With all the excitement over Pinterest’s phenomenal growth, you may be wondering if Pinterest is the right social network for your business. Here are a few tips to help you make that decision.
Do market research. Are your ideal clients using Pinterest?
Before setting up a business profile, the first step is to find out if your ideal clients are using Pinterest. Here are some helpful demographics on users from Search Engine Journal:
- 80% of users are women
- biggest age groups are between 25-44
- 50% of users have kids
- American users spend an average of 1 hour and 17 minutes on the site
View the Infographic and article here
You may want to set up a personal Pinterest account just for the purpose of market research initially (you can easily convert it into a business account later or you can create a second account for business – keep in mind the time necessary to manage 2 accounts though!)
Use Pinterest’s Search feature to look for competitors and colleagues, big brands and popular users for ideas on how others are using Pinterest. Look for the users/brands your ideal client would be interested in and take note of what those brands are sharing (Pinning).
Determine how your products and services will be viewed on Pinterest
Product-based businesses may find it easier to get started since Pinterest is a visual-driven platform. Pinterest Boards can be devoted to one product or a range of products.
You also have the option of attaching a price to your Pins, which encourages customers to purchase (see Image, left). All Pins with a price attached are added to the Gift Category on Pinterest.
Users will click on your Pin to be taken to your ecommerce site/page.
Image shown from Louise Cronian’s Pinterest Page
Service-based businesses can also find success on Pinterest if you create Boards that show the benefits of your service. For example, if you own a carpet cleaning business, create a Board to Pin before-and-after shots or testimonials and photos from happy clients.
What are some of your target audience’s interests that relate to your service? Create Boards that show collections of those interests. Let’s say you are a health coach wondering what types of Pins to add. If your ideal client is a woman in her 30s – 50s who wants to lose weight and learn more about a healthy lifestyle, then create Boards and Pins for things like:
- recipes (this can be broken down into several recipe boards)
- articles and resources all about healthy habits and nutrition
- motivational quotes and images
- articles, resources and tips for exercising
Consider the time required to properly maintain an account
You will want to set up several Boards related to your business with at least 3-5 Pins on each Board. The Pins don’t have to be ones you’ve created and it’s better (and easier at first) if you do not have too many self-promoting Pins.
Follow the same social media etiquette guidelines here as on other sites: share (Pin) more of others’ content (Pins) than your own.
Although many people find Pinterest “addicting” and spend way too many hours getting caught up on all the fabulous Pins on the site, you can quickly see great results in your business by simply setting aside 5-10 minutes a day to upload Pins or share Pins. No blogging or wordy posts are necessary – you find a Pin you like and simply Re-Pin it (to one of your Boards). Just consistently Pin (collect) items of interest to your target audience.
But…consistency on Pinterest (as on any other social media site) is crucial to your success! Don’t create a “Recipe” Board for health coaching clients and Pin one recipe every 3 weeks – you will not attract the attention from potential customers that way.
Add Pinterest to your social media networks when you are sure you have time to devote each day (or at least 3 days a week).
Pinterest has recorded phenomenal growth this year and statistics show it creates more referral traffic to websites than YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+ combined. It can definitely be a worthwhile network if you find your ideal clients using the site, develop a content plan that works for your business and commit to spending at least 5-10 minutes every few days to create and update interesting Boards.
To learn more about 2 of my favorite Pinterest tools, read Pinterest Tools – Easy Ways to Pin Quotes.
About Terry League