With over 450 million monthly users, Pinterest is one of the most popular social media platforms. Once known as an ‘online mood board’ used to plan living room interiors, weddings, and baby showers it can also be a great tool for doing business.
For businesses looking to branch out with their socials, here’s how that can be achieved.
- Set up a Pinterest business account
Pinterest can be used to make money directly if the business owner has a Pinterest business account. Standard Pinterest accounts will give users access to a wide variety of content throughout the site, but with a business account, users can display a whole company name on the site (as opposed to the first name last name model of a standard account). That means that users such as Chip Packard can use their account under a business name rather than using their full name.
Pinterest business accounts give users access to analytical tools that help them to track their onsite activity and ‘rich pins’ that can directly help to facilitate sales. While they have some fees attached to them, they are worth the money that businesses may get back from sales on the platform.
- Use product pins
Business accounts can put their products on their boards using ‘rich pins’. These pins will, once clicked on, take customers directly to an e-commerce website and enable them to make a quick and easy purchase. Visitors to the Pinterest for business page will then be able to ‘pin’ the products to their boards which will equal free marketing for their products and services.
- Build a following
Pinterest is a tool for a lot of people to plan things privately or collaboratively on their own little corner of the internet. However, business owners using Pinterest should do what they can to cultivate a decent following on the platform. People will naturally want to follow boards with interesting content. They should use search tools to find out what other similar businesses are posting while making it as easy as possible for people to follow them back. Business websites could also include a ‘Pinterest widget’ along with the other ways in which they can organically drive social media engagement.
Pinterest widgets overall help customers to shop without having to go too far to complete the purchase. Many potential buyers will have it in mind to buy something later on by creating shopping inspiration boards that they can come back to at a later date.
- Use it as an opportunity to build traffic
Pinterest can be a powerful marketing tool for web-based businesses. One way that this happens is that pins can be used to help to drive people towards a primary business website. The reason for this is that the more people ‘pin’ content to their boards, the more likely people will be to see it trending and will be curious to investigate further.
So in essence, Pinterest is for much more than storing recipes and bedroom color schemes- it can be used as a powerful marketing tool for small businesses.
