Pinterest: Building Your Small Business Buzz

Have You Heard The Buzz About The New Social Media Site Pinterest?

Just when you thought you had your social media marketing under control, another site comes along gaining daily in popularity and is perfect for organic search.

I know you are probably thinking, “I don’t have the time for this!” 

Well, what if it could help you grow your business or brand? Would that make it more interesting to you? People are attracted to pictures more than words. Pinterest is a great opportunity for your business if you want to improve your social media presence, backlinks, SEO, or online marketing. In this post we will be discussing the basics to successful marketing on Pinterest, how it is different from Facebook, and how it can benefit your business.

The web is now image-driven and the bar has been raised. Pinterest is a social bookmarking website.

Users called "pinners" can share content and interests with others by "pinning" images, pictures, or videos to a pinboard. You can set up collections of categories or themes called "pin boards" of images you like and keep adding to them. It is a way of organizing online the storage of your visual collections for future use. It is more goal oriented than present tense like vision boards.

Pinterest is not as “social” as other social networks as it has more editorial comments. It is less about connections and more about admiration and emotional response. Pinterest can bring traffic to your website or blog from images being pinned and could help grow your business.

Do you have any images or photos on your website? Your images could already be on Pinterest whether you are registered or not. If you’re not on Pinterest, you’re already losing control of your visual brand as we speak by virtue of not participating. Pinterest is going to push your brand and content. Don’t you want to be the one in control of your brand?

Pinterest is still in the beta stage, which means that it is in the “Invite Only” stage so you will have to request access on www.Pinterest.com.

Click “Request an Invite” or ask someone who is on Pinterest to send you an invite via email. If you get an invite from a friend, it will be faster than if you request it from their home page where it could take a few days or even weeks before you receive an invitation. Before you attempt to sign up, make sure that you have a Facebook or Twitter account because it is a requirement.

If you choose Facebook when you log into your Pinterest account, make sure that your Facebook is up to date and has the new timeline format.

• Engagement - Pinterest engages people through photos and graphics while subtly promoting brand awareness.  Facebook engages people through links, updates, videos and photos while prompting conversations and feedback. If you feel that your Facebook friends are spending more time on Pinterest, just highlight your account through your Facebook page.

• Emotional Response - Pinterest is imaged based and can keep pinners busy for hours browsing for pictures, and copying and pasting what they want to store for future use. The end result will appear like an organized magazine collection.

• Inspirational - Facebook is more about whom you are, whom you know, where you are, and what is going on now - it is situational. Pinterest is more for the future tense as it is not about what is going on in your life in the present tense. It is more about who you want to be, whom you want to know, what you want in your future, and where you want to be - it is inspirational.

• Addicting - Just like most of us didn’t get or understand why we would want to use Facebook when it first came out, now most of us are addicted to it. The same goes for Pinterest. Once you get started you want to keep adding and adding to your collections.

• Branding - Pinterest is connected to both Twitter and Facebook.  This means when you pin something new, more eyes from other channels will get access to your pictures and boards. Pinners can have the ability to share posts through Facebook, Twitter, and emails. You can see what your friends are pinning and even comment and like the pins.  This is a great boost to get your brand out.

Instead of just having pinboards about your products and services, add other pinboards that include topics that would relate to interests of your target market.

• Where would these products take the customers?  
• What kind of lifestyle are they living and want to live?
• What other interests are related to what you do?
• Do you have any upcoming events?

Find other hot topics that would reel them into your pinboards. Tell your story through creative pinboards. Add images to your pinboards that complement your services or products. Having random categories of topics on your pinboards that relates to your customers.

Categorize each pinboard with a theme or topic so more people will become interested in what you are posting and you will get more followers. Post up pinboards on popular topics and trends such as: dream houses, dream vacations, arts, crafts, food, vacation spots, fashion, gardening, baking recipes, cosmetics, holiday gifts, etc.

You can pin up pictures of your products, services, and blog posts and you may be thinking of going to town on these pinboards. Yes, the temptation is there, but wait and try not to use Pinterest for just selling your services and products. Use Pinterest to promote a lifestyle or need to those who are searching on there. This means not to have all your pinboards with just your products and avoid self-promotion. Pinterest users will be turned off with too many self-serving pinboards and not enough variety. You want to attract not repel. 

What Pinboard Theme Ideas Can You Use?

Check out the video posted here for starters.

Do you need help with ideas on what pinboard themes to use or what to post. Check out this article 6 Pinterest Pinboard Ideas For Driving Traffic to help get you started.

Earlier we talked about how your images could already be on Pinterest whether you are registered or not. If you are curious and would like to see who is taking your pictures and pinning them on their pinboards from your website, use this URL http://www.pinterest.com/source/YOURWEBSITE.com/

Put your website in where it says "YourWebsite.com" in the above URL. You can then see everything that was pinned from your site.  You can engage back to those pinners who have liked your images or YouTube videos. You might have a lot of fans already, so follow them back as well. Engagement really is the key here. Start following the big names in your field on Pinterest to raise awareness about your company.  Keep adding new pins every week or more to help move your pinboards up in views so people are able to find you.

Succeeding on Pinterest is all about finding out how your brand, products, and services fit into the present or future lifestyles of your target audience. Building around this information is the key to attracting an audience in. It is a great place to flaunt what you got or want. Info-graphics are considered very "in" right now so if you can take statistical information and make it into an info-graphic, it will be quite a viral magnetic drawing card that will drive traffic to your pinboards.

If your business doesn’t have a lot of visual graphics of your product or services it may not be the right place to market your brand. It works best for those businesses that have a lot of blog posts, videos, photos, products, and other graphics that are visual. If you are not willing to invest your time into Pinterest or hire someone qualified to do so, it may not be right for your business either. If on the other hand you have lots of images, blog posts, or YouTube videos, you might have an untapped goldmine!  Test drive it and be one step ahead of the crowd.

What other creative ideas do you have for using Pinterest for driving traffic to your business? Share with us your creative pinboards or themes.

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