Top 10 Methods To Promote Your Business on Pinterest

What is first and foremost for your business to know about Pinterestis that it acts as the social platform that allows consumers to promote their products and services for free. It is widely thought of as digital scrapbooking. Pinterest is a virtual pin board incorporated as part of a social network. You are able to ‘pin’ or ‘like’ images that best interest you. Or, alternately as another way to say it; that your business’ best interests get served by. You categorize pins into categories which gives you an organizational touch to it all.

If haven’t heard of Pinterest, you may consider that in the past 6 months Pinterest has grown 4000%.

Graphic artists, photographers, interior designers and fashion designers, just to outline my point, as Pinterest is useful for mostly all business endeavors; create storyboards showcasing their work. They have the wherewithal and freedom on Pinterest to display their work using their creativity, personal style and personality as they create fantastic portfolios that can be seen and shared by other Pinterest users. Thus, consumers check out their work prior to contacting them; seeing a veritable smorgasbord of their talents and efforts.

Some use Pinterest as a tool for their own market research to check into what colors people are drawn to and what products have been re-pinned. The information is a rich asset to a business as it leads the way to inspire additional product development. The diligent business owner can keep track of interests by seeing how many of their ‘pins’ are ‘repinned’ by other users. This can help in three ways:

1. Determining interests

2. Assessing Marketability

3. Determining popularity

Pinterest will work for your business is your content is shared quickly and frequently.

Pinterest will help in a moving a consumer from browser to purchaser.

Now, after that primer, here are the top 10 methods to promote your business on Pinterest.

1. Connect to Social Media

As Pinterest fast becomes a heavy marketing tool you’ll want to begin your account and connect it with your Facebook and Twitter accounts. It will help you gain followers as well as the greater fact that making these connections adds social media icons under your business’ profile pic that link back to your Facebook and Twitter profiles.

2. Creative Board Names

Come up with interesting and creative board names. They get shared whenever you pin something, so make them alluring. (Note: Keep your board name short. There isn’t a lot of room for long descriptive titles.

3. Play Tag

Tag other Pinterest users in your pins by using ‘@username’ in your descriptions. Using this feature, network with other professionals and vendors in your field. The reason why this is number 3 is because not many people are doing this yet and your business will find that it’s a great way to build your following and stand out.

4. Comment Often

Yet another top and innovative method of using Pinterest has recently surfaced: It’s a simple concept: Comment on other people’s pins and do it regularly. And remember the same good manners and common sense approach you use when commenting on a blog or other social media site. And go right ahead and ‘like’ other people’s pins, giving them a thumbs up when you want to give your recognition to great content you see on Pinterest.

5. Videos

That is biggie on Pinterest as far as promotion goes. Pinterest has a special section just for pinned videos, and there are far fewer videos than images on Pinterest at this point, and it will distinguish your identity.

6. Seasonal Boards

Do what users love. Here is another great promotional tool for Pinterest: Create seasonal or holiday boards that relate to your brand. Examples include New Year’s Resolutions & Fourth of July.

7. Follow Me Buttons

Add the fanfare and surefire great method of putting a ‘Follow Me on Pinterest’ button to your website to advertise that you’re a pinner.

The irony is not lost in that pinner rhymes with winner.

8. Strategize

Pin strategically by maintaining your objectives. Ask yourself important business questions (maybe in a conference mode with your team — maybe not, as fits your prerogative): Are you trying to drive traffic to your website? Are you trying to boost brand awareness? Are you trying to increase sales? Do you want to expand customer engagement?

By thoughtful answers you will be more apt to pick images and offers accordingly.

Accurately pinning your market is what Pinterest is about.

9. Social Media Tools

By using social media tools. Without them it is improbable that you can keep up with all the different social networks there are to use to make sure your business gets noticed.

Check out these Pinterest tools:

Pinstamatic: Makes your boards more fun and exciting. And business need not be stodgy or humorless; as a matter of fact, it is a definite plus in many cases, (though not all)

Piqora: a great tool for including analytics and pin scheduling.

Pinpuff: Used for calculating your influence on Pinterest.

Repinly: Repinly, when checked regularly, keeps you up to date with the most popular pins and boards.

10. Get in on what’s good

Improve what can be done with your pinning via Pinterest Goodies. Start by getting the Pin it bookmarklet. You will then be enabled to pin any image or video that you like on the web.

Highly recommended to succeed using Pinterest, would be to get the Board Widgets, so that people will be able to start following your boards directly from your website

So once you got it sussed and your business is a part of Pinterest: Pin to win!

- Rich Casale