Pinterest for Business

Any Business that relies on driving high volume traffic to their website to increase sales, should consider joining Pinterest.  It may not be as popular as Facebook or Twitter, but this virtual pinboard service is attracting plenty of attention.  Pinterest had an estimated 3.3 million unique visitors in the month of October. While there's no mechanism for potential customers to buy your products directly from the site, consider the marketing potential: Popular images (with links back to the original source) can get repinned on hundreds of other users' boards.

Companies that are using Pinterest successfully most often take a broader view of the market.  Rather than directly trying to promote a brand or product, engage your followers by focusing on issues that are important to your customers, such as the environment, healthy living,  and support of your local community.  If you’re still confused about how to use Pinterest for your restaurant or business, take a look at Whole Foods Market, which has really led the way with using the platform to best suit its customers needs.

Whole Foods rarely promotes its products; instead it shows customers all the things they can do with the groceries they buy from its stores. This gives Whole Foods great opportunities to interact with customers. Customers are being informed without hearing a sales pitch, just gentle encouragement to visit Whole Foods, and with over 30,000 Pinterest followers the results speak for themselves.

Use your Pinterest account to pin about certain topics relating to your industry and create a pinboard featuring awesome examples of some of your work.  An example of a company using Pinterest is Minted.  Minted is a global community of independent graphic designers and an online store that prints and sells the best of their designs in the form of paper goods.  They leveraged this tactic by creating themed pinboards that showcase unique ways to use paper. They then include links back to drive traffic back to their website.

If you are a restaurant, you should have a feel for what your customers are interested in. If your restaurant is in a tourist town, have special boards that have various pins of the sites, shops and attractions the town has to offer, the history of the town, your dishes and special events that you host. If you’re in a small town, become active in the community events, local schools’ sporting events, community theater showings and city events. If your restaurant serves food from a specific country or culture, pin images of that place and its traditions.

As you can tell, the trick to succeeding on pinterest isn’t necessarily about showing off your products or services directly. It’s about finding creative ways to show how those products and services fit into the lifestyles of your target audience. find ways to do that, and you’ll have what you need to pop on pinterest just like the brands we have discussed in this blog.