By now, most everyone has heard of Pinterest, the virtual pin board created for online scrapbooking.
While it may not have the large flux of users that Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have, it can still be used to market your business online. In England, much of the early adopter crowd for the new social network uses it for exactly these purposes. In the United States, early users have mainly been women interested in crafts and design.
With a little creativity, Pinterest can be an ideal way to market your business. The key is to be subtle. Users can spot a pinner who is being overly promotional quickly. If your boards are full of only your own products with backlinks to your site, it won’t be long before those you interact with catch on.
Instead what you may want to do is sell a certain lifestyle. If you are a restaurant, pictures of the type of ethnic food you specialize in, or the décor of the restaurant may go over well. For hotels, nearby geographical attractions could be a positive niche for you to pin. A health club could pin motivational pictures, and useful information, things of that nature.
Like any other social network, Pinterest is also an ideal way to build relationships. You want to find the leaders in your perspective field, and establish a connection with them. Find out who is getting a lot of comments, likes, and re-pins, and try and connect.
Another way to drive traffic is to leverage your other social networks to Pinterest. You can notify your Facebook audience when you pin something, and this can help bring in more eyeballs.
While you may not be able to complete a transaction from Pinterest, it’s still a valuable way to help your business grow. Pinterest is not as big as the major players, it is still too large to ignore. The website had more than 3.3 million unique visitors last October, and has been growing rapidly.
So dig in, and find your niche – and happy pinning.
Do you need any help with social media marketing? If so, our Chicago web marketing agency offers many customizable marketing services to help your business grow. Get in touch!