Pinterest: Social Network or A Brand New Marketing Tool?

Pinterest is a brand new social networking website, and is one of those sites that gained popularity over a short period of time.. Although, strictly speaking, it has been around for the past two years. But new in the sense that it has gained quite a lot of popularity in the past few months. In fact, it is hitting more than 10 million unique visitors each month! I like Pinterest because of its very unique concept. While other networks such as Facebook and Twitter rely on text for sharing things, backed up by images or videos, Pinterest primarily focuses on images. It would not be wrong to call it an image based social networking site.

Although still in its development phase, Pinterest is more than just a social network. It is, in fact, a potential marketing tool for bloggers and other online businesses. While Facebook and Twitter remain the kings of the hill, you simply can’t overlook a great opportunity that is Pinterest. Once you start using it, you will realize how useful a marketing tool it can be. Here, I will discuss some Pinterst marketing tips that can benefit your business.

How does Pinterest work?

It’s quite simple actually. You can save your inspirations on Pinterest. If you find something interesting, just pin it and it will appear on your pinboard. You can share your interests as well, and you and other people can comment on the pictures. Also, you can check out other people’s pinboards. It’s a great concept, especially since it’s very unique. Therefore Pinterest can be given full credit for the idea, although many sites are expected to pop up with the same idea.

Pinterest Marketing Tips

Before I say anything else, I would encourage you to make a presence at Pinterest. Ask someone for an invite, or click here for an invite from Pinterest. Invite from Pinterest might take long. But once you have a profile, start pinning stuff! Familiarize yourself with things, so that you know what we are talking about.

Manage your Pinboards

Just like Facebook Pages, Pinterest gives you the option of Pinboards, a smart way of sharing your interests. You don’t need to create a separate Pinterest account for your blog. Instead, you can create a Pinboard for your blog and manage it through your personal account. You can pin images or videos to your Pinboards. And just like in Facebook Pages, you can have more than one administrators for your Pinboard, so that all can pin on it or edit pins.

Social Integration

Not everyone is using Pinterest. People use a variety of social networks to connect to one another. Most use either Facebook or Twitter, which is why Pinterest has tools for integration on these networks. To utilize the full potential of Pinterest, you need to use these tools for marketing. Pinterest provides a great option for sharing on Facebook and Twitter. If you link your accounts, any pins you make will be automatically shared on Facebook and Twitter by default, unless you disable the option. Also, you can invite your friends from Facebook, Twitter or from your Google contacts, for increasing your fan following. These are quite useful tools. Always share your pins on other networks as well.

Use images and “Pin It” buttons in blog posts

Using images on blog posts was important. Now with Pinterest, it’s more than important, since the whole idea of Pinterest revolves around images. If you want to promote your blog on Pinterest, images are a must. So use images, and be creative in the selection of your images. They should stand out on a pinboard.

Also, add the “Pin It” button on your blog. This is just like the Facebook ‘Like’ button, or more precisely, the Twitter ‘Tweet’ Button. This enables you, as well as your readers to pin images on their Pinboards. That way, your posts can get instant exposure through the images pinned on others’ boards.

Looking out for other blogs

It never hurts to look at what other people are doing. Discovering bloggers who are in the same niche as yours can be ver beneficial. You can get to know what the latest trends are in your niche, what people are looking for, what sort of competition you have, what you can do to improve your boards, and so on. Also interact with other bloggers to increase your fan following. If you want to find a blog’s profile, just use a link like this pinterest.com/source/blogname.com. You can replace the blogname with the name of the blog you want to see.

“Repin” others’ content

This is just like re-tweeting someone’s tweet. If you find a great pin by someone, don’t hesitate to repin it. Repins will have the name of the original pinners. How does this help? Well, this is a marketing strategy in itself. First of all, if you repin someone’s pin, chances are that they original pinner will return the favor. Secondly, other will be encouraged to repin your own pins. Not only that, repinning great content will help you build a great board, which you can then use to draw followers.

Spread the word!

Pinterest is a relatively new platform. Many people don’t know about it. You can benefit from this by spreading awareness about Pinterest. That way, more of your friends will join you. If you have a blog, you can encourage your visitors to join Pinterest. Send invites to people who are looking for one. That way, you can provide them the link to Pinterest and in return, you will more followers, ultimately increasing your blog traffic.

Hopefully, these basic marketing tips will help you draw more traffic to your blog. Social media, after all, is one of the biggest source of traffic for blogs. People gain a lot by exploiting this fact. And I recomment you should too. Cheers 🙂