| Pinterest for Business – The Truth about Pinterest for Small Businesses
It has come as no surprise that businesses, both big and small, are using social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to broaden their horizons and to increase their marketing reach on a global scale. It may even be shocking to include Pinterest as a means to market your business, but believe it or not, Pinterest garners an average of 100 milion visitors a month! The site, being less than a year old, has already surpassed other social networking giants like Google+ and LinkedIn.
Everyone knows about why Facebook and Twitter are good marketing weapons, but what makes Pinterest also as good for businesses?
1.) Pinterest has a centered demographic with defined interests – Facebook and Twitter is used by everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE. However, Pinterest stands out because of its female-centered demographic with defined interests. The site is used by women, which make up for 65% of its users and average an age of 32 years old and up. What does this mean? This is a good sign for businesses that deal with products meant for women. Pinterest users also have a keen interest on visual categories like furniture, jewelery, photography, and other lifestyle-related goods, so if you’re business is tapped into any of these, you can make Pinterest work for you.
2.) Pinterest is reliant on visuals – People today don’t like to read a lot of stuff. They prefer compressed pieces of information with bright colors and nice images. Pinterest is a visual pin-board which allows you to post creative and relevant images of your business. This equates to putting up posters on the side of the street, but the difference here is that other Pinterest users can opt to re-pin your photo if they like it. Re-pinning is similar to the Share function of Facebook or the Retweet function of Twitter.
3.) Pinterest offers the ability to allow bloggers to share your content – This is an added bonus after the re-pin feature, regardless if your business is reliant on graphics or not. Basically, bloggers tend to look for things relevant to their blog posts and if they find that your post is relevant to their post, your content will be shared on their blog; from your photo to the licensing information. This also acts as a way to create relevant backlinks because if your Pinterest content is shared, both your Pinterest and website URL will appear on the blog. Of course, bloggers can always opt to change your link, but this is frowned upon by the big search engines.
In any case, Pinterest is something that businesses should consider incorporating into their marketing strategy. After all, with 100 million visitors a month, it’s kind of hard to turn your back against potential customers of this magnitude. |