PINTEREST: The place to be for YOUR business?
Pinterest: The Place To Be For Your Business? | via #BornToBeSocial

PINTEREST: The place to be for YOUR business?

PINTEREST: The place to be for YOUR business? – You have heard all about the exciting conversion statistics for Pinterest. You’re considering making it part of your marketing strategy, but you’re wondering if it is the right platform for your business? Is your business already on Facebook and Twitter? Do you ask yourself if you should add Pinterest to your social media marketing mix to drive traffic to your business website? To help you decide if Pinterest is a good fit for your business, I will walk you through some of the points to consider.


1. Understand how people use Pinterest

In a recent article on the Pinterest For Business Blog, Larkin Brown, a researcher at Pinterest, explains that Pinterest users tend to browse around the site with one of the following four mindsets:

  • “I’m just looking…”

  • “Maybe I could…”

  • “I’m narrowing it down…”

  • “I know what I need!”

This type of behaviour is not just restricted to Pinterest. As a business owner, you may be inclined to focus on the “I know what I need!” crowd. However, the power of the inspirational pinner should not be underestimated. This type of pinner may just come across one or more of your images and pin them on one of their boards to return to it at a later stage. Images shared on public boards will thus appear in other user’s feeds and may get repinned again, with the potential to repeatedly drive traffic to your website.




2. What is the difference with Facebook and Twitter?

Longtail Marketing – Besides being a wonderful source of inspiration, one of the main differences between Pinterest and other social media platforms, is that it is thematic and much more timeless. Pinterest is a perfect vehicle for longtail marketing: a pin can live on for months, even years, compared to just a few minutes or hours on Twitter or Facebook.

Relatively Easy To Manage – On both Facebook and Twitter, as new posts come in, older items get pushed down and out of sight. Likewise, pins are posted in order of arrival on each board. However, numerous image posts are displayed simultaneously, making them less time-sensitive, since they remain visible for much longer. This also means that Pinterest can be more passively managed than either Facebook or Twitter. That being said, someone still needs to do the work, so if you are a one-person shop you have to decide if you have the bandwidth to handle it.

Theme-Based – On Pinterest, images are grouped together based on an overall theme. For consumers, this could be “Products I Love”. For a business or brand this could be “Our First Store”, “Meet Our Team” or any other topic. You could consider creating a group board and invite other pinners to pin content and thus interact with your brand. The theme-based nature of Pinterest makes posts much less fleeting and provides businesses with plenty of possibilities for creative expression. Pinterest lets you share pins via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail. A great way to cross-promote on several social media channels.

3. Visual Story Telling

In just one minute, 208300 photos are posted to Facebook, 510000 photos are liked on Instagram, and 100 hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube [Buzzfeed]. Consumers are increasingly communicating with pictures rather than words. Pinterest offers a particularly powerful platform for engaging consumers visually. Tell a product story, such as the Peugeot car history example below or, if you sell a service, a personal story about who you are and what you do. It builds trust. People much prefer doing business with PEOPLE that they know and trust.

PINTEREST: The place to be for YOUR business? - Born To Be Social

Example: Two boards on the Peugeot Pinterest page showing their car history

Pinterest also supports the use of Vine and YouTube videos. Videos provide an additional dimension to flat Pinterest boards.

Pinterest: The Air France experience - Born To Be Social

The Air France Experience board shows AF YouTube videos explaining the kind of service travellers can expect in the various AF travel classes.

In addition to sharing visuals on Pinterest to attract a typical customer profile or persona, it is also very important to optimise your website for Pinterest. This, and high-quality visual content, will encourage visitors to share content from your website on Pinterest. Let your visitors do the work for you! More about this in a future blog post.

4. Should Your Business Be On Pinterest?

You Sell Visually Attractive Products And Services

As a graphic platform, businesses in industries that are inherently visual should not think twice about getting started on Pinterest. If your business is related to travel, tourism, fashion, food, fitness, home decoration or art – Pinterest’s most repinned categories – you should definitely include it in your social media marketing arsenal.

You Are A Retailer

According to a new study by Piqora, Pinterest mobile app usage and mobile commerce on Pinterest have risen sharply in 2013. The study shows that people are not just finger-swiping to look at pretty photos while using Pinterest on mobile and tablet devices, but are actually clicking and making purchases. In the US, Pinterest is second, behind Facebook, in providing referrals to websites, and it supplies 3 times as many referrals as Twitter.

Last May, Pinterest introduced Rich Pins. A Rich Pin can include a title, price, availability, your brand and logo and a link to your website. Pinterest supports five rich pin types: Product, Movie, Recipe, Article & Place. Oh, and do you know about Price Notifications? A cool feature that notifies users who pin a product whenever the price drops. This is a unique way for retailers to notify shoppers about price changes and interact with them.

You Wish To Expand Your Reach

Currently, the largest Pinterest user-base is in the US, followed by Canada, UK and Australia. In June 2013, 45 percent of Pinterest’s newly registered users were from outside the U.S. [Semiocast 2013]. If you want to promote your product or service in your region or overseas, this inspirational search engine offers you the possibility to bring your product to the attention of millions of inspiration-seekers across the globe.

You Are A Service-Based Business

Pinterest is also a great place for service providers. For a start, you can use it to share blog articles and content from your website. Secondly, you can tailor your Pinterest content based on trends that are relevant to your business. You can do this by analysing popular pin trends. Identify the types of product or service images in which users are interested and which they share across Pinterest. Build boards that use trending images that are relevant to your business.

A food blogger may post pins related to food, recipes, growing vegetables, etc. Whereas a graphic designer would perhaps focus more on photography, art, architecture, design, etc. By associating elements of your business with popular trends, users will be more likely to take notice of your site, share your pins or even seek your professional services. Even more so if your boards are arranged in an eye-catching manner that reflects your work and personality.

How about you? Are you going to integrate Pinterest into your marketing strategy? Leave a comment and let me know.



Pinterest: The Place To Be For Your Business? | via #BornToBeSocial


Mary Lumley | BornToBeSocial | Pinterest Marketing, Consulting & Training | Conseil Pinterest
PINTEREST: The place to be for YOUR business? | Pin to Win Business!

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