How to use Pinterest successfully for your business

Pinterest provides a wealth of discovery and creativity to the user. It establishes a way of exploring the world from comfortable surroundings – like from your kitchen table. Acting like an online version of a pin board, images or ‘pins’ are put together in collections or mood boards, inspiring and seducing the user, transforming into the perfect platform to market your brand or product. Different to many other social platforms, Pinterest is a place that connects people through the visual interests that they share. Users can pin images that they find throughout the internet onto mood boards that other users can follow when it interests them.

The key to using Pinterest for your business is to use ‘product rich’ pins. This is a pin that allows people to do more with it than just view the image on the screen. It contains a link that leads to your website where you can find out more, check the price, availability or even buy. An incredible two thirds of pins have been shown to come from business websites, meaning that there is a big market for it out there! Plus has the added bonus as counting towards search engine optimisation for your website.

So how do you make your Pinterest a place to successfully market your business?

THE PIN

• Use high res, well-lit photographs and images. Take some time to think about the setting, for instance if you are pinning a cushion you may want to position it on a comfortable chair in a living room. Pinners like to enter into the lifestyle of a product and to visualize how they could use it.
  
• It is important that your images are mobile friendly. It has been shown that an incredible 80% of Pinterest traffic comes from smart phones! Make your images tall and good quality. The aspect ratio 2:3 to 1:3.5 seems to be the best for viewing images on a small screen.
• Be mindful of your branding if you are adding text and logos to your images as Pinners are wary of Pins that look too much like adverts. Avoid talking too much about your brand in the description, make it seem like a natural pin by using subtle branding to get your message across. This is where it’s vital to add in an action or link so that the viewer can look into the details of the product further if they want to.
• Use text in a fun way and incorporate bright colours or images into the background. People love to repin quotes. The key to engagement in a pinned quote is to reflect the mission and tone of your brand and should always lead back to your website.
• Add helpful, useful and positive descriptions to your pins. Usually a couple of sentences is plenty. Generally around 75-100 characters. Use key terms or words so that it makes the image easier to be found when searching for it.

THE MOOD BOARD

• Arrange your pins into a variety of interests. Be imaginative and quirky. Make your boards stand out against thousands of others, making pinners want to follow you.
• Don’t just share the products or things that YOU sell, pin what aligns with your business.

For example, if your company sold ski wear, don’t just pin photos of the products but of the lifestyle that they would enter into – i.e. skiing in action and off-piste socialising.

• Balance out your boards with products and images from other sights. However, be careful not to lead users onto direct competitors.
• It’s always good to go with the trends. Research what interests people who use Pinterest and adapt your boards to include some of these, this way you will hopefully get more interest in your site. Food and Drink (particularly recipes), and Home and Gardens are particularly prominent interests in the Pinterest world, with Pinners being predominantly female.

We hope that these are few pointers to put you in the direction of Pinterest success. Happy pinning!