My School of Thought

I love Marketing and have an Advertising-centric approach. Of particular interest to me is relationship marketing and the way that marketing consciously affects buying habits

Essentially I believe that marketing has two purposes. Either to market penetration, or to net sales. However, as the media-scape is changing, so should marketing. This is what shall be explored by the Ignorant Eye.

Tuesday 7 February 2012

How to Use Pintrest for Business and Marketing Purposes/The Golden Rules of Pinterest

As your probably aware 'Pinterest' could well be the next huge social media site, but how can you make it work for your business? Especially when the third rule of Pinterest... is don't talk about yourself (self-endorse) on Pinterest. If you have not yet heard of Pinterest, refer to the bottom of the article.



A great place to start is to check out if anybody has posted anything from your website on Pinterest. The great thing about this is that you don't even have to be signed up to Pinterest for this to be possible! Simply enter the URL: Pinterest.com/source/YourURL
For example Pinterest.com/source/Ignoranteye.blogspot.com
Doing this will allow you to see which photos of yours people have 'pinned', 'repinned' and commented on.
That brings us to the first golden rule of Pinterest!

1. Clear Capture! - you must have high quality photos as people will only pin and repin photos of products that they desire. Therefore, even if you are not the only seller, clear pictures will translate to more traffic.

Once you are on Pinterest you can start to mingle. Don't forget that it is always important to follow those whom you have a business interest in when considering friends for your business profile. Do not hurry to follow too many people, remember to keep it concise and direct. Which brings us to the second golden rule of Pinterest.

2. Have a Plan - In marketing you have to always know why your doing something. Its like your marketing compass, without knowing your goal there is no path that will take you there.

Its been proven that the most effective forms of marketing are the ones that make people want to interact with them, a great example of this is the 'Old Spice' series which has genuinely changed marketing forever. Therefore, when you 'advertise' on Pinterest you are really just giving people another platform and medium to interact with you. However, an additional beauty of Pinterest not currently replicated by another social media platform is that users can exclusively follow one of your pinboards without following your entire profile! Allowing you to have multiple objectives and simultaneously enter several target markets. That brings us to our third golden rule.

3. Keep Pinboards Well Defined - This will allow you to best interact with your target markets.

Finally, make sure that your efforts on Pinterest are trackable and have the best possibility at translating into serious dollars. Its just common sense to make sure that the pictures of items you sell link directly to the place where you sell them. Hopefully this doesn't take much website redesign; however, if Pinterest takes off it would definitively be worth it. So the fourth rule is...

4. Post Products from Your Catalogues

I hope that was helpful and if you would like an invitation to Pinterest or have any questions feel free to contact me at my alex.croker.services@gmail.com



*Pinterest is an image based social media site. Currently the group using it is much the same at 'Etsy' (young women, often businesses run by otherwise stay-at-home-mums). It grew 8000% before Christmas 2012 and Australians make up the 4th largest representation of users in the world.

2 comments:

  1. Morning Vinh,
    Sorry about the late reply, I've had my focus elsewhere for a while. I sent an email through to you via your admin account.
    Regards,
    Alex

    ReplyDelete
  2. A fascinating read, thanks Alex

    ReplyDelete