I’m sure many of us have spent hours poring over beautiful images on Pinterest, looking at everything from interior design, to pictures of pets, to the best duvet sets out there, to ideas for your next birthday party.
But how can a business utilise the Pinterest effect?
Pinterest is often used to inspire people – users tend to access the platform to look for inspiration for their latest project. It may not be obvious how beneficial using Pinterest could be for all businesses – for some, it may work better than for others. But this is also the case for all the other social media platforms – one company may fly on Twitter but have minimal engagement on Facebook.
As a business, you can set up a business account on Pinterest. This type of account will give you additional benefits over a personal account, including access to analytics. Once you have created your account, you can then start to set up your business’s board (this is where you’ll add your ‘pins’ to), so you’ll need to think of a name for the board that emphasises and compliments your business, and it’s branding.
An easy way to test the water of your business’s effectiveness on Pinterest is to design some simple ‘pins’ to load onto the platform. Each pin that you produce needs to have a link behind it – this could be a link to your website, your online shop, an article you would like to drive people to.
As well as designing your own pins, you are also able to save pins from other sites, forums etc. As ever, be certain that anything you are pinning to your business board is relevant to your brand and does not in any way in conflict with it.
The platform works in two ways – as much as you should be trying to post new pins at least once every day, you also need to engage with other users and brands on the site. It’s worth following brands you resonate with – perhaps not competitors, though – so that you can comment, share and engage with them too.
As with every social media platform that you may choose to use for your business, you will likely not know the benefits until you try it. So, set yourself a target of pinning once per day for a set amount of time, measure the analytics of that time, look at how many leads you have gained as a result, and assess whether Pinterest could be the right platform for your business.
If you would like to understand more about the benefits of Pinterest for Business and how it could be integrated into your marketing strategy, then please contact us.
If you would like to read more about social media for business, we have more blog articles here and here
