Is Pinterest your Business’s Savior?

You might be saying to yourself I’ve already got a Facebook fan page, and I’ve got a blog and I sometimes use Twitter, isn’t that enough?

Well…maybe not.

Maybe you’ve heard of a new social media monster that tearing up the internet and it’s called Pinterest, and it may just be your business’s saving grace.

So just what’s a Pinterest anyway and what can it do for your business?

Pinterest is a social media site that has a very unique approach to sharing information on the web. The way it works is pretty simple actually, Pinterest is a site that allows its users to “Pin” photos to their site using themed image pin boards to share images on the web.

What make this so special you may be asking…well in 2011, Pinterest was listed in Time Magazine’s “50 Best Websites of 2011” column, but that’s not as impressive as January’s ComScore report which at that time reported that the site had 11.7 million unique users.

So what does this mean for a small business?

Well, think of the possibilities for merchandising your wares on the site using simple images that you just pin there.

How many followers do you have on your Facebook fan page?

If you have a few hundred, think of what those fans could do if they pinned a picture of an item you have for sale on your business site?

Take a page from Etsy.com

Etsy has about 800 million visitors that come to their site each month on average, and many of those visitors finds items that they like, and pin them to those themed boards that we mentioned on Pinterest.

Do you think that this helps drive traffic back to Etsy?

You better believe it does!

So even if you’re just a small time player in business, it only takes some concentrated effort to get results out of using Pinterest.

Here are a few things that a business should or could do to get the most out of using Pinterest for merchandise marketing:

• Start to incorporate your business site with Pinterest by simply adding a Pinterest follow button on your site.
• Study up on the site’s rules for promoting your brand via Pinterest.
• Do a bit of market research by following what consumer trends on the site.
• Hold a special Pinterest event to draw attention to your business’s brand.

Being creative in how you plan to use Pinterest to your benefit will only help spread your brand’s awareness on the web, so don’t be afraid to experiment with a few different approaches to using this social “pinning” site to your business’s advantage.