Pinterest for.. Business?

That time has come, Pinterest is now “popular” enough that all the “social media gurus” are formulating Pinterest strategies.

As with every social network, there are some businesses for whom a presence will be a seamless and logical fit. For others, it’s tit’s on a bull, as my kiwi-bloke dad might say.

Pinterest is very lifestyle focused, and is useful for aggregating boards of content relevant to particular topics. Personally, I use it to capture inspiration for things I want to do myself – DIY projects, fashion inspiration etc.

You’ll find a lot of twee girly stuff, a lot of macarons, home ideas and craft projects. Depending who you follow, it can seem to be one massive Frankie-magazine-girlfest.

Air New Zealand have climbed aboard the bandwagon and reined in over 200 followers in the past week since launch. But does their “strategy” offer any value? Is the content even that interesting? I guess we’ll see.

How might Pinterest actually be useful “for business”? Well, I can imagine the referring traffic for content shared on Pinterest would be pretty healthy, but you will need legitimately good content to share in order to do well. Great for those with an Etsy store or fashion, craft, or beauty blog.

If you’re on the fence, I’d suggest:

  • Create a personal account and try it out before trying to apply it to your business.
  • Create a business or brand account and start sharing your content
  • Make it as easy as possible for your readers or users to share your content on Pinterest. Yes, that’s a “pin this” button to add to your collection of like, tweet, plus, share, bookmark.
  • Make sure you have good quality images with your content on your site – Pinterest is all visual and most pinners will like or repin without even clicking through to the originating source.

There’s an “Ultimate Pinterest Marketing Guide” available from Hubspot, it’s worth a read if only to know what’s being said “out there” about marketing on Pinterest.