Top 5 Reasons to use Pinterest for Your Business

Pinterest only started in 2010, yet millions of users flock to the site daily. What sets Pinterest apart is that there has never been anything quite like it before. Imagine being able to pin just about anything you want on a virtual corkboard and you’ll get the essential idea of Pinterest. In addition, you’ll be able to organize these boards into topic-specific scrapbooks.
For businesses, Pinterest provides a way to pin a variety of company information, products, and services onto organized online boards. If you’re wondering if Pinterest is right for your own business, here are 5 benefits to consider:

* Pinterest will help drive more traffic back to your company website. Each time you pin something to a board, you can link what you pinned directly back to your site or blog by using the provided description area below the pin. Each pin comes with its own description box which allows you describe the product in 500 characters or less.

* Most Pinterest users are shoppers. In fact, Pinterest users typically buy more products and services than any of the other top social media sites. According to Nielson, many consumers purchase products and services after seeing them on Pinterest. Furthermore, numerous users visit Pinterest with the intention of purchasing. Although this doesn’t mean that every user will purchase a product, the chances of consumer purchases on Pinterest are favorable when compared to popular social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter.

* Pinterest offers business accounts. With a business account, you’ll be able to verify your company’s official website, which promotes trust and credibility to consumers. In addition, Pinterest offers a plethora of educational materials and tutorials to help businesses effectively market their services. For instance, some of the tutorials show businesses how to effectively create a company story, how to increase product exposure, how to build a Pinterest community, and practice tips to help your customer base grow.

* You can run contests on Pinterest. Creating a contest is an excellent way to drive in new customers by offering an incentive to those that help spread the word. Pinterest business users can create colorful product and service photos, pin them to a contest board, then offer a prize to the winner who re-pins or gets the most shares from one of your contest pictures. This will not only help your followers get more exposure, but it will allow your pins to be seen by their followers as well.

* You can have as many boards as you need. For example, you can use one specific board to organize conference notes and charts, another board for product photos, and yet another board for service descriptions. Pinterest also offers a simple way to organize the information on each board with a few simple clicks. Keep in mind that although Pinterest is an effective tool to get exposure for your products and services, you can also use boards for company conferences, training materials, and networking.

The 2 Social Media Sites That You Aren’t Taking Advantage of In Your Business

Social media apps and sites popup with alarming frequency. Also alarming, is the rate at which these platforms seem to overtake each other in traffic and popularity. While you can’t go wrong growing your influence at the top of the food chain where a couple of massive entities still dominate, you can sure as heck get innovative and ride the wave on newer trends to quickly become a standout resource for potential followers. With that in mind, here are a couple of platforms most marketers aren’t taking adequate advantage of.

Pinterest – Pinterest is the iceberg of social media platforms: Unless you’ve spent some time exploring, it might seem like not that much is going on over there, but you’d be dead wrong. When measured in monthly unique visitors, Pinterest is actually the 4th most visited social network on the English-speaking planet; it trails only Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Yep, it even beats out heavyweights like Tumblr and Instagram.

The nature of Pinterest, which is all about quickly sharing images, whether original or curated, makes it such a great opportunity for brands. On Pinterest, “boards” can be created within a theme, so a board may consist of “nature scenes,” for example. Your business can take advantage of this unique tagging system, no matter what niche you’re in, and grant itself massive exposure. Let’s say you were working with an offline client who was a construction contractor, for example. You could create an account for them and start adding images of their stellar work to boards on houses, architecture, even remodeling. And, yes, those all exist.

With unique monthly hits in the hundreds of millions per month, don’t pass up on this opportunity to turn your brand, site, or niche expertise into a visual, sharable commodity.

Periscope – “Peri-what?!” you might say (especially if you’re not on the cutting edge of social media already). Periscope is a new app that allows individuals to livestream what their phone camera is seeing to the internet. In turn, users can follow their stream and comment and chat in real time. The concept of livestreaming is years old, but Periscope seem to have finally been able to popularize it on mobile. Since that’s where most people are spending their time these days anyways, it’s started to really take off.

The whole point of Periscope is to teleport users to another location, lifestyle, or adventure. Savvy social media marketers have taken to announcing that the most interesting parts of their day will be streamed – and you’d be surprised at what really seems to hit home for people! Make a live Q&A session happen during your lunch break, show off your daily work ritual that really gets you in the zone. Even if the majority of your day involves sitting at a computer, you can find a way to deliver some livestreamed value to people out there who are in the same boat or who are trying to follow in your footsteps.

Of course, these are far from the only social hangouts you should be working on, but they’re good places to start. Depending on the needs and demographics of your niche, you may also find certain platforms make a lot more sense for content presentation, so don’t be afraid to deviate when it makes sense.