Monday, January 16th, 2012
It launched in December of 2009, but many small businesses have just started hearing the buzz about Pinterest in the past few months. Still officially in Beta (and invitation-only), Pinterest has joined the weberatti, sitting alongside Facebook and LinkedIn, as one of the 10 most popular social networking sites. It now boasts over 5 million users and has been touted as the fastest growing social network in history. Have I piqued your interest?
Brides, wedding bloggers, fashionistas, graphic designers and artists have embraced the site. And more recently, I’ve seen real estate agents, television brands and teachers jumping on board. At a time when nary a person would say that they need another social networking site, Pinterest has flourished. Why?
The compelling features
In my opinion, they have the magic formula for an over-stimulated and time-starved internet user:
- Simple – It is immensely easy to use. Click to pin, put it in a category, add some keywords, et voila. A great user experience, clean design and devoid of ads, interacting with Pinterest is a breath of fresh air. And, as easy as it is to pin, it’s just as easy to repin. In one click and a matter of seconds, thousands of people can share something that’s been posted.
- Visual – We see well before we read. Pinterest is all about sharing visual images and ideas. No laborious reading here.
- Controllable – Unlike many other social networking tools, YOU choose what’s shared with you.
- Scannable – Pinterest is like window shopping. At a glance users can get inspired and see what’s hot. You don’t need to dedicate hours to Pinterest. In fact, you’ll find yourself scanning during lunch, before you put the kids to sleep, while you’re watching TV, etc.
- Serendipitous – Pinterest is about discovery. Log in and find all the things you love that you didn’t even know you were looking for.
Is Pinterest Right for Your Business?
What makes Pinterest so interesting are the users behind the tool. Grandmothers, stay-at-home Moms, husbands, students and everyone in between. The thread that binds is that they’re looking for visual inspiration or to inspire others visually. In fact, there’s very little discussion altogether, which makes this tool totally unique to any other social networking site.
So, if you’re products or services aren’t visually compelling, this likely isn’t the site for you.
That said, as this tool quickly becomes the place to collect and bookmark things we love, we may see the way it is used shift over time.
20 Ideas for using Pinterest for Your Business
For the inventory-rich business
- Promote your products / inventory – Add a ‘Pin It’ button on each product page to allow customers and prospects to share and catalogue your images.
- Product popularity – Track which products/ideas from your site have elicited the most shares.
- Product ideas – Rather than simply show a photo of your product (like a chair, for example), create Boards by theme (i.e. Winter Wonderland) and show the chairs in different thematic environments. Showcase your knowledge of trends and catalogue products by trend types (i.e. color blocking, stripes, metallics, etc).
- R&D – Test new product ideas by pinning them on Pinterest. Ask customers to vote on the ones they like most by repinning them, liking them or commenting.
- Create an e-commerce board – With Pinterest, you can not only showcase your individual products, you can also attach a price to the item (by putting a dollar figure before the price). When you do this, your products are automatically added under the “Gifts” tab, which allow users to browse products by price.
- Crowdsourced photos – Ask customers to pin photos of themselves using your products and tag them with your company name or a hashtag.
- Weekly offer / sale – Deal of the day sites begone. Why not host your own flash sale site by creating an ‘On Sale’ board and posting sale items. Or create a weekly offer that you promote on Pinterest only.
For the event planner
Create an account for your event:
- Tell a story about the event – Imagine you’re planning a fundraising event. You could create a board of pictures from your events, a board on inspirational quotes, a board showing who you’re helping, a preview of products you’re auctioning, etc.
- Speaker videos – Ask speakers to create a video promoting their session, upload them to YouTube and then pin them on Pinterest. Don’t forget to add annotations to your videos about your event.
- Crowdsourced photos – Ask attendees to pin their photos to Pinterest and have them tag photos with your event name or a hashtag.
- Invitations – Create an invitation image for Pinterest and include the event details in the Details.
- Portfolio – Show transformations & before and afters. As I reported in my last blog post on How to Get PR for your Event Business, editors are scanning social media sites to find events and ideas to feature in their publications.
For all
- Find fans – Find out who has pinned content from your site. Simply type http://pinterest.com/source/yoursite.com into the address bar in your web browser and it will show you who has shared your website’s information and what they shared. Click on their profiles to learn about them and their interests. Consider commenting on their pin, providing more information, answering questions, etc.
- Humanize – Tell a story about your company by way of your pins and boards. For example, an event planning company could have boards for their favorite design books, office photos, style trends, quotes, employee photos, work samples, other interests (like favorite foods / recipes), other inspiration (like favorite decor ideas)
- Insights – Spend time looking into your followers to understand who wants to stay on top of what you’re pinning. Follow them back and track what their interests are. This can give you deeper insight into who they are.
- Contests – Hold a contest asking customers / attendees to pin photos – the one with the most repins, likes or comments win a prize. I.e. Event organizers, hold a contest asking attendees to pin their favorite moments from your event.
- SEO - Currently, when someone attributes a pin to your website (by including a link), this actually counts for SEO value.
- Research – Follow influencers and find out what they think is hot, important and interesting. A bonus is that a user is notified when someone begins following them. So, this can be like a tap on the back to let influencers know you’re there. You’d be surprised how many people research who’s following them.
- Seasonality – Match your boards with your business’ seasonalities. For example, a caterer might create a Valentine’s board to showcase great food ideas for Valentine’s day. A planner might create wedding boards during wedding planning season. A rental company might create a holiday wish list board to showcase products relevant to the holiday season.
- Think keywords – Many users take advantage of the search function on Pinterest, so ensure you’re thinking keywords when you enter your image/video description.
A Few Words of Caution
- Self-promotion – Every social networking site has its own etiquette. Pinterest is no exception. They discourage users from using the network as purely promotional. That’s just common sense.
- High quality photography needed – If you’re going to participate, recognize that if you want to be repinned, your images / videos need to be high quality and attractive.
- Open window into your thoughts, ideas & organization – Pinterest does not have the ability to make your pins private for now, although they have identified this is something they’re considering working on. So, be cautious about what you share. For example, you might not want to post ideas for projects you’re working on – for confidentiality and privacy reasons.
- Rules of conduct – As with any social networking site, there are specific (and legal) rules of conduct. Ensure you follow Pinterest’s Copyright, Privacy and Terms of Use Policies. The site is stirring up a lot of controversy over their copyright terms, so it’s important to read them carefully and ensure you understand and are comfortable with them.
Update
Here is list of how actual events or businesses who have creatively used Pinterest:
- SXSW Survival Guide
- PitchEngine posts recent pitches
- A list of brands using Pinterest
- Mike McCallen uses Pinterest to show his resume
- Fashion label live-pins their event
What are your favorite ideas? How are you using Pinterest for your business?
Hire Lara to Build Your Business
Hire Lara to Speak
Subscribe to our Newsletter
The best way to get in touch with me is hello@ready2spark.com
28 Comments to Pinterest for Brands – 20 ideas
Leave a Reply
@lizmazzei DM me your email address and I’ll send you an invite!
@LizMazzei DM me your email, I’ll send you one!
@melissary YEA!!! DM on the way :)
@ready2spark Fantastic read – will be retweeting. I LOVE Pinterest for my dessert catering business. It has been invaluable!
@FineFrostings Fantastic! Thank you for sharing.
@LizMazzei @mattbologna @melissary Now that’s a community (re: Pinterest invites)!
@KimVallee @markalves oof that’s a great one. love @ready2spark!
@maddiegrant @kimvallee @ready2spark Thanks so much for the fantastic Pinterest tips!
@KimVallee @maddiegrant Merci Kim!
Great ideas! I’m a huge fan of pinterest. I am currently running a contest on my blog and one way to gain an extra entry is for entrants to pin their favorite product from my shop. I also direct people to specific pinterest boards to get more ideas related to specific blog articles – such as diy’s and gift guides.
@rebeccassoapdeli Fantastic, Rebecca. Thanks for sharing. I look forward to checking your contest out. Sounds like a great use of Pinterest.
Pinterest gives me great inspiration for my event planning business. Great information! annettenaif eventdetailsnyc curtainupsevents thepartymaven vagencyevents thepartygoddess intouchevents ashleyfarthing
@AnnetteNaif Delighted you enjoyed it! annettenaif eventdetailsnyc curtainupsevents thepartymaven vagencyevents thepartygoddess intouchevents ashleyfarthing
@ready2spark thank you so much for the mention. I have marked “20 Ways to Use Pinterest to Build Your Brand” as a favorite
@VAgencyEvents Fantastic!
New to this…looks Very interesting and less confining..?
@Janie Sutler So true, Janie. I think this part of the reason for their dramatic uptake since 2009. I hope you enjoy trying it out.
People are less likely to read a whole article but Readers love looking at pretty pictures. I thought it was interesting that this article has no pictures at all.
@gheijkoop haha, bij mij is dat wel duidelijk toch. Ja. Teveel argumenten voor een tweet!
@_MRS je pagina ziet er fantastisch uit! Maar ik ben nog wel benieuwd naar hoe je het gebruikt… Misschien in n paar DM’s ? :-)
@gheijkoop ga ik je vanavond sturen :)
This is a great blog post. I strongly believe that Pinterest will become the hottest social media trend for 2012. In a world where we don’t want to think or read to much, Pinterest can capture a readers attention easily view products and share easily. I am working on a board for real estate.
@Johanna Roach Thanks for sharing, Johanna. Please do share when you get it up. I’m creating a board for interesting marketing applications.
Great post! I am a wedding planner and I use Pinterest to pull together looks for my brides. Also, super easy to create inspiration boards here.
Tweeting this article out so everybody can see it. Thanks!
@HeatherGardner Thank you, Heather. I appreciate your feedback!
Great article. My only question is how do you hold the contest. Others can’t pin on your boards?
@Charmed_Events Great question! There are a few ways: 1) You can create a new board and invite people (but this is limited to the people you invite), 2) Ask people to pin favorite ideas from your site. Lands End did this, see: http://www.momblogmagazine.com/index/2011/12/lands-end-talks-working-with-pinterest/, or 3) Ask them to use a hashtag and search on the hashtag, i.e. http://pinterest.com/search/?q=%23eventprofs
Love Pinterest. Thanks for this post. The one thing I think Pinterest is lacking is a decent search feature, since it only searches on what users title their pins. I truly believe there are some equally good ways for getting event planning ideas, like Google Image search and Flickr. See more http://www.strategiceventdesign.com/blog/bid/81326/Unexpected-Resources-for-Generating-Wedding-and-Event-Planning-Ideas