Pinterest's digital bulletin board is quickly becoming the preferred marketing tool amongst its social media counterparts for big and small businesses alike. With its branding-oriented features like do-it-yourself promoted pins and its recently updated analytics, Pinterest for Business is a must-have for those who need their aesthetics and visual elements front and center. Though Facebook and Twitter still rein king over content-sharing, Pinterest is quickly becoming the single most important networking site for having your brand discovered and tapping into core customer bases. Here is a quick overview of what Pinterest is, who uses it, what its business applications are, and how they can benefit you with the right approach.
Pin-what?
Pinterest is an online social media platform for sharing and saving, or "pinning", collections of content on virtual pinboards. Available through its website or its mobile app, Pinterest boasts a unique older female-dominated demographic that has a proclivity towards do-it-yourself home and fashion projects, arts and crafts, food and drink recipes, and health and fitness tips. Though the site features ever category of ecommerce ranging from technology to finance to construction, many do consider it a niche site akin to Etsy's products and sensibilities.
Interest in Pinterest?
With over 30 billion items pinned and three-quarters of a billion boards created during its only three-year tenure, Pinterest has the fastest growing amount of members with over 70 million users. While some believe this pales in comparison to Facebook's 1.19 billion active users or Twitter's 250+ million users, they could not be more misinformed as to the size of customer base. With nearly 45% of Pinterest users preferring brand and retailer association, Facebook cannot compete with its measly 24%. This means that not only is there a sizable group of people to reach out to with your brand, but there is a far greater viability of converting them into one of your consumers. Similarly, those on Pinterest categorically spend more money more frequently than any other kind of social media user. On average, the purchases that are driven through Pinterest are practically twice the cost as those driven through Facebook and Twitter, meaning that while Pinterest doesn't have the largest flow of traffic, it does have the most lucrative.
How to Pin to Win
Now that you have learned about Pinterest's sales power, it is time to get a slice of that action. Your first move is to either create a free business account if you are a Pinterest newcomer or convert your existing personal account to a business page. Once you have your business page, you will need to set up your profile and customize it with the applicable information, ie: what kind of business you have, where it is located, what your products or services are, and any other pertinent details to establish your brand. Next, familiarize yourself with the interface and how to pin and organize content on your boards. Be sure that you know how to navigate your home feed of recent pins from other users and use that search bar to explore specific categories as well.
Once you feel comfortable operating Pinterest, it is time to incorporate all of its business features and techniques to work for you.
Images or Videos: A key aspect of Pinterest resides in the fact that it is very much a visual platform. With each pin featuring an image or video, style and form is foremost when grabbing a user's attention. While you of course want the content of your pin to be something useful and engaging, it's equally important that it looks the part to immediately generate interest. Remember, "clickability" is a critical part of successful branding on this network.
Strategies: Regardless of your business, service, or product, use your business page with particular goals in mind. This means using a comprehensive strategies and interactivity consisting of liking, commenting, and sending pins, tagging other users, using hastags to integrate other social networks, creating gift guides, playlists, or reading lists, or even event planning or brainstorming. However you decide to implement your business page for promotion, have a clear idea of what you want and how to use other elements to compliment each other.
Re-pins: A useful tip for businesses that don't generate a lot of their own content or have trouble reaching new users is to "re-pin" another person's pin. While you don't want to overdo this, re-pins are an easy way to get others to check your brand out. By scanning through your home feed, the categories you want to tap into, and implementing specific keywords in your searches, you will readily find the right content to repost that aligns with your business's image or marketing strategy.
Rich Pins: These five different kinds of pins simply pack more information than their traditional counterpart to make them more useful. Whether its Place Pins with address details on a map, Article Pins with headlines and story descriptions, Product Pins with pricing and availability options, Recipe Pins with ingredients and serving suggestions, or Movie Pins with reviews and ratings, these specialized pins can increase your visibility to select groups.
Pinterest Analytics: These are the nuts and bolts measurements of your impact among Pinterest users. By tracking pin impressions, re-pins, and clicks, you may deduce and analyze trends in audience, demographics, and locations to help inform future tactics. You may also assess what kind of device the majority of pins start on to help you more accurately place your content and target ads.
Promoted Pins: Akin to ad promotions on Facebook and promoted tweets on Twitter, Promoted Pins allow businesses to advertise pins on a cost-per-click basis with maximum exposure to desired groups. Blending in seamlessly with other users' boards, these pins appear at the top of category feeds and search results to ensure they are seen first.
As Pinterest continues to grow for business purposes, it is important as ever to get a business page now to grow with it. By being mindful of your pins, what kind you use and how, your brand's presence on social media will never be stronger.