Social Media is here and it is not going anywhere. Many brands focus on specific social media sites because of the type of updates they can make or the activity level of their target market. Pinterest is no different and the social media site that is mostly used by women (that's changing) is used for “pinning” and collecting many things for entrepreneurs and business owners to promote brands, communicate with customers and to tell their stories. Rescue a CEO asked some businesses how they use Pinterest to help their business.
Read More: 142 Pinterest Board Ideas for Entrepreneurs
1) Everything
Pinterest is everything to my business. I am an artist who paints custom shoes and sneakers from Newport Beach, CA. Pinterest has allow my products to make curated lists, which gives me the advantage over lots of big companies. My custom art shoes are appealing at first glance and Pinterest is the perfect platform to allow people to show their friends. The cherry on top? It drives traffic into my funnel and allows a constant and consistent revenue stream. In a sense, the pinners on Pinterest are doing the selling for me.
Thanks to Blake Barash, B Street Shoes!
Pinterest: bstreetshoes
2) Share Blog Posts
“We started using Pinterest towards the end of 2014. The steel building manufacturing industry isn't one you would expect to see on a site like Pinterest, but we've found it's a good way to share our blog posts, buildings that we are currently working on and other building that we find to be inspirations or examples of what our industry can produce. It's allowed us to think a little outside the box in terms of what social media can achieve for our business.”
Thanks to Steve Wright, Whirlwind Steel Buildings!
Pinterest: whirlwindsteel
3) Communicate Style & Aesthetics
Though I originally created a Pinterest business account as a way to share new products from my own company, I’ve found that it’s even more useful as a way to communicate my overall style and aesthetic. We’re a stationery design company that caters to the 20-40 something crowd. Our core customer base is comprised of young professionals, young moms, and young couples who use social media like Pinterest to collect ideas for their own world. The types of people that we’re connecting with through our work have a really defined taste, and they fill their social media worlds with people who have similar tastes. So I find that pinning something that I think would be great for my home, or a product I love, or a recipe that looks really great — anything that fits my aesthetic as a person and therefore as an artist — helps me to connect with people who have tastes that are similar to mine, who therefore might be drawn to our cards.
Thanks to Lauren Harkawik, Written in Detail!
Pinterest: writtenindetail
4) Promote our Brand & Pair with Others
We use Pinterest for all of our brands including M&P Speed Shop, Original Cowgirl Clothing Co. and others. We use Pinterest to not only promote our brands but to pair them with brands that we think add value to our own. By showing our brands on boards with brands that already have value in the minds of consumer it raises our own brand profile. What is different on Pinterest is that individuals can follow your profile as a whole or just a pin board so we create boards focused in specific niches allowing us to target specific demographics.
Thanks to Michael Satterfield, RBR Inc.!
Pinterest: cassidymagazine | thegentracer
5) Build Brand Awareness
To use Pinterest to it's full potential we create and share fun appealing content. Pinterest users love repining new and unique content. Whenever our content gets shared on Pinterest it gives our brand an opportunity to showcase our knowledge and expertise in our niche. Also by including a link back to our site they are helping build our brand awareness. Aside from sharing content on Pinterest we are also an active member in our community. We love answering questions and commenting on other user's content. Pinterest is one of the best social media platforms to create a more personal and richer relationship with our current and new potential customers.
Thanks to Lisa Chu, Black N Bianco Children's Formal Wear!
Pinterest: blacknbianco
6) For Customers to Envision
We use Pinterest as a medium for customers to envision how our unique jewelry fits into both their daily lives as well as their momentous occasions. As a specialty retailer of engagement rings and wedding bands, we recognize that jewelry can have great sentimental value and significance. Engagement rings and wedding bands are also a part of women and men’s daily lives as a symbol of their love and a representation of their style. Through Four Mine’s Pinterest boards we aim to provide our take on style, trends, as well as wedding advice and ideas. From everyday clothing, to DIY wedding project ideas, we hope to be a resource starting from proposal and through honeymoon paradise. In this way, we hope to create a relationship with our customers, and not just a transaction.
Thank you to Anubh Shah, With Clarity!
Pinterest: withclarity
7) Concepts, Examples & Backlinks
We have been using Pinterest for quite some time to give our clients concepts and visual examples of window treatments. It can provide a certain amount of inspiration and, ultimately, a decision (and a sale). Our business is driven by interior designers and decorators who usually have an idea of what they want to do. There are frequent occasions when they need help expressing or communicating the idea to a client. As a full service window treatment company, it is our job to help them get that information across clearly. There is almost nothing worse in our business than installing an apartment (or house) full of window treatments that disappoints the owner. We aren't responsible for the design but it's our job to represent the designer. Responsible or not, we become part of the solution. It can be costly. On the other side of it, making someone happy pays off in repeat business and referrals. Pinterest can be important in helping us get it all right. A couple months ago, we created our Pinterest site and have been adding to it weekly. Over time it's our expectation that people will come to our site and be inspired. They will discover us which will lead to new clients. The concept is pretty simple. On a more comprehensive level, we expect to gain many followers which will improve backlinks to our website. Backlinks are an important ingredient in search engine optimization. Optimizing a website is hard work and requires several different approaches to be successful. We struggle with backlinks and believe that Pinterest and other sites are a critical part of the answer.
Thanks to Gerry Parker, Distinctive Window Treatment Plus!
Pinterest: distinctwindow
8) Visually Showcase Businesses
Pinterest is a great place to visually showcase your business. If your business is like mine, e-commerce, the solution is easy: engage your followers by starting relevant and interesting boards that they'll love to follow. Then, supplement that content by pinning images of your products directly from your product detail pages. This will help to drive quality traffic directly to your site, and expand your reach across Pinterest. For example, we're a company selling handmade bike bags, dedicated to bike commuting, so our boards reflect the bike commuting lifestyle, cycling tips, and more. If you're more of a service or Saas company, very often it could be good to create boards relevant to your industry (fitness, technology, etc.) and create original content through blog posts, infographics, and webinars, and then pin directly from these pages to your Pinterest boards. These types of content can generate awesome, high quality traffic to your business. I always keep in mind, Pinterest is a place for visual people, I like to keep my posts visually appealing, eye catching, and well designed.
Thanks to Ezra Rufino, NYMB.co!
Pinterest: nymbco
9) Visual Marketing
We sell individual products and also package up these products into amazing & unique-looking gift boxes. With our business solely being online, we rely on sites such as Pinterest (and Instagram) to help with visual marketing. We seek out Pinterest users who have started boards about “Georgia” or pinned something related to Georgia and then follow them. Inevitably, they follow us back and learn all about Georgia Crafted and what we have to offer. We help our followers learn about Georgia-made products they may not have previously discovered. And, of course, we are always pinning the latest & greatest products on our site to help drive more traffic and more sales.
Thanks to Erin Zwigart, Georgia Crafted!
Pinterest: georgiacrafted
10) Growing Clients & Keeping in Touch
We have found Pinterest to be very useful for growing our client base and keeping in touch with customers. The saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” I found it to be very true for my business. By following Pinterest boards, we can see what other boutiques our customers shop at, what brands they like, what kind of blogs they read and even what their own kids wear. We are basically doing market research. When submitting beautiful, interesting & useful content to Pinterest, we rely on the viral effect to reach new customers. For example, one of our birthday theme pins received over 2,000 repins, brought quite a bit of traffic to our website and generated sales.
Thanks to Tatiana, My Little Jules Boutique!
Pinterest: My Little Jules
11) “Pin” News & Interact with Others
We use Pinterest not only to pin our own individual blog posts and media appearances, but to also interact with others in the industry. Pinterest continues to be one of the leading sources of our website traffic, and it is valuable for business owners to spend a few extra minutes to “pin” their content and use common, searchable hashtags. On Pinterest, we constantly find valuable articles of substance and infographics that we share with our audience on our other social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Using Pinterest has really increased engagement among our followers and has broadened our overall online reach.
Thanks to Denise Stern, Let Mommy Sleep!
Pinerest: letmommysleep
12) Promote Step-by-Step How-To Guides
Omghow uses Pinterest to promote its diverse, step by step how-to guides. We pin anything from “How To Love Yourself” to “How To Make DIY iPhone Covers,” and aim to share anywhere from 5 – 10 times daily. We are constantly pinning new, trending content straight from our website, and have learned that high quality images, conversational descriptions, and relevant hashtags allow our pins to reach as many people as possible. Pinterest drives more than 5 x the amount of traffic from any of our other social media platforms and compromises 64% of our social media acquisition. Because our website, the only sharespace where girls give and request advice from other girls, is content based, Pinterest has remained an optimal platform for us and an important marketing tool. It also impeccably fits within our demographic of young women, and has quickly become the most vital tool in our social media arsenal.
Thanks to Courtney Muender, Omghow.com!
Pinterst: omghow
13) New Features
Pinterest has become my number one source for traffic online because of a lot of the new features that Pinterest has been adding. I use Pinterest for business to attract new and old followers to my articles. The very best way that Pinterest can be used is through visual marketing strategies as this is a very visual platform. However, I also do a lot of curating other people's pins as well. The promoted pins feature is also something that I use to promote for traffic and clients. The number one reason I use Pinterest is for visibility to online marketing. Staying consistent with pinning and re-pinning is essential to get more followers and drive more traffic to Pinterest.
Thanks to Wade Harman, Weal Media!
Pinterest: wealmedia
14) Encouraging Discovery
Our marketing agency uses Pinterest as a vessel to encourage the discovery of products in the case of e-commerce clients or to promote image content such as graphs and infographics. With the high profile nature of the site, we often see this leading to Google discovering your website’s more meaningful internal pages much sooner when we include a link to the corresponding product or page within the description accompanying the pin. Interactive and visual content is what drives engagement online, and this is a great subset of social media to take advantage of for just that.
Thanks to Todd Mumford, Riverbed Marketing!
Pinterest: Riverbed Marketing