Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 0 I don’t know about you, but I kept reading articles about how great Pinterest is for ecommerce. I also read a lot about it being mainly for women and full of food pictures. Eh, that’s mainly true. However, we’re not a social media company or a Pinterest company for that matter. We’re here to help you build relationships with customers. We do it with a simple video chat plugin, but we’re also always looking for new ways to connect with people. While reading about Pinterest, one question came to my mind: Could Pinterest Be Used to Build Relationships With Potential Clients? I could have made a quick search to answer this question but I wanted to hear about real brands and their personal stories. So, I spent the past few weeks reaching out to small businesses to learn a bit more about how they use Pinterest. I was lucky enough to get amazing feedback from 8 of them. I was surprised to see that each and everyone of those 8 small companies had a drastically different approach to Pinterest. Some used it to share their passion, some to sell, some to engage existing customers… I learned a LOT reading about their experience. Don’t worry I won’t be keeping all that knowledge to myself. It would be selfish and we’re all about sharing here at Customericare. I know! How generous of us right. So if you are interested in reading about 8 amazing companies and how they use Pinterest, you should check out this article: 8 Tips From Real Brands Successfully Engaging Customers on Pinterest. If you’re lazy like me, you might prefer to look at the infographic bellow. It’s a choice I would totally understand. (There’s a bit more content in the article though. Life is hard and full of tough choices). This tips can be really useful but they won’t be much use without a strong strategy to back them up. How do I Put Together a Killer Pinterest Strategy? 1. Look at your customers. Marvelous Molds, shared a great tip with us: „Ask yourself: what’s in there for your customers?”. (Yep, that’s tip n°6! It came from them) If you have no way to know if your customers already are on Pinterest, study few popular Pinterest profiles in your niche and see how they are engaging with followers. Then find one problem with their strategy. Solve that problem with your own strategy. 2. Find visual content to share. Can’t find visual content? Look harder, we all have some. It can be photos of your team, of your customers, of your product, infographics, pictures used in articles… Still can’t find anything worth sharing? Then, ok you can start by repining other’s content. 3. Build boards to inspire people. Most Pinterest users are looking for inspiration. Vinyl Impression (one of the companies we interviewed) even started to use Pinterest to look for inspiration. Little shout out to all B2B businesses out there: companies are also on Pinterest looking to get inspired! Take that into account and build at least 4 boards (that’s a good start) that will inspire people. If you sell food: post cooking inspiration If you sell clothes: outfits inspiration If you sell a customer service solution: customer service inspirational quotes Possibilities are endless! If done well, you should even be able to incorporate product photos or images linking to your website in one or more of those inspiration boards. 4. Get social. Once you’ve built the beginning of a decent profile, you’ll need to attract people to it. Of course, you should notify existing customers that you are on Pinterest (use your newsletter or put it on your website). The next step is to actually get social with existing and potential customers. For that you can: – comment on others’ pins (but not too much, you don’t want to be spammy) – reply to comments on your own pins – repin and like other’s pins – organize contests… 5. Find your own unique voice. This is possibly the hardest but also the most important step of the process. People will only be interested in you if you offer a unique value they can’t find anywhere else. This is different for every company and depends on your own personal values and the values you want to communicate to customers. Just stop selling for a minute and start making people dream (of looking better, of a better living room, of traveling, of easier marketing…) Now it’s your turn to talk! If you are already on Pinterest: Share with us what makes your profile unique If you didn’t start yet: Share 2 board ideas that could relate to your brand and inspire people Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article originally appeared on Customericare.com and has been republished with permission.Find out how to syndicate your content with B2C Author: Kane Pepi Kane Pepi is an experienced financial and cryptocurrency writer with over 2,000+ published articles, guides, and market insights in the public domain. Expert niche subjects include asset valuation and analysis, portfolio management, and the prevention of financial crime. Kane is particularly skilled in explaining complex financial topics in a user-friendly … View full profile ›More by this author:VoIP Basics: Everything Beginners Should Know!Bitcoin Investment, Trading & Mining: The Ultimate Guide for BeginnersIs This a Better Way to Set Your 2020 Goals and Resolutions?