Pinterest For Business: The Marketing Boost your Business Needs

More than two million people visit Pinterest every day. Using Pinterest can improve your business in extraordinary ways by reducing the number of steps from discovery to conversion dramatically.

The main difference between Pinterest and other social media is “interest” in the product or service that “Pinners” pin. On Facebook, a person may click the “Like” button simply because they like the person that posted it, whereas Pinners pin items of interest. Many will pin things so they can get more information or purchase it later, their followers see their pin, which spreads the word for you, much like a share on Facebook.

Pinners often pin items of interest. According to Shopify, on average, pinned items of interest are repinned 11 times. This will help to multiply the number of people that see your product or service exponentially.

Unlike Facebook likes, Pinterest pins are weighted by popularity, so that your posts or pins gain strength with time. Unlike Facebook posts that might get many likes for a few days and quickly fade, Pinterest pins grow your visibility and reputation year after year. This concept makes it necessary to use an “evergreen” or long-lasting approach to your business presentation. That does not mean you cannot offer periodic specials or promotion, though those will live on so you must adjust the price after the period of the promotion.

Fact: Products with prices included garner 36 percent more interest or pins than those without.

Creating Your Business Profile

Perhaps the best part about Pinterest is the simplicity in creating an account. The first, and most important, thing when creating your account is to make sure you are creating a business profile. Although, both the business and personal profiles are free, a business profile allows significantly more flexibility with boards (interest areas) and links than personal profiles.

All you need to get started is an email address.

Pinterest is a visual site, so it is important to keep these key points in mind:

  • Use a professional high-quality head and shoulders photo or logo
  • Use your business location
  • Link to the business website address
  • Link to other social media pages, such as Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIn
  • Use product images with descriptions

The first item a possible customer will see is your profile picture; make sure that it is eye-catching, high quality, properly sized, and appears professional.

Remember this is the same as a business introduction, so “put your best foot forward,” and use details. This is a chance to build trust and show proof of your existence, proof that you are not a computer. You are a real person with a real address. Reputation management can be the key to success.

Keep the name very simple and on key. The easier it is for people to find your profile the more traffic it will generate. For example, when selling jewelry, be sure and use the word jewelry in your profile name. There is nothing wrong with making your profile name “JJ Jewelry Design.” There is a 15-character limit, so be creative.

Next, prepare the profile description. Prepare a short description utilizing keywords and synonyms from Keyword Planner, or another appropriate source. These should be the same keywords you use for your website. This will help show the relevance to the link back to your website.

Creating Boards

Choose boards (areas of interest) close to your business in line with “rich pins.”  “Rich pins” include movies, recipes, articles, products, and places. According to Vincent Ng, a Pinterest Marketer in, “Pinterest Marketing Tips from a guy that’s been Doing it for 5 Years,” “Rich pins for a blogger is a must because rich pins are a factor in search rankings for Pinterest. Pinterest prefers to show blog posts or pins that are rich pins,” says Ng. “On top of that, rich pins also have more credibility and authority because rich pins for articles show off, in bold text, the title of the blog post article and the Meta description when clicked through.”

Be sure to enable rich pins on your website. This can be difficult, so you may need the assistance of your website designer. For CourseVector clients, just complete a Support Ticket, or non-clients can request a free marketing evaluation through our SEO services department. Be sure to reference Pinterest on the support ticket.

Another option when choosing boards is to tie boards to the most often searched topics, such as DIY, Food & Drink, Home Décor, Design, Weddings, and Women’s fashion, when possible.

Pam Neely at Act-on.com states business boards should include boards that feature:

  • products/services
  • blog posts
  • email newsletters
  • webinars
  • white papers
  • “How to” videos
  • inspirational quotes
  • events
  • portfolio items
  • Infographics

In fact, she suggests 17 “smart ways” that businesses can create boards.

Use a Pin-it button on your site, so that people can pin the things they like, which will track back to you. Although most people pin things so they can get more information or purchase it later, their pins are seen by their followers, which spreads the word for you, similar to sharing on Facebook.

Track it Back!

Too many pinners simply pin pictures to their boards from their phone. Whereas this is fine for a personal account, it does not work for a business account. Although it is easy to upload photos from anywhere, if those cannot be tracked to your website, it is just another image. Make sure your pins take shoppers and potential clients to a place where they can answer your call to action.

Be careful of moving pages. When you move or redirect web pages you will lose traffic. Changing the link on your board is easy, but you cannot change that link on anyone else’s.

Tracking your Pins and Traffic

Like any website you are using for your business, you need to know that it is working for you. Pinterest has added Google Analytics to the dashboard recently, making it easy to check on how many views and repins you are getting, how you are doing with keyword searches, and how much traffic you are getting to your website.

In addition, use http://pinterest.com/source/YourWebsite.com/ to find out who is pinning your boards and interact with them using comments and newsletters.

Pinterest can be a valuable asset to any business, like any social media. Good marketing is all about exposure and Pinterest is number two of the top social media sites for exposure. By linking other social media sites and websites to the business profile, Pinterest could become an important resource for your business.

A Point worth Noting!

Although Pinterest has a Help Center for users, business owners without much experience on Pinterest or the time to devote to Pinterest might find it advisable to hire a professional search engine adviser or Pinterest marketer. That may sound expensive, but it is not compared to the return on investment. Course Vector can provide Pinterest support or include Pinterest marketing in any of our digital marketing campaigns.

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