Who’d have thought that the online equivalent of a corkboard and pins would have revolutionised how brands are marketed? And yet the social media phenomenon that is Pinterest is changing the way brands are marketed online for good – especially to its predominantly female audience. So what exactly does the channel offer for marketers and how are businesses using it imaginatively?

1) A new twist on the old

Of course mood boards to illustrate a marketing concept is nothing new for anyone in a traditional marketing department, but how to translate that into a useful and meaningful campaign that means something to their customer audience has always been the hard part. Now however marketers can not only push out their own versions of their mood boards but see the concepts, items and ideas that inspire their customers too – their own moodboards as it were. (more…)

With two jam-packed days of content, frequent networking opportunities and the best of the industry at your fingertips, it’s easy to miss some of the messages being spread at #SMWF N. America.

Merlin Ward, account strategist at Renegade, has six lessons from some of social media’s brightest brains at last year’s New York show:

1. Pair Your Social with Ads

Chris Thorne, Vice President of Social Media & Media at EA, the sports game developer, found that content was more effective when coupled with Facebook advertising. They put extra care into creating content that users could “play” with, essentially gamifying their Timeline; then they made the monetary spend to promote it to as many users as possible. The result was more than just extended reach—they increased virality and sales.

2. Your Content Doesn’t Work Everywhere

Morgan Baden, Director of Social Media and Internal Communications for the book publisher Scholastic, shared their failures and successes with Pinterest. Pinterest is a natural social network for this brand, but they found that not all content is created equal. While female users enjoyed sharing book covers and special quote memes from books, photographs for events and other physical spaces didn’t attract the same interest. It seems that content made for collecting does the best on Pinterest, while amateur point-of-view photography is better left on the shelf.

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Pinterest has made a big dent in the world of social sharing in the past year. Quickly shooting up the social media pyramid, Pinterest ranked as number three social media website in a recent Experian Hitwise report following Facebook & Twitter and just ahead of LinkedIn.

Having gained a reputation for being a predominately female with anything from 72% to 97% of its users base reported as being female, the platform has has offered a new way for marketing managers to connect and engage with this demographic. (more…)

#SMWF is very pleased to announce that Wildfire, the social media marketing tool designers, has come on board as a Platinum Sponsor for the event at the Sentry Centers, New York on Nov 27^th – 28th, alongside speaking at the social marketing track.

Wildfire’s opinions and insight will undoubtedly be highly sought, being partnered by Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Youtube, Google+ and Facebook – all the big players in the social media sphere.

In July, the marketing startup announced what they described as “a new chapter to the story”, being snapped up by Google for £159 million ($250m). Over four years Wildfire has built up their company from 5 to nearly 400 employees, as well as serving over 21000 customers.

Wildfire will be joined by speakers from McDonald’s, Boston Celtics, Shell, P&G, FedEx, foursquare and many more. To find out more information on the social marketing track please click here.