Pinterest – What is it and how can it help my business?

With so many social media sites out there it is difficult to identify those that are worthwhile spending time on. Pinterest is one of those websites, it first launched in 2010 and has recently started to grow massively in the popularity stakes. It’s basically a pinboard where you can collect all of your favourite images, for example if you were getting married you could keep all your favourite wedding dress pictures in one place so that you don’t have to keep going from website to website.

But what does this have to do with business I hear you ask. Well the website allows you to categorise your images so you can have separate boards for different things. You connect with people in the same way as many other social sites and so your followers will get to see every time you ‘pin’ something new onto one of your boards. These images can be shared, liked and commented on and it’s a great way for people to get opinions on specific things, so maybe a range of business card designs, pairs or shoes or a new car as a way of helping you decide what to go for.

Now here’s where the magic happens! When you click on an image it takes you to the website where the image was sourced and this is proving to be driving traffic to websites at a higher rate than many other social networking sites. Businesses are also setting up their own pages, kind of like an online brochure it’s a great way of keeping customers informed of any new products that you may have to offer. But as with all kinds of social media you can’t simply post loads of images and expect the traffic to come flooding in, you need to be engaging with people on these sites, writing comments giving feedback on other peoples boards otherwise you might as well forget it.

And any decent marketing consultant will tell you, it’s not about complete self-promotion either, take the wedding dress example as a business you may want to give people advice on different venue’s or makeup artists that you have worked with before. Social media is all about sharing content with people and as a business you need to be offering up free advice and showing interest in related content not just trying to sell your own products and services.

We will certainly be watching Pinterest closely over the coming months and will report on any new developments along the way.