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How to Use Pinterest as a Business to Increase Your Sales
Pinterest is one of the biggest photo sharing social networking (social media) sites that has grown phenomenally today so much so that it's now a household name. You can now mention Pinterest in any occasion and most people will have heard of it at the least. It's a site for both personal and business use and thusly used by people for personal reasons and and useful for business purposes too. But Pinterest is a bit of a pet cemetery as well and is peppered with dormant profiles by people and businesses that didn't know how to use it and harness its potential for their benefit. Don't end up just another dead profile and apply some of these Pinterest business tips which aren't difficult to use Pinterest as a business to increase your sales and revenue with.
Register As a Business User
If you're going to use Pinterest as a business, you need to register as a business user and not a personal one. Registering as a business will give you some additional benefits like access to Pinterest Analytics so you can see where are all your pinners are coming from or which boards and pins are doing the best etc. Pinterest Analytics isn't as comprehensive as Google's Analytics or Facebook's Insights but it's built into Pinterest and shows you most of the things you'd want to know or see from the dashboard.
Create a Consistent Profile
If you've already got a Pinterest account you use a personal user, you can convert it into a business account using their convert to business option. Otherwise you will have to create a new account from scratch. On their registration page, click the register as a business link. You can join Pinterest with your Facebook page or register using email. You'll be asked to input an email if you Login with Facebook anyway so it's best to register by email using your business email address. Just choose which type of business it is either a professional, media or brand, retailer or local business whatever.
Then once you're registered and have confirmed your email address, just like you'd want to be identified as who you are on any social media site, you will want to make sure you use your site or brands recognizable logo as your profile picture. And use the same website URL, locations and other of your business information etc on Pinterest as you're using on Facebook, Twitter etc. Also make sure to add your physical address as well so it's all the same.
Be the Official Website
If you're a unique and successful brand, there's always the chance of someone piggy backing off your success! They will create a similar profile that imitates yours and sell similar or alternative products to your customer base and social circles. You can't stop people doing this, but you can you can verify that your website is the official one for that Pinterest page by using the Pinterest Verification Stamp. This will tell people that your site is the official one for your brand. Also confirming that you own your website adds your profile picture to any Pin that came from your site. You’ll also get access to analytics so you can see what people are saving from your website. And finally, it can also give people a little more confidence in you as well knowing that you've taken the steps to verify you're the original brand and also help you if someone does try to imitate and copy your profile.
There are two ways to confirm and verify your website with Pinterest;
- The Meta Tag Method:
You can add a simple meta tag to your websites header file <head>. Just add that to your header and then click the "confirm website" link on Pinterest.
- The HTML File Method:
You can download a simple file and upload to the root of your websites directory. Then just click "Finish" on Pinterest
Add the Pinterest Hover Script
The Pinterest hover script is a small script you can add to your site that will place a small "pin it" link on your images when people hover over them with their mouse cursor which they can then click on to instantly pin that image to one of their boards on Pinterest which will have a link to that post on your site where the image was pinned from. This is a great script that will promote your images to get pinned more but it does have some caveats in that it only works on desktops and laptops. It wont work for tablets and mobile users who don't have a cursor so if your traffic is mostly from mobile users then this script is pretty pointless in having but for desktops, laptops it's well worth having to promote and encourage people to pin your images.
Connect with Other Pinteresters
Just like you would connect and network with other bloggers in your niche market by
commenting on related blogs to you, you should do the same thing with Pinterest too if you want to become a powerful and influential force on there like some are that have many followers. In order to do that, you'll need to search for and discover boards and pinners in your niche area and then follow them. Then what they pin and post will show up on the Pinterest homepage which you can then pin and repin to your own boards and like them place thoughtful comments on them. I know this might sound counter-productive, but trust my logic on this, when they see you doing that for their pins, they will likely do the same thing for your pins on their boards as well. Keep this up and this can be very fruitful for you. Don't just go mad and pin everything they pin, mix it up and blend it in with other pins too but be consistent and do it every day, always following more people, pining and repinning their stuff etc etc and this will set you on the path to having a successful and worthwhile Pinterest profile that can end up getting you a lot of traffic, sales, clients, customers and revenue for your business.
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Create Boards Related To Your Products
Now this is where you can really come into your own and do your thing. Let's be upfront about it, you're a business and you're going to use Pinterest to sell your products and services on that much is a given. So you'll need to create some boards that are related and relevant to your products, categories or services. So if you have a business about artificial rainbows, you might want to create boards about rainbows, mountains, sunsets, waterfalls that kind of thing. Yes a funny cat gifs board can be super popular and get you a lot of followers but if you don't sell products for cats then it's not really worth having. What you need to know is what your targeted audience likes and is into. If you already know this then you'll be able to come up with some great boards to pin stuff too. You can use your Facebook Page Insights if you already have a busy and successful Facebook Page to get ideas about this but just make sure to create boards that are about your products, services and the things those people might like. That way, your audience is going to be much more likely to follow you, check out your boards and buy your products that you've pinned to them.
Request Pin Access to Big Boards
One of the best ways to get a lot of traffic quickly from Pinterest is by getting access to some very big community based boards. To do this, you can send a message to the owner of those boards and request (or politely ask) if they can invite you to it. You could offer them the chance to pin to your boards
as well in exchange which most pinners will go for as that way, your followers become theirs and vice-a-versa. You shouldn't do this right away but wait until you've really become quite established on Pinterest after a few months when you have a lot of boards which have a lot of pins and you have a nice amount of followers. They will see this and be much more likely to oblige.
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Only Pin High Res Pictures
Pinterest is meant to be a visually pleasing place that leaves you breathless and in awe of all the beautiful things in the world. So pictures, photos and images need to be of very high quality indeed. But this is not always possible if you're running a site that doesn't really have that many pictures or high quality photos on them especially if you're running some kind of affiliate site like an SEOClerks affiliate site or something. However, there is a little workaround you can do. You can pin other peoples high quality images and photos from their website or you can even download them or find them in Google Image search using the Usage Filter to filter by images that can be reused. Then after you pin it to Pinterest, you can edit the pin and replace the URL with yours. Or you can just upload the image and then put the link to your site. You can also
use affiliate links on Pinterest now too so you can either put a link to your site or put an affiliate link also.
Use Rich Pins
Pinterest Rich pins are a small piece of code you can add to your website that Pinterest can use to grab more information from that page as it changes on your site. It works very similar to how
Schema markup works. So if you pin a product or a service that you have for sale on your site, Pinterest can show the price of it and other important details of it on that pin. I don't need to tell you that pins with prices on them have a much better response rate than pins that don't. These rich pins can show anything from the author to the price, ratings for things or recipe ingredients as well as tons of other useful info. So don't overlook rich pins and make sure to add the code to your site so Pinterest can use it and make your pins much more appealing and helpful to people. Find out more about
Pinterest Rich Pins work and how to add the code to your site.
Final Thoughts..
Pinterest can only do good for your business. But by not having an official Pinterest page you're leaving money on the table for your competitors. It can seem a bit overwhelming to some. But if you apply these tips and principles it can be one of the best things your business ever did. Go for Pinterest!
TommyCarey
I've been hitting instagram pretty hard trying to increase my conversions for an SEO and Web Design type service and it's been going well. I've been thinking about targeting pinterest but I wasn't sure about a few things and now I'm glad I found this post
I have a few questions though...
When I register as a business and get my website on pinterest, does the newly created profile have some sort of badge on it to show that it's a business pinterest profile or does it just look like all the other profiles on there? I'm asking because if I can get some sort of badge or label saying it's a business profile I would assume I'd be seen as more of a professional compared to someone that is just posting the same stuff but from a personal account. I know you can get a verification badge, but is it possible to get something that says like "Verified Business" or "Business Account" to show on your profile?
I have a professional or business account on a few different platforms where I've also verified my profiles and I've seen a higher conversion rate soon after I got the badges. Badges are pretty sweet in terms of closing sales
Thanks Idealmike
- Razzy I haven't really gotten into pinterest because I feel it's full of women pinning wedding dresses, well at least my lady pins dresses all the time :( I've been hitting instagram pretty hard trying to increase my conversions for an SEO and Web Design type service and it's been going well. I've been thinking about targeting pinterest but I wasn't sure about a few things and now I'm glad I found this post :D I have a few questions though... When I register as a business and get my website on pinterest, does the newly created profile have some sort of badge on it to show that it's a business pinterest profile or does it just look like all the other profiles on there? I'm asking because if I can get some sort of badge or label saying it's a business profile I would assume I'd be seen as more of a professional compared to someone that is just posting the same stuff but from a personal account. I know you can get a verification badge, but is it possible to get something that says like "Verified Business" or "Business Account" to show on your profile? I have a professional or business account on a few different platforms where I've also verified my profiles and I've seen a higher conversion rate soon after I got the badges. Badges are pretty sweet in terms of closing sales :D Thanks Idealmike :) - Razzy
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