Understanding Pinterest and How To Use It For Business

Pinterest isn’t thought of as a top site that marketers use for business. However, there is an audience of users that is ripe to be reached. Currently, there are 459 million Pinterest users, with over 100 million joining in the last year alone. As the number of users continues to grow, there are more opportunities than ever to create a message that resonates with potential customers. Here are some tips on how you can use Pinterest to promote your business.

Reasons to Use Pinterest in Marketing

• Additional traffic. Using Pinterest gives you the opportunity to increase links back to your website. This makes it more effective at sending traffic back to a website than any social media page.
• High user engagement. Many users of the site find and share content with groups of people. Using well-made content enhances the likelihood of having your pins viewed and shared.
• More chances to buy. Pinterest condenses the process of discovery to conversion, meaning people can go to the source of a product directly. On average, Pinterest users convert leads faster than other social media sites.

Create a Quality Profile

Before you decide on what you want to promote on Pinterest, you first need to create a profile. Filling out your profile should take less than a minute. However, it’s useful to expand on more than the basic information. Start with adding a distinct company logo to your page, as well as a cover image that reflects the style you want for your brand. From there, write a description that explains your brand as well as what subscribers can expect from your content.

Develop Content Worth Clicking On

When creating content to be used on Pinterest, the quality of what you use makes a big difference. Simply adding links and pictures isn’t enough to convince an audience to visit your site. Before posting, you want to come up with a strategy that details what kinds of pins you will create. The best type of pins will feature content that meets your audience's expectations explains your company’s purpose.

So what kinds of content should you consider? Given that Pinterest is visual, you want images that will catch the eyes of visitors. These can be higher-definition images or graphics that are color-coordinated. You can also create instructional graphics, which include how-tos or tips. With 84& of Pinterest users saying the site helps them learn new things, adding content that teaches visitors is a great opportunity to reach potential customers. Finally, consider educational images such as infographics that include facts about your business or industry.

Using Key Features

Pinterest has four key features on its site: search, feed, pins, and boards. Knowing the best ways to work with each of these can be beneficial to your marketing strategy. Starting with search, it is the first step for users to find information about a product. Pinterest search is similar to Google search, where the best results are displayed based on what keyword is entered. Feeds are an organized collection of pins. These can be sorted into specific feeds, such as home (a collection created by people and brands you follow) and explore (focusing on trending topics and popular posts). Boards are where you can organize pins. Businesses can have multiple boards that can categorize them to make them easier to search for.

For companies, the main area they will focus on is the pins. There are multiple ways to use pins to enhance your online marketing. First, you can add a Save button to products you sell on your website. This allows users to save it to their own boards, where it can be shared with other visitors. Adding search-friendly captions is another method to employ. When creating a pin, take some time to go through search terms your business wants to highlight. Then, craft the pin content around those keywords. Having images with relevant captions is a great way to improve your search ranking.

Conclusion

Adding a Pinterest campaign to your marketing strategy can be beneficial in increasing traffic to your site. With its ability to share content easily, you have the opportunity to reach numerous visitors and turn them into customers.