Is Pinterest right for my business? 

As you’ve probably come to realise through reading my blogs, I love social media marketing. It’s an accessible form of marketing that’s cost-effective and really works in getting you in front of your audience.

But one social media channel seems to throw up a ton of confusion whenever it’s mentioned for business marketing – Pinterest.

In this blog, I want to explore some of my thoughts behind using Pinterest and why it can actually be a fantastic form of marketing for your business.

Pinterest isn’t a particularly social channel

It’s strange how Pinterest has ended up being included in social media as it’s not a particularly social channel. There are no groups to form a community with, although you can comment on a pin very few people do. It’s more of a “sharing channel” in my opinion but that’s where the strength lies for your marketing.

Pinterest has essentially turned into one giant search engine (so much so, that Google uses it to find results for you in image search). You simply enter what you’re looking for and your screen is filled with pins related to that subject, most of which lead back to blogs, articles and websites that can provide more information on what you’re searching for.

If you have an audience searching for topics you and your business can provide an answer or solution to, Pinterest can be a fantastic channel for your business.

Isn’t Pinterest for sharing recipes and homework projects?

This might be how Pinterest started but these days you’ll find pins on everything from SEO to blogging, virtual assistant advice to starting your own business. So even if your business isn’t direct to consumer but you’re marketing to other business owners, Pinterest can still be incredibly useful for you.

Pinterest is all about driving traffic back to your website.

Imagine that one of your customers is searching for information on GDPR and comes across a pin titled “GDPR basics you need to know for your business”. They click on it, read the description and decide it’s just what they’re looking for, so they click through to your website. Once there, they realise they need professional help and fill in the contact form for your services.

That’s how Pinterest can work for your business.

How do I know my target audience are using Pinterest?

There’s a common misconception that Pinterest users tend to be middle-aged women with kids but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Recent Pinterest statistics have shown that:

• 40% of new people signing up to use Pinterest are men
• Millennials are using Pinterest just as much as Instagram
• Over 5% of referral traffic to websites is from Pinterest
• More than 14 million articles are pinned to Pinterest every day
• There are 2 billion searches on Pinterest every month

There’s also the added bonus that Google trawls Pinterest to find answers for its image search users, so even if your audience isn’t on Pinterest searching for what you do, they can still find you.

Pin today, there forever

One of the problems I find with social media marketing is that you’re required to post consistently to keep in front of your audience. The Twitter feed is literally updating every second, so it’s easy for a tweet to get lost. Facebook posts are dependent on ever-changing algorithms.

The fantastic thing about Pinterest is that it’s based around keywords. If you’re using the right keywords in your pin titles and descriptions (which you should naturally be doing if the article/page you’re sharing is solving your audience’s pain point) then your pins will appear time and time again whenever those words are searched for.

It’s evergreen social media content.

I think Pinterest can be especially useful to businesses trying to drive traffic to their websites and reach their target audience in new ways, especially as there are still a lot of UK business owners who aren’t using the platform yet.

Why not be one of the first in your industry and see how much additional traffic you can drive to your website?