This article is the last in a four-part professional series on how to market yourself online.
In this series about How to Market Yourself Online, we have already talked about Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. But there are other social media marketing avenues out there that you can use to market yourself on-line. Utilize as many of these avenues as possible to gain your advantage. Depending on the industry that you are in, marketing avenues like Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube might be the way to go.
Marketing Yourself Through Pinterest
Especially if you are in a visual-based business like a graphic design, interior design, retail, furniture refinishing, photography, or clothing; Pinterest could be just the source to market yourself. Pinterest is the third biggest social network in the United States behind Facebook and Twitter. Most of this growth happened since 2010. Even before Pinterest dropped their invitation-only format back in August 2012, the service was on track to surpass Yahoo’s organic website traffic that same month. Pinterest is also a referral traffic Mecca, beating out Bing and Twitter with an awesome year-over-year referral rate increase of 2,535 percent. Another study by Shopify shows that referrals from Pinterest are 10 percent more likely to be engaged and those referred to your site spend double the average spend of Facebook referrals.
With that being said, if you are looking to market yourself or your wares, make sure you have a presence on Pinterest. The more pictures that you can take of your work, the higher the quality your pictures are, and the more creative you can be with the products in your pictures, the better you will showcase on Pinterest. Around February 2012, Pinterest also started showcasing a “gifts” tab. This is a specific place for customers to go that are looking for gifts for others. To post one of your products as a gift, all you need to do is add a price in the description of your product when you add it to Pinterest.
Marketing Yourself Through Instagram
Another visual based on-line tool to market yourself is Instagram. With the rise in mobile devices with higher quality cameras, Instagram started in October 2010 to monopolize on this trend. The service was then bought by Facebook in April 2012. Instagram is a social network and photo-sharing service that allows users to take a photo, apply a digital filter, and then share the photo with other Instagram users. 
Instagram can be an effective way to showcase your products. Make sure to optimize your Instagram pictures by using descriptive hashtags and if your website is made in WordPress, there is actually a plug-in that will help you optimize for Instagram. Be creative with your pictures and how you display them. One of the most important things to remember is to be selective about what pictures you upload. If you upload all of your products and services through un-edited pictures, your Instagram photos lose their effectiveness. Lastly, use your other social media accounts to publicize the fact that you are on Instagram, so that your fans on other social media networks know to follow you on Instagram too.
Marketing Yourself Through YouTube
Content is king in today’s digital world and video content is very effective. Back in 2008, YouTube overtook Yahoo! as the number two search engine. If you have the ability to create video content, this could be a major advantage in marketing yourself on-line. As of January 2012, YouTube users watched $4 Billion videos a day. If you can create quality content, this means the odds of your content being found and watched are good.
Whether you are interested in Pinterest, Instagram or Youtube for marketing yourself, you can count on us to help you keep up –to-date on all of the latest trends.
Visit our website Eric Wagner Marketing to learn more! Image Credits: Dirk Dallas
One thought on “How to Market Yourself Online Through Lesser-Known Avenues”