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Lisa Orrell, The Promote U Guru 
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Powerful Pinterest Tips to Help Grow Your Small BusinessDecember 11th, 2013Hi All! As the third most popular social media network after Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest has over 48.7 million users, recording more than 25 million monthly visitors. And it has become a powerful social media platform for product-based businesses, bringing in more traffic than Yahoo and Bing. Plus, statistics show that prospects are likely to spend 70% more money with you when they are driven to your website from Pinterest. That alone makes it all the more important to take this newer social media platform seriously! That said, here are a few tips for using Pinterest effectively to grow your small business and increase your sales: 1. Increase Your Brand Awareness Provide useful, educational information to your followers. Your purpose is to become a reliable source of the most accurate, valuable information; not just to promote your products and business. This will ensure that your followers see you as an authority in your industry and look to you as the go-to place for all relevant information about your niche. Done right, you’ll inspire interest and build trust online, and that can lead to increased customer loyalty, greater audience reach, and referrals from others. 2. Expand Your Reach Other social media networks have given small businesses amazing tools to expand reach and grow business, and Pinterest does, too. Using the group board feature on Pinterest and collaborating with popular pinners, you can easily expose your brand to a greater audience and expand your reach. Make each board theme specific, with a catchy title and keyword-focused relevant content. As the audience follows the focused boards, your follower numbers will tend to spike. 3. Make Your Business Site Pinnable The best way to spread the word about your business is to make your Pinterest site visual. You may use Flickr, Shutterstock, Photo Pin, iStockPhoto, or Fotolia to find unique, interesting, exciting, and pinnable photos on a regular basis. However, don’t forget to check the copyright of images. Be sure to give credit where it’s due. The most successful pins are a combination of valuable content and great images. 4. Add Pinterest Logo to Your Website Adding a Pinterest logo to your business website will help increase your fan following and remind site visitors to pin your content. Also, to ensure a positive brand image, send messages that express the real identity (the voice) of your business. So plan out your boards accordingly, keep your content organized across different boards, and clearly outline the information you want to share with your fans. 5. Engage with People Engage with your audience to better understand what they want to generate better boards that they’ll like. Use the Repin option to stay current with what is trending on Pinterest by examining the pins of the most popular Pinterest users and keep your pins sharp, current, and targeted. Also, be sure to keep an eye on your competition to see what they are doing to attract traffic and create engagement. These tips may seem like common sense to some of you, but they’re NOT common practice with many pinners! I constantly hear from people who ask me, “I’m on Pinterest (or Facebook, or YouTube, or LinkedIn, or Twitter)…but what should I be doing there?” That’s more proof that opening an account on a social media platform doesn’t immediately make you a marketing expert. Learn the basics of Pinterest, get comfortable with using it, and then start experimenting with more tools and features they offer. It can work for you as long as you’re persistent and consistent!  Leave a Reply |
