOLUTION

Maybe I can email it to you?

 

If you can’t get through try an in mail.

 

5. MEET THEM OUTSIDE THEIR OFFICE

Otherwize its all business and the meeting will be cold.

They say 11 points of contact are necessary for a sale. Once you’ve done all this, they will be a bona fide prospect and you can revisit them again and again until they have a problem Furthr can help them with.

Lookout for our event guidelines – coming soon!

 

OTHER TIPS
Go to the top, that’s who refers you. Middle managers will NEVER refer you.

 

 

 

 

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To boost business growth, flip your pyramid

May 11, 2015

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Here at Furthr, we love an organisational pyramid.

In fact we invented our own, called The Content Tree. 

We use it to start thinking about targeting content and developing a tone of voice.

But here is another couple of pyramids we think are very useful.

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These represent the hierarchy of business needs. The most important is brand and that sits at the top.

The blue represents the time a business spends on this stuff. As you will see, many organisations spend the least time of the most important stuff. Why?

According to the Harvard Business Review, “The punishing forces of quarter-to-quarter performance expectations have forced business leaders to scramble for short-term profit gains at the long-term expense of the organisation.”

Most of us can recognise this idea.

Companies spend way too much time on the less important matters of regulatory compliance and operational efficiency – stuff that could perhaps be completed by automated means, while the really important stuff towards the top is overlooked in the rush to meet targets.

But really, businesses should be spending their time like this:

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Revenue growth, business model transformation and brand are the business priorities that help  organizations grow and compete.

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