Pinterest Archives

The pinboard-style photo-sharing site Pinterest has been rapidly growing in popularity among users and businesses. At first glance, the site seems to be another social media site used to share photos of outfits, recipes and DIY ideas displayed on aesthetically-pleasing Pinboards, however according to research conducted by Shareaholic, Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined. So how can you take advantage of the whimsical Pinboards on your profile and start generating website traffic?

Here are a few tips for your business to get stared on Pinterest:
1. Set up a Pinterest Business account
Firstly you should consider opening up a business account on Pinterest or converting your current profile. Although it is not entirely necessary, it’s definitely recommended if you are planning on selling products via Pinterest. A Pinterest business page, similar to Facebook, will create a more professional and credible look for your profile.
2. Let your personality shine through
Your Pinterest profile should not be a replica of your website, instead it is a great place to let the personality of your brand shine through. Unlike traditional advertising, this social media platform is unique in that it allows your business name to get in front of people by others ‘repining’ your fun content. As well as showcasing your own work, you can use it to show more wide-ranging interests, such as a commitment to environmental issues, pictures of food you would like to try, places you would love to visit, or your customer’s pins.
3. Watermark your content
Adding a watermark to your images is a great way to make sure those who come across it know its origin. There are many tools out there to do this, it can be easily created in Photoshop or using Microsoft Word. Placement and size of the watermark is important. While putting your watermark over the entire photo will make it much more obvious who the owner is, it will make users less likely to share your image. For Pinterest it’s better to use a simple watermark in a corner, that way the quality of the image won’t be impacted and brand awareness will increase and direct traffic back to your website.
4. Provide Tutorials
Make use of your YouTube videos to get your message out there. Similar to images, YouTube videos can be pinned to boards so you can provide users with interesting and beneficial ‘How To’ videos. Pinterest allows for the video to be watched in its entirety from wherever it is sited by the user. Pinning videos creates a great opportunity to showcase your expertise.
5. Show off your current clients
One of the best ways to persuade potential clients or customers to do business with you is through highlighting the fantastic work you already have done. Not only is a board dedicated to current clients and projects an excellent way to brag, it also provides the opportunity to drive more traffic to your client’s websites.
6. Give a glimpse of behind the scenes
You can use Pinterest to show behind the scenes of your company with boards of your staff, location and industry, or other ways of using interesting images to shed led on what your business is about and offers. Service based businesses could benefit greatly from this and use it as a tool to drive sales.
7. Engage
If you want users to engage with you then it’s important you spend some time engaging within the Pinterest community yourself. By regularly liking, commenting and pinning, your chances of getting likes and comments from others as well as more followers are increased. Make sure you stay true to your brand and pin only what you feel is relevant and represents you business.
Need help with your social media management? BFJ Media, Brisbane Marketing Agency, can help prepare and manage on-going social media campaigns on any platform like Pinterest. Contact us for more information.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
If a thought is shared with the Internet and no one reads it, was there any point in sharing it?
These deep philosophical issues have been pondered for generations (actually, only the first one has,if we’re being honest here) but there are tools available to help ensure your thoughts are heard and read by as big an audience as possible.
A hashtag, which looks like this – #iamahashtag – is effectively a tool for adding your tweets or posts on social media into a global pool of information, easily accessible by anyone looking to find it.
Hashtags are now offered by most social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and Google+. You can invent hashtags to suit your brand’s social media campaigns or you can use established hashtags as you see fit.
Inventing your own hashtags will let you easily monitor the response to your brand’s social media campaigns; piggybacking off more popular hashtags will allow you to maximize your audience quickly. For example, say you have 300 people following your business’s Twitter account.If you send out a tweet and don’t include a hashtag, you’ve got a pretty small audience reading your thoughts. That usually means minimal interaction, minimal exposure and minimal chance of new people discovering your content and becoming familiar with your brand.
Adding a hashtag, for example #grandfinal or #summer, adds your Tweet or posts into a global pool, significantly broadening your reach. It potentially means hundreds of thousands of people who search that hashtagcould see it – depending on which hashtag you choose.
For brands looking to broaden their reach by using hashtags, there are pitfalls to consider first. For example, people may be cynical about brands that try to piggyback off popular hashtags that are irrelevant to their products or services.
There are also many cautionary tales of brands that have invited social media meltdown by encouraging people to use ill-consideredhashtags that simply invited criticism of their products or services. In one of the better-known cases, Qantas launched a social media campaign inviting people to share tales of luxury inflight experiences, tagged with #QantasLuxury. Unfortunately, they did so shortly after the airline had experienced significant mechanical problems with its fleet, leaving thousands of people stranded. The #QantasLuxuryhashtag was quickly overtaken with angry customers sharing their ironic ‘luxury’ travel experiences, including being stranded overnight.
Don’t let that put you off using them – hashtags are an invaluable way to quickly find your target market on social media and to significantly increase the reach of your messages.
The lesson is to put some thought about what hashtags you assign to your branded messages and to know your brand and audience first.