How SMB’s Can Benefit From Pinterest

By Melissa Megginson, Marketing Manager at PinLeague

You’ve invested in Facebook. You’ve invested in Twitter. Maybe you’ve even invested in Google Plus. But have you invested in Pinterest yet? You might be surprised to learn that Pinterest isn’t all cute animal pictures and kids crafts. With surprising benefits for those looking to find and engage their audience, now is the time for small businesses to take the Pinterest plunge.

Benefits of Being on Pinterest

Hyper-Targeted Content

Because Twitter and Facebook lack any form of content segmentation, often a user’s feed becomes cluttered with irrelevant information causing them to ‘unfollow’ or ‘unlike’ a brand. However, because Pinterest provides the ability to only follow certain boards, rather than a brand’s entire profile, users experience a heightened sense of control over their home feeds. While this is great news for users, it is also great news for brands. Now, instead of spamming all of your followers with information that may – or may not – be of interest to them, you can simply create multiple boards for the multiple facets of your company.

Longer Lifespan

Perhaps due to the news feeds cluttered with irrelevant information, the lifespan of content on Twitter is only 5-25 minutes and Facebook content only lasts 80 minutes. The lifespan of content on Pinterest? More than one week. To see an example of this phenomenon, check out our Family Tree of a Viral Pin graphic, which shows a pin that took 32 weeks to finally go viral.

Higher ROI

Proving ROI is fundamental to brands adopting a social network into their marketing mix. And while many brands have adopted Twitter and Facebook, Pinterest is often – an mistakenly- overlooked. When comparing the amount of revenue from a social platform, an average Twitter user who clicks through to your site is likely to spend $69, while an average Facebook user will likely spend $80. However, when an average Pinterest user clicks through to your site, they are likely to spend $179! Because Pinterest skews to an older, wealthier crowd, the traffic received from the network is of higher quality, and will produce a higher ROI.

3 Steps To Building Your Brand On Pinterest

1. Know Your Audience.

If you don’t know what your audience is interested in, how will you know what to pin? By using both Pinterest’s analytics tools and a third party analytics too, (I’m partial to PinLeague’s free-to-start analytics suite) you can easily find out what resonates with your audience. After setting up an analytics account, your first step is to see what content is trending from your domain. By seeing what images you’ve already produced are popular with Pinterest users, you will have an idea of what content clicks with your fans.

2. Pin for the User.

Here at PinLeague, we have a simple pinning formula to get you started:

·         Make 5 boards for things your audience loves- After doing your research on your audience, you should know what kinds of things they love to pin. Make 5 boards centered around that knowledge.

·         Make 5 boards for things your audience has a hard time finding- A lot of users come to Pinterest to find solutions to problems. If you hold the key to those solutions, you’ll be more likely to engage with users. Keep in mind, these don’t necessarily have to be topics related to your company - just things to help make the users life easier.

·         Make 2 boards centered on your company- While these boards may seem like the perfect place to pin all of your products, you have to remember to mix it up. Users don’t want to feel like they’re being advertised to. Instead, create a mixture of your product offerings with something else related to your company, like where you’re located or quotes on your team philosophy.

Voila! You now have 12 impactful boards to grow your Pinterest from.

3. Pay attention to keywords.

When setting up your Pinterest pages, much like when setting up a website, it’s important to keep in mind the keywords that are relevant to your brand. If you’re local, keep the keywords local. If you’re a tech company, use those tech-y keywords in your “About” section, board names and pin descriptions. These words help you show up in both Pinterest's search and even Google searches.

Of course you want users to pin content from your domain, so why not make the process a little easier on them? First, add a “Pin It” button to your site so users can quickly and easily pin images directly from the page. Second, make sure the images on your site have descriptive alt-text, so that when users pin from your site the automatically generated description that appears is relevant and adds value to your Pinterest presence.

SMB’s Doing Pinterest Right

The Individual - Better Off Wed on Etsy

With weddings being such a popular category on Pinterest, it’s no wonder Tina Albin-Lax’s Etsy store, Better Off Wed, has such great success on Pinterest.  Her Pinterest page is an amazing combination of all-things-wedding mixed in with her specially made heirloom wedding cake toppers.  Her great content and frequent pinning allowed Better Off Wed to quickly take off on Pinterest.

The B2B - Organik SEO

Green-friendly marketing company,Organik SEO, uses their Pinterest page to showcase what’s important to their company. While they pin appealing graphic marketing content for the more “business-y” Pinterest user, they also have boards dedicated to “going green” – a popular topic within the Pinterest community. The mix of consumer and B2B content helps keep their page fresh and their followers happy.

The E-Commerce Site - Minimus.biz

Minimus.biz specializes in all things, well, small. To showcase their unique items on their Pinterest page, Minimus has created 58 boards with a mix of images from Minimus.biz and related images from around the web.  Minimus has also joined a number of community boards in different categories to help spread their tiny content around to potential customers they would miss by only pinning to their own boards.

With great benefits, proven success and an easy guide to getting started, what are you waiting for? Go out and take advantage of all Pinterest has to offer

Melissa Megginson is Marketing Manager at PinLeague, the leading Pinterest Marketing Tool for Brands. For more information visit www.pinleague.com or email Melissa directly at melissa@pinleague.com.