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What Does Pinterest Mean To Your Business?

I am sure you have recently heard of the new social media platform that has sprung up, Pinterest. Its identity hascome on leaps and bounds with over 11 million unique visits last month alone. Infact, it’s growth has been “fasterthen any standalone site – ever“ (Hubspot). But have you considered what Pinterest means to your business andhow it could affect your social media and marketing activities? No? Then read on…

It has been reported that in January 2012, Pinterest “referred more traffic than Google Plus, YouTube andLinkedIn combined”. This has impacted businesses that rely on large numbers of website visitors by providing anincredible opportunity to dramatically increase their sales volume with little effort. In fact from what I have seen sofar, just about any business that currently uses social media to complement or enhance their business, couldbenefit in some way from this new social network.

There has, however, been some negative press. The Metro reports that “like Facebook, Pinterest has attractedconcern over the question of ownership.” If a user owns a picture and ‘pins it’ on Pinterest, they are effectivelyhanding over ownership to the site. Andrew Murray, professor of law at the London School of Economics, hasalso stated that “Pinterest is acting at the margins of copyright legality’. Even with these concerns, I personallythink that Pinterest will continue with the rapid growth is has shown and provide another platform for businesses toenhance and complement their services.

So… how can businesses effectively use this new social media platform? Here are some basic guidelines to getyou started:

Audience Building

Pinterest works a little differently from the typical follower functionality of other social networks. There are two‘follower options’ a user can take when someone likes their content: a user can follow a specific board or anaccount.

The difference is when a user follows a board, they will only be notified of new content to that board, whereas if

they follow an account, they will be notified any time the user pins any content to any board.

Marketing

Pinterest offers a range of activities to market your business to a new audience. Some of the main features itshowcases includes: featuring visual contents, creating user-generated pinboards, creating videogalleries, hosting a contest, featuring offline events, gathering business/brand insight, ability to add the pin-itbutton to your website and links in the descriptions of your pins and using hashtags.

Final Thoughts

If your company is serious about using social media to complement and enhance its business activities, thenPinterest can be a viable business option.

Integration of another social media platform into your social media campaigns has business implications thatrequire considering, but all the signs so far point towards an enhanced campaign if it is successfully understoodand implemented. Are you using Pinterest to enhance your social media campaigns yet?

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