Are you using Pinterest for your Business? Have you included this dynamic image based social media tool in your Social Media Strategy? If not? Just read on!
Social media discussions are moving from text to images, turning pictures into the new way fans connect, since a picture is worth a thousand words! Pinterest is rapidly becoming a major social network for businesses. As Pinterest expands its business platform, it’s clear that brands not engaging on this site are missing out on important traffic and visibility chances.
As I rightly pointed in my previous article, even Oreo has not started using Pinterest. May be they never realized the value these pins can offer, or may be they have some different reason. With 70 million users and increasing as per Social Media Stats 2013, Pinterest isn’t going to go anytime soon. Thus its time brands started caring about this influential network, better late than never!
Here are 5 reasons (actually more than that) why you should not miss on Pinterest while creating a perfect Social Media Strategy-
1. Pinterest is not only Images
Pinterest introduced a new type of pin, “Article pins” on 24th September 2013. Pinterest board does more than collect images of your favourite band and recipes for desserts. Pinterest is rolling out a new look for article pins, complete with more information like headline, author, story description, and link- and can include a logo, by-line photo or infographic message. With this new article pin, it shows that the social network is getting serious about content sharing with users. Brands they traditionally use Pinterest for highlighting products, with Article pins the potential to add a lot of depth to existing boards, and with readers that are increasingly looking to learn the stories behind the products they buy.
Like the New York restaurant review boards, where they have the name of the author, story headline, a Meta description, the source URL with this the reader get a better sense of what they can expect inside the article.
2. The Online Showroom
Pinner’s certainly love to spend! The average shopper on Pinterest spends 80$. Pinterest is transforming. The site that has always been the place to pin your visual wish list, is now turning into a true e-commerce player. Pinterest has become the top social site for e-commerce sharing, accounting for 41 percent of shared retail content compared to Facebook at 37 percent.
In May, Pinterest introduced “Rich Pins”, a feature that allowed users to post detailed information about an item, such as the originating image site, product purchase information, or ingredient listings for recipes. Although other users were able to repin these details to their account, nobody was able to tell if an item had dropped in price. But not anymore, price drop email notifications will solve just that.
Some numbers to reinstate your belief, that you cannot ignore Pinterest anymore, 41% of pinner’s engage in reverse show-rooming. Those pinner’s discover the product on Pinterest but end up purchasing those products in the brick-and-mortar stores. 59% of the pinners buy the product 2 weeks after pinning the product.
3. Mobile for the win
One ongoing trend in social media is the growing use of mobile devices. It is no surprise that more and more users are visiting social networks on their phones and tablet devices. This trend applies to Pinterest as well. It is easy to browse and pin on the go. Brands need to be mobile ready as 35% of unique users, browse from their phones. It would be terrible to lose all the Pinterest traffic that will come to your brands website if the website isn’t ready for it. 50% of social sharing happens via the ipad.
For brands it is extremely important to have your brand pages on websites be mobile friendly, as a large segment of online population uses their Smartphone devices to browse, share and buy. Thus brands have to be in it, to win it!
4. Promoted Pins The New Angle For Advertising
Pinterest rolled out promoted pins a couple of days ago, with Promoted pins the idea is to allow businesses category feeds in a way that doesn’t feel like advertising, because they aren’t flashy banner ads or Pop-ups, But rather relevant items designed to match user’s Interest. They work just like regular pins, only they have a special “promoted” label, along with a link to learn more about what that means.
With this it gives brands a chance to make user’s wish list a reality by advertising in the right places of their interest. Normally advertising on social networks irritates the consumers and makes it feel like spam, but with this gentle approach it is doing so subtly and not making it seem like the brands are trying to hard!
5. Are you a B2B Marketer?
The days of Pinterest being an effective tool for only retail and food brands are over, and its popularity is quickly spilling into the B2B sphere. Regardless of what you sell or offer, images remain a provocative way to tell a story, and Pinterest gives brands a great chance to do so immediately. Pinterest got 53.3 million unique visitors in March 2013 – roughly double its traffic a year earlier.
- Leads- with Pinterest you can find new leads as this social networking site is rising at an incredible rate. If you have customers overseas, with Pinterest your chances to crack them have increased by 45%, as in June this year that was the amount of users from abroad.
- Customer Engagement- 80% of users on Pinterest is women, who are the key decision makers! So as a brand if you are presence is not felt here. You are leaving a large segment untapped and saying goodbye to your potential customers.
- Repurpose content and drive traffic- As being a B2B marketer your brand has access to wealth of content, you can repurpose this content by having attractive visuals in a creative way. With this you share content as well as drive traffic to your websites.
6. Bonus Reason
Dismissing Pinterest as a scrapbooking portal for women can be a really wrong deduction for brands. Even though more than 70% users are women, brands should keep in mind that mostly the age group of this audience falls in the 25-44 categories. This age group constitutes a huge final decision making audience when it comes to making purchases.
So if as a brand, you are catering products for women and are not on this platform, you are losing out on a whole lot of customers. But that doesn’t mean brands should only keep catering for produces related to women and their needs, they even buy products for their loved ones it may be their spouses, brothers, friends and fathers! Don’t forget women are pro when it comes to the buying, they know what they want. As a brand you need to know how you are going to sell all sorts of products to women, including products for men as well.
For Example: Gillette may give exclusive offers for Pinterest users only, with providing solutions for Valentine’s Day, Fathers day etc. By making it personal and easier for them to decide the gift they want to buy for their loved ones.
As you can see that there is more to Pinterest than cupcakes, craft and cat images! Over the last few months this social network has been brining changes with new features like rich pins, promoted pins etc.
Pinterest is an excellent way of showcasing your brand products and of demonstrating your passion and expertise in a particular area, and when the content engages people, they will like and share (repin) it, helping your brands content spread virally. This ensures that your brand reaches additional would-be customers, who might not otherwise have been exposed to your existing or usual marketing channels.
Your turn
Are you ready to jump on board and start pinning? Are you facing some problems there? If you are already on Pinterest, you can share with us what is working and not working for you.
Read more: A Step By Step Guide to Becoming Popular On Pinterest