Pinterest is currently the toast of the town in the world of social media. Even the world’s most powerful man, Barack Obama couldn’t resist the temptation of pinteresting. However, on the other hand, Pinterest has also been in the news for all the wrong reasons – spammers making merry out of it without the fear of being caught.
None the less, despite the sensationalism and criticism, there’s no doubt that Pinterest is an altogether new approach to social media. I personally believe Pinterest can prove to be a fantastic marketing tool if they were to follow these 7 golden rules.
1. Pinteresting for nformation Disbursal
Pinterest is all about pictures and videos – both great marketing tools for information disbursal. I believe marketers can leverage Pinterest to promote their business products/ services. The best part – it’s simple and instant in impact – just pin the products to share with other users in the appropriate categories and share them with a specific customer base.
2. Pinteresting for Cross Network Marketing
I believe Pinteresting will be a natural evolution for marketers who already have an active presence on Facebook and Twitter. Marketers should focus redirecting customers to and from Pinterest and other social networks. Pinterest is currently riding the new wave of innovation as it provides customers with a new way to interact with their favorite brands, and improves your business’ social media presence so why not leverage its reach across multiple social networks.
3. Pinteresting for Engagement
I reckon Pinterest to be a marketer’s delight because it’s after all a social network at the core. It’s an ideal platform for marketers and businesses to build a community around their brand. When users re-pin items, marketers should ensure putting in comments and thank them. Marketers can up their engagement quotient by following other users, and encouraging others to spread the goodness.
4. Pinteresting for Pitch
Like any other marketing tool, pinteresting can only be effective if you get the pitch right. If the videos and pictures are blunt and aggressive, it’s likely to annoy the viewers. On the other hand, if it doesn’t make an impact, it’s not worth the effort. Therefore, it’s important to adopt the right pitch and choose the correct images and videos to connect with the audience.
5. Pinteresting with Gifts
Gifts are a marketer’s best friend and pinteresting facilitates gifting at the core. Marketers can just add a price tag for the items they pin, and add their website link. Pinterest highlights such items in the “gifts” section on Pinterest. I believe marketers can leverage the Gifts section to gain more customer outreach for their products and services.
6. Pinteresting for Visual Impact
Marketing is all about creating an impact and I strongly believe visuals are a very powerful tool for to do so. Pinterest provides marketers a great way to pin customer stories on your Pinterest boards. Businesses and marketers should customers to share interesting items, thereby improving the overall appeal of their Pinterest board and in turn improving the visual experience for customers.
7. Pinteresting for SEO
Pinterest is SEO friendly – when products are pinned, marketers can add website links for SEO traction. This way, Pinteresting provides marketers with high quality backlinks whenever other users link to those products. As a rule, marketers need to ensure that they write concise descriptions and choose the right keywords to help improve search-engine ranking.
Have you used Pinterest for marketing yet? What’s your success mantra for pinteresting? Please have your say by leaving a comment.
Thanks for sharing this GREAT article Doug which coincidentally, I found on Pinterest!
Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for being part of the Smedio community.
Pinterest – Noun/ Name
Pinning – Verb
Pinteresting – Adjective
Yes, teacher!
Nice list. I’m a strong believer in the benefit of Pinterest. What will be very interesting is the way in which it interacts and/or amplifies Facebook & Twitter. Will it be a separate and distinct ecosystem or will sharing occur seamlessly across networks?
Good Article. You hear so much about Pinterest about these days. And when a friend said it had helped her promote her business I really got interested. As a marketer you have to take Pinterest serious.
This article was extremely interesting, especially since I was searching for thoughts on this subject last week
I find it difficult to take someone serious who misuses the term evolution
I enjoyed your article as I have previous ones over the past couple of months. My only problem is that none of this is new information. I am currently doing my company’s Pinterest profile and have been reading plenty of articles similar to this e.g. from Colby Almond and others.
http://www.copyblogger.com/pinterest-marketing/
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/222740
http://colbyalmond.com/the-viral-guide-to-pinterest-marketing/
I was recently watching an interview (so annoyed I can’t remember who) but he made a very good point. Instead of just talking about things and regurgitating what has been already studied, let’s get down to the actual doing.
I’m probably going to come off as a hater. But from my point of view this article has been written, from what I’ve seen, 20 times or so. And I’ve reread it three times just to make sure I’m not sounding like an idiot.
How can Pinterest be used for promoting services? I’m asking because many products are easy to photograph, but photographing services is more challenging.
It really depends on what type of service you’re offering, but at the end of the day you are offering something that will benefit people. Show them, visually, the benefits of using your service.
Do you have a catalog of images that you can use? Even if you don’t have many images, this is ok. For every image you post that relates to your company, you should post at least 10-15 images that aren’t.
Eventually, you should begin to see referral traffic ramp up for your site, which in my book, is gold.
Well, there you go. At least give it a try.
My success mantra for pinterest is to use pinterest like a pinner and not like a marketer before you start trying to market on it.
It is amusing to see mistakes that marketers make on pinterest because they are not familiar with the culture. It is like they are showing up to a volleyball game with a basketball and thinking that somehow they are ready to play the game. It is so obvious to see who gets pinterest and who doesn’t. So, if you want to market on it – use it first.
Hi, Douglas, and thanks for the list you put together. You have some really useful “Pinsight.”
A similar good read: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/pinterest-pictures-for-your-business/
I gather a newly marketing word which is Pinterest. I sense the success and progression as I read the contents of this blog! The accuracy of the facts here was worthy to take my thumbs up!