How Small Businesses Can Leverage Pinterest Effectively

Have you been struggling to figure out how Pinterest could help market your business? Managing a small business today requires a connection not only with your audiences offline but online as well. I am sure by now you know that very well. Thus now it has become a need for every business to tap this medium be it big or small. In every research you read it has been said ‘Visual Content’ attracts audiences and grabs their attention. That’s why you shouldn’t ignore Pinterest, its being a visual medium, a great platform to leverage.

Using Pinterest to boost your small business online is highly recommended whether you are sharing content or selling services and products. Businesses can benefit from Pinterest too since every image on the site is linked to a blog or website. By adding images to the site, you’ll be able to link them to your company website meaning more traffic, sales and customers. Let’s look at various ways that small businesses can leverage Pinterest.

1. Engage with others

For making the power of Pinterest to work for you, you need to engage with your followers and that will result in creating awareness for your business. Don’t just brag about your products, try to provide your audience a great mix of content from overall industry. Social media is all about being social so engage with your followers. Share pins from their boards, comment on their pins, and keep appreciating what you like. The whole point is to engage with others to build relations with them and thus earn them in ways as followers.

Example – Random House books, has showcased a board called best book covers. Where a lot of the books are not from their publication, which shows they re-pin and share others content as well.

2. Create a User-Generated Pinboard

By creating a collaborative board on your brand page, it is great way to involve your followers and customers making them feel, they are important to you. Pick out your top followers and loyal customers and create board. Have a brief description of what is required out of them and by doing so you are letting them showcase their personality. This is a great way to get your customers understanding as well as getting customer testimonials in a visual way.

Example – Ben & Jerry’s not only do they make delicious ice-cream, but ask their consumers to share their experiences as well. Great way to increase engagement and create a bond.

3. Host contest

Before you start hosting contest it is very important to read Pinterest rules regards to contest, so you are making sure you don’t overstep the boundaries. I had earlier done an article for how to run contest and competition you can read that as well to get some ideas to get started.

With holding contest it’s a great way to improve engagement, increase followers and most importantly create awareness for your brands presence. And while hosting contest, make sure your giveaways are exciting enough for them to participate, when you do so it will generate more traffic to your website and new visitors will go and check out the perks and terms of the contest on your site and at the same time check out what does your brand have to offer. Contest is a sure shot way, to put your business on the social media map!

Example – Norwegian Cruise Line With its simple calls-to-action, for the contest with the hashtag #NorwegiansPinToWin.

4. Add the pin-it button to your website

Have a pin-it button strategically placed on your website or images like see you the pin-it button hovering over every image you see in this article, it will encourage visitors to share your content. And if they like your content on website, they don’t need go look you up on Pinterest and then re-pin you, with the pin-it button they can easily share your visual content with their followers. Just like I have embedded the button on Digital Insights, hover on any image and you can pin-it right away!

5. Make use of the rich pins

With the use of rich pins, it adds more information to pin. Pinterest has five types of rich pins that let you add topic-specific details to a pin.

• Article pins include the headline, author, story description and link


• Product pins include real-time pricing, availability and where to buy


• Recipe pins include ingredients, cooking times and serving info


• Movie pins include ratings, cast members and reviews


• Place pins include an address, phone number and map

You can decide which kind of rich pin you want to apply for, add the appropriate metatags to your site and validate your rich pins. With using these pins you provide relevant information to your users.

6. Make use of Hashtags

Just like Twitter, Facebook and Google+, Pinterest supports the usage of hashtags. Users can use ‘#hashtags’ to tag their pins and make their content easily searchable. It is a great way to promote your campaign or product, if you are running a contest on other medium you can create a board with that hashtag, thus increasing reach as well you integrate it with other platforms as well.

Example – Sony held a campaign to give away $1 for every re-pin from their board for Sony’s #PinItToGiveIt, with this hashtag they increased their reach as increase awareness for their cause of the campaign as well.

7. Consistently update

By diligently updating you Pinterest page is a great way to update your followers. And when you consistently keep adding new content, it will generate engagement and interest in your business by your followers. Getting actively involved in updating your Pinterest is a way for you to easily connect with any audience.

Just as with all marketing platforms to be effective, you must use Pinterest consistently. Use scheduling software’s as well, thus it becomes a convenient way to schedule your pins in advance and with pre-scheduling pins allows you to consolidate your marketing time.

8. Integrate with other Social networks

When you are using Pinterest, it is important to integrate your other social platforms simultaneously for maximum exposure and benefits online. Registering a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn account helps to brand your business across different networks at once and even increases awareness of your brands presence online.

Whatever sort of strategies you implement on Pinterest; there is one universal guide you must always remember. That your content is the key and only way to interact with your current and potential customers. Pinterest lets brands deliver that content in an easily shareable format that leads to increased visibility and higher traffic numbers. I think Pinterest is totally worth giving your time!

Have you developed your Pinterest strategy for your business? Do share your insights with us below.

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