Article by Paul Kirk – www.paulkirkdesign.co.uk

As a business you’ve probably got Twitter, Facebook and even LinkedIn in your social media arsenal but have you considered Pinterest?

Pinterest is one of the newest mainstream social media sites, it started in 2010 and is rapidly becoming ‘the’ social media sharing platform. A recent Pew Research Centre study found that Pinterest is actually more popular than Twitter! Its’ focus is to allow users to catalogue and share images and other content by “pinning” them onto themed boards – think of them as virtual pin boards. Users can then share other users content by “repinning” them, liking their pins or following another users.

So how can Pinterest work for your business?

It enables you to quickly promote your own product or service on your boards making it easier for you to reach more people and potentially increase sales of your product or service. It doesn’t have to stop there though – take it a step further and create ‘boards’ around additional information that your followers might find interesting or inspirational. For instance if you sell wine, you could compliment your product boards with boards on wine production, recipe ideas and wine events. Become the ‘go to’ place on anything about your product or service. The more you can surround your product or service with complimentary information the more invaluable your Pinterest boards will become.

So how can you pin or allow your business to be repinned?

1. Create your Pinterest business account
Sign up for Pinterest as a business, rather than an individual, by going to business.pinterest.com and make sure you follow the steps to verify your business website. This will give prospective followers confidence in you and more importantly give you access to Pinerests’ Analytics.

2. Visual consistency
Pick a profile graphic for your company that’s instantly recognisable and consistent with your other social media platforms.

3. Make it easy to be pinned
Add the ‘Pin it’ button to your website pages – it’ll allow others to pin your pages/products themselves. Don’t forget to also include a link to your Pinterest account, like you do with Twitter or Facebook. If enabled, Pinterest can also post updates to your Facebook and Twitter feeds – saving you valuable time.

4. Create your boards
These should showcase your brands products, services and related interests. Give your boards clear names but make sure you keep it to 20 characters or less to avoid them being truncated and choose a cover pin image that will grab people’s attention and give a taste for what’s inside. You can use draft or secret boards to help you collate images prior to publishing them to the public and don’t forget to reorder your boards to take advantage of seasonal interest or product launches.

5. Use ‘rich pins’
These allow you to include additional information like availability, reviews, prices, links or other useful information. You should ideally be looking to pin at least once a day and incorporate a mixture of your own pins and repinning of other people’s pins.

We’ve only scratched the surface of what Pinterest could do for your business. It can be a great way to visually present your companies products / services and your related interests to your customers. While it may not be suitable for all businesses it certainly has merit if used correctly.

If you want to find out more about Pinterest, any other social media platform or you need help planning your social media strategy don’t hesitate to get in touch with me at http://paulkirkdesign.co.uk