Pinterest is BIG business in the Social Media world, todays post was spurred on by various people posting in a Forum and on the Facebook group that I am an admin on. I wanted to write this to help people gain a better understanding of exactly WHY Pinterest is a great place for anyone using Social Media to build their online presence to be hanging out.
For me my Pinterest work and marketing is very much still in the developing stage, but I have managed to secure 146 followers and 132 likes at the time of writing this post, and MANY of my pins are re-pinned multiple times. I mainly Pin for fun, but lately I’ve been looking a lot more into Pinterest from a business marketing perspective and as such I am now really looking to hike those likes right up.
I spend quite a bit of time working in a Forum, connecting with other internet marketers and online business owners, and a man named Arthur Casey has managed to generate over 1000 likes on his pins, and more than that, he has driven his Facebook likes to over 4900 now and credits his work on Pinterest as a major driving factor in this success.
Getting The Most Out Of Pinterest
People resonate with images, its up to you WHAT you post. For someone who is ultilising Pinterest as a way of building their business online, a really great “board” you could set up is a showcase of Testimonials and positive blog comments.
Twitter allows you to favourite positive tweets and people can comment / write recommendations on Facebook, LinkedIn users can write you a recommendation, and any blog post you write can encourage comments from your readers. Pinterest is THE perfect place to house all these in the one place.
I tend to take screenshots of all the positive comments about MY work / business and then post them in the relevant board on my Pinterest account. You can break it down, or make it easier for people to find by just having one central board that showcases all in the one place.
This is an excellent tool for building trust in relationships with prospects and new customers, and is a very good extension to your customer service tools. By having a specific board for this information you can direct people to it from other places (other social profiles and website)
This is not something new either! Pinterest is BIG and a LOT of people are already utilising this feature, it wasn’t until someone mentioned it last week that I thought it might be a good idea to share this with my readership.
A simple Pinterest search for boards containing testimonials
In addition to housing your testimonials on specific boards, you can also start to drive traffic back to websites of YOUR choice by simply editing each image you pin – be it a repin from another user, or an uploaded image. Arthur Casey has credited this simple trick to building his Facebook following to the 4900+ likes that he now has.
Each image you upload allows you the chance to “edit” it, in the edit section you can over ride the URL that is attached to it, or add one if you have manually uploaded the image.
Example of editing an existing pin and inputting a specific URL
People LOVE Pinterest, it generates and drives an awful lot of web traffic elsewhere – with the welcome addition of an image bank to Social Media, Google images could almost have lost its importance now (if you are a “pinner” now and want to look for an image where do you search – Google or Pinterest?)
Therefore it makes an awful lot of sense for each person who is using Pinterest for more than just a “fun” element to spend time going through each of their pins and edit the URL’s attached to each image. If a user double clicks on any image inside Pinterest they are redirected to the URL attached to it.
If your goal is to drive traffic to your web blog, then ensure the URL attached will send people there. Likewise if you want to drive traffic to your Facebook page you edit the URL to send people there.
For me, personally I have a variety of places than my pins are relevant too, as such I am editing my own boards and every single pin to drive people to the associated websites.
Ensure that your pins ALL have keyword right descriptions, this gives your pins the best chance of being seen by the right audience. Much like Twitter you can also use hashtags in the descriptions too. If the pins are engaging and eye catching then people naturally will want to click on them.
Example of an individual pin’s description including usernames, keywords and hashtags
I believe that Pinterest is a GREAT way to help drive traffic to Squeeze Pages, and also Facebook Landing Tabs (a variation of a Squeeze page for Facebook) Are you offering free training, free download or giveaways? Find a suitable image and link it to an app tab or squeeze page that will allow you to gather targeted lead data and then market to them outside of the Social Media parameters.
Social Media is a TOOL to drive traffic to another source, this example of using Pinterest couldn’t be a better way of showing this.
By manually editing ALL links against images you have pinned might take some considerable time, but Arthur Casey clearly stated in a forum that he built 4900+ Facebook links in 10 months – now that is some going.
Imagine if he was directing traffic to a specific landing page on Facebook with a really great free giveaway? How many people he would then have on his email subscription list away from the confines of Social Media to market products and offers too.
This is something I am certainly going to be spending a LOT more time monitoring and measuring with my own work, I am going to try using Pinterest to really drive my email subscription list up for my weekly newsletter I write Switched On Social, amongst other relevant places I want to increase my presence.
It is important to build on the email list, because IF we were to lose Social Media tomorrow, we have no where to keep the customers, so ANY business that is developing business and prospects, this should be at the forefront of your priority list.
As a little bonus to you all I’ve included a really great Webinar from Chris Farrell’s public library which also includes Laura Waage (Pinterest EXPERT!!) on. I’ve watched it myself and learned an awful lot from it about using Pinterest for business.
You can watch the Webinar here (no optin necessary either!)
Have a wonderful week!
Clair 
Hi Clair,
This is great! Been thinking how I could use Pinterest more for my business and this post has given me tons of ideas.
I tend to get plenty of Pinterest subscribers, but barely any “likes” on my pins. One thing that I totally didn’t realize about was hashtags. I didn’t know that Pinterest used them, so I will have to start making sure that I include them on my uploaded pins.
Think the testimonial board idea is a great one as well. Taking a simple screenshot of those good comments you get and puting them all in one place can only be good for business.
Cheers for all the great ideas
Matt Smith recently posted…Guest Posting: Good or Bad?
Hi Matt,
Yes, I am really going to try and work harder on my own Pinterest account to try and develop the work that I am doing too.
I tend to find that I am drawing people to my Pinterest account with my non business related pins (as ever with it being a “Social” site) and once they are on my profile they tend to stop by my other boards.
For me I had a lot of general ones, so I’m going to really try and make some more specific boards and ensure that each image leads somewhere relevant within my own sites.
I’m not sure i want to focus on 1 area, If I was it would have to be my newsletter subscription, but I do want to focus on general community build up so going to give it all fair attention – i’ll be interested to see how you get on Matt with your efforts too.
Thanks for the comments!
Clair
Hi Clair,
Useful Pinterest post. I have been a member for some time now and it has grown dramatically since its birth…..
I do get some traffic from it but not major numbers. But then I do not have a major following. What I am finding though is since I have been invited to a few group boards things have improved. For example, the other week I ran a couple of posts with Infographics on them. This went crazy on Pinterest – getting repins in all the relevant infographic groups….
So – the quality and usefulness of the image is whats important I think. Niches like, wedding dresses, cakes, home decor etc do exceptionally well…..
What about your printing co?, Does that have a pinterest page?
Regards,
John
John Banks recently posted…Use Social Media to Humanize your Brand and Serve Customers
Hi John,
Yes the obvious public interest niches always do well – I find a LOT on my timeline about the world and the wonderful sites around always populating my newsfeed.
I actually pin the printing work on a set board on my own account – I kinda decided it would be far easier to just set aside one board for that rather than trying to manage “another” social media profile. http://pinterest.com/MissClairTrebes/print-my-family-business/
I am trialling a few different things and have carefully accepted a few group pin boards to see if that helps with overall traffic generating. I am going to monitor my GA account too, carefully to see if these steps are making a difference.
I am debating pimping my dog out – he gets a lot of likes and repins haha to assist with this too!
If only i could get away with it!
Clair
I absolutely LOVE Pinterest! I am definately going to listen to the webinar you have here, as Pinterest is one of the major sources of my traffic, so I want to maximise it as much as possible. I didnt realise either that you could use Hashtag’s, so I will look at this a lot more closely. I also like the idea of putting comments up from my blog….it would be interesting to see whether I get any traffic generation from those pins.
It took me several months of having a Pinterest account before I got to see any traffic generation from it, and I almost thought about giving up on it, but I’m glad I didnt now as I couldn’t run my blog without it!!
Catherine recently posted…St Patrick’s Day Subway Art
Hi Catherine
Actually really glad you posted on this one as wanted to ask you a question seeing as you have been using it to generate traffic.
I’ve noticed that a lot of my pins aren’t showing up in the search results lately when i type in keywords associated with the pin, do you know of anything specific that could be stopping that (ie in my settings) pinning to all public boards so know its not that.
Thanks
Clair
Hm…Im afraid I wouldn’t know Clair. I havnt even checked this with my own pins and I havnt been using Hastags!! I wonder if it has something to do with the timing of pins and whether only pins added in a certain time frame are shown? Or it may have to do with whether the pins are popular or not? When I have searched for certain things I have seen that the most popular pins (ie: lots of likes and shares) have come up first. But this is ALL a guess!
Hmmm, think i am going to go and dig a little deeper, it might just be my own account i don’t know! Thanks Catherine
Hi Clair, this is an excellent post and one I need to take notice of, this is gold and has opened me up more to Pinterest, only last night I was talking about Pinterest to my better half, she is thinking of starting a blog and our concern was that Pins on Pinterest only took her to the photos and not the site where they can learn more. It seems that with some tweaking to the image you can send people to anywhere you want.
This is excellent news and something I didn’t know, I have a few webinars to watch when I get the time but it is very handy having you as our social Media expert to bring us this new stuff if we personally do not get round to it.
As for the screenshots of testimonials and positive Facebook and Twitter posts pinned to a special board in Pinterest is an excellent idea. Simple and very effective and one that will look genuine and not manufactured. I have used those type of images on Facebook, Twitter and on newsletter pages but never thought about building up a ‘What people say about us’ style page or Pinterest board. It is now going down onto my to do list.
A great post and I am going to share.
Andi Leeman recently posted…How To Forward Gmail Emails To Your Main Email Account
Hi Andi,
Let me know for sure how you get on with this, I’ve noticed my own pins not really showing up in the search facility lately on there when i type in keywords, therefore I need to look into this a little more on my end.
Its a great central place to direct people for testimonials and the like – centrally and if they are screen grabs, then you know they are authentic!
Yes i do try and keep my finger on the pulse, but as you know its a never ending task keeping up to the date, but i will filter it out as and where i can to everyone else!
Thanks for commenting
Clair
I have been checking out a few of your posts and it’s clever stuff. I will make sure to bookmark your site.
Thank you for the comment, and stopping by the site!
Clair