11 New Pinterest Tips For Your Business…

11 New Pinterest Tips For Your Business…

We will all have noticed how in the last year or so Pinterest has become a pretty powerful Social Media Marketing tool for many businesses, just like yours. What is best is perhaps the simple fact that it basically came from nowhere and the popularity has simply skyrocketed to a similar level as Facebook and Twitter. It is currently estimated that Pinterest has a market of registered users in the region of 10 Million. With that many users, can you as a business person really afford to ignore the trends and not be in there with the big boys. Now if you are anything like us, perhaps your thinking but Pinterest is a visual platform, how can we as a business benefit from it, the platform is far different from the likes of Facebook or Twitter. Well let us tell you this, with a tricks you can all benefit from Pinterest and the best is, if you configure your systems well, it does not have to be time consuming.

So, to help you understand perhaps the basics or a few advanced option, we have are going to share a few of our Top Tips For Pinterest with you. Lets get in there and get your business going on Pinterest. If you do not already have an account, you might want to get up to speed by checking this page out.

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Link your Twitter page

We would hope that in fact you have already completed the most obvious of tasks in Pinterest and that would be simply connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts to your Pinterest account. One thing to note at this point however is that Pinterest currently do not support the Facebook Fan Page sysytem, we would there suggest authenticating your account through your Twitter brand page.

Pop over to your Pinterest page now and check that your connections are ready to go.

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Optimize Your Profile
Pinterest just like all other Social Media platforms, allows you to add information concerning you and your business within a description section together with adding locations, web pages and profile images. It is here that you really need make your brand stand out from the rest. Using your brand image/logo as your profile image perhaps. Ensuring that all content is complete and that you have connected your web page up with your Pinterest profile. Creating the connection for your web site on Pinterest is currently a little tedious, you might want to check out these instructions here. Always keep in mind when you are setting up your profiles on any platform, that you want it all to be cross promotional and cross recognised by your audience so you might want to keep to the same profile images and descriptions.
You may also notice that Pinterest has an option to have your page hidden from search engine, we would advise to obviously not have this option selected. In addition, perhaps you might want to actually submit your URL for Pinterest to search engines. In order to do this you can use the Google Url submitter here, although you will need a google account first.

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Get to Know Your Audience
Just like all Social Media platforms, a good strong and solid following of loyal fans requires you to provide your followers with relevant and interesting material. As this is your business you are promoting, you are in the best position to know what your followers want, however just because it is your business, this does not mean you always get it right, sometimes you have to modify your material to suit the requirements of your followers. It has been suggested that perhaps by visiting the Pinterest boards of your strongest followers and then finding a common thread in order to create stronger connections with similar posts and visuals. However you need to find the balance between relevance and brand promoting, this is after all about promoting your business.

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Avoid Blatant Self-promotion
Whilst you may think that Pinterest is simply a visual aid for your products and brands, you are going to need to mix up your posts a little. Blatant self-promotion is not the way to go if you want a good foundation of followers, by constantly posting about yourself or your brand is going to put followers off, mix it up a little by adding posts just like you would any other Social Media platform. It has been known however that a twist can be placed on various types of posts, by getting creative you might be able to showcase the outcome of using your brand, the lifestyle it creates and remind followers that the boards topic is exactly what your business is about.

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Add Links to Your Pins
At the moment, Pinterest allows you to create a description for the content of your Pinterest post, this description actually has useful character limit of 500 . Now whilst in essence, this is actually meant to describe the image, lets be honest, most images can be described in a short sentence rather than a complete paragraph, so what is to stop you adding a link to your website or web content. It may also be worth thinking about using such services as bit.ly in order to create shortened links.

Another advantage to adding links and brand content to your Pinned posts, is simply the fact that if somebody else re-pins, likes or tweets your Pin, the content you created goes with it, therefore spreading the word further.

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Use Hashtags
This is a little known fact, just like Twitter and Google+, Pinterest supports the use of hashtags. this is going to make direct targeting of various pins to your customers specific requirements far easier. You are going to be able to simply add the relevant hashtag to your pins in order to attract the attention of those following relevant hashtags, therefore exposing your brand further more. The more pins you have with relevant hashtags in, the more chance these pins have of being shown up in results.
However you should note that hashtags in Pinterest, don’t work in the same way as on Twitter. Pinterest simply searches for the word after the hashtag.
If you are anything like me, the science behind hashtags never has dropped in to place within my brain cells, UNTIL we did a little research on various websites. Such as hashtag.org which provide regularly updated lists of trending hashtags. Within this site you also have the option to do searches on words/hashtags that you might think are popular, through these searches you can quickly work out which are the strongest hashtags to use in your Pins.

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Add a Pinterest button to your Web pages
Just like all the other Social Media platforms online these days, the option to have a relevant Media Button on your web site or blog is a simple must. Therefore it makes obvious sense to have the “Pin It” button on your sites. The button functions exactly like all the others, like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. Providing your followers with a quick and easy option to pin your content to their own Pinterest pages. If you are not sure how to do this, check out the simple instructions here, or visit the Pinterest “Pin It” page.
Additionally you are able to add the “Follow Me” button to your web site or blog. Again just like all the other Social Media sites around, the “Follow Me” button is a simple way of allowing your customers to add your Pinterest page to their list of “Following”, and enable them to receive updates when you post content to your Pinterest page.

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Humanize Your Page
Pretty sure we have all been there, visited a Social Media brand page and seen nothing but boring business oriented content. Lets be honest, would you chat to your customers in person with nothing but business talk in order to close a sale, or would you do the expected and make the conversation more natural and relaxed by making it personal. Well Social Media is exactly the same, your followers want to know who you are and what you are about as well as your business.
Adding a personal touch or content to your Pinterest boards, will do your boards the world of good and help make followers feel more relaxed as well as demonstrate that your a person as well as a business. The general idea that follows here is to create a board dedicate to the fun side of your life or business, Pins of staff parties, staff games, mishaps or even just going about their normal duties etc. You never know, that follower who just popped in to see the latest fun pictures might just spot something and become a paying customer. It has also been known for some business to also include their customers in the Pins they add to their Pinterest boards, (obviously with customers permission first).

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Interact with Users

One of the smallest facts of and understated options within Pinterest is the fact that you can interact with other Pinterest users and followers. Although it may not always be as instant and as quick pace as perhaps Twitter or Facebook, your followers will appreciate your efforts more. If you receive a notification of a comment on your Pins from followers, it is considered polite to respond and keep the conversation active in order to promote your brand within the Social platform.
Interacting within Pinterest can be anything from commenting on or perhaps where appropriate sharing followers Pins or replying to comments on your Pins. It is also wise where possible to remove negative comments from followers who are perhaps simply acting as trolls, your true followers will normally understand your view of removing the comment or even the Pin.

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Monitor Your Metrics
As with all Marketing projects, you need to be able to monitor the performance of the relevant methods used. You want to know that you are not wasting or money in your efforts. With Pinterest, you need to have some reassurance that you are creating an interest in your brand and driving traffic to your web site or blog. If you notice this is not happening, it is time seriously review how you are using Pinterest as a marketing tool. At this moment, the main points that need to be monitored are fairly straight forward.
• Clicks per Pin
• Re-pins per Pin
• Average Visit Duration
Unlike many other Social Media networks, Pinterest does not have built in tools like Google Analytic or Facebook Insights, however there are various tool around that you can use to make monitoring the Pinterest activity with ease rather than guess work. Below are just a couple and we will be looking at Pinterest Metric Monitoring systems in more detail very soon.

Reachli

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