Social media moves constantly and it can be tricky for businesses to keep up. Got a Facebook page? Check. Your twitter feed is frequently kept up to date? Check. Well here is something different to keep you active - Pinterest.
The difficulty with technologies adjusting so rapidly is that you don’t always understand what horse to back. You could have spent your money having your Myspace page custom designed, only to discover all of your customers have moved onto Facebook. So when you hear about the latest social networking experience, you’re right to pause and ask yourself, do I need to be worrying with this? So, should you be bothering to get into Pinterest?
Pinterest (rhymes with interest) is an internet virtual pinboard. Stuff you stick on your pinboard or freezer at home, you can stick onto Pinterest. I’m not talking about a note stating ‘Buy Milk’ - more beautiful/interesting/inspiring things. If you are getting married and spotted an idea for flowers you might stick that on the site, or if perhaps you’re a fashionista, you may use Pinterest to share a high-heeled shoe you love.
When we ‘pin’ these pics on Pinterest, other people may comment. So after you put up the flower design which you think will make your eyes look stunning, your bridesmaids can offer their opinions, as well as suggest alternatives.
In a perfect world, people link through the pin back to the original source, so that high heeled shoe should link to the company’s website, or the fashion blog page you discovered it on, but not every person does this.
Profiles on Pinterest can be public or private, and users can follow other people’s boards. All this seems pleasing, is intuitive to navigate round, and is jam packed with hip youngsters putting up stuff other stylish individuals have created. But do you really need it?
The very first thing you’ll notice when you visit Pinterest.com is it is visually attractive. The homepage has pics of enticing food, garments, buildings and anything else that’s pleasing on the eye. It is a very visual social network website, and this should offer you an idea of what type of business might benefit from a profile on Pinterest.
Aesthetically attractive goods works well in Pinterest. If you’re in a creative business, it’s worth contemplating pushing your products within the website. Certainly anyone who delivers a service or product in the wedding industry should consider looking into it - brides-to-be looking to design their perfect day appear to be big members of the service in its early days. The main consumers of Pinterest at the minute are females aged 25-44.
If you sell through eBay or Etsy then you definitely should be investigating what Pinterest can do for you. In actual fact Etsy recently added a ‘Pin It’ button on their item listings, to allow members to effortlessly share their items in the social network.
If however you happen to be an accountant, solicitor or other skilled professional who is marketing a technical service, you might not uncover much of interest for you professionally. Concentrate instead on your LinkedIn account.
If you think maybe Pinterest could be appealing to you, then the next issue is how might you use it to PR your organisation? Pinterest is a social network, thus rather than directly promoting your wares, the focus needs to be on encouraging individuals to share your products. Direct plugging of your products is not going to go down well and is not going to benefit your brand.
When you are promoting craft goods or fashion, it is easy. Inspire your customers to pin your products through your subsciber list or Facebook profile, and contemplate adding follow and ‘Pin It’ buttons to your listings alongside your other social networking buttons. This can be accomplished by following the instructions on the Pinterest website.
Other businesses will have to be much more ingenious about promoting their goods. Should you manage a cafe or catering company you could share one of your recipes on Pinterest. Ensure that you’ve got a good, enticing photograph of the dish, post the recipe on your website and add a Pin It button. Hopefully consumers will pin the photo to the site and others will simply click right through to your site.
Do not forget - the key to doing well on Pinterest, and making it to the high traffic homepage, is to always have alluring photos. Be sure that your pictures are first-rate and you will succeed.
One potential problem for you is that you are not able to easily sign up for Pinterest at the time of writing this article - it is not open to the general public. The quickest method of getting onto it is to ask a buddy who is on the site to send you an invite. If not you’ll need to ask for an invitation from Pinterest and wait patiently by the laptop.
To sum up, creative types need to investigate Pinterest. Ask for an invite today and you can have a play with it and see whether it will work for your firm. It’s definitely going to increase in popularity over the coming months, which means by getting on Pinterest nice and early you might ideally be able to steal a march on your challengers and develop a presence on the website.