Pinterest and Instagram can seem like personal tools rather than business but both have helped companies to get noticed and drive business, SEO can use these social media tools to help drive business for their clients.
In SEO we get many different clients and in managing their social media it is important to stay on top of all the options. Pinterest and Instagram work very different from Facebook, LinkedIn, and the like in that they focus on images rather than text. I have found that these tools work great for graphic and web design clients and here is why.
1) Instagram
Instagram is a social media application available to smart phone users. The app allows users to take pictures from their camera phone and add filters to the photos to make them look as though they were taken from a film camera. The tool has become widely used by over 90 million people across the world. We can especially see its progress in promotion with celebrities of the music and TV world who get thousands of followers and likes each day.
I say Instagram is especially important for design SEO because it allows web and graphic design companies to share their inspiration and aesthetic. It also allows them to share their office environment and special events that go on in and around their office. Like Twitter, Instagram is all about hash tagging. Users can click on hash tags or search for hashtags to find Instagram accounts they might be interested in following.
One account I find especially interesting in the marketing world is Targetdoesitagain. Whether the account was implemented as a marketing ploy from target or was created organically is uncertain. The account consists of two girls who go to Target weekly and try on the clothing, then Instagram it to their followers. With 67,304 followers I have noticed the cross promotion not only for Target but for the girls’ own fashion blogs. It is niches like this that make Instagram useful for SEO and you can certainly employ the niche to your own on-line marketing if it feels like a good fit.
2) Pinterest
Pinterest is another social media site that is all about sharing inspiration. It is also especially relevant for design clients but can be used for other arenas that seem to fit. On Pinterest, users post pictures from the web that they find interesting or inspiring. Users can also share photos from other Pinterest users.
A big niche for Pinterest is the wedding industry. Pinterest has become a mecca for women sharing the wedding process because it makes it easy to organize the inspiration. From the initial engagement ring inspiration to planning for the actual ceremony, the site is used to get inspired and organized.
It can be used in the same way for web and graphic designers. Using Pinterest to get creative thoughts going about what your clients want in their web or graphic design work can be helpful to you and the client as well as get the word out about the graphic/web design company.
Pinterest and Instagram are both useful tools that are important to think about but it is necessary to realize what SEO clients best fit these tools.