Pinterest made its debut in 2010 and is now one of the fastest growing social media platforms boasting over 70 million users. But, did you know that these users aren’t just enjoying the platform for personal use, many are using Pinterest for Business. Since visual marketing is the current trend – that makes Pinterest a popular social media site where pins can go viral in an instant. What does that mean for you? Well, a pin that has gone viral means you now have a captive audience that you can cater to over and over again. And that means big money and big business for you.

Where To Start

First, go to Pinterest and register for a business account. Using Pinterest for business is just like a personal account, except for the type of account you’ll sign up for. Pinterest requires you to use a business account if you’re going to be using Pinterest for commercial purposes. Then follow the instructions for creating a board. Pinterest has a great tutorial that’s easy to follow so you won’t have any problems knowing what you should do.

Now What

Pinterest isn’t always about using custom graphics and professionally shot photos. Sometimes it’s better to make your pins more real. Pinterest is a place where people like the casual feel of the site. Therefore, if you come across as too “commercial,” it may turn off the majority of your visitors. You should always begin by making a banner for your board. You can do that by going to a site called Fotor.com and making a banner. Fotor.com gives you all the tools you need to quickly and easily make a banner, (even if you’re not technically inclined.) The best size for your banner is 300 px by 300 px because that’s the size that looks best on your pins. It’s important, when you design your banner, that you use an attention grabbing headline so your pin stands out among the others, and so it will attract people to your pins. Look through existing pins to see what catches your attention and why then try to imitate the things that grabbed your attention on the banner you design for your pin. Now you need to make sure your banner is linked to your website, wherever it is you want your followers to land. Your followers will click on your attention grabbing banner so you need to make sure they will end up where you want them to.

Build It And They Will Come – But Only If You Do It Right

You now need to set up a Pinterest for business account, schedule of daily, weekly and monthly tasks in an effort to keep growing your board and your brand. One thing to keep in mind is to not just pin things from your business to your board because that comes across as spammy. You want your boards to be interesting and to include information that would be helpful to your visitors:

1. Search Pinterest and pin five to ten pins from other boards to your board. Then search the web and pin five to ten pins from the web to your board. Just make sure you’re not pinning anything that would be competition to your site.
2. After you’ve finished the initial building of your board, you’ll need to ask Google to crawl your board, to get it indexed, so that it will show up on the search engines. You can do that here: Google Webmaster Tools just enter the URL of your board in the box provided and Google will take care of the rest.
3. It’s important that you don’t throw up a bunch of pins at one time and then not post anything else. You want the building of your board and your brand to look natural. Therefore, after you’ve added the pins from #1 above, you can now begin your daily slow drip posting of pins to your board. Each day for the first few days, you will need to add three to five more pins to your board. You can add fun quotes, infographics, a YouTube video or anything else that would interest your visitors from the web and from within Pinterest as well. After the first few days of pinning have been completed, you can then go to a weekly pinning schedule to keep your visitors engaged and your board growing.
4. The last thing you want to do after you’ve finished adding your initial pins, is to add the banner you made to your pin. You want it to show up at the top of your board. Additionally, you should designate your banner as the cover photo for your board so you get the benefit of that attention grabbing headline you wrote.
5. After you have an established Pinterest board, you can begin adding your products and services sprinkled throughout your board. But don’t overdo it; otherwise, you’ll alienate your followers.

How To Promote Your Pinterest Board

Spread the word, tell all your customers about your new Pinterest board and encourage them to use it and to tell their friends. Make sure the link to your Pinterest board shows up in your advertising and everywhere throughout your business if you want it to have a chance of going viral and to help build followers. Additionally, you need to make sure your board is linked to your website as well. Follow other businesses with similar interests on Pinterest, ones that you can engage with. Remember, Pinterest is a community. Pinterest uses hashtags much like Twitter uses them. So if you want your pins to be found, you should add hashtags to the images you pin to your Pinterest board. All you have to do is to add the hashtag symbol on the front of important keywords. Example: #gadgets.

The Take-Away

Pinterest for business is all about utilizing visual storytelling to represent your brand, the authority you have in your industry and your products and services. The effect of this type of visual marketing through positive inspiration and image sharing is absolutely staggering. If you do this right, your business has the opportunity to enter into a whole new dimension. And one that will change your entire business and marketing model forever.

Related Reading:

• 5 Blogging Mistakes To Avoid
• Spider Bots on Twitter
  
• The 50 Best SEO Tools
• Content Distribution Strategy: How to Promote Your Blog Posts

This blog post is about:

• Local content marketing
• Developing a content marketing strategy
• SEO
• Content optimization

Originally published: July 16th, 2014.
Updated: November 14th, 2018.