Are you pinning with purpose? Have you devised a Pinterest strategy for your company and your brand? Have you decided on your goals and how you will achieve them?
It’s likely you are wishing to increase your numbers of followers and repins as a means to building traffic to your website and increasing conversions. To do so, you will need to educate others, show your expertise, convince others of the value of your products or services, demonstrate the fun side of your business and promote your products.
A recent post by Spiderworking shows how choosing two elements from three choices of ‘Fun’, ’Give Info’ and ‘Help’ can keep you on track with your tone of voice and messaging in your strategy. For example, this blog fulfils ‘Give Info’ and ‘Help’ whereas my personal blog is moreso ’Fun’ and ‘Gives Info’.
However, I believe that a Pinterest account and a pinterest strategy can include all three and if it does, it is well on the way to engaging followers, ensuring repins and building on conversions.
‘Giving Info’ on Pinterest
While Pinterest may be viewed by some as purely visual, as a tool for those with pretty pictures, this is not necessarily the case. We find that Pinterest delivers three times the amount of traffic that comes from Facebook and all of our pins tend to provide information, they link to blog posts which provide information on social media.
Giving Info: If you are a nutritionist, a chef or a food blogger, providing information on recipes, on cooking, on dietary tips and on the sourcing of food is much needed by many people. Creating pins that demonstrate what the information is (such as this one by Herbi & Carni) will deliver more click throughs to your website.
Instructographics/infographics – If these can provide useful information in a concise, easy to read, easy to comprehend, attractive and user-friendly graphic, they are well on the way to being repinned and generating traffic for the creator. These tend to look professional and ooze knowledge and expertise. Infographics tend to travel well on Pinterest and receive significant numbers of repins.
Help
Your boards can answer the questions and solve the problems of potential customers.
Fashion Advice: A fashion boutique can post pins to a board entitled ‘Skinny Jeans – how to wear them’ and demonstrate how they can be worn by people of varying shapes and with different styles of shoes, thereby showing people how to wear this fashion item and increase sales.
Home Decor Help: An interior designer can include pins on ‘Smart Storage Solutions’ to demonstrate her expertise in this area and solve problems that people may not even realise they have.
Help With Social Media: A social media company (like us) can pin from blog posts – posts which explain how to use the social media platforms effectively, and title the board ‘Social Media Tips for Businesses’.
Holiday Advice: A travel company or an accommodation provider could name a board ‘Travel Tips’ to provide potential visitors/travellers with tips with the aim of generating some business for themselves.
Fun
Pinterest is where every business can show the personality behind the business, show what makes them tick, their involvement in the community or in charity events. There’s many different ways to do this.
Quotes always do well on Pinterest – having a board for quotes related to your industry e.g. if you have a clothing boutique, create a board for suitable quotes.
Animal pictures – cute and funny pictures of animals tend to do well too – perfect for if your business is in any way animal related. I noticed Mashable have a board entitled Pets Gone Digital which includes photos of animals with a digital gadget and ties in their digital marketing business with a photo to be seen as fun.
Colour – create a board that is dedicated to beautiful objects in the same colour as that of your logo.
Always Consider Your Target Customers Interests
When creating your strategy and building your Pinterest boards, think about what your ideal target customer is interested in.
If you clean horse rugs, your target customer is going to be a horse-owner – how can you engage them? With boards showing pictures of beautiful horses (some wearing very clean rugs), horse grooming tips, jumping tips, dressage, funny pictures of horses, horsy quotes, horse-related publications and of course, your own horses as well as boards dedicated to keeping horses warm, why rugs are necessary, how to clean horse rugs …..
If you are an accountant, most of your boards are going to be related to accountacy tips, tax returns advice, financial planning, business growth, who you are – all board fulfilling the ‘give information’ and ‘help’. But what about fun? What will show the personality of your accountancy firm and propel people to repin pins and engage your services? Start a ‘Charities’ or ‘Community Events’ board to show your involvement. If your logo is blue, create a ‘blue’ board including beautiful objects in vivid blues. Create a board for quotes that are somehow related to money or accountancy. Offer a board for fun ‘Money Saving Tips’ or ‘How To Start Kids Saving’. Create a ‘Fun Facts’ board.
Whatever your business, Pinterest will work for you – if you provide information, give help and have fun with it. You also have to use keywords in your board titles, keywords in your board descriptions, categories your boards and pin regularly. Create your own pinterest strategy, make Pinterest part of your working day for 3 months and evaluate the results.
We have launched our new sister site We Teach Social and our first Pinterest course (for beginners) starts on 10th June for 5 weeks. The courses will be delivered online so you can complete the course from the comfort of your own home.
