Posted on May 20, 2016 by Stephen L Dalton

Could Pinterest be the Boost your Business Needs?

With over 10 million visitors and 11 million hits per week, there is really no question regarding how important Pinterest can be to your business.

Pinterest can help to reduce the number of steps it takes to get a customer from discovery to conversion dramatically. 

The best part about Pinterest is it makes it so very simple to create an account. The first, and most important thing, when creating your account is to make sure you are creating a business profile. Both personal and business accounts are free; however, a business profile allows you to do more with links on your boards than a personal profile will.

What’s in a Name?

Pinterest professionals walk you through step-by-step to create your profile. All you need to get started in creating your business or personal profile is an email address. Keep in mind when creating your profile that Pinterest is a very visual site; to create the perfect profile for your business you should keep some key points in mind.

When you create the profile name, keep the name very simple and focused on your business. Although your Pinterest business name should be close to your business name, you are only authorized 15 characters including spaces, so you may need to make some adjustments. The easier it is for your profile to be found the more traffic it will generate. For example, if your business is selling jewelry, then be sure and use the word jewelry, or a version of it, in your profile name. John’s Jewelry works, as does Juicy Jewelry.

Once the customer has reached your profile the first thing they are going to see is your profile picture, so make sure your profile picture is eye-catching, high quality, and sized properly. I like to use the same profile picture and logo on every social media profile and website I use for my business, brand recognition is vital and it invokes a feeling or familiarity, which breeds trust. Trust is crucial to an online business.

 

Keyword Use

Take the time to write a short, concise business description for your profile. Do that in Word or another text program so you can do a grammar spellcheck. Short & sweet is the key for your description. Cover who you are and what your business is about.

Do keyword research to ascertain what are people searching for when they search for your business items and use variations and synonyms of your business keywords. For example, if you are pinning about jewelry, be sure and mention a few of the different types of jewelry you will pin on your boards. This way when someone searches for beaded jewelry, your profile will be included in that search.

Creating Boards

Now that you have your profile set up and on point, the next thing you will need to do is start setting up boards. Keep your board names short and relevant and create a board for each type of product you have, even if you do not have many products in a category yet, eventually you may. Don’t worry about having too many boards, I know people that have over 400 boards. The more boards and content talking about your boards, the longer people will stay on your page pinning items of Pinterest.

Use high-quality pictures, common keywords that people will search for to describe your pins, and include links to original content, such as blog posts and product descriptions. Anything that mentions your product could be of Pinterest to visitors, which can convert visitors to guests, and guests into clients.

Testing and Analytics

Like any website you are using for your business, you need to know that it is working for you. Pinterest has added Google Analytics to the dashboard, making it super simple to check on how many views and repins you are getting, how you are doing with keyword searches, and how much traffic you are getting to your site.

If you’re not getting the repins and views you are expecting, then try changing some of your keywords. Try finding some new pictures, or sometimes something as simple as just rearranging your boards can increase the time people spend on your profile. Look at changing some keywords in your descriptions whenever possible to keep your content fresh. By making some of these changes, and keeping your profile fresh you can help to increase views, shares, repins, and visits. Once again, to convert visitors to guest, and guests into clients.

Pinterest can be a valuable asset to any business, like any social media. Good marketing is all about exposure and Pinterest is one of the top social media sites for exposure. By linking other social media sites, and websites to your business profile, Pinterest could become the most important resource for a business.

In addition, not to be sexist or anything, start targeting men more with your pins. Now more than ever before, men are using Pinterest.