Weekly roundup: 5 social media marketing tips, trends and tactics

The secrets to Pinterest success

Posting social media pictures is a great start to engaging with customers on image-heavy platforms, but not all pictures have the same value and likelihood of user engagement. Ripen eCommerce recently revealed six keys to success for getting repins on Pinterest:

• Eliminate faces. Images without faces have 23 percent more repins.
• Post tall pictures. Tall images are shared 67 percent more often than short images.
• Let the light shine. Lighter images are repinned 20 times more than dark images.
• Target 200 to 300 characters. This pin length is shared 57 percent more often than ones shorter or longer in length.
• Give it a price tag. Users are 36 percent more likely to like pins with prices.
• Tell users what to do. Calls to action increase engagement by 80 percent.

Read more at Marketing Pilgrim

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf debuts its #PurpleStrawCam Instagram filter

Customers like to be creative on social media, so the coffee and tea chain has given them the prop to do so—its signature purple straw. In its campaign for ice blended drinks, Instagram users are encouraged to get creative with their filters by creating a #PurpleStrawCam by cutting off an inch of the purple straw and holding it to the lens of their smartphone camera. Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf has taken user-generated content to a new level by tapping into the creative, inventive spirit of Millennials.

Read more at Marketing Land

3 lessons from BuzzFeed's "What City Should You Actually Live In" quiz

Every BuzzFeed quiz in the "What City" series is essentially the same, so how do the quizzes get 500,000 views within 22 hours of being published? One secret to the high volume of clicks is simple: create interactive content since it's six times more likely to engage readers, according to consulting firm DDI. With high hopes to publish engaging content, here are three tips from Seth Lieberman, founder and CEO of content marketing platform SnapApp:

1. Tap into the human desire to test by creating quizzes and assessments
2. Repackage content and give it a new twist
3. Combine brain power to create a quiz that has a quick turnaround

Read more at It's All About Revenue

Social media performance beyond the like

For years, brands have measured the success of their social media efforts by looking at the number of likes and followers, but now they're shifting to measure based on brand lift, purchase intent, click-through and sales mainly because organic reach on Facebook and Twitter has decreased, according to Matt Britton, CEO of digital shop MRY. Britton told DigiDay that organic reach has plummeted because of Facebook's revised news feed algorithm and the massive number of brand tweets. Followers are often just a number and don't represent the ability for a brand to reach customers. Instead, social media agency Laundry Service has steered its focus to user comments to see whether the customers are perceiving the brand as the brand hoped.

Read more at DigiDay

Insights into reaching the Snapchat generation

Marketers are desperate to reach Millennials and Generation Z since they hold the buying power, but the perfect strategy for capturing their attention has yet to be uncovered. Based on what these customers are looking for, here's how marketers can reach the Snapchat generation, according to Natalie Waterworth, Millennial engagement expert and co-founder of Talented Heads:

• They want to share everything, so marketers need to give them social media platforms such as Secret, Whisper and Snapchat where privacy limits are tested. Younger generations are "known for their digital savvy, entrepreneurial spirit and somewhat lax regard for personal privacy," writes Waterworth.
• They engage on niche social networks, which is prime territory for marketers to reach a captive audience of customers who are passionate about a particular subject.
• They master the art of multitasking and collaboration. Whether streaming videos on Ustream or video chatting on FaceTime, being able to access content in a multi-screen world is of utmost importance.

Read more at The Guardian