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We recently remodeled our house in Seattle. It was quite a large job which included replacing the roof, furnace, windows, doors, floors, and adding a new kitchen and bathroom.

In all we needed 8 specialist contractors to do the work and we needed it done quickly. While early summer is not the best time to request bids as it’s a busy time in the lives of contractors, I was amazed by some of these businesses lack of communication and marketing skills.

Channeling my frustration into some lessons learned, here are 4 of my takeaways from an experience that EVENTUALLY has helped us renovate a home we love living in.

Establish a Response Protocol

When emailing in requests for bids I’d like to think I was pretty thorough with the ask. I’d detail what we needed doing and within what timeframe, and wait patiently for an answer. Sometimes there would be none, sometimes it would take days and sometimes someone called or emailed within 24 hours.

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When we think about using social media for personal branding, most of us would immediately think of LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, right?

Well, what about Pinterest?

At first glance, you may think of Pinterest as an extremely visual-oriented digital book marketing tool that doesn’t fit in your personal branding strategy unless you are in areas such as retail, fashion, arts, design, etc. But Pinterest can be a terrifically complementary to your digital presence and personal brand no matter what niche you are in.

Gemma Craven, Executive Director of Strategic Markets at Spredfast explained in a webinar with Adweek recently that Pinterest has reached significant scale and maturity with more than 70 million users and 1 billion boards.

Moreover, according to a study from Shareaholic, Pinterest drives more traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined. We recently uploaded all of our personal branding articles and blog posts on Pinterest, and it has already become the 3^rd biggest social referral source to Delightful’s website!

So, are you ready to know how to use Pinterest for personal branding? Let’s get started.

Treat Pinterest differently

Pinterest is a unique social platform in many ways:

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In the information age, we are all influenced by the inexhaustible flow of digital media, content, and messages.

All of the time.

The Internet makes it more difficult for brands to manage their online reputation and consumer sentiment because they themselves are not the main source of their own message anymore.

Brands are simply not as authoritative as they used to be:

• Fewer than 10% of shoppers actually visit manufacturer websites when researching a purchase.
• 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations while just 33% trust ads.
• 43% of people say they turn to blogs when they are looking for inspiration.
• 48% of consumers discovered new brands and products, mostly while browsing content online.

(From Influence Now)

So who are sending out the messages that actually influence your consumers? How can you find them in order to build healthy relationships? Should you start an influencer program or campaign in the first place?

A recent e-book >> Influence Now by Linkdex and Momentology answers all these questions for you.

Mel Carson, Delightful’s Founder, has shared his thoughts in the book on what makes a successful influencer.

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Social marketing is increasingly raising companies’ attention as an integrated marketing channel to the business. According to the CMO survey in 2014, Social media spending of marketing budgets is expected to increase 128% to 21.4% in the next five years.

However, many social marketers are still struggling to demonstrate the value of social marketing. Although tons of new social marketing analytics tools are emerging, measuring ROI is still the number one challenge for marketers, according to the 2015 Social Media Marketing Trends Survey by Simply Measured and TrustRadius.

A webinar with Kevin Shively, Sr. Content Marketing Manager at Simply Measured, and Megan Headley, Research Director at TrustRadius, discussed the challenges social markers are facing and provided some insightful tips on what they can do about the challenges.

Here are our top learnings from the webinar on how to make the most out of social marketing and demonstrate its value:

Set Right Goals and Metrics

Why are you using social media? This should be the very first question you ask before setting up the social marketing strategy as it’s crucial for defining the value of any social programs.

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Join Delightful’s Founder – Mel Carson – and the team from PR Week on Wednesday June 24th at 9.30am PST (12.30pm ET) for a webinar in PR Week’s Performance series entitled: Perfecting Your Personal Brand

Here’s the blurb:

From amplifying efforts on behalf of your brand to making you a stronger representative of your current organization to paving a path to genuine thought leadership, establishing a personal brand is a crucial career-advancement element.

In today’s social media age, it is more important – and challenging – than ever to communicate who you truly are and what you stand for. The benefits of doing so effectively – and, conversely, the issues that could come from doing so ineffectively – can have far-reaching impact.

Presented by Mel Carson, founder and principal strategy consultant at Delightful Communications, former digital marketing evangelist at Microsoft, and frequent speaker on the topic, Perfecting Your Personal Brand will be a 90-minute session detailing the key dos and don’ts of establishing and reinforcing your personal brand.

Crafted specifically for communications pros, this is the latest offering in the PRWeek Performance Series, webinars designed to help you do your job better.

Subjects covered in Perfecting Your Personal Brand will include:

• Analyzing and improving your current digital footprint
• Strategies to amplify your best work and instill more trust in your company/clients
• How your personal brand helps you stand out in a competitive workplace environment
• Cutting-edge tips to make a better impression offline
• How to become a thought leader and back up your personal brand claims

Register here for this 90 minute webinar: Perfecting Your Personal Brand Hosted By PR Week

Hope to see you online in a few weeks!

May has been an amazing month for Delightful Communications as we’ve been able to share insights broadly on digital marketing and personal branding both online and in-person.

Earlier this month, Mel was invited by the University of Washington Foster School of Business to talk about social media strategy with the students. In back-to-back lectures to two different classes, Mel talked about integrated digital marketing using social media, big data and content marketing to reach new audiences and satisfy current customer demand.

He then stepped up to talk Personal branding with SEMrush and Simplicity Consulting to share ideas on how to build a compelling presence in a professional capacity both online and off it.

Watch the on-demand webinar below if you missed it…

How to Build a Compelling Online Personal Brand

This month we made two more steps further to perfecting your personal branding strategy:

Step 3:  How to Establish Your Professional Purpose

Step 4: How to Lear to Listen and Practice Empathy

Please sign up to The Delightful Times so you don’t miss a single edition!

Also, check out Mel’s new articles on Entrepreneur.com:

Improve Your Content Marketing to Increase Your Business’s Reach

8 Digital Experts Entrepreneurs Can Learn From

That’s it for this month, thanks for reading!

Bianca Hu – Delightful’s Digital Marketing Specialist

Twitter is a must-have for brands who want to build an engaging community, raise brand awareness, drive web traffic and generate leads. Most marketers are aware of it, but how many of them are utilizing Twitter properly?

A few weeks ago, Mel Carson, Founder of Delightful Communications, was asked by Momentology to provide some thoughts on how brands should effectively use Twitter for marketing.

Their comprehensive Twitter Marketing Guide covers every aspects of Twitter marketing including the characteristics of Twitter, how Twitter Advertising works, successful brand stories, and tips from industry experts, etc.

It is a perfect how-to guide to Twitter Marketing for newbies , but also provides interesting insights that will titillate experienced marketers as well:

• Among all online adults in the United States, 19% use Twitter. Men tend to use Twitter more than women.
• 90% of people consume content; 9% of people occasionally create content; 1% of people are power users and create the majority of content consumed by others on the network.
• More than 78% of Twitter users access the site using a mobile device.
• People who follow businesses online are influenced to take action on company information shared on Twitter more than on any other online channel.

For more insights and tips, see the full guide from Momentology.

And don’t forget to:

Subscribe to The Delightful Times

Follow @Delightful on Twitter

Like the Delightful Facebook Page

Join us on LinkedIn

Thanks for reading,

Bianca Hu – Digital Marketing Specialist

It’s been a great month with lots of awesome industry events both here in the US and in Europe.

Delightful Communications has been busy attending MarTech in San Francisco on behalf of client Majestic.com,  The European Search Awards in Berlin, and HeroConf in Portland  with the guys from Bing Ads sharing and learning about latest digital marketing trends.

The 2015 European Search Awards, hosted by our founder Mel Carson, announced their winners last Wednesday at a glittering gala event in the heart of Berlin. You can read more details on Search Engine Journal in a piece by Matt Southern who Mel was particularly thrilled to have met at last!

Mel Hosting The European Search Awards

April also saw us launch a series of blog posts entitled Personal Branding: 10 Steps to Your Perfect Strategy. Please sign up to The Delightful Times so you don’t miss any editions!

Here are the first two steps:

Step 1: Get a New Headshot – Your New Image Starts With an Image

Step 2: How Discoverable is Your Personal Brand

Also don’t miss out Mel’s new articles on Entrepreneur.com:

Report Highlights Digital Trends Entrepreneurs Need to Know About in 2015

5 Ways to Tell If You’re Doing Social Media Right

That’s it for this month, thanks for reading!

Bianca Hu – Delightful’s Digital Marketing Specialist

Earlier this month, we helped the Bing Ads team create a video of the awesome #JanesOfDigital event that took place at SMX West in San Jose.

The evening mini-seminar slash networking opportunity is the second in an on-going series of get-togethers designed to celebrate women in search and digital marketing.

We partnered with our fabulous editor, Andrew Goddard, at Cherry UK to produce a promo which really captures the atmosphere and buzz surrounding this most excellent occasion.

A particular call out to Sarah Wulf who did an exceptional job as anchor and for asking some great questions, which as you can see, garnered some great answers from the evening’s esteemed panel!

So here is the video. Hope you enjoy…

Like what you’re reading on the Delightful Blog?

Why not Subscribe to our Newsletter  >> The Delightful Times as well?

Regards,

Mel

Keith Reinhard, the chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide, reminded us on Adweek a couple of weeks ago that marketing and advertising have always been about connecting brands with people, and we need to remember that human nature stays pretty constant.

Although the technology landscape is constantly changing, it’s useful to understand and utilize the constants in our lives (and marketing plans) as well.

Twitter Analytics is one tool that can provide valuable data for marketers to understand people, connect with them, and tell stories they love.

Although we’ve been using Twitter Analytics since it was open to the public, the webinar hosted by Twitter last month gave me some deeper insights, especially on how to use the tool for content marketing.

Know Your Audience

Understanding who you are talking to is an essential step before you start talking. Twitter Analytics can help you with this by providing visualized and easy-understanding data about your followers.

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