You have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, a blog, even Tumblr covered. So, what’s next? It may be time to get your business active on Pinterest! Yes, Pinterest. It’s been a long time since this versatile social media platform was reserved for crafters and DIY fans. Today it is an absolutely legitimate place for small business owners to create buzz for their brands. Keep reading for a few tips that you can use to
See What Kind of Content Gets Traction
One of the many beautiful things about Pinterest is that it will let you know who has started following you, and who is repinning your pins and when. This is a great way to track which boards and which pins are really gaining traction. It may be a bit of a poor man’s analysis, but it will let you know what content is working best.
Curate Content With a Quickness
Once you become active on Pinterest, be sure to install the Pin It plugin. This allows you to automatically pin interesting content to one of your boards. As soon as you see an image, video, article, recipe, whatever, just hit the button and pin it. It’s an amazingly quick way to offer up new content to your followers.
Use The Buy Now Button
Not long ago, if you posted one of your products on Pinterest, you had to wait for customers to navigate their way back to your website or e-commerce store in order to make a purchase. Now, you can activate the Buy Now option.
This means that when someone browsing your pins sees something that they like, they simply hit buy now and then continue with the purchase. Even better, Pinterest does not collect a commission on these sales.
Highlight Your Products And New Ways to Use Them
It isn’t unusual for small business owners to dedicate an entire page on their website to a single product. If it’s big enough, some will even create an entire microsite around one product. Imagine taking this a step further and creating a pinterest board dedicated to one of your products.
You could use the board to highlight images of the product. You could even pin product demonstration videos, and product instructions or troubleshooting tips. What about taking things to an even more creative level? You could use pins to demonstrate potential uses that and product ‘hacks’ that your customers may have never considered. Traveling Vineyard’s Pinterest is an amazing example of taking a product, in this case, wine, and introducing people to new and creative ways to think about and use that product.
Connect With Pinners Like You Would Influencers Elsewhere
In some ways, Pinterest is just like other social media platforms. It’s all about developing relationships and creating growth. When you are on Facebook or Twitter, you reach out to influencers and others that you believe will provide interesting content for your audience and whose audience members will also be interested in what you have to say.
Search Pinterest using keywords that are relevant to your industry. This will help you to find both users and boards that have content that your followers will enjoy. Start following influencers, and you will likely get followed in return.
Combine Multiple Small Business Offerings Into an Online Catalog
Many small business owners are diversifying. For example, instead of owning a single business, someone might go into direct sales working with multiple suppliers and selling a variety of products. If you are involved in a family business, different family members might focus on a different customer base or product offerings.
If this sounds like your small business model, your Pinterest can be the ideal location to curate everything into a single online catalog of sorts. Then, followers can purchase your items directly from Pinterest or head to your Etsy shop or website to buy what they want. In fact, you could even strip down your website a bit, and keep your product related content entirely on Pinterest.
Crowdsource Relevant Content
Pinterest is a great platform for giving your followers a voice as well. If you are already crowdsourcing, stories, videos, images, or other content from your customers, Pinterest is a great place to keep all of that great content.
For example, let’s say that you create a community board on your website, ala Modcloth where customers can share relevant content:
In order to keep things ‘fresh’ on your website, you can cycle content off of your community board and over to a dedicated board on pinterest after a few weeks or months. This ensures that content remains visible to interested followers, and that your website content doesn’t go stale.
Pin Your Blog Posts And Other Content
Of course, your crowdsourced content isn’t the only content that deserves a permanent home. Be sure to pin your blog posts, articles, press releases, and other newsworthy content. This gives you own more point of contact when it comes to reaching new audience members with your messaging.
In Closing: A Few Extra Tips
Now that we’ve covered a few ideas that small business owners can use, let’s go over a few tips to help ensure that you can get the most out of Pinterest for your small business.
- Remember That You Can Pin Videos as Well as Images
- Use a Great Cover Image For Each of Your Boards
- Create Board Categories That Make Sense to Your Audience
- Use Alt Tags And Captions on Your Images
- Use Relevant Keywords to Create Great Hashtags
- Use Pinterest Analytics
- Complete Your Profile Information
- Attach Your Pinterest to Your Other Social Media Accounts
By following these best practices and incorporating some of the tips above, you will find that Pinterest is a great platform for sharing content and creating engagement with your audience.
Image: KIEV, UKRAINE – MAY 09, 2015: Pinterest logotype on pc screen. Pinterest is photo sharing website.
