Pinterest – A Waste of Time or A Big Opportunity?
Nowadays, social media has become more and more important for many of people, and its value for businesses increases every day.
But which social media platforms should businesses focus on? One particular platform that continually comes into the foreground is Pinterest.
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a different kind of social media that relies on users pinning photos of a certain topic – for example food, houses or a DIY projects. Anything can be pinned and consequently found on Pinterest. It's basically an online pin board that acts as a search engine for the latest pictures, topics and ideas. Pinterest feature and frequently update a list of current popular topics, which you can see here.
Why should Pinterest matter for your business?
As Pinterest is ever-growing, the reach your business can have increases steadily. Additionally, it's very easy to use Pinterest, and as a business you can set up a business account to monitor all activity that is connected with your account.
Still, many businesses hesitate to use social media and view it as a waste of time. Of course, in the digital world there are a lot of time consuming and useless things, which get people distracted very quickly. Plus, Pinterest has a very big database of pins, so the newsfeed gets bombarded with any topic that you are interested in, whether it’s useful or not!
Embrace the challenge!
Despite having a busy newsfeed, this isn’t a reason to hesitate to use any social media, including Pinterest! It should be an added motivation for you to set new goals and be more effective in using the opportunities that Pinterest provides. The challenge of fighting people’s short attention span should be a further encouragement to utilise Pinterest’s tools to the fullest.
How to effectively use Pinterest?
Obviously, there are many different ways to use Pinterest and below are a few of my favourites.
Being frequent when posting your pins is essential, as well as having different boards to organise your page helps to keep a good overview. To get more people's attention on your pins, they need to be attractive. One way is the use of writing with your pins. Definitely, a picture speaks a thousand words, and still you can get more attention on your posts when people can read something besides looking at the pin.
Furthermore, you need the right people to see your pins. Adding other Pinners to your boards and following them is the first step and at the same time, you need to re-pin their related pins on your boards too. This will increase the attentiveness of other Pinners, especially their followers, and encourage more people to follow your boards.
Besides using the pins of others, it is important to post your own content, leading back to your website and products. There is no specific rule on how the relation between shared and owned posts should be, so it is best to see what works best for you. Many suggest 80:20 between shared and owned posts or vice versa too, so test your pins and see what suits your business.
What will you do?
Now it is your turn to decide what is best for your business. Whether you choose to leave it as it is, trusting that your traditional marketing is enough, or using the online social media tools at your disposal and increase your market value and reach to so many more people – it is your call!
We use Pinterest in combination with many other social media channels for ourselves and for our clients. The results speak for themselves, and with 79% of Australians on social media, it is an excellent way to reach your customers.
To find out more about your social media marketing options, get in touch!
Ramon Romani
Ramon joined the Sierra Marketing team as a Junior Marketing Assistant. Through his work and experiences at Sierra he has developed a love of social media, digital advertising and online marketing. Every day he aims to meet and exceed the needs of clients.
