By now, you’ve probably seen numerous Pinterest boards floating around online. Whether it’s a friend of yours sharing her board full of wedding inspiration and desires or sharing recipes, it’s a fair bet you’ve been shown several Pinterest boards full of fun and interesting hobbies.

But is it just a fun way to create galleries of all the things you love and share them with friends or is there more to it? Can you actually capitalize on Pinterest’s popularity for your business? The short answer is yes.

With this post, I’m not only going to show you some compelling reasons on why you should be using Pinterest for your business, but I’m also going to give you some cool tips on how to master the platform.

Why You Should Be Using Pinterest for Your Business

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Pinterest is a network that gives consumers the ultimate freedom: they can create boards and search for others based on their own interests and hobbies. By having a presence on the platform, you’re increasing the chance of your business being top-of-mind for consumers looking for certain interests, products or services AND the opportunity for them to pin images of your products and services to their boards.

According to comScore, Pinterest users spend more money on more products, more often than any other user on the other top 5 social media sites. Not only that, but Pinterest also receives an estimated 85,500,00 unique visitors in one month alone, according to eBiz.

Pinterest can drive web traffic back to your company website too. Placing the ‘Pin It’ button on any image on your company page will help drive traffic back to your website because every single one of your pins will include a link to the original source.

Convinced yet? Ready to create a Pinterest business account? Here’s how you do it:

How to Create a Business Pinterest Account

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Go to http://business.pinterest.com to set up your business account and click the red button that says “Join As a Business”. Select a business type, add all the contact details, including a password. Then fill out your profile including a company logo, a description of the company, your username and your website URL.

Here’s a tip for the business type you choose: The business type you choose with help your account rank on more relevant searches and provide relevant fields on your page

Three easy steps to create a business Pinterest account. So now that you have a business Pinterest account, how do you go about using it to elevate your business?

Here’s the list of 15 cool tips to help your business master Pinterest:

top15 pinterest tips

1.) Promote Your Pinterest Account Across Other Platforms-Add the Pinterest button to your website and promote your account through your other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. Consider launching a Pinterest contest and writing a fun blog post about it on your website

2.) Create a Board on a Specific Topic (Ie. Weddings, Brunch Recipes, Classic Cars)-Taking this approach allows you to attract users passionate about a specific topic. Create resourceful boards using a few core keywords that you already use in your SEO strategy. Having such a board means being ready to add other users’ pins to enhance your collection.

3.) Engage W/ Others’ Pins-Follow users that you want to follow you back. Like and comment on their pins; when they see you interacting with their pins, they might be more likely to follow you

4.) Avoid Human Faces in Photos-Data shows that photos without human faces are shared 23% more than images with faces in them

5.) Be Selective W/ Your Color Choices-Data shows that images with dominant colors of red, dark green and pink are shared 3X as much as images that don’t have them. Red or orange images are also re-pinned twice as often

6.) Try creating a User Generated Board-Similar to the ideas I floated in my post about getting more sales through UGC campaigns; by allowing prolific users to contribute their own pins, you open up your marketing to an entirely new world of valuable content by involving fans.

7.) Highlight Happy Customers-Encourage customers to send you photos or take photos of them at your next event-using your product or service!

8.) Promote Your Blog Content-Use photos that could be successful on Pinterest for your blog posts. By pinning those images on Pinterest, you will drive traffic directly back to your posts!

9.) Host a Contest-Another idea plucked from my previous post, asking dedicated users to take the time to create their own boards demonstrating what they love about your brand, products & services gives your fans agency and tells them you valued their input in your marketing. They’ll love you even more when you tell them that the best pinboard will win a prize!

10.) Add the Pin It button to your website-Make it easy for people to share images from your website

11.) Add Links to the Pin Descriptions-Adding links to the descriptions of your images on Pinterest will drive traffic back to your main website, which allows you to measure how useful the platform is compared to your other social media presences

12.) Build a Video Gallery-YouTube and Vine aren’t the only places where you can share videos! Build a library of videos about your products and services along with relevant images to catch fans’ attentions

13.) Use Hashtags-Hashtags make content more search-friendly and it can help you leverage a marketing campaign on multi-channels such as Facebook and Twitter

14.) Feature Offline Events-Create a pinboard with the best photos and videos from your events to help promote buzz for the next one.

15.) Embed Posts on Your Website-You can easily embed a Pinterest post on your website and increase the visibility of your Pinterest account on other websites

Hope these tips will help your business jumpstart new marketing campaigns on Pinterest and stay tuned for Part 2 of How to Master Pinterest for Your Business.