Do you use Pinterest in your personal life? Maybe you’ve started planning a kitchen remodel and you’re looking for ideas and pinning cabinet and tile choices. Or maybe you’re planning a wedding and sharing a wedding board with your maid of honor, capturing dress styles you like and colors to consider.
Females are the primary pinners and users cross generations. Millennials favor Pinterest the most with 36 percent of Pinterest users falling between the ages of 18 and 29. In a close second, Gen Xers make-up 34 percent of Pinterest’s audience. Boomers round out the group, accounting for some 18 percent of users. *
Several suppliers, like BIC Graphic NA, are on Pinterest, offering product ideas sorted by categories, price points, vertical markets, seasons and more. We’re still learning as we go, but we have some ideas to offer from how we’ve seen some of our customers use Pinterest and what we’ve learned from the social media experts out there. Here are a few tips and thought starters…
- Create your own Pinterest account for your company. Pinterest has business accounts that are free, and just as simple to utilize as a personal page. Make sure your company is easy to search and easy to find on Pinterest. Include your full business name when you are setting up your account. You also want to claim your name in your Pinterest URL.
- Your “About” section can show up in searches. Use this opportunity wisely. You have a 200 character limit, so keep it short and sweet and include a few keywords to help you show up in industry related google searches.
- Use keywords in your pin descriptions. You are marketing your products and brand, after all, so use language that’s relevant to your content.
- Hashtags are a major component to being found within the Pinterest site. They are also a way to make your pins a lot more searchable within the site. Include up to three hashtags in a pin post.
Ok, so now that you are set up with your own account, what do you actually do to interact with suppliers and how do you share content to your customers?
- Follow the suppliers you normally do business with. This will give you ideas for ways to sort and theme your boards for a foundation of content. When you are setting up new boards, you can name them based on keywords. If you want to get found on Pinterest, and through other searches, do not use these common titles. You need to be more specific and detailed for each of your particular boards.
- Proactively send links to boards to your customers as appropriate. Promoting products for an upcoming holiday? Create a board of ideas and email a link to your customers.
- Developing ideas for a specific customer event? Send some preliminary ideas via a private Pinterest board in preparation for a more formal in person presentation. It helps ensure you’re on the right track and makes for a collaborative, innovative process. This may not be appropriate for all clients, but certainly some enjoy this type of interaction.
- Create a fun, non-business related board or two as well. Maybe inspirational quotes, maybe something related to your local area, maybe its related to your niche market and expertise. This broadens your business’s potential reach as your posts could show up in keyword searches on these topics.
More tips to follow in a later post. There’s more to know about SEO, image optimization and promoting your page in general.
Happy Pinning! Feel free to comment and share your experience with Pinterest as promotional products distributors!
And don’t forget to check out BIC Graphic NA’s Pinterest Page!
~Margit Fawbush
* Hootesuite, Top Pinterest Demographics That Matter to Social Media Marketers, Jan 10, 2017
