Logion Web Design and Development
Pinterest, the social media site that is driven by visual sharing of photos, has had explosive growth, coming close to Facebook and Google as the 15th largest visited web site in the U.S. according to Alexa.
Yesterday, in one day, their page views increased 5%, and their reach increased 15%.
The main audience and types of pins in Pinterest has been women and arts/crafts/fashion but that is changing. Now businesses and brands are seriously looking at Pinterest as a branding venue for their products and services. However, they may not market these directly but offer helpful information related to their industry.
A good example is Whole Foods, known as a nationwide gourmet health food store. Their information strategy with their pins on their main Pinterest site - http://pinterest.com/wholefoods/ -
offers boards (categories) for recipes, gardening, kitchens, gifts, and other topics not directly promoting their products. The brand awareness is huge and it is no surprise that they have 99,572 followers at the time of this blog post.
For businesses seeking to expand their marketing reach and offer helpful information in the form of visual topics Pinterest has some good potential. One example would be a blog relating to your business. The blog is posted and there is a nice photo associated with it. It is pinned to a board on your page and has a link back to the blog. The brief description will help the pin be found with search results, and those who decide to follow the board or your page will become captive fans for whatever else you post. Like Facebook it will show up in their Pinterest news feed of photos.
Here's ten tips for business that plan to post photos:
1) When you set up your page, use your exact business name to maintain your brand recognition.
2) Use infographics to visually show statistics related to your industry. Now you're an expert.
3) Look at what is trending on P9interest and use the same theme tied into your own brand or related idea. Chances are that you may show up in search results and increase your followers dramatically.
4) The ideal hours and times to pin are shown in the graph below courtesy of 97th Floor. Sunday is a very strong day/time to pin from 5pm on for maximum results.
5) Keep your content relevant to the board that you are pinning it on, or create a new board. Followers of that board expect relevant content. The board has it's own title and description. Use the keywords that match the topic.
6) The better the image the better the response. You are competing with hundreds of images being posted every hour, so it needs to be eye-catching and engaging.
7) Don't just be a pinner of your own content. Repin relevant images from others to your boards.
8) Do not set up too many boards. 20-30 is the normal amount. You do not want to be tagged as a spammer with your pins or your # of boards.
9) When adding a description to a pin, place a link to your Pinterest profile page at the end of the post, and depending on the popularity of you pin this may also increase the number of followers.
10) Study your competition and what some of the largest pinners are doing. There is a general etiquette and protocol for Pinterest. Study this and the help section of Pinterest for ideas and good information.
