Pinterest is a social sharing site where people can pin photos, images, infographics and videos. Many people originally thought of Pinterest as a place to share images reflecting personal hobbies and interests. The impact on business success when promoting through Pintest is awesome.
In fact Public Relations, SEO & Marketing, Graphics, are among Pinterest users’ top 10 interests.
Pinterest already have over 70 million users, 72% of which are women who love to spend money and have the money to do so. Pinterest is the top social media referral source for business websites.
Pinterest drives more referral traffic than YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+ put together. And traffic arriving to websites from Pinterest is found to be 10% more likely to by and spend on average 10% more than visitors arriving from other social media sites.
The majority of people who use and like the pinterest are bloggers, individuals and small businesses. It’s time to start taking this site very seriously.
So how do you set up an optimized business account, get followers and drive traffic to your website through pinning? Here are 5 useful Tips to get you started:
1. Open a Pinterest Business account – it’s free- make sure you optimize it by using your business name and keywords in your Pinterest home page. This is your first opportunity to brand your business on Pinterest.
2. Create targeted pin boards – keep in mind target market, and different aspects of your brand, don’t be afraid to add personal interests. Your prospects and customers are buying from YOU, not your brand.
You are more likely to attract followers if you mix it up. You can pin pictures, graphics and videos that are fun and interesting and give your followers a sense of community.
3. Make your website pinnable – ensure that you have plenty of pictures and Videos on your site for pinning by you and others as well. Add a ‘Pin-It’ button to your site to make it easy for visitors to pin to their boards – again adding to your viral reach.
4. Link your photos and videos back to your website. After you have posted an image or video to your board, re-open it and put your website or web page URL where you want to drive traffic. This is an important step in getting Pinterest traffic to go to your website.
Once you do this, every time one of your pins get ‘liked’ or re-pinned, you are increasing the likelihood and the traffic to your website.
5. Spend time engaging with other people’s boards – it’s just like any other social media site. Meaning, if you want others to engage and re-pin your pins, you have to spend some time doing the same.
As with all online marketing activities, you should check your analytics to ensure your efforts are getting results – This allows you to track how many people have been pinning from your website and how many people have viewed your pins.
Remember, the purpose of marketing your business with Pinterest is to drive more traffic to your website.