The Right and Wrongs of Using Pinterest for Your Business

If you’re still not utilizing Pinterest to market your business, it’s time to start.

Since 2012, the simple “pin board” sharing site has become a powerhouse for savvy social media marketers, bringing some businesses many times more traffic than Twitter.
And that’s despite the fact that Pinterest is a still-growing platform with just 70 Million users (compared to 302 Million on Twitter and 1.4 Billion on Facebook).
Pinterest works much differently than other social media platforms, where people tend to connect with people they know, network with other professionals, or stargaze.
On Pinterest, people connect over similar interests, often creative ideas or visual “wish lists.”
If you think of Pinterest as the world’s biggest recipe box and wedding planner, you’re not entirely wrong, but you certainly don’t need to be in an industry popular on Pinterest (food, wedding, travel, photography) to benefit from it.
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That’s because, as an online idea board, Pinterest is not just a place full of pretty pictures (though visual presentation is vital), but a place to discover.
And the beauty of Pinterest is that if a user sees something they’ve got to have, try, or want, they’re only a click away.

Getting Started On Pinterest

Even before you start setting up your Pinterest account, you need to make your website and blog Pinterest-friendly. Go to the Pinterest Business Resource Centre, where you can sign up for (or convert to) a free Business Pinterest account.
A Business Pinterest account has several advantages over a personal account:

• Analytics — when you connect your business site to Pinterest, you’ll be able to see the pinning activity for your site.
• Rich Pins — a fairly new feature that provides additional information on a pin — for example, allowing a user to see the current price, ingredients, product details, etc. Rich pins are available for articles, produces, places, recipes, and movies. These require setup by a web developer at this point, unless you’re very tech savvy, but they’ve been shown to increase traffic.
• Tools — make your site Pinterest-friendly by adding “Pin it” buttons (along with a nice pinnable image) to blog posts, and a “follow me on Pinterest” button to put with your other social media buttons.

While a Business Pinterest account is more functional than a Personal Pinterest account, it looks the same to users. You’ll have to set up your page to make it look professional, with your branding.

Setting Up Your Pinterest Account

Assuming you’ve set up other social media pages before, such as Twitter or Facebook, setting up Pinterest is pretty simple:

• Add your logo as an icon (bear in mind, the Pinterest icon is tiny, so you may have to adapt).
• Add your website social media URLs
• Come up with one to three sentences about your company. Your slogan is fine, plus a little extra — just a little. This isn’t the place to go into deep detail or explain your history. The pins will do the talking.
• Start with no fewer than four pin boards. If you are not a well-known company (like Sephora), create some boards for pins that are not directly related to your product — for example, Inspiring Quotes, Dream Getaways, or Products We Love.

Ethical Pinning

Pins are only valuable if they are properly sourced. Any time you go to repin a pin from another pinner, click through to the website.
It should take you to the site where the image and any connected information originated.
It’s usually pretty easy to tell if the pin is properly sourced — usually, you will be taken to a product page or blog post.
Occasionally, you’ll be taken to post post about the originating post. In these cases, follow the link to the original and pin from there.
If you click and are taken to Google images, don’t repin it. If you have time to find its origin, pin from there.
Why is this a big deal?
Because improperly sourced pins rob the creator of hits, recognition, and sales.
You don’t want people repinning an infographic you created with a link to a Google image instead of your site.
Give others the same courtesy. (Plus, it can make you look bad, and you don’t want to hurt your online reputation.)
Since rogue pinning is a fact of Pinterest that is out of your control, it’s a good idea to watermark (i.e. put your URL on) your images.
That way, if it gets away from you, your website is still attached.

Social Networking

The best way to get people to start following you on Pinterest (aside from letting your followers on your other social media platforms that you’re on Pinterest) is to follow people with an interest in what you do.
How do you find these people? Simply search a related keyword ( for example, “marketing”):

The pins in your results have been pinned by people who, like you, are most likely marketing their own business website.
Follow a selection of these pinners. It will give you relevant pins to repin in your main feed.

Also look at who repinned pins relevant to your business (click on the number next to the repin icon just above the pinner’s icon).
You’ll see a list of the repinners, with the board they’ve repinned to, and the option to follow that board.

Don’t go overboard with following too many pinners at once — while there doesn’t appear to be a limit to how many pinners you can follow at once (aside from an overall maximum of 50,000), keep it around 100 people in a sitting if you’re just building a following.
The more followers you have, the less likely mass following will be seen as spam.

Use the Like Feature to Show a Pin Some Love

Likes are saved to a publicly accessible Likes board. Liking puts your mark on pins that for whatever reason (redundancy, relevance, etc.) you choose not to re-pin.
It also doesn’t hurt to comment on other people’s pins if you find them especially useful, or to join in on a conversation.
Use moderation here, too; since there are those who abuse the comment sections by using bots to post spam, heavy commenting is sometimes penalized.

Creating Pinnable Images

This is the important part! You can have the best information, articles, or blog posts in the world, but if you don’t have an appealing image to pin, Pinterest isn’t going to work out well for you.
If your business involves products, this will be simple — you already have nice images. For other types of businesses, especially information-based businesses, you’re going to have to put your creativity to the test.
Luckily, there are very simple graphics programs — we love Canva — that can make creating a pinnable image easy.
Your image should have a nice background (this can be stock or a photo you’ve taken, if you have the skills), an eye-catching headline, and your logo.
This is just the minimum you need to do — but if it looks good and the text grabs people, it should get you traffic.

Some businesses prefer more complex infographics, including things like graphs and charts. These can be effective with the right visuals.
There are pros and cons to putting a lot of information in a pin. The text is often unreadable, but that can encourage people to click to enlarge. If all the information they need is in the pin itself, they may not click through to your site.
Then again, if graphics is your game, you want highly graphic pins.
Keep in mind that while long pins can contain lots of information, some pinners dislike them because they tend to disrupt the visual balance of a pinboard.
An unofficial scan of search results shows that short, nice-looking pins that tease information get the most repins.
Don’t forget to put your image in your blog post so it comes up when readers click on the “Pin It” button.
Once your post is ready to go, get the ball rolling by pinning it to one of your own boards, utilizing 1-2 hashtags.
If you use these tips to create beautiful, pinnable images, it can help grow your business in the right direction.
If you have tips for using Pinterest for your business, share them in the comments below.
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