You may have heard of the latest fastest growing social network: Pinterest. The fairly young network pretty much came out of nowhere to snap at the heels of other social media giants, Twitter and Facebook. At the time of writing there are 12 million users worldwide, of which about 200,000 are in the UK.
With this many users the opportunity to drive traffic to your website is huge. Pinterest is currently referring more traffic to websites than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube put together!
Pinterest is a cross between a digital pin-up board and a scrapbook. You can create different boards for different interests, repin other people’s pictures, like pictures and other users can pin to your boards and make comments.
In the words of Pinterest themselves, the new social media platform “connects everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting”
Part of its appeal is that it’s a visual feast for the eyes.
Interestingly, the average amount of time spent on Pinterest is around 90 minutes, which beats Facebook hands down. It is also worth knowing is that 80% of the users are female.
So as a business how could you use Pinterest?
- Firstly, as per the usual etiquette rules of any other social media site Pinterest shouldn’t be used purely as a self promotion platform. Think about what your customers and clients would enjoy. Reflect their lifestyles through your boards featuring food, travel, fashion trends and so forth. If you’re selling toys then your audience will be parents, so think about their lifestyles and what they might like to see.
- You should certainly repin pictures that you like, especially if they compliment your products or services. This will encourage others to repin your pictures and so widen your exposure.
- Get into the habit of using images alongside your blog posts and pin those images to a board with a linkback to increase traffic. You could also try infographics which show interesting facts and figures from your industry in visual form. These are very popular at the moment and would probably get repinned a fair amount.
- Create a special offers board with relevant links. This could change on a regular basis.
- You can Tag other Pinterest users in your pins by using “@username” in your descriptions and network with other professionals in your field by using this feature.
- You can pin videos as well as images, although not many are doing this, so they will stand out more.
- Don’t forget to comment on images and like them. Interaction with your audience is key.