I admit, I am addicted…to Pinterest! It is an amazing resource for ideas, products, and design in a community setting where everyone is sharing with each other. Just like you may sit around with your friends and talk about the latest hand lotion you bought, or the new color you painted your bedroom, Pinterest takes this to the World Wide Web.
Pinterest is a cross between the image search engine results and a social media community like Facebook. It is a virtual board where people can share pictures of virtually anything. When you click on a picture on Pinterest, it links back to the original site that it was found on. Unlike Google or Bing searches, all the results on Pinterest are posted by people, not algorithms. Your Pinterest profile contains “boards.” These boards contain all the pictures that you want to save for yourself and share with others. You can “follow” people (just like Facebook) and see all the pictures that that person has put in their boards. It creates a large “word-of-mouth” community where people can get suggestions for things to buy or ideas of services to use from friends and strangers alike.
How Pinterest Can Help Your Business
If you sell products or B2C services you can take advantage of this fast growing social media site. When you join Pinterest, you download a link that allows you to grab pictures from websites outside of Pinterest. Below is an example of the process.
1. You are on a website that has this really awesome book you want to share with friends. When you click on the special Pinterest link, it will automatically grab all the pictures from the webpage for you to pick from. In this case, I will click on the book I want to post.
2. Once I add a description of the picture it gets posted for all of my friends and strangers to see.
The example above would work for any products you may sell. If your company offers a service, like interior design, or masonry, you can pin your most recent project, like a portfolio piece.
Don’t wait for someone to happen upon your website and share something – take it into your own hands. There is nothing against creating an account and posting your own stuff. Who knows, it may really catch on, which will increase the traffic to your site and potentially grab new customers.
