Social media is awesome, isn’t it? You can reach out to your clients via Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ and even meet new people, bringing them in and turning them into customers. There are so many excellent social channels out there that you might start to feel a bit overwhelmed and wonder just what else, outside of the social media trinity, you should use.
Well, I am here to tell you about an incredible social channel that you might just be overlooking – Pinterest. That’s right! I am going to show you why you need to add this channel to your mix, as well as how you can use it successfully for your business.
5 Major Reasons Why You Should Be Using Pinterest for Your Business
Pinterest is a great resource for businesses, and can give you a wider reach and range for your audience. Here are some great reasons why you should be using it.
1. More Than 70 Million People Use It and 93 Percent of Those People Are Buyers. That’s right. The 70 million users is a stat from Wikipedia a few years ago, so it’s safe to say this may have even doubled by now. And Shopify is saying that two million people pin product pins daily, while 93 percent of all Pinterest users actually use Pinterest to plan purchases.
2. You Can Use Pinterest to Help Increase Traffic. According to Jessica Meher from Hubspot, a great reason to use Pinterest is to help increase traffic. Research on the amount of traffic Pinterest provides shows that it can actually bring in more people than Facebook or Twitter, which is great for all websites. This is definitely amazing if your site is new or you rely on your site to help drive sales and bring in new customers.
3. You Will See High Amounts of User Engagement. Pinterest is amazingly addictive for anyone who uses it, and many people love to interact on it. In the article mentioned above, Jessica Meher points out that you will see more engagement on Pinterest simply because many people are on it and addicted to it. This means that they are very likely to pin, favorite, and comment on your pins while they spend their time browsing through the channel.
4. It Will Help Strengthen Your Brand. You can use Pinterest to strengthen your brand and drive trust among your client base. According to Nicole Kohler from Shareaholic, a great way to use Pinterest to strengthen your brand is to bookmark mentions of your brand and products. This will help you keep track when people mention your brand, giving you the chance to interact with them. This can help promote engagement, trust, and, as I’ve mentioned, strengthen your brand. It will also help you stand out from your competitors if you are regularly seeking out and engaging with your customers.
5. You Have Easy Access to Market Research. One of the great things about Pinterest is that you get the chance to do excellent market research easily. Pinterest gives you the ability to see what your users want to see while keeping you updated on the latest trends. You can follow your clients back and easily watch what they post and see just how they use social media, helping you create and curate excellent content for them.
Here Are 9 Top Ways to Successfully Use Pinterest for Your Business
Now that you know a few excellent reasons about why you should use Pinterest, let’s take a look at just how you can use it successfully.
1. Integrate Pinterest With Your Website, Twitter and Facebook. A great way to use Pinterest is to integrate it with your website, as well as your other social channels such as Twitter and Facebook. You can set it up so Pinterest updates your Facebook and Twitter pages when you make a new pin, helping to drive your existing social media followers to your account. To integrate it with your website, you can include “Pin It” buttons to encourage visitors to pin product images to their own Pinterest accounts.
2. Learn What Your Audience Wants to See. You need to do some basic client research to be sure that when you use Pinterest, you are sharing what your clients want to see. You can create personas, but simply following your clients and taking a look at their boards can help you figure out what they pin and like to see. When you understand your Pinterest audience, you can then start to develop things that are interesting to them, helping bring about engagement and driving more people to your website.
3. Focus On the Quality of Your Pins. Trying to find the best time to post to social media is something many people look for to help bring about more clicks and views. However, according to Kevan Lee from Buffer, when it comes to Pinterest, you need to focus on the quality of your pins and not when you post. High-quality pins are more important to Pinterest users and many people are on Pinterest at varying times. When you post something that is high quality, you have a higher chance having more people pin your pins and click on the links.
4. Create Excellent Captions With Each Pin. Just like with your blogs and other social media posts, the headlines and captions on Pinterest are vital. When you create a pin, make sure you have an amazing caption that can capture a user’s attention, convincing them to click. Focus your attention on making something that is engaging that gives clients enough information to be curious but not too much information that keeps them from looking further at your website.
5. Make Sure You are Driving Traffic to Your Site. You might be sharing a lot of interesting pins, but when using Pinterest, you need to make sure that you drive traffic to your site. For example, when you share a product image or an image from your blog, make sure to “Pin It” directly from your website. This will link back to your site visibly on Pinterest and will make it easy for a user to click on the image, taking them to the product or blog you are linking to. The only way to see the amazing traffic that Pinterest provides is to make sure you link back to your site.
6. Add a “Pin it” Button On Your Landing Pages and Blogs. As I mentioned earlier, adding a “Pin It” button to your website is a great way to integrate your account with your site. Make sure the button is on each of your landing pages and product pages, as well as your blog. This will help make it easier for your clients when they want to share something from your site they find interesting.
7. Have Proper Pinterest Etiquette. Just as in normal life and on other social media channels, having proper etiquette is great when approaching Pinterest. This can help you be more successful when using the social channel. Some good ideas for etiquette are to be nice, give credit to any sources you use, and don’t be overly self-promotional. You can also comment on your clients’ pins when they pin something from your website, and just maintain a fun, great client-business relationship.
8. Add Your Keywords and Use Hashtags. When you create your captions, be sure to include your keywords in the description. This will help someone locate your pins when they are searching through Pinterest for those keywords, just like when they are searching Google.
You can also include hashtags in your Pinterest post. This will help categorize your pin with a specific hashtag such as #weightloss or #shorthair. In addition, Anna Bennett from Business 2 Community says that it will help if you have your Twitter and Pinterest linked. This means that once you make a pin and it is sent out over Twitter, you already have the hashtags in place.
9. Use Secret Pinterest Boards to Curate Content. You don’t want to overwhelm your Pinterest followers with several pins all at once, but you also don’t want to lose the great content you’ve found. A great idea from Cynthia Sanchez at Social Media Examiner is to create secret boards that only you can see and curate excellent content.
This can help you with your whole social media strategy, as well as a blogging strategy. But it can also help you keep all of the excellent content you find in an easy-to-access location. Once you set up these boards, you can always go through the pins and begin pinning them throughout the week.
Pin Away, My Fine Friends
As you can see, Pinterest is a great social media resource and there are many ways you can use it for the betterment of your business. If you don’t have a Pinterest account, go ahead and set one up and start pinning.
By Julia McCoy
