Just keep pinning: Why your business should be on Pinterest
If your brand doesn’t have a Pinterest account, could you be missing an opportunity? We think so!
It’s no newbie in the social media sphere, but amidst the flurry of new features on Facebook and Instagram and the dominance of Twitter and LinkedIn when it comes to business, Pinterest often gets overlooked or forgotten altogether.
But, done right, Pinterest can be an incredibly powerful platform for raising awareness of your brand and driving traffic to your website.
First hitting our PC screens back in 2010, Pinterest was warmly welcomed by fashionistas, bakers and interior design enthusiasts alike. But since then, the platform has come a long way, with a mobile app and a reported 150 million users on the platform in 2017.
While it may not be the first platform to spring to mind when thinking about your company’s social media presence, just this week Pinterest raised $150m at a $12.3bn valuation, showing that the image-based social site is as popular as ever.
Spotting an opportunity in the popularity of the site, we took to Twitter to find out whether business people are making the most of the platform. Take a look at the results:
Question time! Do you use Pinterest for business purposes?
— sookio (@sookio) June 7, 2017
Our Twitter poll results show that although a lot of people love using Pinterest, the majority have started an account at some point without getting round to making the most of it. But would you consider returning to the platform if you knew that a whopping 87% of pinners have purchased a product because of Pinterest?
So if you've lost touch with the platform, or if you've never had an account at all, now might be the time to brush of the dust and perfect your pinning strategy!
With a whole network of ideas, creative inspiration and, most importantly, potential customers on offer, Pinterest can support many segments of your business, from the initial product inspiration and creativity to marketing and sales.
So what else does Pinterest have to offer your business?
Pinterest helps you reach more people
Because of how Pinterest operates as a social media platform, your content can reach a really broad spectrum of users. It works by enabling users to ‘pin’ images that they like into various boards set up by themselves.
For example, see our ‘Copywriting inspiration’ board below. We use this Pinterest board to store any great copywriting we see online, on printed collateral or anywhere else we can find it. The board proves a great source of inspiration for our own work, and we are also able to easily share the board with our clients or on our other social media channels to illustrate to others what we think great copywriting looks like!
Other people can then see these pinned images, either on their own timeline, in Pinterest search bar results, or directly on the profiles of whoever they follow. Should you wish to, you can then follow other people’s boards and re-pin things to your own profile, meaning your followers will also be able to see them.
Use Pinterest to make a noise
Creating boards based on your company’s interests, products or services can also help to generate awareness. Placing your images in front of the people who are actively searching related content will ensure that your brand’s blog or website is easily accessible to your followers and other Pinterest users. Longer term, this could help keep your product or service at the forefront of potential customers’ minds.
Take a look at how Hunter uses Pinterest to raise awareness and generate interest in its range of boots. The firm creates boards which place the boots in all kinds of scenarios, appealing to a broad spectrum of potential customers and the things they might be searching for, such as festival attire.
Drive traffic to your blog or website
When uploading your own content, you can link each pin to the relevant section on your blog or website.
So, for example, if you’ve pinned a new product which your business is offering, or an image from your latest blog post, you can easily link to it. This means if anyone clicks on the image, they will be taken directly to the product on your website or the content on your blog.
As each pin can include a link, this also means that whenever someone else shares or pins your content on Pinterest, the link to the original source remains on the post. And let’s face it, us marketers love a backlink, don’t we?
Track your success
To measure your success, Pinterest also have a handy built-in Analytics function. This allows you to track all activity on your page, such as daily impressions and viewers, average monthly viewers and how much your posts are being engaged with on a monthly basis. With such a broad outreach, the results are often surprising too!
Analytics also usefully breaks down user activity further, showing you how many impressions and viewers your website or blog has received from your Pinterest profile.
Reach more people through Pinterest ads
Like other social media platforms, Pinterest also has an Ads function, meaning you can promote your pins to reach more people.
Pinterest Ads works by promoting your pins across the platform’s feeds, charging you per 1,000 impressions on your pins. Various Ads campaigns are available, such as campaigns to boost Awareness, Engagement or Traffic, meaning you can tailor advertising to meet the needs of your business. It lets you track the results too!
Create quick, easy content for other social channels
Another great thing about Pinterest is that once you have created a series of boards, you have yourself some ready-made content to share across your other social media platforms.
Whether you have a board showcasing products, images from your blog content, some top team shots or your company’s general interests, sharing Pinterest boards with your followers on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn can be an easy and quick yet effective way to showcase your brand’s personality.
Turn browsers into customers
Have you ever made a completely impulsive purchase when browsing in a shop? You didn’t go in wanting the item, you probably didn’t need it, but when you saw it, you just had to have it?
Pinterest is a bit like window shopping, as the simplicity of the platform makes it easier for users browsing their feed to make a purchase. Direct links on Pinterest enable businesses to eliminate the usual steps between the initial discovery of a product or service and the purchase stage, and you can add product details and a price to your image too. Making everything clear and visible, customer conversion can be much simpler, so you should see more sales!
Use boards for team brainstorming
Pinterest can be a really useful internal tool to share ideas, inspiration, or even just fun things. You can choose to have secret boards, whereby only invitees can see and contribute to the board.
So whether you’re looking for inspiration for your written work, your office interior design or even for lunch ideas for an upcoming event, secret boards can be a really useful way to share visual ideas among your team.
Think you’re ready to get started on Pinterest? For more content, social media and design inspiration, be sure to give Sookio a follow!
If you’re looking to show a more creative side to your business, do get in touch to find out how we can help with your social media strategy.