Pinterest for Small Business: Top Tips and Tricks

If you’re a small business owner, chances are you’re operating on a relatively tight budget, and that is especially so for your marketing and advertising expenditures. That makes it very important that you get the most you can for your money, and that you maximize your investment in social media strategy. This discussion will center on how you can use some tips and tricks to get the most out of your Pinterest social marketing investment, and get real value for your small business.

Tag the original pinner

While you’ll get some results by just pinning your own images, you’ll get a lot more out of it by re-pinning the content of others. This kind of active engagement will help you to gain new followers, and all you have to do is tag the original pinner in the section reserved for descriptions. By simply adding the @ symbol before the original pinner’s name, that person will realize you gave them a mention, and more than likely, you’ll pick up another follower. If you do this for a number of pins, the cumulative effect should build your following fairly quickly.

Don’t forget pricing

The majority of Pinterest users visit the platform for more than simple inspiration, and a great many of them have an eye peeled for a bargain or an item which just fascinates them personally. If you do have a product that you’re trying to sell for your business, don’t forget to put a price tag on the image. It’s a proven fact that pins with price tags get 36% more likes than pins which lack them.

There are a number of other ways you can call attention to your products as well, such as creating a mood board which will display seasonal products and styles, or incorporating products with associated keywords that your fellow pinners are likely to be looking for. Product pinning is a very good way to maximize likes and re-pins, so it’s something you should make part of your game plan on Pinterest.

Zero in on your target audience

It’s a good idea to get into the habit of checking out the pinners who have followed your business, because they can provide a lot of useful information about your general target audience. Follow the pinners in this group and see what else they’re engaged with on Pinterest – their likes, their comments, and all their other pins. By analyzing this information, you can obtain some great trending information about the users who comprise your target audience.

Use visuals other than images

It’s a good idea when marketing products or other content for your small business, to use additional visuals to supplement your social media marketing strategy. Assuming you’ve already uploaded some product images and descriptions, you may want to add to that by uploading other types of visuals, such as videos, slides, charts, and infographics. All these can give increased presence to your small business, so you have a better chance of gaining more followers.

Use strong keywords when uploading images

To make it more likely that other pinners will find your uploaded product images, make sure to use really strong keywords that are descriptive of the product, and are terms which users would actually employ in their product searches. As an example, instead of using your product’s model number, string together a series of terms which describe it, and which a searcher would use to find it. This takes advantage of sound SEO techniques, and will give you a much better return than if you simply put up a model number, which very few pinners will be actively searching for.

Verify your business

By verifying your business, you can demonstrate to other Pinterest users that your small business is a trustworthy source, and it’s a very simple process to go through on the platform. Once you have verified your business, users will be able to see that and have greater confidence in you as a source, and it will also allow you to gain access to Pinterest Analytics. As mentioned below, having this kind of information on metrics can tell you an awful lot about your target audience and their interests.

Use Pinterest Analytics

In order to see how well your Pinterest marketing strategy is working, use their ‘Web Analytics Walk-through‘ video to learn how you can effectively measure your conversions through their platform. There are a number of other things that you will find out through watching this video, such as the number of pinners visiting your website from within Pinterest, the quantified popularity of your pins, and everything that’s being re-pinned directly from your site. These metrics and analytics will give you a pretty clear picture of both your website activity and your Pinterest page.

Pin ideas useful to your target audience

Apart from selling initiatives for your own products, it is a good idea to pin some ideas and products that would be useful to your target audience as well, even if it’s not anything your company sells. The idea behind this strategy is that you will be providing useful information and ideas to your target audience so that they will then view you as a reliable source of valuable information. Once your audience begins to consider you as a useful resource, they might well be more receptive to your own sales initiatives.

A trick to start conversations

One of the best ways to encourage conversations that get passed around in Pinterest is to add a question in the comments section. Simple questions are best, and open-ended questions are even better. For instance, something as concise as “Tell us what you think about this product”, can be very effective at triggering a whole slew of comments. Any question you come up with that encourages pinners to comment is a good idea. When they do comment, make sure that you engage with them and reply, because this positions you as the hub of the conversation, and it also tends to extend that conversation.

Pinterest is an excellent way to showcase your products and your brand in a visual way, which is most effective for boosting sales. Now that you know how to maximize your Pinterest reach, what new content will you be adding to your Pinterest boards?