Let's face it, whether you personally use Pinterest or not, it's become one of the most popular social media platforms in the world and it's growing. While we wouldn’t recommend all businesses investing time, energy and budget into the site, using Pinterest for small business marketing can be extremely effective.
Using Pinterest for Small Business
The marketing advantages of Pinterest for small business are arguably greater than that of Facebook, depending on the type of business you own. So let's take a look at a few of those advantages.
Pinterest for small business can be thought of as a more visual version of your Facebook marketing, in the sense that photos and videos have prominence and there are a lot more seen at once on the screen. Users on the site scroll through hundreds of images and "Like" or "Pin" (archive) their favorites. The secret marketing value of Pinterest is found in "repinning", which can be thought of as the equivalent of a Facebook "share" (not just a "Like", but when somebody "re-shares" your post to their friends). Just as "shares" on Facebook help you reach new users/customers, "re-pinning" an image spreads your brand across Pinterest to new people. Many argue it's even easier and more common to "re-pin" on Pinterest than to "share" on Facebook, so your brand has the potential to spread.
For example, restaurants or bars often post pictures of different dishes, recipes, draft beers, flyers, and more on Pinterest for their target demographic to see, "pin", and "repin". Then, small businesses pin these same images to their website, blog or Facebook. If your small business already has a wordpress, blogger or tumblr, putting images on Pinterest can drive traffic, through the images, back to these sites. Repining images that are along the same interests as your business can also help aid in the integration and aggregation of content along different social media platforms.
In addition, Pinterest has been proven, on average, to drive more traffic than Facebook and lead to more direct sales than Facebook. This is because avid Pinterest users spend more time on Pinterest, by day, than Facebook users do, and because these users are often in more of a shopping mindset while looking for new products. Commenting and liking on Pinterest is a fun way to engage your potential followers in a natural way. It’s all visual and lends itself to many different business endeavors in both sales and marketing.
Now that you know a little bit more about the marketing value of Pinterest for small business, create an account on the site (for free) to get a sense of how you can use the tool to build your brand, drive online sales, and attract more visitors to your restaurant or bar!
Once you've determined whether Pinterest for small business is good fit for your marketing, it's time to look into Rockbot — a popular app among customers that engages over 2 times more users than popular services like Foursquare. Check out Rockbot here: http://rockbot.com.
