Since Pinterest created business specific accounts in 2012, it has become a valuable asset for small businesses particularly those in the creative fields.
In 2014 Pinterest was the fastest growing social media platform.
A Pinterest post can be seen for 4 to 5 months after it is initially pinned giving a post on Pinterest a much greater value than something posted to Facebook or Twitter.
So if you haven’t set up your Pinterest yet here are some tips and tricks we have learnt along the way:
The Basics:
- Ensure your business has a business profile rather than a personal one, if you have set up a personal one in error it is easy to convert it to a business account. There are significant difference between them, read more here: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/pinterest-guide-business-pages/
- Make sure you confirm your website helping it to appear higher up the search ranks
- Install the Pin it button onto your website so you can easily share imagery when you see it
- Be careful with hashtags – don’t stuff your descriptions with too many as this could affect your ranking
- Follow engaged Pinners that will interact with your pins
Content:
If you write blogs, why not share these on Pinterest
- Write a brief description or quote from your article
- Provide an image and a link to your article
- Search for other images which relate to your blog topic and pin these – you can always rewrite the description to include keywords
The main point of Pinterest is to share images
- Share images from your website
- Share images from your other social media accounts
- Beware of sharing images from Facebook (see tip below on this)
- Remember to add keywords and links back to your website where you can
Engagement
It might be easy to gain lots of followers on twitter but what about Pinterest? You will need to dedicate time to grow your following by interacting with other pinners (as you would on twitter/Facebook for example).
- Make sure you have original and relevant content to pin
- Pin often and regularly (diarise this) so you appear in your followers feeds
- Follow your followers, look at their boards and followers, and don’t forget to repin, like & comment your followers pins
- Have a contest board ie “Pin it to Win it”
- Shareable images with “How tos” and tips do well
- Look for successful people, boards and brands in your area of speciality and follow their followers
You will find that if you try and pin photos from Facebook that you get an error message
There is a work around this but we would recommend you only do this for photos that you have posted yourself or have the rights to:
- Right click on the image and then select “Open image in a new tab”
- In the new tab you can now Pin it to Pinterest
- Please note you will need to change the URL in the image description to something more relevant like your website address
Other Pinterest tips
- You can schedule pins by using ViralWoot
- Group boards get your content out there – look for boards with over 10,000 followers (and message the owner)
We hope this is enough material to get you started on your own Pinterest boards. We are however around to give you 121 tutorials. Get in touch with lindsay@reddesk.co.uk to find out more.