How Using Pinterest Can Impact Your Business

As a visual "Pinning Board" of everything imaginable to the mind - Pinterest has swept social media platforms for the last two years, and will continue to rapidly grow.  Data collected in January has shown that Pinterest has been leading more traffic to websites than Google+ and LinkedIn combined. As well, as of September Pinterest became the 2^nd largest reference to landing pages behind Facebook.

If you are not impressed, then I do not know what else to tell you!

So why not benefit from this thing called Pinterest?? You’re probably thinking that it’s just something that girls use to look up hairstyles, makeup, clothes, food, and ridiculous DIY things, right?? And you’re probably thinking how can it help my business??

Well...here I will TELL you, and SHOW you, how to benefit your business by using Pinterest - and why you should invest your time and energy into this social media phenomenon. 

How do I use Pinterest for Business?: 

1) Create Your Profile

• If you go to business.pinterest.com you can create your business account.
• Make sure you make this profile detailed and eye-catching to make your business stand out. (Tip!: Use your Logo!)
• From here, you can add “Pin-it” Buttons to your website to start the “pinning” process

2) Create Boards:

• When making boards for your business, you want to represent your business and highlight your personality and culture.
• Create easy titles for the boards so that they are easily searchable.
• Start by pinning your products, pictures, blog, info-graphics, and other things relevant to your business.
• Now, you can pin other pinners pins! This is great for interacting with other pinners to start getting re-pins, impressions, interactions, and leads.

3) Engaging Your Audience and Other Pinners:

• Invite people to follow you!
• Making your website “pinable” is the best way to engage people. This is because it will be easy for people to link back to your website from pins, and make it easy for people to pin from your website.
• Constantly pinning engages others to pin. Followers, bloggers, and consumers always appreciate fresh content.
• Add follow buttons to your website and add Pinterest buttons to blogs/social media posts. This will grab the attention of people and it will let them know that you are a Pinterest connoisseur.

 4) Descriptions and Pins:

• Make the descriptions clear and not wordy - It has to be searchable. Think of it as SEO.(Tip!: do not stuff with hashtags and keywords)
• Pictures should be very clear, not too much text in image, and long pictures typically look better on the page.
• Make your pins/descriptions timeless, NO PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL. This is because Pins will not go away! They will always be there!
• Use “Rich” pins! Along with a verified account, "Rich" pins will get you higher search engine results.

“What makes a good Pin description? Check out these tips:

Recipes: Describe the main ingredients of the dish and how to cook it

Fashion: Include what kind of clothing, the designer or season to wear it

Travel: Tell people the location and the kinds of things you can do there

DIY: Describe what it is, how you make it and what materials people need

Photography: Name the photographer, year, subject or publication

Design: Mention the designer, medium, publication, etc”

Is it for me?:

You may think that not all businesses fit the “Pinterest Profile”, the truth is that your right. Not every social media platform will be fitting for your business, but Pinterest is so diversified that, really, anything goes.

Since you can pin pictures that lead to articles on your website, almost any business can utilize Pinterest even if your business offers services and not tangible products.

Some examples of Businesses using Pinterest Effectively:

 Sony:

In a summer launch email, Sony included Pin It buttons next to all of their images and saw products get repinned from the email more than 3,000 times.

Ben and Jerry’s:

 With 23 boards, 683 pins and 3,372 followers, a modest number for such a global and well-loved brand (I’d be well-loved too if I spent all day making ice cream), Ben and Jerry’s does a great job in providing a warm and inviting Pinterest experience.

The People Behind the Pints Board and History Board are an effective way to let users go behind the brand and provide a personal connection they may not get via other channels.

 Lowes:

With 50 boards featuring 1,903 pins and a huge 3,509,845 followers, the American home improvement chain Lowe’s is one of the most popular brands on Pinterest, and with good reason.

Lowe’s rarely pins its own products, instead it has created a vast mood-board of ideas and creative sparks for the budding DIY enthusiast from a variety of resources.

Reap the Rewards:

I have covered the ground work on how to establish yourself, and your business, as a Pinterest Pro. Now, let me explain how beneficial it is.

1) Increased exposure:

• With Pinterest exposure is everywhere. Being exposed on Pinterest allows you to be even more exposed on other social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Google+, and Facebook with the help of the "Pin"/"Follow" buttons.

 2) Quality leads:

• The nice thing about Pinterest is that it's almost like Google in the sense that people are searching for what they want and when they click on your pin, they can be sent to your website with a purpose. From here they can potentially trickle through the sales funnel.

3) Easy to use and track:

• Pinterest is very applicable and you can add buttons to anything you want to pin/expose.
• They also have an analytics page where you can track what pins/boards are doing better than others, then you can manipulate your profile. You can also track your audience and their interests.
• Easy to track leads to your website.

The Bottom Line:

Making yourself visible on Pinterest is a smart marketing tool. Pinterest will just continue to grow and be used more and more everyday. This continual popularity makes the benefit of Pinterest astronomic. So why not take a chance on it and gain quality leads, exponential social media exposure, and increased traffic to your website? It's a no brainer!

 *Thank you Cur Laser and Skin for letting me demonstrate your Pinterest!

About the Author:

Jaymee Porter is the newest addition to the LocalTrifecta team through our Internship Program. She is a recent graduate from New Mexico State University that holds a BA in Communication Studies and Minors in both Marketing and Advertising. As well, she is a retired Springboard and Platform diver for NMSU. Jaymee's passion within Inbound Marketing is Social Media. So, you can catch up with her on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. In her spare time, she likes to eat frozen yogurt, and participate in CrossFit as well as Hot Yoga!