Pinterest for Marketing Guide

So you’re browsing the Web and you come across an image that you really like. You want to bookmark it or share it. Well, Pinterest is a great new way to do this. You can get a bookmark add-on for your browser so that when you are on a web page and you see an image you like, you can hit the ‘Pin It’ button and choose the board you want to pin it to. It’s that straightforward.

You can also follow people on Pinterest. So if they’ve got a similar interest to you, you’ll then see a stream of all their pins, which is a great way to re-pin images that are already on there.

What we’re seeing at the moment is lots of brands coming to Pinterest. Although there’s no specific brand or business pages, there’s certainly of scope to get really good results from it.

In terms of strategy, it’s going to work really well in a branding campaign. I don’t think it’s going to be as effective for direct response, although it is delivering a lot of traffic. So you may eventually find that traffic from Pinterest can convert, especially if you put prices on your pins. That’s one tip to remember. It works really well for service brands or brands where your product isn’t tangible because it just gives you a bit of substance to create something and really reinforce what you’re trying to portray your brand as.

So starting with the basics, it’s really important to have a Pinterest button on your site so people can pin your content. Also, have the Pinterest profile button so people can go through to Pinterest and follow you as a brand. Integrate your Pinterest content so when you want to share something, maybe pin it first and then do a Facebook post about it. So the pin becomes kind of more central to your online marketing.

It’s a great way to have competitions online. For example, if you are a fashion brand, you could ask your users to style your products and then pin the winning design. It’s great for research. So if you’ve got a new ad campaign coming out or you’re considering a new product line, put some related images on Pinterest just to gauge a reaction, see if they’re re-pinned or see if they just slip through and are ignored.

In terms of SEO, Pinterest is great because it is followed links. I think it’s really important to stress not to spam it and not to pin every product on your site on Pinterest. Just pin the things that you think users are actually going to want to read and want to look at.

This leads me on to content, which is the most important thing. In terms of what you pin, this is going to completely depend on your brand. But if you look at a brand like Mashable, for example, they pin their infographics, which is a great way of taking the content on their site and sharing it. It’s also important not just to pin the content from your own site. So don’t be scared of pinning things from competitor sites or things that are just related to your industry.

Don’t just pin your own products. Think about lifestyle, think about the brand experience you want behind the product, and pin things that relate to that.

So in terms of all the things you can be doing, there’s a lot more scope than this, but that just gives you an overview. If you want to find out any more, you can visit us on our blog at Koozai.com.