10 Tips for Using Pinterest

Are you a Pinner?  If you are, you’re most likely a casual pinner, finding great new recipes, kids craft ideas, and inspiration for your future home decor.  But Pinterest is so much more.  With an audience that is 80% female, Pinterest has become one of the hottest and most influential social media sites for marketers.  Pinterest has a higher revenue-per-click than both Facebook and Twitter, and 70% of people say they go to Pinterest to get inspiration and ideas on what to buy (compared to only 17% going to Facebook).  Pinterest is potentially the most influential social media platform to affect your business.  Let’s get you using it!

Pinterest is a pinboard-style website, that allows users to create and manage theme-based “boards” on any topic of choice, such as events, hobbies, or interests.  Users can browse other boards for images, “re-pin” images to their own boards, and like or comment on other photos or pins.  And what’s most important to any business marketer, is that the user can direct the source of the pin.  I’ll explain this more shortly.  Once you setup your account, you want to be strategic in how you’re going to get your product in front of your target demographic of customer.

1. Setup your boards.  Create boards thoughtfully and strategically, in an organized way that allows the person browsing your boards to see the flow of pins.  Having too many pins jumbled together is disorganized and distracting.
2. Find people to follow.  One of the ways you’ll get more exposure, is by following the right people.  You want to be following those who have a similar customer demographic, and have >1000 followers.
3. Pin.  Find great pins (either by browsing the Pinterest categories, searching for a specific topic, or uploading your own content) and pin to the boards you setup.  Make sure your pins include robust descriptions, including #hashtags, as these will be searchable on Pinterest.
4. Confirm the source URL.  When you edit a pin, you can direct where that pin points.  If you re-pinned a great image from a competitor consultant, change the URL director to your own page (assuming the image is not watermarked with someone else’s contact information).
5. Use Pinterest for your parties.  Create boards for your hostesses to pin ideas and recipes to, or pictures of your party guests and their new products.
6. Comment on other pinners’ pins.  When you do this, you are exposing your comment to all of their followers.  (That’s why you want to follow people with large follower counts.)
7. Setup a Pinterest tab on your Facebook page using a Woobox fanpage app, and invite your Facebook fans to follow you on Pinterest.
8. Promote specific boards or pins on Facebook, and encourage your Facebook fans to become Pinterest followers.
9. Use contributor boards.  These are boards that are allow you to create community, by inviting others to pin on your boards.  What a great way to engage with your fans, team, customers, and  followers.  Additionally, when you choose to “follow all boards” on your contributors accounts, they automatically follow all your boards too, increasing your reach.
10. Let your Pinterest boards show your personality.  I am a business person, wife, mother, and hobbyist.  My boards reflect the varieties of my life.  I like that my hostesses, team, and customers can see all the things I’m interested in, as it makes me more personable.

Are you interested in getting started on Pinterest?  Checkout this video to give you the basics!

If you’re a new direct sales consultant and interested in learning more about how to apply social media to your business, join us in the Sassy Suite! Contact me today for more information!  And finally, follow ME!  Click on this image, and come on over to Pinterest and browse my boards!