Okay, how on earth can Pinterest help my small business? This is a question that we hear being asked quite a lot these days as the “new kid on the block” takes on some more credibility. Can you believe that this social media site has grown from a meagre 700,000 unique visitors to almost 20,000,000 in the last year? This is a meteoric growth curve and according to compete.com Pinterest is already at about half the number of Twitter’s unique visitor tally. Some are saying that Pinterest is taking away from sites such as Facebook. Others are saying that it’s bringing in a whole new raft of interested people who may have never engaged with a social media site before.
You may not even know what Pinterest is. Think visual. This is the place to “pin” images, but remember not just any old image. This is where you need to put your best stuff. Everyone who is involved with any kind of online marketing must realise by now that imagery is essential if you want to engage people. If you make the content that’s being posted on Pinterest vivid and enticing it’s likely to be shared or “repinned.” Infographics are especially hard-hitting. Get together with your virtual assistant to create some infographics around your niche. The good news is that there are a number of software tools available these days to help you do just that rather quickly.
Think about this creatively. It’s a social media site. You want to try and get some two-way traffic here. You can invite your users, your prospects and customers to pin stuff. In this way they will feel more personally invested in what you’re trying to do.
Being a social media site people are interested in the human side of your operation. Pin pictures of yourself or the people who work for you to show this human element. This could be attached to a profile or an interview and is going to be much more fun than the simple “about us” static page on a website.
A good virtual assistant will know implicitly how to approach social media from a marketing perspective while at the same time ensuring the personal perspective too. Always bank on that knowledge and as a small business owner don’t fall into the trap of using a medium like this just to unroll your business agenda. You have to be subtle here and provide a lot of information and education that’s of direct interest to your prospects and customers. When they can see that you’re doing this on a consistent basis they’ll become magnetised and are far more likely to be buying something from you in the future.
Do you use Pinterest for your business or are you thinking about using Pinterest? I would love to read your comments.