pinterest marketing

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Make Pinterest Work for Your Business

Pinterest marketing

“The catalogue of ideas” on the web – Pinterest was started by Ben Silbermann along with his co-founders  Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp in 2010. From a paltry 200 test users to the current 150+ million monthly active users, it is one of the fastest growing social network sites in the world. Pinterest has become an integral part of corporate digital marketing strategies.The image driven virtual cork board helps to bookmark your ideas, thoughts, and just about anything that catches your eye! Pinterest is all about pictures and videos – upload, save, sort, and manage images—known as pins—and other media content (e.g., videos) through collections known as pinterest boards.

How does one get onto Pinterest?

Pinterest for Business

All you need to get onto the Pinterest bandwagon is an email address! The users can utilise the website for personal use or for promoting businesses called as “virtual storefronts”. Once you have registered, you are all set to roll. One can choose from a gamut of ideas and interests in the form of boards to follow and “pin” to their home board.

Deciphering the Pinterest Lingo :

Pinterest lingo is no rocket science and is quite self explanatory if you have been on other social network sites like Facebook or twitter.

Pin: The lynch pin of the logo is the (want a image of the board pin). Pin is an image that’s added to your virtual home board. It can be added either through a Pinit button on your web browser or an  image or video that has been uploaded by the user.

Board: A board is a categorised superset of pins.You can add or remove pins at your discretion.

Repin: For users familiar with twitter, rePin is akin to retweet. The most popular action by users helps to share a pin that one found interesting – making a pin goes viral.

Exploring: The guided search feature helps a user explore topics of interests based on the search terms.

Comments and Likes: The names are self explanatory. You can stamp your approval for a post with a like and/or an unlike button. Commenting (which cannot be deleted like in Facebook) and liking are ways in which you can expand your pinterest circle.

Follow: The home feed is a sum total of content from users and boards a user chooses to follow. To be notified what a user or business posts on his/her board you could follow the post. You can limit the notifications to either all that the user posts across boards or limit it to a board that interests you.

Pinterest for businesses

Businesses can use pinterest to drive their sales and traffic with promoted pins. Studies have found that marketing on Pinterest resulted in higher customer engagement and higher converts to sales. In one case study of a fashion website, users visiting from Pinterest spent $180 compared to $85 spent from users coming from Facebook. The reason could be the diverse features like Rich pins, Instant ideas, the shop button and the Shop the Look feature. Almost 55% of pinners, are using pinterest to research and make their next buy. Hope all the advertisers and marketers are listening!  

Etiquettes are important as much in the virtual world as in the real. Hence, share content without infringing on copyright or intellectual property rights and make sure what you share does not hurt other’s sensibilities. After all, a picture speaks a thousand word!