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New Pinterest for Business Pages

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Pinterest LogoEarlier this month, Pinterest, the popular and ever-growing “pinboard” Social network, followed in  Facebook’s footsteps and introduced pages for businesses. This simply means that, instead of creating an account and posting effectively as a person, you can now post, or “pin”, content as your business.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a Social network that allows users to share content in the form of themed “pinboards”. A user can “pin” his or her own content or “repin” content from other users to create these boards. You can also Like and comment on content as on other Social sites.

Pinterest is also the third most popular Social network, having overtaken LinkedIn some time ago, and as the below graph shows, it just keeps growing, up 802.63% from this time last year (source Compete):

 

Pinterest Unique Visitors Nov 2011-Nov 2012

Pinterest number of unique visitors Nov 2012

Creating your Pinterest business account

When it comes to creating your Pinterest business account, you have two options – if your business is not yet on Pinterest, you can create a new business account here. Or, if your business is already on Pinterest, you can simply convert your account into a business account. Pinterest business accounts, like personal accounts, are completely free – they just display a verification badge next to your website to show that you’re a business, rather than an individual. You should note as well that there are new terms of service for business pages, so make sure you read these first.

Verify your website

Verify your website in Pinterest

You’ll need to verify your website in Pinterest; to do this, go to “Verify Website” under your profile settings. You will be asked to download an HTML verification file which you will need to upload to your web server. Once your website has been verified, you will see a little verification tick mark next to your site in the search results.

Tick marks next to verified sites in Pinterest

In turn, there is a follow button that you can put on your website to encourage your visitors to visit and follow your Pinterest bpards.

Secret boards

Like personal accounts, Pinterest business accounts will have access to Secret Boards, another recently announced feature which allows you to limit the users who view your board. However, you can only switch the feature on and off once before it becomes permanent. But if you’re looking for somewhere to keep design or event planning ideas that you don’t want the whole world to know about, Secret Boards could be really useful for your business.

Secret boards can be found in the “Boards” section of your profile.

What do the new Pinterest pages mean for businesses?

At the moment, Pinterest for businesses is not all that different to Pinterest for individuals, but no doubt this move signals Pinterest’s intention to make more of this feature and provide more options for businesses to share their content in the future. And due to the sheer number of visitors, it’s definitely worth being on Pinterest, especially if you work in a highly visual industry (and even if you don’t, you can still share inspirational content that reflects your customers’ interests and aspirations), or you’re looking to drive traffic and increase sales (and who isn’t?!)

Remember, if you’re using the “Pin it!” button, when the content appears on Pinterest, it will include a link back to the source, which means that Pinterest is brilliant at driving referral traffic (and, in turn, sales). So you need to make sure you’re creating pin-worthy content for your site. (Links are nofollow, so there’s not much SEO benefit, but you will still get traffic).

You can also link Pinterest with your Facebook (although not business pages) and Twitter, allowing new pins to appear in your news feed and Twitter stream, which  will increase your audience even further.

What should I put on my Pinterest business page?

The Pinterest Business site contains best practice guides and examples of what other brands are doing on Pinterest.

Pinterest Business - Organized Interiors

As you might expect, Pinterest is very visual, so if you want to make the most of it, you’ll need a lot of visual content, such as photos, videos, charts and infographics. Bear in mind, however, that it is bad Pinterest etiquette to engage in self-promotion, so be careful about what content you share from your own site.

Otherwise, you can use your business page to:

  • share content that reflects your business’s values
  • create inspiring themed boards
  • highlight any specials
  • post seasonal content, e.g. Christmas, Valentne’s Day etc.
  • ask questions
  • post images of your products being used and your happy customers

If all this seems a bit overwhelming, why not schedule your Pins with a service such as Pingraphy?


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