how to use pinterest for your business
TRANSCRIPT
How to use
for your business
Pinterest is a fast growing social network in South Africa with 150K
users.
“Based on Alexa.com traffic data, Pinterest is the 19th most popular website in South Africa. South Africa has the 12th most Pinterest users globally and is responsible for 1.6% of all Pinterest page views worldwide.”
In January alone 328 000 South Africans visited the social platform.
Currently 80% of Pinterest users in South Africa are female, ages 25-34
and predominantly fall into the middle - to upper-income bracket.
A few facts
The most followed person on SA Pinterest has more followers than the
most followed South African on Twitter – Aimee Sawyer.
Primary interests of the top accounts are design, travel, cooking, arts
and crafts, weddings and personal development.
Pick ‘n Pay is the top brand on Pinterest.
A few facts
It is easy, current and free!
It does not require a specialized management team like Facebook and
Twitter and it is as simple as clicking or uploading a picture.
When it works really well is when the business is product based or
targeting a specific industry; particularly fashion, food and furniture to
name a few.
Nothing sells quite as well as an image. What is it that they say, “A
picture is worth a thousand words”?
Why Pinterest?
to help you maximise your Pinterest
account and make it become more
relevant for your business
Now for some tips and tricks
Step 1: Set up a Pinterest Business account
Think about setting up a Pinterest page for your brand. It is a great way
to show that you are active online and help to spread that WOM for
your brand. It will help you to understand what your audience likes and
doesn’t from what they are pinning and what they are checking out.
It especially works if you are wanting to sell products online and via
Pinterest. Just like other popular social sites, having a Pinterest page for
your business will make you appear far more professional and give your
brand credibility. Engagement on social media is key and just like other
platforms, this will either set you back or bring your forward depending
on how interactive you are with your followers.
Take this first step
and get
started: http://pintere
st.com/
Alternatively if you are
thinking of opening up
your own Pinterest store to
sell your products, take a
look at Shopinterest– you’ll
be able to set up shop in a
matter of minutes.
Step 2: Use tools to help
Like all digital platforms, the techno wizzes of the world are already
hard at work creating tools and devices to aid us in maximising our
Pinterest experience.
This can be used for a more complete Pinterest dashboard (including analytics
and pin scheduling). Like all online sites, analytics play a vital role in
determining what is and isn’t working for your brand. You can track things like
how many people have been pinning from your website and how many people
have viewed your pins. This can also help you to redirect your pins if they are
not getting the correct engagement. You can then redirect your thinking to suit
your target market. Pinterest does offer its own analytics, but they aren’t always
as credible.
- Piqora
This is great if you want your boards to be more fun and exciting
- Pinstamatic
This is ideal if you want to calculate your Pinterest influence.
- Pinpuff
This can be used to keep up to date with the most popular pins and
boards.
- Repinly
Step 3: Make your website pinnable
This is important if your website has a lot of traffic and you want people
to start pinning directly off your site. This is a really effective way of
spreading the word about your brand and if anything will help to
increase overall brand recognition. In order to do this you need to
ensure that your website/ blog are as visual as possible. This means
regularly sourcing the right images for your business. This can be
challenging in itself, but luckily some of those techno wizzes have
helped us out.
Here are a few relevant free sites that you can source images from (don’t forget to give
your images credit):
Flickr
Photo Pin
For paid royalty-free stock images, check out:
iStock
Fotolia
Shutterstock
Step 4: Get the ‘goodies’
Like all social media, the addiction will set in and you will be trying to
find ways to improve your site. You can visit Pinterest Goodies to help
you out. Pin It Bookmarklet is a very handy tool that will enable you to
pin any image or video to the web. Pin It Button can be used for your
own website – this will allow readers to easily pin anything they like
from your website. Also make sure you get Board Widgets so that people
will be able to start following your boards directly from your website.
Step 5: Pin to win!
We all know that there is nothing to engage with a consumer better than
a competition. Contests are great promotional tools for your brand/
business and Pinterest offers the perfect platform for running a contest.
This is a great way to get engagement quickly if you are just starting out
and want to get followers.
There are many apps that you can use to help you run a contest on
Pinterest and here are a few of them:
Woobox Votigo
Example of a
Pinterest contest
Thank You