Are you Pin-interested? If not, you might be when you find out the power of Pinterest, the digital version of items pinned to a bulletin board. Pinterest can help grow your business and create greater brand awareness with the trifecta of increased credibility, brand value and traffic to your website. According to Mashable, Pinterest now drives more traffic to publishers than Twitter, LinkedIn and Reddit combined.
Pinterest — which has around 70 million users, and 80 percent are women — is a tremendous social media site for a food-related professional or business, making it perfect for registered dietitian nutritionists. Shared images of mouthwatering food will engage your followers to find out more about what you offer. Where men are from Google +, women are from Pinterest, and women of all generations love it. Whether you use it for your own business or a company you work for, it’s worth considering as another layer to your social media plan.
Get ‘SMART’ to determine if Pinterest is right for your business
S(pecific): Review specific goals for your business. Does a Pinterest business page fit your overall goals?
M(easurability): Goals must be measurable, with clear steps and business analytics.
A(ttainability): Goals must be attainable. Do you or your team have the time to learn another social media channel?
R(elevancy): Will the time commitment deliver results that are relevant to your business?
T(ime constraints): Can you deal with the time compression that comes with the immediacy demanded by social media?
If you decide Pinterest if right for your business, then it’s on to the next step.
Utilize these 7 smart strategies to power up your Pinterest presence
- Create a business Pinterest account. Add the Pinterest URL to both your Facebook business page, personal Facebook section and other social media accounts so that people can find you.
- As you start to follow others on Pinterest, go to your Pinterest news feed and like or comment on pins to increase exposure.
- When you pin, add the URL to your videos, blogs, podcast or magazine articles when appropriate.
- Use a call to action in the pin description such as “Click this pin to see…”
- Think big-picture keywords and hashtags in your pins’ captions.
- Add Pinterest links within your blogs and/or articles.
- Tweet a Pin of the Day: #PinoftheDay with a link to one of your pins.
Finally, for more great Pinterest tips, check out the December 2012 issue of JAND for an article titled “Pin It to Win It.”
