What Is Pinterest?
& How Can it Help Your Internet Marketing Business
Pinterest is a social network that allows users to “pin” their new interests such as images or videos to their own or others’ pinboards. Users of Pinterest visually share using a method called “pinning” and they do so by uploading images from their computer or using the “pin” function to post images / videos they find via websites.
Users of Pinterest can browse through other users’ images / videos, who have pinned, liked, re-pinned, or commented on a pin. As with Facebook and many other social networking sites it’s all about interacting with the community and you do so by reposting someone’s pin, commenting, liking, sharing via other networking sites or email, and even embedding pins on websites / blogs.
The site focuses on the sharing of visuals of a person’s lifestyle, interests, preferences, dreams, and so on. As Pinterest put it, this is a social network meant to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting.”
Why Does Pinterest Matter
Almost every business online relies on driving a high volume of traffic to their website to increase sales. Thus, if you are in the internet marketing business you should consider joining pinterest. Early reports are showing that Pinterest is actually becoming more effective at driving traffic to websites compared to other social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Businesses online who are using the “pin it” function are creating a link back to the source of the image / video. However, Pinterest just recently announced a “no-follow” link. But, not all is lost you can still find “do-follow” capabilities within the description of your pin. The actual image is a “no-follow” link. Not all is lost though because there still are plenty of places on Pinterest to get your “do-follow” links, not to mention your image that you pin still allows users to click on the image / video with the opportunity to visit your website.
Connecting Pinterest to Facebook / Twitter
You can also connect your Pinterest account to your Facebook account and Twitter account. This enables automatic sharing of your pins among these sites which in return for others to see. Result: More eyes from other channels to access your linked pictures and possible sharing of your pins. This is a great feature to boost your social engagement and increase your brand awareness. Bad news is, right now Pinterest does not have the function available to post to a business Facebook Fanpage.
How Does Pinterest Make Money?
I found this quite brilliant. If you are using your website as an affiliate product promotion site, then pay close attention because Pinterest is taking a cut from your sales. They have partnered with a firm which will automatically scan through every link posted on the Pinterest site to see if it goes to an affiliate program. If Pinterest finds an affiliate link it inserts a code “secretly” to ensure that they get their cut. What I find interesting is I can’t find anywhere on Pinterest the company disclosing this information to users.
Pinterest still operates under an “invite only” platform. Therefore, you must be invited by a current Pinterest user to get access to the site. You can request an invite from Pinterest but they are very stingy about giving out memberships and it takes forever. My advice just dig around Facebook and you will find someone willing to invite you to Pinterest. I simply just asked in my status update and wa-la there was an invite. You can ask me but, I may not be the quickest avenue either.
Ideas for Using Pinterest For Marketing
- Create a video board – Utilize this board to put up your promotional videos that link back to your website.
- Products you love board – Utilize this board to post images of products that are linked to an affiliate product, but be warned DO NOT self promote, it’s just bad etiquette.
- Create a happy customer board – Post images of your customers and link them back to testimonials from your website or video.
- Strong visuals – Post up creative images that link back to your blog posts.
- Book covers – Maybe you have an e-book or you are into personal development books, strive to become a leader in offering up insightful information on books of interest to increase your following and don’t forget those links.
- Create user generated board – Utilize this board to encourage your followers or other users to post on this board to increase your brand awareness and engagement.
- Business personality board – Utilize this board to showcase the personality of your business
And….lastly, strive to become a go-to Pinterest account by establishing yourself in a niche.
Hopefully this post will spark some ways for you to profit from this new and exciting site called Pinterest. Now I am off to do some “pinning!” Come over and find us on Pinterest by clicking HERE.
