The world is digitally connected through social networks today, like never before. A staggering amount of content is being shared each day, each minute, each second! Every brand worth its salt wants a digital marketing strategy that will help it leverage the interactions. This digital boom is being largely driven by social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram; one of the more popular ones being Pinterest; an image-sharing platform.
Who’s On Pinterest?
Pinterest has over 70 million users, with 80% of users being female.
The popular age group on Pinterest is between the ages of 25 and 34. What Is It Worth?
Pinterest is valued at $3.8 billion. According to a recent research, Pinterest is close to overtaking email as the third most popular content sharing channel.
Facebook has about 5 times as many active monthly users around the world as Pinterest and more than twice as many as Twitter; but in terms of leads, Facebook and Twitter are slightly way under than Pinterest. Clearly, Pinterest is emerging as one of the key social commerce drivers of today’s day and age!
Does Pinterest Really Drive Sales?
Pins with price tags included, get 36% more likes than those that don’t; which means that Pinterest is more suited for product-based businesses.
According to a recent survey, 21% of Pinterest users surveyed had pinned an item before buying it from the store.
In the past year, Pinterest drove more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined.
Most of the brand engagement on Pinterest is user driven.
SOLD! I want My Business on Pinterest! What do I do?
Set up a Pinterest business account:
Pinterest now lets you create a business account. Similar to Facebook, a business page makes your business profile look professional. Just like Google+, Pinterest too has verified brand pages.
Make your website Pinterest-friendly:
To make people pin more content and share more of your content on Pinterest, you need to make your website and blog very visual. Make sure it has nicely designed and useful images that tell the story of your brand. And don’t forget to add the ‘Pin It’ button to your website.
P.S. – If you are a product website or an e-commerce business with lots of different products, you might want to include ‘Pin-It’ buttons on each of your products; so people can share exactly what they like!
Know your audience:
As a business, whether or not you are on Pinterest, it is recommended that you understand your target audience. It will prove helpful on Pinterest because if you know your target audience’s behaviour, their preferences and choices, you can create boards that resonate with the things they like. This will help you get maximum interaction and engagement.
Create infographics:
Pinterest is a great platform for sharing details visually, in an infographic format. Create a striking infographic; and it is bound to be liked, pinned, and repined by your users. You can create infographics online by using websites/tolls such as visual.ly or infogr.am.
Contests:
Contests are a great to make people engage with your business on social networking sites and create buzz. You can take help of apps/tools such as Woobox to run a contest. But don’t forget to read Pinterest’s terms and conditions before you run a contest.
P.S. – Always remember, a good Pinterest contest is one that leads to creation of fresh, original content rather than spamming users with repins of the same, existing content.
Pay attention to the competition:
It is important for businesses to know what the competition is up to. A little competitor analysis can work wonders for business and can help set new trends in the industry.
You could either decide to do it yourself, or get your social media agency to set up your Pinterest account for you.
But Pinterest is here to stay, so keep pinning!
And if you need some assistance, help is always at hand!
Share your queries in the Comments or get in touch today!
Sources for Statistics:
http://mashable.com/2013/10/23/pinterest-3-8-billion/
http://www.marismith.com/10-pinterest-tips-and-tools-to-grow-your-business/
http://www.retailsolutionsonline.com/doc/can-pinterest-actually-generate-sales-0001
Tushar Kishnani is a senior social media executive at Ethinos Digital Marketing.