Published April 22, 2013
Is your business on Pinterest?
Or are you still unsure how to use Pinterest to effectively promote your products or company?
In November, Pinterest launched business pages with their new terms of service. This update lets you use Pinterest commercially.
You can promote your products, generate sales and leads and use it for other commercial purposes without any worries.
But first, you may want to convert your personal profile into a business account (or if you don’t have a personal account, just start fresh with one for business).
Here are some tips on how you can take advantage of this update and use Pinterest commercially to promote your business.
A great way to drive sales is to create boards where you pin holiday products. This could be Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Mother’s Day or any other day that is of significance to your audience.
You can use Pinterest to show your audience that you’ve got what they need to celebrate.
The first thing you need to do is create a board based on that holiday and label it with a board name, description and category.
After that, you can begin pinning relevant products from your website to this board. You could also upload the images directly to Pinterest, but in this case make sure the image leads to a landing page on your website where people can make a purchase.
Write a good description to let readers know how they can use your product during this holiday. You can also add the price.
Rearrange your holiday-themed boards so that they’re at the top of your profile page during the appropriate season so they stand out (and don’t forget to add a good cover image).
You could also add a board widget to your website to help promote the board.
Like Argos, promote your products for festive occasions.A good example of a holiday board is Christmas Gifts for Her, which can be found on Argos’ (a UK home and general goods retailer) Pinterest brand page.
On this board, you’ll find pins of products from their website for Christmas, along with detailed descriptions and labels, which all ultimately lead to a landing page to buy the item. This is a great way to market their products on Pinterest.
Check out the board to see how well it’s been done.
Another creative way of using your Pinterest brand page is to promote your products using a theme. This could be a theme around colors, designs, materials, ingredients, locations or anything else that’s interesting and can be categorized.
After you choose a theme, create several boards based on that theme.
For example, if you choose the color theme, create several boards where you plan to pin products of different colors. Label them accordingly, with different color names and arrange them side by side, so users know that the boards collectively form a theme.
Once you have set up the boards correctly, start pinning products of that color onto that board and add a good description (make sure you mention the color here too). This is a creative way to market your business, as people can easily find products of their favorite color.
This method is also good for search engine optimization (SEO), especially when you mention the keyword (color) in the board title, board description and pin description.
Displaying your products around a theme can increase engagement and drive sales.A company that is promoting its products around a theme on Pinterest is Debenhams, a chain of stores in the UK.
On their Pinterest page, they have several boards labeled with names of designers like John Rocha, Betty Jackson and Jenny Packham. They also have each designer’s photo set as their board cover.
On this board they share clothes and accessories created by the designer. Fans can visit that board to check out the creations of that designer instead of visiting the website and browsing through hundreds of clothing items and accessories. This can help generate traffic and increase sales.
You can also promote your products in a similar way. Just make sure you choose a title under which you can group many of your products together. And don’t hesitate to experiment with different methods and themes. If something doesn’t work, you can always delete the boards and pins and create new ones.
People like popular products. When they know that a product is selling well and everyone else is buying it, they want to get a hold of it before they miss out. This is one of the reasons why there’s the Amazon bestseller list and the option to look at the most popular products on online stores.
Once your products reach that list and are easily visible to your website visitors, they are likely to sell even better.
You can take advantage of this same idea on Pinterest too and list your most popular products.
First, create a board with a title and description to tell readers this is where they can find your most popular products. After that, pin some images of your most popular products here and add descriptions. You could also add the rank of the product.
Make sure you write everything about the product—include the price, whether the product is a limited edition and add a call to action asking users to check out the product or buy it.
Also make sure you update the board regularly. Remove products no longer available and replace them with hot new items.
Create a bestsellers or a top-sellers board and pin your most popular products to it.Top 40 Best Sellers is a board on Gourmet Display’s Pinterest brand page, where they pin 40 of their best-selling products for food and beverage displays. This is a great way to further increase the sales of these products.
The board has a good name and a well-written description, which instantly tell you what the board contains. The pins have both an attractive image and a good description and they lead to a page where the product can be purchased.
Another way to use your Pinterest page is to generate leads. First, create some quality content (such as ebooks, white papers, reports, case studies, etc.) that is gated with an opt-in form on a landing page.
Then add a short description about the content on the landing page along with an attractive image that is also the cover image of your file. After that, pin this image onto a board where you share your premium content. Write a brief description about it with a call to action that asks people to visit your website to sign up.
This will increase your landing page traffic and will help generate more leads, which can be used to increase website and blog traffic and drive sales later.
Using your brand page to generate leads can be easier than trying to push sales.An example is the Free Marketing Resources board on Team MarketingProfs’ brand page, where you will find pins of their free marketing resources. Here, instead of directly marketing their services, MarketingProfs asks its followers to download their marketing materials for free. Many of these resources can only be accessed by providing an email address.
This is a great way to generate leads from potential customers who can be marketed to later. It’s a lot easier than trying to get them to buy your products or use your services right away.
The ultimate goal of your campaign is to generate leads and sales for your services and products. In fact, it would be nice to start generating sales as soon as you set up your brand page, but on Pinterest you want to take your time doing this.
You need to build an audience first. And after you gain followers, you can start promoting your products.
On Facebook and Twitter or other social networks where you share posts every day, you might be able to promote your products more than once daily. But on Pinterest, the best way to promote items is to create a dedicated board where you pin the products you want to sell.
Remember, you want to pin your products only once because if you do it over and over again, you’ll appear to be overpromoting yourself.
When you first pin one of your products, you want to get as many initial likes, repins and comments as possible. This will add social proof to your products, encourage users to check out the product and increase the likelihood of more direct shares in the future.
So focus on building an audience first by sharing content regularly and then pin your products to your page.
Focusing on building an audience first will make it easy for you to drive sales later.On The Gracious Pantry’s Pinterest brand page, you will find a board called Gracious Pantry Cookbooks where Tiffany McCauley shares pins of her books. Many of these pins have been repinned several times. The number of times the book has been repinned and liked can be found right below the pin.
These numbers add social proof, encourage users to visit the site and repin the cookbook right away. And when she pins something new to this board, she will automatically get repins and likes because she has already built an audience. The board currently has more than 15,000 followers.
So focus on building an audience first and share your products after you have achieved this.
Use Pinterest to Promote Your Business
As you can see, there are several ways you can highlight your products on Pinterest. Have a look to see how other businesses are using their Pinterest accounts and figure out which your audience might like best. Choose the boards that will work best for you.
Have you been using Pinterest brand pages to promote your business? What’s worked for you? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.
http://www.jretechnology.com
Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.
"To begin sharing your achievements and creations on your profile, simply select Edit on your profile, then follow the prompts in your Summary, Experience and Education sections."
More Google+ activities are being integrated into search results.
"To mention a user, type @username and select the name among the suggestions you'll see."
Twitter ads are available to everyone in the U.S.
About the Author, Cindy King