3 Ways For Small Business To Use Pinterest

Pinterest is one of my favorite sites for marketing products and services because its visual posts quickly convey a message. One of my clients is a supplier of precious and semi-precious jewels and I’ve been working with her to develop a digital marketing strategy to build and grow her e-commerce channel in the U.S. We included Pinterest in our strategy and noticed the value of the site for both internal needs as well as externally communicating information about her brand and her products. So I thought I’d share just three ways for small businesses to use Pinterest in their marketing that we like best.

Brand Position

Pinterest is an ideal forum for positioning your company, brand or product because what you pin reflects who you are. My client’s company, for example, supplies responsibly sourced gems so we’ve built Pinboards with useful and relevant resources around responsible sourcing, the importance of conflict-free gems, etc. These boards helped her gather information we use in our own content and has helped her clarify the company’s brand, even internally. Additionally, these boards have begun to build audiences of people who find this type of information valuable and are drawn to her blog and company site to learn more. These audiences now associate her company, or Pinterest account at least, with responsible jewelry sourcing, exactly the market position we’re taking.

Band Wagon

Trends are a Pinners best friend because they get shared. The trick is to identify trends where your brand can logically play. For my client, for example, we’re building an Emmy 2014 board to track the jewelry worn by the stars on the red carpet. Not only does this relate to Women’s Fashion, a top category for pins, but will help extend her reach to a whole new audience interested in the Emmy’s. Just make sure you’re not tardy to the trend party.

Product Promotion

Because of the visual nature of Pinterest, it can act like a product showroom, complete with rich descriptions and information on where customers can buy. Pins with prices are automatically included in the Pinterest gift section however, as this Mashable article reports, Pins with prices are less likely to be shared. Thankfully, there’s no rule against Pinning the same image to multiple boards to get the best of both worlds but we like to stagger the re-pinning using a scheduling tool like ViralTag.

Regardless of your business, I always recommend people to keep a Pinboard where they can track pins they like or think are effective. These “Swipe” boards help me bring what works to my client’s efforts but consider locking the board so you don’t have to worry about how the pins may affect your overall image.

Like all marketing, measure your performance. Use Google Analytics to identify how much website traffic is being driven by Pinterest and don’t forget the Pinterest Pin Counter to check the pin count for specific URLs.

Continue reading here: 7 Critical Online Marketing Trends

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