Marketing your business with Pinterest

Pinterest for some people, is a place where women to share product images of things that they like, but its meteoric rise as a social network makes it a great place for businesses too. Women are tremendous influencers, especially over the men in their life ? when do men buy any major purchase without discussing it with the women in their life?

Think of Pinterest as a place to share ideas in a visual way with your ideal customers and those that influence your ideal customers. Pinterest is not the first site for organising images, WeHeartIt and PinSpire are also image based social sharing sites, along with Gentlemint.

Being creative ?with Pinterest is a different thing when compared to just pinning images that we love, we need to factor in how you and your business can profit from that.

Users on Pinterest love to share and repin images from a whole range of categories, especially food. Did you know the most pinned image is one of garlic bread? ?The advice might be don?t tweet what you eat when it comes to using Twitter, but what you and your team had for lunch shows you in a whole new light on Pinterest!

As with any social network you just need to find a balance between self-promotion, social networking, and making money? too much in one direction and the community will lose interest in you, too little and you?ll lose interest in it.

Here are a few creative ways you can use Pinterest to market your business.

Promote Your Blog

If you have an image on your blog, it?s pinnable. For that reason alone, you should always add an image on each of your blog posts along with a ?Pin it? button under each. At the very least have the pinning button in your sharing options. ?Readers are drawn to images and an interesting image encourages them to go on and read your article. More information on ?what images you should use for Pinterest images and attribution can be found in this post.

When you or a reader pins your image to Pinterest, it creates a direct link back to your blog. This not only adds to your link-building efforts, it can bring a whole new type of traffic to your site. My infographic on content creation was repinned over 100 times. That?s a lot of links.

Create themed boards on Pinterest that are based on the categories on your website, and make sure that you always pin your own blog post images to those boards. This helps your SEO and enables people to have an idea of what to expect when they look at those boards.

Involve Your Customers

Having Pinterest boards is a new way to engage your customers online. Not only can they pin their favorite images to your boards, but they can comment on them and share them with their friends and followers. When people enjoy interacting with your website, they?ll come back more often. This not only builds your relationship with website visitors, but it gives you far greater opportunities to showcase your products and services in a friendly and engaging manner. Nobody likes being sold to, so don?t be heavy handed in your tactics.

Inspire Your Customers

Often people only see your products in one way and for one purpose. Pinterest boards give you the chance to inspire different ways to use your products through visuals. For example, if you sell flowers, you can show pictures of them in the table settings of customers? weddings, in the church, in cars ? anywhere in the home. You can also showcase accessories that come with flowers such as vases, and have a board that shows how to care for flowers with tips and techniques that help the customer. ?That?s far more inspiring than a simple product image on your website.

Show That You?re a Real Person

It?s always difficult to make a personal connection with people online vs. face-to-face. By including both business boards and personal boards in your Pinterest account, prospects and customers get to see some of your own interests ? the human connection. They start to see the real person behind the business persona. Even if you are representing a large company, remember that customers are eager to know the real people behind the corporate face. If you?re a small business or entrepreneur, this is even more crucial.

Add Affiliate Links

You may not realise it, but you can also insert your own affiliate links on your pins. It?s a whole new way to affiliate market.

You can create boards that are just product related and earn cash when people click those links and buy something. Just go into the ?edit? button for a specific pin and replace the direct link to the product with your affiliate link and add the price in dollars so that people know they can buy the item.

How would you use this option in your offline business? Ok, let?s explore this aspect further? you have a board and fill that board with books that are essential reads for anyone starting up in your industry, or books that are essential for your customers to make the most of their product. These boards are?incredibly?useful to your ideal customer, it shows you care about their experience with your goods. You earn some money which you can give to charity or buy more business books and it?s win/win. If we think back to the florist example I used further up, as well as linking to blog posts about flower care and longevity, books and tools can be found on Amazon to make a complete floral care experience.

Pinterest isn?t going anywhere any time soon, despite copyright rumblings and it is incredibly active. Make the most of it as a place to engage your customers and prospects. At the same time, it presents a new opportunity to earn money online from a completely different source.

Sarah

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