You may or may not have had the following questions about Pinterest: How do I use Pinterest for my brand? What’s the point of Pins for my comapany? Isn’t Pinterest just for women? How is Pinterest at all useful for my business?

I will admit, I have long held the opinion that Pinterest is a social media site whose user demographic consisted primarily of women. What use could I possibly have for a website on which all I did was make “boards” with “pins?” I didn’t even feel the urge to pursue those activities in the privacy of my real life room, let alone in the very public virtual space of Pinterest. My initial forays into the world of Pinterest only confirmed my early assumptions…most Pins I saw consisted of pictures of women fawning over pictures of attractive men. Not quite what I was looking for.

After that initial trial, Pinterest and I went on a long break. They say that separation makes you realize things you never saw because when I came back to Pinterest about a week ago, I suddenly realized Pinterest’s immense potential as a marketing tool. Here’s how to use Pinterest to promote your business.

Links Links Links

Many casual users of Pinterest create boards to reflect their interests, and simply repin pins that they find on Pinterest. One critical function of Pinterest is the ability to make your own Pins. The Pins that you make can be pictures from your blog or your website, or pictures of your product. When the user then clicks on your pin, it takes them to your website, which increases YOUR traffic.

Creative ways to utilize this function include a call to action, for example a pin that says “Use Pinterest to Promote Your Brand,” written in elegant font on a beautiful background, with a button below saying “Click here for more information.” Bam. That’s a call to action. These pins can be utilized as a “tease,” offering little information coupled with a link to your site. Exploit this avenue with the full force of your creativity and you’re on your way to maximizing Pinterest’s potential.

Show Off Your Family

This headline probably caught your attention. No, I’m not advising you to pin pictures of your pop, mum, siblings, and the family dog on Pinterest. Though I’m sure they are all lovely and charming, this isn’t exactly going to help your site gain traffic. What I mean by this is to use Pinterest to show off your beloved employees, the hardworking, invaluable people who make the magic happen. Not only will this put a face to your company, this will also boost trust between customers and your company.

This tip can be combined with the first tip. For example, if you’re a web application company, you can post a picture of your lead developer, with the caption “Frank has been working hard all month to create so and so new feature! Check out his work on our site!” with link to said feature on your site. Again, there is plenty of room for creativity here.

Interactions

Interact with other Pinterest users, and re-pin their posts. This encourages camaraderie, as Pinterest supports a more intimiate level of interaction than Facebook and Instagram, closer to the level of Twitter. In addition, re-pinning the posts of other users encourages them to re-pin your posts as well, which is invaluable when they re-pin posts that link to your website or blog, as their audiences will now also be able to access your website.

It is also important to target tastemakers on Pinterest (I discussed tastemakers in this post on viral videos). Tastemakers are those that set the trends on Pinterest, or any other social media application, who typically have huge followings. Getting a tastemaker to like and promote your brand is huge, as you will now be able to access the immense human resources at their disposal. Sort of like the Zuck himself letting you use his Facebook account to invite people to like your page.

Pin it to Win It– Contests and Giveaways

Everyone likes to win, and everyone likes free things. That makes contests and giveaways on Pinterest perfect. For example, a giveaway such as “for every re-pin we will donate a _____ to ______ cause!” can also be very successful.

Above is a great example of how a brand is using Pinterest to organize contest and generate traffic. As you can see, Kraft has created a pin with not one, not two, but four calls to action, one of which involves re-pinning one of their thirty promotional pins featuring images of their product. By utilizing this technique, Kraft is able to provide incentive for their fans–a potential prize–while generating exposure for their brand. This is only one example of how Pinterest can be used in this fashion. Because Pinterest has yet to become heavily used as a commercialized marketing tool, there is plenty of exploration and experimentation to be done.

Integration

As with all social media sites, integration is extremely helpful. You can share your Pinterest board on Facebook, or link your pins to your Facebook page. And these are only two of the strategies you can utilize to use your social media sites to drive traffic to each other. Thus your fans on one site also become your fans on the other.

For maximum effect, you can use a Tint to consolidate all of your social media feed into one location, so that users on your website or Facebook page and simultaneously see posts from your Pinterest, as well as your Facebook, as well as any other social media sites you have. This will allow them to easily see news and information about your company across many different mediums, increasing interaction and engagement. Happy Tinting!

Are you an avid Pinterest-er? What other ways have you seen very effective when using Pinterest? Let us know in the comments below!

-Eric