When you think about your business’ current use of social media channels, the ability to share blog posts, videos, photos and even connect with people online are now par for the course. Yet, how do you share other peoples’ visual content? That’s where Pinterest comes in; the only photo sharing tool that gets it.

Whenever you see a great looking image online and think that your followers would enjoy it too, you can install a “Pin it” button to allow you to do just that. Pinterest enables you to share other peoples’ images online, as well as organising them into your own set of folders on a Pinterest profile and even maintaining credit to the source, helping their content go viral.

It’s heartening when you see one professional recognising another’s work. Not only will your followers benefit and appreciate relevant and interesting content, but you’ll also earn the respect for sharing it with your audiences online.

Pinterest is also a great way to share your own images. If you construct an interesting tweet, or even blog about a recent project, it can be lost in the moment. Pinterest allows you to timelessly recycle your content in a new and sharable way. Whilst Pinterest is great for image sharing, we can’t stress enough the value in quality images and videos in your blog posts, as a poor image is unlikely to be ‘pinned’ and certainly won’t be looked at or ‘re-pinned’. Lots of people add an image to a blog as an afterthought, which is absurd when you think how content is becoming more visual and imagery is vital to its success.

Why should businesses be using Pinterest?

Tell your story
Aside from the underpinning fact that utilising Pinterest will promote your content in a visual and engaging way, it can also increase engagement with your brand in refreshing new ways, giving it some personality. By creating interesting boards for pins that give you inspiration and pinning images that reflect your team’s personalities and hobbies can help your customers get a feel for exactly who they will be doing business with, making you more memorable and at the forefront of their minds when they’re ready to use your products or services. Brand storytelling is great for building relationships and inviting potential and existing customers into a conversation with you. However, don’t just use Pinterest as a dumping ground for your products/ services as ideally, most of your pins should be related to your industry. They should be a mix of educational, interesting third party content that will excite and entice your audience, improving engagement with you.

Customer insight
Pinterest is an incredibly useful tool for gaining quality customer insight, out more about your customers and what makes them tick. After all, they’re pinning things that they’re interested in, helping you understand their journey as a customer.

Establish your expertise
Craft key-word rich pins, board titles and descriptions to boost your Google ranking and be found for your expertise. Using hashtags will also highlight the key words and phrases that your customers search for, so you can be there waiting when they are searching for information!

Cross promote
Pinterest is a really useful tool for cross-promoting to your other social media channels. Businesses using a combination of social media have found that the results can be quite impressive. You can embed pins into your blog posts to promote your pins, as well as promoting pins on Twitter and Facebook. Why not find an interesting pin related to a customer’s industry and tweet it to them?

“Pinterest has great potential to build your brand and become a source for information in your market place. The future is visual and Pinterest is a channel you should seriously be considering incorporating into your social media strategy if you want to position yourselves as experts in your industry.” – Sarah Kersley, Marketing Executive at Rockadove.

Do you use Pinterest? Follow us here for pin boards ranging from video marketing to creative inspiration.

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