I think many of you would be surprised by how many businesses do not take advantage of Pinterest. Maybe it's because social media marketing is a constant challenge for small business owners who hardly have time to take a coffee break, let alone post a pin! Pinterest is very important to growing your online presence, building your customer base and driving traffic to your website and blog. However, if you are pinning images without just cause then you are wasting your precious time.
Today, we're going to break down five steps that every entrepreneur should know when it comes to Pinterest for your business. Then, we'll review three big companies and how they have made Pinterest work for their brand and business.
1 | WHAT TO PIN
Organic images of products, employees, workplace culture, event follow-ups, blog photos, infographics and videos are perfect for your account. Re-pin images that are relevant to your business and industry. Remember to keep your personal pins separate for your company pins, or at least create secret boards for personal use.
2 | WHEN TO PIN
3 | CONVERT TO PINTERST FOR BUSINESS
In case you didn't hear, Pinterest now has a "Pinterest for Business" feature. Convert your account to a business account to get discovered by more people interested in your products and/or services. Pinterest has made an ultra-user friendly blog and website just for those of you new to this feature. Click here for more details and FAQ.
4 | FOR YOUR WEBSITE + SOCIAL MEDIA
Be Pin Friendly! Add the "Pin It" or "Follow Me on Pinterest" buttons to each blog post and webpage to make it easier for your audience to find your Pinterest account. Also, when you add organic pins to Pinterest, build in relevant links to your website and/or blog post to increase your clickthrough rate.
5 | BE ORGANIZED
The richer and more organized your Pinterest account content is, the greater opportunity you will have to get noticed and get re-pinned. Separate you Pinterest boards by category and include a short, sweet board description for each board. This will help spread your ideas and is more appealing to your audience's eye.
TIP: Include your company's unique hashtags and other like hashtags on the pin description to increase your pin visibility. Note that hashtags are only clickable in the pin description (not in your profile description)!
BUZZFEED
Uses Pinterest for finding story ideas + trending topics to make their content go viral. Now, Pinterest is BuzzFeed's 2nd largest social media referrer. Read the full success story here.
ETSY
Learned to showcase items for sale in its' marketplace + learned what their customers wanted by monitoring user engagement of pins, re-pins + likes on products. See the case study here.
PETPLAN INSURANCE
Created a Pinterest account to visually showcase its' expertise and convey their brand personality. By pinning the best content for their company, they increased website views to 69% and 97% of those visitors spent more time on their site compared to those from Twitter and Facebook. Read the success story here.