6 Pinterest tips for small business success
If you think Pinterest is only for Martha Stewart, Buzzfeed and Etsy you're probably missing a trick. I'm not saying Pinterest is the best social network for all small businesses, but with 72.8 million monthly active users it's certainly worth considering whether it could bring value to your company.
Like most social networks, Pinterest is a great platform for small businesses to experiment with because it's free to set up an account. There's no financial outlay but you will need to spend time using the site to generate a strategy for your small business to employ.
Ready to buy into Pinterest? Here are six things you should think about to ensure small business success on the network:
1) Create a Pinterest business account
There are two types of Pinterest accounts, personal and business. When you create your account make sure you create a business Pinterest account. A business account is exactly the same as a personal account (it's still completely free) but it has the added benefit of access to an analytics dashboard.
2) Verify your website
Verifying your website means your full URL will appear on your profile page (take a look at the image above to see how it will appear). This is great for your brand and will allow users to easily click through to your website and find out more about your small business.
3) Pinterest analytics
I touched on it before, and it's probably worthy of a whole other post, but for now just start checking your Pinterest analytics regularly. Play around with the data, download spreadsheets and learn what works and what doesn't for your brand. The dashboard is easy to use and contains all the information a small business needs to know about how they're performing on Pinterest.
4) Use rich pins
Rich pins allow you to add extra information to a pin. There are five types of rich pins in total but small businesses should start by focusing on article pins, product pins and place pins. These pins give the user more information and perform brilliantly. How do I know that? Based on my experience managing Pinterest accounts (from data accessed via the analytics dashboard) I can see that on average rich pins perform 80% better than standard pins.
5) Utilise place pins
Place pins are a rich pin, but they're so useful for small businesses that I thought they deserved a whole paragraph of their own!
Local search is incredibly important to small businesses. Pinterest is ranked highly in the search engines and place pins can also help you establish expertise in your area when you create specific boards relevant to your local community.
6) Track what people pin from your website
Once you have the Pin button live on your website you'll be able to see if visitors to your website have pinned your content. Just replace "URL" in this link with your website address to see what content on your own website is performing best: https://pinterest.com/source/URL
If you found this article helpful please consider pinning it. You can also follow me on Pinterest here.
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Carla Bradman writes a London lifestyle blog and is the marketing manager at Paramount.