How to Use Pinterest for Business

Pinterest is a top ten social network, sitting above big names like LinkedIn and Google+. It refers more traffic than Yahoo and will soon be the fourth largest traffic source in the world. Reports suggest that Pinterest is the third-largest social network in the U.S., behind only Facebook and Twitter. It is currently looking to expand into overseas markets, such as France, Germany and Japan.

“Can I use it for business?” Yes, you can – and here Shinesquad shows you how:

Pinterest is to visually share, curate, and discover new interests by ‘pinning,’ images or videos to their own or others’ pinboards. The goal here is to gain brand recognition, drive traffic to your website and be successful at converting the new visits into leads. But without showing off your products or services directly. It’s about finding creative ways to show how those products and services fit into the lifestyles of your target audience. Authenticity is key. Brands would be smart to incorporate a rewards-based strategy for their most loyal contributors and publicly promote these followers as brand advocates.

As Pinterest puts it, this is a social network meant to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.” Girls and women make up a large portion of its user base. According to wikipedia: The site has been popular with American women and, in 2012, it was reported that 83% of the U.S. users were women. In Britain, however as of March 2012, 56% of the users were male and their age profile was different too, being about 10 years younger than in the U.S. where the age range was typically 35-44.

For retailers, Pinterest users tend to spend more than from users coming from Facebook and is more effective at driving traffic compared to other social media sites, even Facebook and certainly more than Google+. Encourage online purchase decisions: Adding a dollar sign ($) to a description automatically adds a price to a pin and allows your image to show up in the gift section – and therefore increases the potential for purchase. Other currency symbols should be added soon.

More Links

It’s great for link building too and if you are using the “Pin It” button on your pages, every single one of your pins will include a link back to the source. The business value is that pinners visit your pages in just one click.

Pin it Back

To find out who’s been pinning you use this link: http://pinterest.com/source/yourblog.com

More Eyeballs

The site now connects with Facebook, enabling users to automatically post new pins to their Facebook feed for others to see.

Get Pinned

Add a “Pin It” button to your product pages, so visitors can pin your products onto Pinterest. Add a Pinterest “follow” button to your website, alongside your buttons for Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and install a “Pin It” button on your own browser in the bookmarks toolbar so you can “pin. ” All buttons can be found on the Pinterest Goodies page and are easy to install.

Open to All

Pinterest now has open registration, dropping its invite-only approach. Users can now sign up for the social photo sharing website without waiting for an invitation, according to Pinterest’s official blog. Now, prospective pinners can register using their email addresses, or log in with their Facebook or Twitter accounts.

Pinning on other Social Platforms

Register your account with the same email address you use for your business Twitter account – remember that there’s no connection to Facebook business pages. There are some apps that could be used to get this content onto your Facebook pages.

Co-pinning

Boards can have multiple contributors, so collaborating with co-workers on a project is easy with everyone’s ideas and inspiration in one place.

Settings

Choose your company name as your username and complete your profile information, including a company description, logo, and a link to your website. Make sure that you are visible to search engines.

It’s not all about me, me, me.

“Pinterest is designed to curate and share things you love. If there is a photo or project you’re proud of, pin away! However, try not to use Pinterest purely as a tool for self-promotion.”

Follow

A person can follow a specific board by a Pinterest user or a user’s account.  When following a board you only will be notified (via your stream) when a user pins a new piece of content to that board. When following a user, you will be notified every time a user pins content to any of his or her boards.

Keywords

Create boards based on a few core keywords that you already use in your SEO strategy.

Hashtags

Pinterest supports the usage of hashtags so you can tag your pins and make their content even more search-friendly.

Visual Content

Showcase your company’s culture with photos and infographics – even data can be made to look interesting. Use creative shots in your company blog and pin them with a link to the article. Hold a contest and get followers to tell you what they love about your brand, products, or services. Ask them to pin in your “Guest Gallery.”  Use your analytics tools to understand what images work and what don’t. Use the separate video tab to showcase your brand with a call-to-action. If you don’t have good content and aren’t willing to support others with good content, Pinterest is not right for your brand. If you want good content then contact us.

There are apps for Android, iPad and iPhone. The apps are  available for download at Apps.Pinterest.com.

Pinterest for Android, iPad and iPhone

Here’s a link to one of our users and for 360 audit of your social media strategy please contact us at social@shinesquad.com