Social Media Blogs by Aliza Sherman
Aliza Sherman is a web pioneer, author, and international speaker. Sherman is the author of 8 books about the Internet including The Everything Blogging Book, Streetwise Ecommerce, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Crowdsourcing and Social Media Engagement for Dummies.

4 Ways to Leverage Pinterest for Your Business

4 Ways to Leverage Pinterest for Your Business

Does your social media marketing include Pinterest? Not using Pinterest could be a missed opportunity for businesses. Particularly those with products to sell such as clothing, accessories and home décor. Anyone doing visual work, from arts and crafts to photography, can do well on Pinterest. Even companies that provide services can carve out a space on Pinterest.

Success on Pinterest involves knowing your audience – your customers and prospects – and knowing that they use Pinterest in the first place. You also need to understand how they use Pinterest. People who pin content to their Pinterest boards often do the following:

  1. Browse and look for inspiration
  2. Use pins and boards as visual planning tools
  3. Collaborate and share information and resources
  4. Compile shopping lists
  5. Shop

According to GfK, a market research group that conducted a study for Pinterest on a path to purchase study, 90% of weekly Pinners make purchase decisions on Pinterest.

People use Pinterest for everything from pinning real estate listings when buying a home to interior design ideas when redecorating or renovating to planning weddings, birthdays and other events, to putting together weekly meal plans.

Here are four ways you can get more out of Pinterest to build your brand and convert views to sales:

1. Use a Business Account

If you set up a Pinterest account a while ago to check it out, you may have set it up as a personal account versus a business one. One benefit of having a business account over a personal one is the ability to pay to advertise on Pinterest and the other is to gain access to Pinterest’s analytics. Pinterest lets you easily convert your personal account to a business account, and in the process, you can confirm your company website to strengthen the connection between your site and Pinterest account.

2. Find Your Niche on Pinterest

Do a search on Pinterest for your company, competitors and your industry space such as retail, real estate, consumer packaged goods, etc. and see what people are pinning. Check Pinterest Trends to see the top pins of the week and what’s trending in popular categories. If you have a catalog of products, turn your Pinterest business account into a shopping experience for users. If you are a restaurant, promote your takeout menu and daily or weekly specials. If you are an illustrator, pin your portfolio and examples of your client work. By looking at what others in your field are doing well on Pinterest, you can use best practices while showcasing what makes you and your company unique.

3. Vary Your Pin Types

Pinterest offers several eye-catching options for content pins. A standard pin that features an image, title, description and hashtags, a clickable post that leads to a destination URL. Increase your pin engagement with a video post. You can pin video housed on other sites or upload your own videos directly to your business account as pins. Pinterest recommends shorter videos from four seconds up to 15 minutes with an aspect ratio of 2:3 or 9:16 at a 2GB maximum file size. If you are uploading your video, you can use .mp4, .mov or .m4v files. Another type of pin is a Product pin where you can link to your site to help generate interest and sales. You can also create Collections where you include multiple products in a single pin such as an electronics store grouping together everything a person needs to buy for gaming such as a game console, monitor, and headset. Pay attention to the style and content of popular pins and look for ways to create something similar but relevant to your business. You can also create an overall aesthetic for your pins such as color themes and alternate the different pin types while maintaining an overall consistent look and feel.

4. Drive Traffic to Your Site

When it comes to social networks, Pinterest remains a solid traffic driver. A social network like Facebook tries to keep their audience on their network and uses tactics to discourage you from sending people away from Facebook to other sites. They do this by limiting the visibility on posts that drive traffic away to your website or another site – unless you pay to advertise and boost the post. Pinterest is all about bookmarking or pinning images and video from other sites and knows its users return to their site again and again because of this valuable feature. People using Pinterest expect to click away from Pinterest to learn more about something they have loved or re-pinned.

Pinterest is known as a “discovery app,” and if you are marketing your business, you want to serve your existing customers and get discovered by new ones. Pinterest can help you do both.


Read other social media blogs by Aliza Sherman