SCORE Tip of the Week: Best Ways to Market Your Business with Pinterest

Are you using Pinterest to market your business yet? If your business is visually focused, such as an interior decorating firm or graphic design business, or if your products lend themselves to visuals—such as a clothing boutique or restaurant—Pinterest can be a great way to promote your business. Pinterest now allows businesses to create business accounts; visit Pinterest to set yours up. Then try these tips:

    •    Cross-promote your Pinterest activity on your business’s website and Facebook page. You can add the Follow button, Profile widget or Board widget to your website to make it easy for customers to interact with you on Pinterest and follow your activity.

    •    Encourage engagement. Pinterest works best when it’s not just you pinning things, but a community of fans and customers interacting with your boards. Consider collaborating with other Pinterest business users (related but noncompeting businesses) to comment and pin on each other’s boards.

    •    Have fun with it. Customers turn to Pinterest for relaxation and inspiration, so show your personality and get creative.

    •    Drive traffic and sales. Add a Pin It button to your website to make it easy for customers to pin images from your site to their Pinterest boards. The button makes pins “discoverable” so other Pinterest users who like those images can follow them back to your business website (and perhaps buy your products).

    •    Use SEO (search engine optimization). Optimize your Pinterest boards for search by using keywords that your customers might be searching for in your description of your business, as titles for your pinboards and as captions for your pins.

    •    Keep current. Like other social media sites, Pinterest is constantly changing. Visit Pinterest for Business and the Pinterest Blog regularly to learn about new developments, new tools and best practices for marketing your business on Pinterest.

Ken Yancey is the CEO of SCORE, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping small business grow and thrive. CEO since 1993, Ken leads the organization’s 364 chapters and 13,000 volunteer mentors lending their expertise and guidance to small businesses across the country.

Image courtesy of Pinterest.