The Goldmine of Pinterest

There is endless potential to find new clients on the hugely popular social networking site Pinterest! People engage in this phenomenon to relax, as a means of self-expression and to foster creativity. Displaying your company’s products and services on a Pinterest board is ingenious as users can leisurely browse your inventory from the comfort of home while enjoying one of their favorite pastimes. Pinterest fanatics virtually “pin” images of everything from apparel, furniture and recipes to art, fitness regiments and dream travel destinations onto cyber cork boards to save their finds. People invest considerable amounts of time chronicling and archiving their picture collections on Pinterest.

With a strong and growing following, Pinterest users share everything that they post with the Pinterest community.  It is important for companies to realize though that Pinterest is catered toward a particular target audience. The predominantly female fan base means that a wedding planner agency or interior design firm will be more likely to benefit from Pinterest than a power tool company or sports gear retailer.  Pinterest connects with Facebook so users gain instant friends to follow and view their activity on the site and vice versa, but being someone’s friend is not required in order to look at their various boards. Pinterest makes it easy to connect with others and build relationships between similar individuals who find one another based on the types of pins that they acquire. If someone comes across a myriad of boards from one person that they like, they may add that pinner to the list of people that they follow because they consider them a “quality pinner” and want to see what they have to offer in the future. From then on, that person’s most recent posts will appear on the follower’s home page of news feeds. The vast system of users is a great opportunity for small businesses and entrepreneurs especially to advertise their products and services because a plethora of eyes will see it based on how Pinterest shares information. Individuals can then click on the image of the bouquet of peonies or hair style that they pinned which will then take them to the florist’s or cosmetologist’s home page of their website for potential buyers to then purchase the item or book an appointment for the service.

Pinterest is a free tool for corporations to capitalize on in order to increase awareness of their company as well as traffic to their website. Spreading the word one pin at a time, this social networking site could be the key to your business’s success! A few small businesses that have triumphed due to Pinterest include Adonis Displays, Chocolations, Mompreneurs® Onine, and Gardens By Elena. If they can do it, so can you!

Here are 6 savvy tips for making the most of Pinterest:

1. Upload Original Photography to market products or services as they are the type most featured under the popular tab on Pinterest.
2. Spread the love by making sure to pin content similar to your own from others or “liking” it in order to increase your company’s Pinterest following.
3.  Have a “Special Offers” board that features online exclusive coupons or sales for Pinterest users.
4. Create Price Tagged Catalogues like the business Nordstrom does on their Pinterest boards so users can browse your entire inventory and immediately know the cost of what they are viewing.
5. Time Your Pins to zone in on when your audience will most likely be online (after work, lunch time, etc.).
6. Organize Your Boards so that they are easy to find based on their simple titles and geared toward one unique theme.

Written by Lauren Polhill, a sophomore at Stetson University majoring in communication studies and minoring in journalism and marketing. Lauren is an aspiring writer living in Orlando, FL.