Tips for Leveraging Pinterest

If you haven’t been pinned, you’re missing out.  Pinterest refers more traffic to ecommerce websites than larger, longer-established sites including YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn, and it presents an incredibly rich opportunity for businesses – and their customers.  It capitalises on the love of sharing fun things, but it also puts people in the mood to do a little shopping.  Here are some tips for leveraging Pinterest and capturing some of this traffic conversion for your own site.

First things first, add a Pinterest button to your website. To do this, first open a Pinterest account.  You may have to wait a few days for your “invite,” but this typically does not take long.  When you have opened your account, take some time to get oriented and do some searching around.

1. Go to About, in the top right corner and choose the “Pin It Button.”
2. Scroll down to “Follow Button for websites.”
3. Select the button you want, copy the code, and embed it in your website.
4. Return to the Pin It Button page and scroll down to “Pin It button for Websites.” Follow the onscreen prompts.  This will allow you to put Pin It buttons on particular products, posts, etc., which encourages visitors to share this content.

Incorporate Pinterest with Facebook. Use Facebook Tabs to showcase your Pinterest content. Visual images have more of an impact and can be very effective in attracting visitors.  Post Pinterest content to other social media outlets, including Twitter or Google+.

Create different boards for customer groups. You can subdivide and target customers by creating boards that appeal to their specific needs.  Lowe’s does this by adding Seasonal Boards, For the Home, Craft Ideas, Family Projects, Improvement, Bedroom, and others to help users find what they need.  Of course, they can always travel to other boards of interest once they have clicked through. Creating specific boards helps organize information and content while inviting users to come in and have a look around.

Start pinning and start winning over customers.