By now, many of you have probably heard about Pinterest: the visual website where thousands of individual users and brands alike are “pinning” images to personalized boards online. Pinterest has helped close the gap of visual culture with technology and social media. Yes, we love to see pretty pictures of outfits, hairstyles, food display, and exotic vacation destinations (okay, so maybe the females do at least!), but Pinterest is beginning to open their doors to brands and businesses, too. Find out how your brand can boost its image through Pinterest!

According to an article by AdAge, a brand’s image strategy must contain the following three elements: audience engagement, audience acquisition, and revenue. Audience engagement refers to a brand finding that niche with their audience. Ask yourself the question, why would people want to visit our page? By investing in high-quality images on your Pinterest board and organizing images into various categories of your company, people will be drawn to these categories by their specific interests, passions, skills or hobbies. However, pinners beware that images won’t direct website traffic to other websites, or worse, your competitors!

Next, audience acquisition asks how brands can convert audience engagement into sharing. Pinterest’s platform helps to make sharing easy through “pinning”. Pinning images simply means clicking a button and tah-dah, your image is instantly uploaded to your own personal board. Making the decision of what to pin may be the trickiest part of audience acquisition. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes: what would that specific demographic want to see? Don’t forget to be creative! Funny, shocking, or aesthetically pleasing images tend to lure in greater audiences.

Finally, revenue targets how much money a brand can bring in. Why not pin deals or promotions on your company’s board? By hounding in on promotions, giveaways and incentives to visit your pin board over your competitors, pinners all over will be drawn in instantly. Who says Pinterest can’t make your brand a few extra bucks? Be creative!

What do you think about Pinterest for brands? Does your company have a Pinterest page? Let us know below! 

As a business owner, marketing professional or social media professional, we like to see numbers. Specifically, how many website hits our business or client is receiving, how much new interest the brand is getting, and increased ROI (return on investment). Essentially, we want to see results. In a recent MarketWatch press release, HootSuite and Adobe announced a partnership to help marketers calculate ROI.

What does this partnership mean for brands?

Here’s the gist. HootSuite will be working with Adobe to automatically calculate on-site social media ROI through connecting social media engagement with website conversions and statistics. By using this quantitative approach, marketers will be able to achieve the best and most accurate results with the actionable data Adobe and HootSuite are providing. This system gives customers a level of information on social engagement ROI including: message efficacy, employee ROI, social account success, ROI per post, and optimizing traffic by determining at what point of the day is the best time to post and generate content through various social channels?

The Adobe and HootSuite partnership enables businesses to utilize analytical measurement tools in one all-inclusive package. Businesses now have a simple “go-to” for measuring data and success that saves on time, money and effort. Here at TRA360 we are all for this new partnership! What do you think? Let us know below!

We all want to be famous and receive worldwide acknowledgment for a talent, skill, idea, or content that we created. But with so many other people and brands out there trying to receive the same recognition, how can you make yourself stand out from the crowd? Whether you are company looking to be widely recognized or an individual looking for overnight fame, the key is figuring out a niche to going viral.

People think that going viral is like winning the lottery: you have a one in a billion chance of winning or making it big. But by nailing down the following two basic characteristics for making content go viral, you’ll be thanking the academy (or Inc. magazine) in no time!

1)    Take a Risk

Everyone’s trying to become noticed and using the same social media platforms to promote their business or themselves. Instead of going along with the current, put yourself out there and do something out of the ordinary! For businesses, this does not mean embarrassing yourself or acting in an unprofessional manner. Think more about individuality and uniqueness; what haven’t people done in your industry or field already that you would be interested in seeing or hearing? Take for instance those YouTube videos that take you by surprise (sneezing panda, anyone?) or an article that makes you gasp. We love content with crazy characteristics because the element of surprise is a nice change from our daily reads. Create a funky video for your company or even conduct a hilarious interview with an unexpected candidate—the possibilities are endless! People will want to share this content with their colleagues, friends, and family members, which could create overnight success!

2)    Discuss a Hot New Topic

Hot topics like new emerging technologies and popular industry trends spread like wildfire. Once a major publication grabs hold of valuable information, you can be assured that major news outlets will be reporting on the same topic, it will be a trending topic in Twitter and become a page on Facebook. But after awhile, the news can become old and repetitive. By finding an interesting topic that hasn’t been widely talked about or sharing your ideas with a unique perspective, people will recognize the uniqueness of your actions and begin to share your content through various social channels. 

SEOmoz is one example of a brand that has taken off virally. As an SEO software development company who has over 114,000 followers and 31,000 fans on Facebook, this brand is doing something right. Staying active on all social channels and generating fresh content definitely helps SEOMoz with their popularity! Check out what CEO and Co-Founder, Rand Fishkin has to say about going viral.

Going viral may sound nearly impossible, but there’s a sea of people out there hungry for refreshing and invigorating content. Why not try becoming the provider? Comment below and let us know what your favorite viral content is and why. We bet you can do it too, but even better!

It’s no surprise that some of the greatest companies on Earth have had their success through great leadership and pioneering. From Apple to Ford, key people have played the role of innovator and saw opportunity in the gaps between what is and what could be. In a world that prizes management skills, it’s easy to overlook a series of traits that set aside the best from the good. It’s leadership ability that helps a company to reinvent, reinvigorate, and revamp in ways that just aren’t possible by optimizing the same old same old.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a mantra that many managers live by. As a result, the companies they inhabit usually die a slow and painful death. Companies that rely on the status quo follow a very similar pattern. Notice the S curve diagram. It can represent the prosperity of company over time, where the peak of the curve is the point where sales are high and competition is weak. Think Microsoft Windows 95. I’m sure the managers at the time did a wonderful job at cutting production costs, marketing and sales. Yet, from that peak, it was difficult to see the incoming threats of other technology companies. The wants and needs of the consumers were rapidly evolving and companies had to adapt and provide value. Changing the way business is done has a lot less to do with managing, and a whole lot to do with leading.

Leaders can inspire. They get upper management involved and clear the path for the team to follow. With great leaders, these changes aren’t just magic tricks. They systematically uproot the old ways of doing things and instill a new culture. The entire process is built on the strategy laid down, with the resources provided, organized processes and tools, proper learning and motivation, the right people in place, and the culture. A great leader can cultivate a team around him or her who is reliable and knows how to manage all of the moving pieces. By having a solid, yet flexible plan from the get-go, a leader can reach for goals that would otherwise be impossible.