Your business needs to be using Pinterest. Period.
With Pinterest generating more referrals than YouTube, Google+, Linkedin, and Reddit combined, that’s precious web traffic you’re missing out on if you’re not using Pinterest. If your business relies on your website to fuel your sales and marketing, the advantages are obvious.
So let’s just get right to it, shall we? Here are 6 reasons your business should be using Pinterest:
Improve Your Website’s SEO
While you might think of Google and Bing first when discussing search engines, most social media networks are actually dynamic search engines on their own.
Pinterest is no different. There are millions of searches every month on Pinterest, and combined with its quickly growing popularity, it’s an ideal platform for targeting SEO efforts.
Getting to the top of search results involves generating (and making good use of) social signals. Given how Bing includes pins in image searches and Google positively indexes your website based on high engagement, there’s an opportunity Pinterest to help your business to rank above your competitors.
Pinterest’s popularity presents many opportunities for backlinks if you pin images from your website. From your products to your blog posts, convince users to pin your stuff by adding an on-hover “Pin It” button as a pleasant reminder to pin your images.
Approximately 95% of the images on Pinterest are either pinned or re-pinned from the web. Therefore, it is necessary to make sure all of your images can be found by saving them with keywords and hyphens to help them appear in a typical search engine search.
The naming and description is also important when uploading to Pinterest.
- Ensure the description describes both the image and your business accurately.
- With search engines only being able to read the alt tags, the description of your image on Pinterest helps it rank within the platform
- Detail the pin with between 200-300 characters, but do it naturally and avoid sounding like spam
- It’s important to use searchable keywords for not just pins, but Pinterest boards as well
Brand Awareness
With consumers preferring to associate with brands on Pinterest more than other social media platforms, there’s no time like now to create a Pinterest for business page.
Choose an optimized company username and optimize your about section. You only have 200 characters to describe your business, be sure to include a few of the important keywords that have driven people to your website.
If your business is involved in volunteer initiatives, create compelling boards and pins that present the amazing work your company is doing. Reflect on the values important to your business and you will be pleasantly surprised that many others are interested in the same things and will create a stronger bond with your business.
According to Heidi Cohen, the average pin is 100 times more viral than a tweet and yields:
- 2 website visits,
- 6 page views and
- Over 10 re-pins.
Evidently, Pinterest is an effective tool to raise awareness about your brand.
Understand and Grow Your Customer Base
Using Pinterest is a fantastic way to get to know your customers. Much like other social media networks, you’re able to gain information about how connected users are to your brand, all in a matter of minutes.
By reviewing the sites your audience most frequently pins from, you are able to learn what motivates your potential customers and can change your plan accordingly. You can learn what your customers are interested in, what products are trending in certain groups and, more importantly, what users want to buy.
Pinterest shoppers spend significantly more than on any other social media channel. According to RichRelevance, Pinterest purchasers spend an average of $168.83 per order, compared to $94.70 and $70.84 on Facebook and Twitter, respectively.
This is mostly because Pinterest reduces the number of steps from discovery to conversion better than any other social media platform. Clear social proof shows an interest in the item — it’s as easy as see it, like it, buy it.
Share Valuable Information
You would be hard pressed to find a more trusted social network than Pinterest, as 81% of U.S. online consumers trust the information and advice they receive from the platform. If that isn’t a reason to share valuable content, I’m not sure what is.
The best content shared on Pinterest is content that is easily digested, most commonly infographics. Infographics are an excellent way to drive traffic to your website and cross promoting content on your other channels helps build credibility.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to create all the content that you pin on Pinterest! Share from a carefully-vetted combination of sources to ensure your boards contain the most accurate and useful information available.
Collaborate With Others
It’s well known that Google+ and LinkedIn offer the best spots for conversation and conversion within their groups. Pinterest offers the same opportunities for businesses by giving you the ability to create group boards.
Collaborate with clients and prospects by inviting other users to pin to your board. Every platform has influencers who stand out within their industry. Relationships with those influencers can benefit your business.
Take the time and make the effort to comment on various influencers’ pins. This will encourage meaningful relationships that result in visibility with new audiences.
Analyze Your Success
How do you know if your efforts on Pinterest are working? Fortunately, they’ve made it easy with their Pinterest Analytics, having worked hard on developing a platform that contains valuable information for your business.
“We’re excited to announce a smarter analytics tool to help businesses continue to improve how they work, with meaningful insights about what their customers are interested in,” Pinterest wrote in their blog. “We hope this helps you improve how you do business—whether it’s updating your product offerings after seeing what’s popular on Pinterest, or changing how you pin based on what’s trending with Pinners.”
The new analytics tool gives advice on impressions, clicks, and re-pins, so your business can edit and change your Pinterest strategy as you see fit. In their site metrics you can also see the daily number of pins, re-pins, people who saw your pins, and the number of clicks to your website.
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Remember that Pinterest is a social network filled with visually-driven and community-oriented people. Extensive opportunities exist for collaboration, building your brand, and boosting your SEO.
The time is now for your business to start using Pinterest!
(original article)
