5 Tips to Get Started on Pinterest

Make Peoples’ Jaws Drop The best pinboards for your brand are those that catch peoples’ attention quickly. An effective strategy is to think of every possible aspect of your business that could translate into a pinboard topic, remembering that Pi. For instance, an Orange County web site design firm can create a pinboard that is comprised of screenshots of unique and well-designed webpages depicting Orange County (titled something like ‘The Orange County Web of Design’). Another pinboard can be ‘The Backbone of Orange County’, dedicated to highlighting small businesses throughout the county; or even ‘The Entrepreneurial OC’, showcasing top startups and innovative business ideas in the area. Why? Because that web designer in Orange County will be reaching out to their target market via both pins/networking and prospective audience. Ideation Before Creation Variety is a definite advantage when creating pinboards for a business. If visitors keep seeing pinned content about the same subject, they are less likely to return. One tactic is to think of as many related areas as possible that tie into the products and services you offer, and your local area. To illustrate, a magazine in Orange County has a lot of options because they can create pinboards on virtually anything related to the area and still be reaching out to their target market at the same time. Some examples:

• The ‘O’ in the OC: include photos of activities, places of interest and everyday scenes that start with the letter ‘O’.
• Orange County Through an Instagram’d Lens: take and pin photos of popular landmarks in the area with different Instagram lenses. (NOTE: People love Instagram photos, especially on Pinterest).
• ORANGE County: include photos of fresh local produce and Farmers Markets.
• Top Outdoor Activities in Orange County: take and find photos of people engaging in outdoor activity in local hotspots, like surfing at Trestles, hiking in Peters Canyon Regional Park, discovering sea life at the Laguna Beach tide pools, hanging out at the Balboa Fun Zone, etc.

Go on a Photo Hunt Eye-catching images translate into much more traffic to a Pinterest profile. Large numbers of both free and paid stock images are available from various websites, and you have very good chances of finding some unique ones that fit with your business's overall message. Before using images from other sources you might want to check first that you have appropriate permission, although 99.9% of people will be thrilled that you’re sharing their content and linking to their site. Interact Optimally Interacting with the rest of the Pinterest community is crucial to generating interest in your brand. Writing focused pinboard descriptions is one step that some users overlook. The same SEO rules of keyword use also apply to these descriptions, but remember to first check to make sure you’re focusing on the right keywords for social media optimization. Business owners using Pinterest can create trust and credibility by sharing content that helps others with their ventures. (This is obviously the networking end of your Pinterest campaign, which I’m not going to go into too much.) Find industry Influencers and relevant businesses with whom you can create a vertical market on the network and ultimately help spread word each others’ campaigns. Infographics! These digital illustrations map out ideas with both graphics and text, and they are becoming popular as alternatives to text-only web content. Using infographics offers greater flexibility because Pinterest recognizes them just the same as other types of images. Plenty of both free and paid tools are available for creating infographics, so definitely check those out. People absolutely love infographics – like Instagram photos – so they can be a great tool to capture the market and spread your content. Oh, and one more thing. You will want to pin all of your images from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, your blog and your website as another way to link directly back to your sites and increase traffic. And now with the recent Flickr-Pinterest integration, Flickr users can now share their photos straight to Pinterest and all of their details (including a link) will go with it, no matter how many times people repinn it. Possibilities, my friends... Possibilities. There is a lot more to say about Pinterest strategy for businesses, but this should be enough to get started. If you have any questions, comments, or your own tips, I highly encourage you to leave them down in the Comments section.