When it comes to marketing your business, social media engagement is the best way to go. The question is, which social media would you go for? If you have already created a Facebook page, then you then you have made a great start. Your next step should be pinning with the queen of visual social media networks, Pinterest.
Shareaholic.com reveals that Pinterest has increased its traffic driving capacity up to 7.10% from 4.79% in just three months (from December 2013 to March 2014). This 48% increase has a huge effect for brand exposure through digital marketing in products such as books, magazines, antiques, services, and even IT/computing.
Pinterest is a social media platform based mostly on images. For more than four years, you increase your social network by pins of uploaded, saved, and shared photos which are then organized into pinboards. It can be compared to Facebook as it has an increasing number of fans reaching over 70 million and still continues to grow. If you want your business to be big, here’s why you should go ahead and start pinning and start some Pinterest marketing.
Reasons to start Pinterest marketing
Here are some top tips to start Pinterest marketing today!
1. Strengthen Your Brand
With Pinterest, you could personalize your page to your business name and your logo as your profile picture to reach maximum exposure every time you pin an image. You could also add a paragraph describing the nature of your business including your business website, and even link this to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. If your business involves different types of services or products, you could categorize them into different pinboards for easier navigation.
2. Drive Heavy Traffic
To drive traffic for your website, Pinterest provides a hover button which leads directly to your site. This is beneficial for users to pin images directly from your site and check your site as well. You do not even have to worry on how to use Pinterest for your business, Pinterest has a guided editor which helps you navigate through the pages without breaking a sweat.
3. Market Research
Pinterest gives you an overview of the trend in the market and what appeals to customers most. You may think that most Pinterest users are women but these women still have husbands and male friends who they would want to give gifts to or shop for. By the way they build pinboards and pin things, you see what makes them tick as a customer and the other products that are trending.
Photo by Bunches and Bits {Karina} via Flickr
4. Gain New Customers
Once your pin has started to gain popularity in various pinboards, you still get a hefty amount of views even when these are pinned or not. Imagine a billboard along a highway, these are seen by the public and could still win them over as long as it stays there. If pinned and shared by various users, you have a higher chance of gaining new customers in the process.
5. Be An Authority In Your Line Of Business
Since you are able to do market research, you can change and focus your ways on how to be an authority in Pinterest. With the right amount and quality of photos and descriptions, you could easily target these descriptions to what most new Pinterest users would want.
6. Free Marketing From Your Fans
Just like Instagram and Facebook, Pinterest makes use of the followers and images that need to increase their popularity. The more the photo or image is interesting, the higher the chances of being pinned by other users. You don’t have to spend more money on a separate content marketing strategy, all you have to invest on is the right description and the quality image that you could pin.
7. Customer Engagement Through Contests
You could increase customer engagement through contests. With Pinterest, you could try hosting a photo contest of the best photo with your business logo on them. This will definitely initiate a pinning spree all over the world with your logo which is an instant marketing for your product. Your brand is being shared not only to you but to their friends as well which are potential or current customers of your product.
Photo by Thomas Hawk via Flickr
8. Widen Product Exposure
This has been said a number of times above, but the point is Pinterest is often linked to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media websites so expect to have numerous customers with just one pin.
9. Boost The Sales
Scattering photos all over Pinterest increases exposure to different pinners and boosts your product sales. You may create different pinboards for every target audience you have which, with the right board name, entice these potential customers to patronize your business. Also, part of the sales process should also include the company’s target, vision, and mission.
10. Longer Post Exposure
According to WebpageFX, the average lifespan of a Pinterest pin is three and a half months, which is 1,600 times longer than a Facebook post. Overtime, as your pin gets to be shared with other users, it still continues to spread like wildfire. You don’t have to repeat the pin over and over again to achieve this exposure. Wisemetrics.com shares that a Tweet achieves the peak of its views and retweets in 24 minutes and then dies, a Facebook post could live 90 minute half-life at best, but a Pinterest pin lives for forever. Pinterest makes it easier to search for your product not only on your page but also on other pages as well.
Photo by Kris Olin via Flickr
11. Excellent SEO Strategy
With the way Pinterest works, keywords are still important. If you google keywords, most of the time a pinterest page comes up with numerous pinboards in it containing the product or the search item.
12. Free Sales Promotion
You don’t need to hire anyone to do the pinning for you. Get a great shot, work on the words, and post it online. Viola! Free marketing! You don’t need to spend a dime on this and this works 24/7.
Tip: If you still want to hire a Pinterest expert or freelancer, try Fiverr.com.
Why use Pinterest for your business? Pinterest is not just about fashion and other girly stuff. With the rate pinning takes your business, you might just need to start pinning it!
Guest Author: Jeanette Anzon is a freelance writer and runs the blog Adventure Dweller. Follow her @jeanetteanzon
Top Photo by mkhmarketing via Flickr