Let me dispel a myth for you, Pinterest is not only for wedding planning & fashion lusting, it has immense potential for business, regardless of industry. Yes it takes time, yes you need work at it, but these tips will help you embrace Pinterest and utilise its power to enhance and promote your business.
Make a Plan
Get a big piece of paper, in the centre write your business name, from that central point ask yourself;
What do I want from Pinterest?
Drive traffic to your website
Build brand awareness
Acquire new customers
Inspiring/Educating
Sales of products and/or services
Once you have this list, you can start to build a plan and create goals. It is worth keeping this piece of paper, and revisit from time to time to ensure you are still working towards your goals.
Know Your Audience
As with all aspects of business, knowing your audience is key. By understanding what they want from you, you can ensure that the content you share across all social channels including Pinterest is on brand and provides your audience with what they need. If you aren't sure who your audience is on Pinterest, take a look at your direct competitors, how are they engaging.
Set Up as a Business Account
This is the most common mistake I find with brands, they set up a personal account and then have a couple of boards that are related to their brand and then go wild pinning things that really belong on a personal page. If you wouldn't share personal posts on your brands Facebook or Twitter page, then don't pin personally on Pinterest.
Once you have set up as a business account you can then go ahead and verify your website, this enables Pinterest to scour your website and provide analytics, which in turn will allow you to see how your pins are performing.
Understand Keywords & Optimisation
When naming your account Pinterest allows you to use your personal name and brand name in your account title. To ensure people & Google can find you then your bio should also contain your list of brand/business keywords. As there is a limit to the number of characters you can use, it's important you use them productively.
Board titles are also critical and should include keywords and phrases that will be easy to find in a search, again either by a user or Google. You can also create board descriptions, this is another opportunity to share your brand message; keep the content short, snappy and always on point. Ambiguity gets you no where
The titles of the images them selves are also incredibly important, just as you would rename images within blog posts, to allow for easy searching, it's important to be sure to use your brand keywords to rename them. As with the board descriptions, pin descriptions should be concise, on brand, relevant
Size Matters
Pinterest is after all a visual representation of your brand, and as such you want to ensure that every follower and visitor has a positive experience, to make sure your boards and pins look as inviting as they can pay attention to the size of your images.
Caitlin Muir is quick to stress the greater impact long, portrait pins have, “They drive traffic because they require you to click on them so you can see the full size [to read them].”
You can find a list of the optimal sizes here
Update Regularly & Harness The Power of Seasons
This one may not seem to be an important point, but in terms of keeping your boards and profile engaging and up to date, creating seasonal boards is a must. Every industry has seasons, whether its fashion sharing new collections, foodie brands sharing seasonal produce tips or even a building firm sharing how to guides for surviving the winter.
The aim of Pinterest is to keep people coming back for more, not simply visiting once, never to be seen again. Give them a good reason to come back, make every visit worth their while.
So there you have it, we've covered a lot of territory and these are just a few ways you really make an impact on Pinterest. There are so many other tips and tricks that I can share with you, so I will be making a Pinterest Series, if you have any questions or would like me to expand on any particular areas by all means leave a comment or you can tweet me