Getting on Board with Pinterest to Drive Sales

Pinterest is the fastest growing social media platform, and now drives more visitors to websites than Twitter, YouTube, Google , and LinkedIn. So how can you make Pinterest work for your business?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. On Pinterest, users can create virtual pin boards, post images to them, and arrange the boards into categories by topic. Think beyond the ever-prevalent recipes and home projects; Pinterest has wide appeal, and its process has the potential to sell.

Compare the Pinterest experience to window shopping or flipping through the pages of a slick magazine. Exposure to visually stimulating content appeals to the imagination. It triggers desire.

User Engagement

The average user spends 98 minutes a month sharing on Pinterest. Why? People like to express themselves. They post reminders of things they want to do, buy, or revisit in the future. They like to discover new ideas, and they want to share their discoveries.

As a business, what do you need to know to successfully take advantage of opportunities on Pinterest?

• Avoid aggressive selling tactics. Become a valuable resource.
• Build relationships with your potential customers by following other boards and share content by repining posts you like. Comment. Evoke conversation, start a   dialog. These efforts will cultivate a network of followers.
• Use a photographer and/or graphic designer. It’s all about imagery: photos, videos, charts and infographics.
• Engagement rates are 80% higher on graphics with a call to action.
• Add text to photos. Incorporating words within images can be very effective.
• Pins related to trending topics generate better sharing results.
• Offering tips and advice to help customers fulfill a goal is a simple way to increase brand awareness on Pinterest.
• Content with a how-to guide or tutorial will get 42% more engagement.
• Trigger a reaction. Emotions such as surprise, fear, and awe generate high levels of response.
• When you pin an image, be sure to include a description with it. A great description will be repined all over the site. If the content originates from your own website or blog, by all means, include your business name.
• If your pin is for an item you are selling, be sure to put the price in the pin description. By doing this, your pin could be featured in Pinterest’s gifts section.

Other Tips for Pinterest Success

• The more comments and likes you get, the higher your pins will show up in search.
• Be sure to use key words related to your business or service when posting descriptions on your images and boards.
• Carefully craft SEO keyword phrases for your pin-board names, as these will be formulated as the title of the web page, and the first words of the board name will become the Meta description.
• Connect your Pinterest account to your Facebook and Twitter pages to create a wider reach.
• Post images measuring 600-800 pixels wide, which is the ideal image size for Pinterest pins. Don’t use photos or graphics smaller than 300 pixels wide. There is no limit on how long a Pinterest image can be.

When done right, getting on board with Pinterest can give your business an edge when it comes to making effective use of customer engagement and reinforcing brand awareness -- with an obvious goal of driving sales online.

Brave River Solutions’ social media marketing services, offered through their Internet Marketing division, includes Pinterest management. We can help your business develop a successful social media campaign on all mediums that will increase traffic to your website, create connections, and drive brand awareness.