What is Pinterest?

Many small businesses focus on creating a Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but there is a hidden social media market called Pinterest that is unnoticed by most B2C companies. Maybe it’s because they may not have heard about the site and its many benefits. With 200 million monthly users, Pinterest may not be a social media that’s as powerful as Facebook, but it’s an important social platform. Half of all U.S. millennials use Pinterest, for instance. Pinterest offers a different approach to gaining market exposure through the use of pictures that are linked to your articles or website.

If you want a more in-depth look at Pinterest and how it can benefit your company, here are some tips below: 

How Does it Work?

Pinterest is a network where people look for inspiration, including specifically seeking out ideas about new products to buy. Here are some of the elements of using Pinterest:

1. Pins

A Pin is simply any image or video that someone chooses to save to Pinterest. For businesses, more important than the image itself is the link: Every pin links back to the original source, so Pinterest can be a great source of referral traffic.

2. Boards

Users (called “Pinners”) save a lot of stuff—an incredible 100 billion Pins to date. In order to keep things organized, they sort their Pins into collections called boards. For example, you can have a board called “Golf Apparel” or “Golf Courses” so as to separate your photos by categories. The social media platform has many categories that can be broad or a niche topic. Your profile can contain as many boards as you would like and you can either create original pins or re-pin from other users onto your board.

Pinners can follow your entire account, or just the specific boards that interest them most. Then, the Pins you save will appear in their feed. Each pin should have a link attached to the image, which will direct the user to whatever website you want them to go to.

3. Feed

A Pinterest feed is just like a feed on any other social network—it’s a collection of links and content from boards and users that the Pinner has followed.

What Will Pinterest Do For Your Company?

Pinterest provides a marketing strategy that’s different from other platforms. The idea that you can create boards, post or re-post pins and include links for each one is a great tool to use.

With the use of these pins you can draw interested users to your main site, thus increasing qualified web traffic. Additionally, by re-pinning relative content onto your own page, you draw more users to the content on your boards through popular pins. However in order to successfully use this site, you must actively post new pins and re-pin relevant, popular pins onto your own boards each day.

By frequently pinning content, you create an opportunity for users to notice your brand and potentially increase the number of followers on your profile.