How to Make Pinterest Your Brand’s Own

Callan Green, Senior Social Media Specialist at Sony, joins the Social Pros Podcast this week to discuss the layout of Sony’s social media team, how to find success on Pinterest, and playing to strengths on different platforms.
Read on for some of the highlights and tweetable moments, or listen to the full podcast.

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Tweetable Moments

“Take the afternoon and make something really cool, you’ll have a good piece of content.” -@callanpaola (tweet this)

“Twitter and Facebook are very different avenues. I see them as complementary.” -@callanpaola (tweet this)

“Social moves so fast that you have to continue doing these refresher courses for all employees.” -@jaybaer (tweet this)

Driving Influence for a Visual Brand

The Sony Social Media team is broken up in an interesting way: instead of being divided by platform or time, they divide their efforts by strengths and interests. Callan spends her time working on influencer relations and integrating social strategies with Sony’s traditional marketing. She also tests new platforms and devises strategies for expanding to them. Another team member is devoted to product launches, and another focuses on the commerce aspect of social. These team members work from the same office in San Diego.

The “post-purchase team” also uses social (in additional to traditional channels like phone and email) to reach out to customers who have already bought a Sony product.
Sony joined Pinterest back in December 2011, right as the platform was becoming popular. They’ve been pinning to the Sony Pinterest page largely within three winning categories: direct product pins from their web store (which have been surprisingly popular, Callan finds), brand affinity pins of Sony-related artwork, and community acquisition pins where they try to reach out beyond the tech-type people who interact with the brand on Facebook.
The Sony social communities are very active, with many users creating content on a regular basis. This is a major factor that allows Sony to be so successful on visual platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. Callan warns against brands “jumping on Pinterest without knowing what your assets are first.” Many companies would be better served expending their social energy elsewhere.

Social Media Stat of the Week: 55% executives concerned about confidential information being leaked via social

While most executives seem to agree that the benefits far outweigh the potential risks, a recent McKinsey study reveals that most global executives have concerns about the risks associated with using social technology. 55% of the executives interviewed were concerned about confidential information being leaked over social media, and 40% feared that social would encourage abuse of intellectual property and distraction from core tasks.

The way to mitigate these concerns is through education, both for the executives in question and for their employees. As the landscape changes so quickly, the risks are changing with it. “Social moves so fast and the norms change so quickly that you have to continue doing these refresher courses for all employees, from executives all the way down,” says Jay.
Many CEOs don’t have enough time to fully understand these changes and might be gleaning their information from skimmed headlines. As Jeff puts it, “You can’t make plans for everything but you can create very solid teams with good abilities to react in negative situations to the best of their experience to head off something that could be a bad situation.”

Social Pros Shoutout

“This is corny,” Callan admits, “but I learn the most from the Sony social media team. They’re absolute geniuses.” Gina Campbell, Jennifer Martin, Katie Levien, Kathleen Ngo, and Reena Leone are some of the women that Callan works with who work so hard to build the Sony brand on social.
She also admires the COO and President of Sony, Phil Molyneux. He just started using Twitter to look outside his normal job role and embrace new technologies. “I’ve worked with many executives in my career and I have never seen someone so naturally good at it.”
See you next week!