By Rebecca Bullard, Creative Director at Matice
By now you have probably heard of Pinterest and if you’re a woman there’s a pretty good chance you’ve used Pinterest yourself. That’s because about 80% of the 70 million Pinterest users are female. If you’re unfamiliar with Pinterest and how it works; Pinterest is a website where users ‘pin’ hyperlinked images to their virtual pinboard for future reference. Typical pinboards are themed such as recipes, home decor, or fitness tips.
Who is using Pinterest?
So, should you be leveraging Pinterest to promote your business? Well you probably already know that Facebook and Twitter are popular social networks at this time and they are great ways to reach your audience. There are, however many reasons that Pinterest could be a great addition to your Marketing Strategy. Did you know that more online adults use Pinterest than Twitter? And also according to Pew Research Center, Pinterest has seen significant usage increases over the past few years; 28% of adult internet users engaged with Pinterest in 2014 compared to 21% in 2013 and 15% in 2012. (Keep in mind usership for Pinterest is much lower than Facebook, so if you’re not utilizing Facebook yet, that would be the best place to get started; especially for businesses targeting a local demographic.)
As already mentioned Pinterest’s user base consists mostly of women, many in the USA. If your business’s products or services are designed for women, then the Pinterest platform could be a great fit for your business. Majority of people using Pinterest are young, under the age of 55. Some of the most popular categories of activity on Pinterest include cooking, crafts, and health info. If your business is related to either of those categories, Pinterest could be a great way to promote your brand to potential customers.
Marketing on Pinterest is a good way to reach a targeted demographic of users nationwide. Lots of users follow people and bloggers who they don’t know personally. A user’s homepage feed of pins is not restricted to friends or geographical boundaries. Influencers on Pinterest are mainly bloggers, designers, and brands.
Tips for Marketing on Pinterest
So at this point if you have decided that Pinterest is the next step for your brand, let’s discuss how you can begin to leverage the power of Pinterest right away. In fact you don’t even need to have a Pinterest account to start taking advantage of it. One of the simplest ways to encourage your website visitors to share your content on Pinterest is to add the Pin it button to your website. From the Pinterest for Business site you can generate the code for the button; After the code is generated you can load it into your site to create a pin it button anytime someone hovers their mouse over an image on your site. This way, visitors on the website who also use Pinterest will be encouraged to pin your images on their boards which will spread your image. One step above and beyond that would be to create a Pinterest account for your business and create pin boards that would be helpful for your target customers. Then you could also add a follow button or a pin or profile widget. The button or widget can be added to your site the same way as the pin-it button.
If you have a Pinterest account, there will be a lot more ways to get engaged with users. Like any other Marketing strategy, you need to know who your customers are and what they like or are interested in. Then you can create pin boards on your account for the most popular categories, categories related to your products, and also complementary boards. Don’t just pin your own articles and products though. Your boards should be curated to contain a variety of high quality pins – with great photography and no broken links or spammy pins.
As with any social network, it’s important to be social. Follow lots of relative users and bloggers and like and repin their images. You can follow people and see all of their pins to all boards, or you can just follow specific boards. If possible to get your brand invited to a group pin board, it is a great way to get your pins in front of a huge audience of followers. Every pin is spread organically and gains popularity the more it’s repinned. Every time it’s repinned, it shows in the news feed of all the followers of the board it was pinned to, which can prompt more and more users to repin and to spread exponentially. Pinterest is really used as a source for inspiration and ideas, so your pins and content will gain more popularity if they feature inspiring or how-to images.
The Bottom Line
Right now Facebook is the most active social network with a huge and broad audience. It’s a great place to start marketing. But if you’re already on Facebook but looking for a new Marketing outlet, Pinterest can be a highly effective network if the shoe fits.
If you’d like to explore more how Pinterest marketing techniques could help your business, please contact Matice – info@matice.com.
