Marketing Your Business With Social Media –

Our Interest in Pinterest

– By Emma Dalzell

So when you think of social media what do you think of?

Facebook?

Twitter?

YouTube?

And hopefully Google+ (if you read our blog on it!)

Whilst there is no denying Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and even Google+ are great tools for small businesses, could the smaller players in social networking, such as Pinterest, be the undiscovered gems of the social media world?

Despite Pinterest’s estimated 49 million users, when comparing its estimated worth of $2 billion to Facebook’s $67.8 billion its easy to see why it has slipped under the marketing radar of most small businesses.

However, businesses need to consider that (with some exceptions) the mindset of a Facebook user is not predominantly that of a customer – most visitors to Facebook are there to communicate and interact with friends and not to purchase at that point in time.

Pinterest, is a very visual social media network. It encourages its users to search for images, pins and boards of pretty much whatever they like, from make up tips to inspiring quotes, from funny pictures to business information.  The website works allows all images to be pinned and shared and to link back to its origins, meaning that no matter how many times you are ‘re-pinned’ or shared, there will still be a link back to your business. Great for increasing your online awareness, marketing your products and raising the profile of your brand.

The catch?  To progress and expand on Pinterest buy diazepam sri lanka your business needs a good amount of images (preferably inspiring, cute, humourous, o at least vaguely appealing) that you can use in order to get repinned. Meaning that this form of social media is best for physical goods businesses rather than services, unless you can represent your business in a visual format (such as infographics – see an example of ours here).

So think about it….if you wanted to buy a wedding cake, Facebook may not be your first port of call. However, Pinterest would allow you to search for your exact requirements, for example a green wedding cake, rather than having to search by business. This means that a customer could find you by your product rather than by your business name, which is very powerful in terms of marketing your business online.

So  are you Pinterested?

Get started with our three top tips to happy pinning…

1) Be active!

Pin and be pinned, the more active you are the more active your followers will become, people won’t flock to your Pinterest site if you never update it.

2) Have a ‘Pinnable’ Website

If you sell a product and have product images on your website, allow for them to be repinned, it keeps your account up to date with new followers and allows for others to promote you.

3) Create Boards

Creating boards for different product ranges, using the cake example again you could have boards for wedding, birthdays and anniversaries etc.

So what are you waiting for? Happy Pinning!