KIM GARST · Once your account is active, optimize your profile under settings. Make sure you include your company name, company description, logo and a link to your website. This

KIM GARST

Copyright © 2012 by Kim Garst.

ISBN: 978-1-XXXX-XXXX-X

All rights reserved.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Dedication

For my husband and best friend Joseph, who is my biggest fan and supporter.

Acknowledgements

A Special Thank You To:

My God . . . who is constantly with me.

My family; husband Joseph and my boys, Tyler and Logan . . . you are my heart and soul. Love you!

My Mother . . . who is always there for me.

My friends . . . for believing in me and pushing me towards this and other goals in my life.

Contents

What is Pinterest? .............................................................................11A Virtual Pinboard ...............................................................................11The Layout .............................................................................................12Getting Followers .................................................................................14

Using Pinterest for Your Business ................................................17Does Your Business Need Pinterest? .................................................18Businesses Selling Products ................................................................19

Product Promotion ...........................................................................20Tracking Product Popularity ..........................................................20Product Themes ................................................................................21Product Testing .................................................................................21Customer Testimonials ....................................................................22Exclusive Offers ................................................................................22Online Catalogue ..............................................................................23

Pinterest for Service Oriented Businesses .........................................23Inspirational visuals .........................................................................24Cute kids or animals ........................................................................24Recipes, DIY Projects, stories in pictures ......................................25

Creating a Brand Image & Online Presence .....................................26Finding Fans......................................................................................26Listen To Your Customers ..............................................................26Crowd Sourced Promotion .............................................................26Using Images ....................................................................................27

Why You Can’t Afford to Ignore Pinterest .......................................27Driving visitors to your website .........................................................28Targets Users Interests .........................................................................29Picking Up Trends ................................................................................30Link Building through Images ...........................................................30

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ....................................................31Demographics .......................................................................................32Giving Your Business a Boost with Pinterest ...................................33

About the Author..............................................................................35

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Introduction

P INTEREST, ThOUGh RhYMING with interest, is only loosely related! Basically, it’s a virtual pinboard just like the corkboards we had in our rooms as kids and you may still

have in your home or office. Pinterest is a social networking site that allows users to create photo collections online – like online, upscale scrapbooking. It is primarily a photo sharing website where the members are allowed to create albums pertaining to a certain theme or pattern.

Over a very short period of time, Pinterest has become one of the leading social media networks. Fairly recently, given that it launched in early 2010, the site has grown in leaps and bounds and is viewed as a strong competitor to the older social media networking websites. At present, the website attracts over 11 million visits each week, placing it among the top 10 social networks.

Over the past few years, businesses have been using social media websites for promoting and boosting their businesses. The same is the case with Pinterest. You might be wondering how a photo sharing website can help your business become a success.

This book is intended to be a guide for using Pinterest to strengthen your business and brand. Read on and learn how ‘you can do’ branding with Pinterest!

What is Pinterest?

P INTEREST IS ONE of the newest social media websites that has quickly become extremely popular with the youth and women between the ages of 25-54.1 If you are in your

20’s, you may already be a member of this website. In case you don’t know much about Pinterest, here is an overview of what it is all about.

A Virtual Pinboard

Pinterest describes itself as a virtual Pinboard on which you can ‘pin’ your images to share with your followers. In addition to pinning your photos, you can modify and post anything interesting you find on the internet. In essence, Pinterest is similar to a pinboard hanging on the wall in your room or office. You find an appealing picture or a great magazine article, rip it out and pin it up. If you are a parent, you may have a collection of your child(ren)’s artwork.

The concept is the same, except that this is online and collaborative with other members. Once you complete the signup process, you get 1 http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/social-networks/pinterest-demographic-data/

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What is Pinterest?

the chance to create different boards for yourself. You can customize and ‘name’ the boards according to your interests. You can also like and follow other people’s boards. One of the commonly used features is the re-pin, which is similar to the retweet on Twitter, only here you can easily re-pin a photo a friend has on their board and add to your own board collection.

The boards and anything you share on them can be posted on Facebook and other social media websites as well. The original website link from where the image was taken is posted, so when someone clicks on the image, they are directed to that website. This helps in increasing the traffic to that particular website. This alone could be huge due to the incredibly viral nature of social media!

Like all social media websites, Pinterest is designed to be interesting and engaging. There is little surprise that it has grown substantially to be ranked among the top 10 social networks at present. Originally, Pinterest is used by people to organize and share their interests with their friends and other users of the website. Recently, the website has started to generate considerable buzz in the corporate world.

The Layout

The website allows users to express their interest through ‘pins’. The pins can be in the form of images, videos, gifts and discussions. There are many categories for users to choose their interest from. here are some of them.

• Film• Music&Books• Education• Fitness• Food&Drink• Art• Cars&Motorcycles• Travel&Places

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The Quick And Easy Guide to Branding Your Business and Creating Massive Sales With Pinterest

• Technology• Wedding&Events

These are just some of the categories users can pin their graphics under. Users are encouraged to name their own individual boards. You may consider naming your boards with keywords that revolve around your niche as users can search by keyword by board names.

Access to Pinterest is by invitation only. You can visit www.pinterest.com and request an invitation or you can ask someone who is already actively a member to send you an invite to your email. The second option appears to be a more timely option. If you would like a personal invite go to my website www.kimgarst.com and complete the contact form. I will be happy to send out a personal invite.

Once your account is active, optimize your profile under settings. Make sure you include your company name, company description, logo and a link to your website. This is important so please do not skip this step; make sure that your ‘hide your Pinterest profile from search engines” is checked to the OFF position. You definitely want to be indexed by the search engines! Include keywords in your profile that pertain to your niche so that you can be ‘found’ when someone searches for those keywords.

Board Organization. Move the boards that are the most popular or most relevant to your brand to the top. When people click through your profile you want to catch their attention with your best ‘look’. The ole saying “always put your best foot forward’ applies here.

How You Name Your Boards. Make sure that you name your boards so that the topic is clear and contains keywords that are relevant to your

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What is Pinterest?

brand. You can also have cute or quirky named boards to showcase your personality and authenticity.

Build At Least 8 Boards With 9 Pins Each. There is no rule on how many boards you can have but I suggest 8 boards with 9 pins each because that is the ‘view’ that people have when they come to your site or to use designer term ‘above the fold’. After those first 8 visible boards, people will have to scroll down to see more. When someone clicks on your profile, you want to give them a good first impression. You want them to know that you are active, engaging and have great content.

No Empty Boards. Don’t create an empty board until you have images to put in it. Empty boards make your profile look inactive or incomplete.

Getting Followers

Pinning away is basically useless without an audience to see your pins. On Pinterest, having followers (the total number of followers that is visible from your profile) is important but the number of people who follow your boards is also important. Sometimes people will follow a thematic board before they will follow a personal profile.

FOLLOW, FOLLOW, FOLLOW those who have similar interests and/or are in your niche to ensure that as many people as you can have exposure to you and your boards. You can start by searching Pinterest for keywords around your product, service or industry. For example, if you are in the travel industry, you might search for words like ‘vacation’, ‘travel’, ‘hawaii’ (other hot travel spots), ‘hotel’, ‘destinations’, ect. You can follow boards or people, based on what your search yields.

Follow back those who follow you. If you are on your personal profile page, you can see the number of followers directly underneath your name. If you click on that number, all those that follow you will appear and you can follow anyone who you are not currently following.

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Mention other users. You can mention others in your comments or pin descriptions to get the attention or to recognize someone specific. A ‘mention’ is very similar to Facebook and Twitter. Type the @ symbol before starting to type the name of the person. A drop down box will appear and your choice should be displayed there for you to select. One quick note on this . . . you can only mention users who are following you on at least one board. When you mention someone using this method, they will get an email and the @mention will be linked back to their profile.

Repin others. This is just like a retweet on Twitter or a share on Facebook. It is a great way to share valuable content and to recognize someone else. This also encourages them to follow you in return. Obviously, you want to make sure that what you repin is of value to your audience or meets your board’s content theme.

Like other people’s pins. You might want to like other pinner’s pins that may not be useful to your audience or your board content instead of repinning them. Anytime you like someone’s pin, it will show up in their activity feed. This may grab their attention and get them to follow you.

Use the # or hastag to define keywords for search results. This works exactly as it does on Twitter in the sense that you can use a hashtag to define keywords in your pin description. For example, if you want to be found under the keyword ‘travel’, use #travel in your description. This makes it easier to be found and will create more followers.

Add a follow button to your website. Add a Pinterest social media icon to your list of social media connections on your site. You can get Pinterest icons by visiting this link http://www.pinterest.com/goodies.

Pinterest Has a Mobile App! This is huge as it allows you to browse, pin, repin and even take photos to pin right from your phone! Search www.itunes.com for ‘pinterest’ and you will be able to download the app and start using it immediately!

What is Pinterest?

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This is a general overview of Pinterest. We will explore this amazing new social media platform and its benefits to business in the next chapter.

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Using Pinterest for Your Business

ThE VERY IDEA of using a photo sharing social network for business might seem a little strange to you at first. however, businesses have been using social media websites

extensively for their promotion and growth for quite some time now. It should come as no surprise that enterprising business owners have seen the potential benefits of Pinterest right away.

The main reason why businesses look to social media websites is for promotion, online marketing and direct engagement with their customers. Branding plays an important role in creating an online presence for any business. In effect, a business brand is a recognizable

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entity that real people can connect and trust in the online environment. Through Pinterest, businesses have the tools necessary to create a brand, connect with their audience and boost their reach on the internet.

Pinterest is among the best options you have for branding because it’s visual in nature. Pinterest is a photo sharing website which means that images play a huge role in interacting with users there. The Internet is becoming a visual playground. People’s time is very limited these days and they want information that they can quickly absorb and run with. This is one reason that photo sharing sites are hugely popular online. By putting up interesting pictures related to your business and its products, you can create a powerful brand image for yourself and provide a way for your prospects to connect with your business, products and services.

Today, the average internet user would say that there is an overload of social media websites. Yet, in its brief history, Pinterest has managed to flourish. There is every reason to believe that this trend will continue and Pinterest will become an ongoing place of connection for individuals and businesses alike.

Does Your Business Need Pinterest?

Before we get to how you can use Pinterest for your business, there is an important question to consider: is Pinterest right for your business? It is probable that you are already using Facebook and Twitter to promote your business. Using another social network may sound overwhelming right about now. One way to gauge whether Pinterest is worth your time and effort is to determine the market

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segment you can target through this new and rapidly expanding social media platform.

The users of Pinterest are a diverse group. Generally, social networks attract people of all ages, from different walks of life and from across the world. Students, their parents and even their grandparents use Pinterest. The unique draw of Pinterest is that it brings people together through the use of visuals instead of words. This makes it different from all the other social media platforms out there.

There is little discussion or conversation on Pinterest. Most of the communication takes place through the use of images. As they say, a picture can speak a thousand words. Just imagine the impact of an interactive niche-rich collection of images about the mission and message of your business, products and services.

however, there is a possible drawback to this unique feature as well. If your products and services aren’t visually appealing, then Pinterest may not be the right place for branding purposes. With a little strategy, however, even businesses without immediate visual appeal can still find many opportunities to interact on Pinterest. If you do not have visuals for your business, products and services, I would suggest hiring someone to make a collage of graphics that would help you launch your branded presence on Pinterest.

One idea is to use the graphics in your blog posts and link to your content. Everyone can do this! This is an opportunity for you to increase traffic to your blog site.

In the next section, we will look at how different types of businesses can make the most of Pinterest.

Businesses Selling Products

Before taking a look at how Pinterest can benefit your business, I want to point out that the numbers speak for themselves and you definitely need to take a really good look at whether Pinterest is a fit for your brand. In the past six months, Pinterest has grown by 4000% and receives approximately 11 million visitors a week.2

2 http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/12/22/pinterest-sees-site-visits-increase-by-4000-in-just-6-months/

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What is the easiest place to start, right? Let’s cover the basics and then we’ll get into some unique strategies for product focused businesses.

Product Promotion

Since a ‘pin’ can be placed on any webpage, you can attract people by making it easy for your readers to interact with their Pin Boards right from your website. A ‘Pin It’ button is easy to add to your web pages. When a visitor clicks on the ‘Pin It’ button, an image from that page along with a link back to your page will be shared on a board the Pinterest user chooses. As a result of that pin, many more people will see your product and website. You can get the pin it buttons in the Pinterest Tools section or by clicking here.

You can also install a Pinterest browser extension directly to your toolbar that will allow you, with a simple click of your mouse, to pin any photo you find anywhere on the Internet. If you use Google Chrome, click here to install the extension.

As an example, Real Simple is a brand that has been using ‘Pin It’ buttons very successfully. In fact, they have recently acknowledged the fact that the majority of the traffic to their websites is generated through Pinterest; more than even Facebook.3

Tracking Product Popularity

Tracking your most popular and photogenic items is simple with Pinterest. Every time someone Re-Pins one of your originally pinned photos, you are notified. Additionally, tracking traffic via tools such as 3 http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/real-simple-pinterest-drives-traffic-

facebook/231576/

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Google Analytics will show the effectiveness of product placement. Simply putting up photos of your products is not enough to generate interest and ‘repinning’ engagement though. One way Pinterest supports innovation and creativity is with the way boards and categories work within the Pinterest community.

Product Themes

‘Products I love’ is a standard board that is offered when anyone first signs up with Pinterest. Yet the places where folks true favorite products show up are more often in themed boards. Creating your own thematic boards will start off a Pinterest conversation. Members are likely to create similar themes or boards. Or you’ll discover by watching how and where they repin your products, a community theme that you hadn’t thought of yet.

For instance maybe you are a master gardener and create amazing potted gardens. You might think that gardening or gardens would be a logical board to start with. however, when your amazing potted flowers show up in thematic wedding boards, you have discovered an entirely new niche!

Product Testing

Involving the Pinterest Community in the design and implementation of new ideas is another unique aspect of this social network. A strong segment

What is the easiest place to start, right? Let’s cover the basics and then we’ll get into some unique strategies for product focused businesses.

Product Promotion

Since a ‘pin’ can be placed on any webpage, you can attract people by making it easy for your readers to interact with their Pin Boards right from your website. A ‘Pin It’ button is easy to add to your web pages. When a visitor clicks on the ‘Pin It’ button, an image from that page along with a link back to your page will be shared on a board the Pinterest user chooses. As a result of that pin, many more people will see your product and website. You can get the pin it buttons in the Pinterest Tools section or by clicking here.

You can also install a Pinterest browser extension directly to your toolbar that will allow you, with a simple click of your mouse, to pin any photo you find anywhere on the Internet. If you use Google Chrome, click here to install the extension.

As an example, Real Simple is a brand that has been using ‘Pin It’ buttons very successfully. In fact, they have recently acknowledged the fact that the majority of the traffic to their websites is generated through Pinterest; more than even Facebook.3

Tracking Product Popularity

Tracking your most popular and photogenic items is simple with Pinterest. Every time someone Re-Pins one of your originally pinned photos, you are notified. Additionally, tracking traffic via tools such as 3 http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/real-simple-pinterest-drives-traffic-

facebook/231576/

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of Pinterest is the DIY and artistic communities. Pictorial recipes and DIY projects in pictures are very popular. Show the manufacturing or creative steps you go through to develop your products and you’ll have enthusiastic followers!

Customer Testimonials

Nearly without effort, Pinterest creates customer testimonials for you. This is one of the biggest reasons that every product based business needs to be engaging on Pinterest! Run a contest and ask your readers/customers to share pictures of themselves with your products or simply collect the photos that are already out there. Instantly you’ve gained marketable credibility no matter how small or ‘just starting out’ your business is!

Exclusive Offers

One way to promote Pinterest engagement with your products is to create ‘Pin offers’ that are exclusively for the people who are following you on Pinterest.

Create a special board where you put up such offers on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. People like to feel that they are getting a ‘special’ deal that is not available to others and this is a surefire way of getting repeat traffic to your boards.

Land’s End used Pinterest wonderfully to engage their fans. They launched their ‘Pin It to Win It’ campaign on their Pinterest page. This attracted many visitors.

This exclusive offer, for the people who follow their page on Pinterest, generated a huge response!

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Online Catalogue

One of the most obvious uses of Pinterest is selling products. You can set up a board that is a virtual catalogue for your products. You can actually place price tags in the description box which allow the customers to view details about your products. When you add a ‘$’ sign to your pinned graphic, the products get listed in the ‘Gifts’ section, making your products easily searchable from the main Pinterest menu.

My personal opinion is that the strength of Pinterest is in its community atmosphere. Focus first on generating engagement and then add a virtual catalog after there is some interaction about your products and brand. In other words, do not lead with a sell, sell, sell attitude.

A business that is not able to create a favorable brand image for itself will struggle to pry away customers from rival businesses. In the online, social media driven marketplace, the strength of a brand rests on its authentic connectivity. Focus on real world, visual conversations with your products on Pinterest and you’ll be ahead of the game!

Pinterest for Service Oriented Businesses

Using a visually focused platform may be tough to wrap your mind around as you may not be used to promoting your business, products and services in a visual way. After all, you don’t have cute products to put out there. You may be thinking, what photos will you lead with? What will others interact with you on?

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Inspirational visuals

One of the most popular and most often re-pinned segments of Pinterest that bridges all users are inspirational or funny quotes set in beautiful visual graphic. Maybe you have a stellar mission statement or business values that portray your message in the marketplace. Additionally, you could easily make a habit of re-pinning others great quotes or sayings.

In this respect, Pinterest is for photos what Twitter is for quips and pithy sayings. The addition of a graphic adds visual appeal and the motivation grabs the emotions! The strength of your presence as a company can be enhanced when you re-pin the quotes that showcase your personal or business values. You are honoring other Pinterest members and they’ll remember your re-pin of their treasures!

Cute kids or animals

Sure, you may not be a dog groomer or a wild-animal wrangler but consider the message behind these often-shared photos. Warm feelings extend the warmth of your brand and your service.

If you are in the niche of family services, coaching or consulting; focusing on family photos, kid photos or other connective and community building pictures gives your brand an emotional connection that blog articles or even Tweets cannot.

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Recipes, DIY Projects, stories in pictures

Get creative. Are you a cake baker? Maybe you teach martial arts. Or you are a financial advisor or SEO expert. Create a mini-class with step-by-step photos. Ask your audience to take pictures of their favorite moves or recipes. Create a collaborative visual discussion around your niche and you will have mastered Pinterest as well as boosting the visible feel of your business.

Don’t assume that because you are NOT in the business of selling products that Pinterest is not for you. In many ways Pinterest is easier to interact with as a business owner. Granted, you may be forced to be creative and more interactive. Don’t fall into the easy trap of just listing out all your products and leaving it there. Remember, Pinterest is a social media platform NOT a listing service!

Start posting some inspirational pictures and re-pinning your follower’s favorite visuals . . . you will be surprised at the increased engagement and interaction that comes your way!

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Creating a Brand Image & Online Presence

Let’s focus specifically on branding for a moment. As a successful entrepreneur, you want to create solid results through branding your business. here are some ways Pinterest supports those efforts.

Finding Fans

Your fans are going to take the time to pin content from your website and about your business on their boards. When you interact with their pins, re-pin and like them as well as comment on their favorites, you’ve engaged in a conversation with your audience. This conversation may have never happened without the visual interaction Pinterest brings. This is a great way to create super-fans who rave about and share your products.

Listen To Your Customers

You will gain valuable insights into your customers’ interests through their pins. Follow the people enthusiastic about pinning your content to their boards as well as those pinning photos from the influencers in your market niche. Check out other pages and boards they are showing interest in. Getting to know your customers enables you to build products and services that will meet their needs. By communicating in such a vibrant, visual way you will be interacting on a level not provided by any other social media platform. In fact, there are people active on Pinterest that wouldn’t tweet or FB if you paid them to!

Crowd Sourced Promotion

You can ask your customers to promote your business. Ask them to ‘pin’ your product pages and other landing pages to their boards. Offer a prize to the fan that has the most pins related to your business. This creates a contest for your fans to engage in and creates a bit of competition.

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Crowd sourced promotion works wonders in the world of online marketing. hemp Milk has been using Pinterest to generate crowd sourced promotion. You can see in this image how their fans can promote the brand through three actions; the repin, like and making a comment.

Using Images

By creating an image-based marketing strategy, you may discover a visual brand that wasn’t apparent when you first started your business. Using the collaborative and interactive aspects of this platform the images that are in line with your mission and message will quickly become obvious. Test out logo or specific branding images or just collect a variety of related images to test out your audience. It’s all possible with Pinterest!

With so many different social networks available, why should you use Pinterest? It is a relatively new social media website so wouldn’t Facebook or Twitter be a better option? The answer to these questions is in the next chapter.

Why You Can’t Afford to Ignore Pinterest

Pinterest and other social media platforms can be a great boost for small and emerging businesses. They can create a significant online presence and attract customers. Yet, there are so many social networks around, each with its own set of pros and cons. Sometimes it can be tough to decide where to invest our time and energy. Recent developments around Pinterest make it clear to me that this platform cannot be ignored!

Creating a Brand Image & Online Presence

Let’s focus specifically on branding for a moment. As a successful entrepreneur, you want to create solid results through branding your business. here are some ways Pinterest supports those efforts.

Finding Fans

Your fans are going to take the time to pin content from your website and about your business on their boards. When you interact with their pins, re-pin and like them as well as comment on their favorites, you’ve engaged in a conversation with your audience. This conversation may have never happened without the visual interaction Pinterest brings. This is a great way to create super-fans who rave about and share your products.

Listen To Your Customers

You will gain valuable insights into your customers’ interests through their pins. Follow the people enthusiastic about pinning your content to their boards as well as those pinning photos from the influencers in your market niche. Check out other pages and boards they are showing interest in. Getting to know your customers enables you to build products and services that will meet their needs. By communicating in such a vibrant, visual way you will be interacting on a level not provided by any other social media platform. In fact, there are people active on Pinterest that wouldn’t tweet or FB if you paid them to!

Crowd Sourced Promotion

You can ask your customers to promote your business. Ask them to ‘pin’ your product pages and other landing pages to their boards. Offer a prize to the fan that has the most pins related to your business. This creates a contest for your fans to engage in and creates a bit of competition.

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Driving visitors to your website

In a recent article, noted Social Media expert Brian Solis collected some fascinating recent data about the explosion of Pinterest traffic and its power on the web to refer members to other sites. Take a look at these two info graphics.

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It’s fascinating to note that while Pinterest still comes in below Twitter, it is by a narrow .01% margin. Additionally, Pinterest drives more traffic than YouTube, Reddit, Google+ and LinkedIn combined! Without question, this platform cannot be dismissed and stands to be a powerful tool in for all businesses.4 http://www.briansolis.com/2012/01/pinterest-rivals-twitter-in-referral-traffic-

pinteresting/

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Targets Users Interests

The goal for businesses who use social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter is to extend their reach by getting more and more people to follow and subscribe to their pages. With Pinterest, it works differently. People use this site to browse for content related to their areas of interest. If your business’ photos and interactions happen to be within their circle of interest, the person is very likely begin a photographic conversation with you.

having thousands of followers is not helpful if they are not interested in your niche or expertise. Pinterest gives you the opportunity to find interested prospects in a very simple way. This means that you have a better chance of developing long-term, results based relationships. Not only are such customers going to stick with your brand but they are going to recommend your products to other people as well.

Rent the Runway has been successful in segmenting its audience through Pinterest. To target interested users, the brand creates different pin boards for outfits related to different occasions. This makes it easy for members who are interested in occasion-specific fashion to find them through Pinterest.

By targeting interested users and giving them what they are looking for and simultaneously expanding the options available to them, you are in a strong position to build a particularly responsive follower base via Pinterest.

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Picking Up Trends

Pinterest is a great place to check out the latest trends that internet users are following. Much like Twitter provides you a list of pages that are trending, you can find out the boards that are receiving the most pins. Since the trends are being updated in real time, you get relevant and up-to-date information. The ‘Popular” category is where you will find the most popular and repinned graphics.

If you are unsure about choosing a theme for your board, a good idea is to look into the latest trends. You will have an idea of what members are looking for and you can adapt the themes accordingly.

Link Building through Images

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The main method of link building is through backlinks. Yet backlinks are boring and hold little appeal for the average user. Pinterest provides you the opportunity to carry out link building without having to use backlinks. You can use the images that you pin to your board to build links to your website and also to other sites.

It is easier to get people to engage when the links are visually appealing. Since every picture you share or that is shared by any of your fans who link to your product page or landing page; it is an especially effective method to build backlinks.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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Good SEO boosts the online presence of a business significantly. Without having to dive into the endless sea of keywords and link building, Pinterest provides you a way to get good SEO easily. As mentioned above, the images link back to the website where they originated. By having images pinned on Pinterest link back to your sales page and website, you are effectively boosting your SEO.

5 http://www.flickr.com/photos/silvery/6344314863/

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The SEO can be invaluable if you have a new startup or small business with limited financial resources. You can improve your page ranking without having to engage in the SEO learning curve or hiring an SEO expert. Improving the page rank can be a hard job, especially for a new business as it takes a lot of time to get the required number of links and visitors.

Demographics

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According to Google, a whooping 82% of the users of Pinterest are female and 70% of them are under the age of 45. This can be a huge advantage for a business looking to target women. This would be virtually any type of business! Research indicates that women are the ‘deciders’ about many products or services typically bought for their households. While Pinterest may not be the best place to target men (yet!), women buy gifts and make many shopping decisions for men.

6 http://marketaire.com/2012/02/01/pinterest-facebook-social-commerce/

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So don’t discount the power of Pinterest for typically male products as well.

There are many social networks out there yet, it’s clear that using Pinterest as part of your marketing strategy is a great idea. however, if your business is female-centric, then Pinterest should be at the forefront of your online marketing campaign.

Giving Your Business a Boost with Pinterest

We have explored the viability of using Pinterest for branding your business. Among the social media websites currently in use, Pinterest is a unique asset when you are seeking to create and establish a visual brand.

At present, Pinterest is in its infancy. As it progresses, the effectiveness of Pinterest as a marketing presence in the online world of social media will, without a doubt increase exponentially. More and more businesses are going to make use of this photo sharing social media platform for branding and community interaction. The strength of this unique platform lies in its simplicity. By connecting items, photos and interests instead of people, Pinterest has revolutionized social media. Take the opportunity to begin experimenting with this simple, yet strong platform today.

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About the Author

K IM GARST IS a Mompreneur, Social Media and Personal Branding Strategist, Speaker, Coach and Trainer. She was recently name by Forbes as one of the Top 50 Social Media

Influencers.her systems help the average business owner quickly master social

media to generate extra-ordinary results for their business. She has been working online successfully for almost 20 years and has built a number of successful businesses during that time.

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About the Author

Currently she shares her experience with large corporations, small business owners as well as new and established solopreneurs.

She is a devoted wife and the mother of two amazing young men.her motto is ‘you can do it’!

A note from Kim . . .

I would love to hear what you think of this book, questions you may have, feedback or simply some suggestions and ways that YOU use Pinterest. I want to hear from you!

Web: www.kimgarst.comPinterest: www.pinterest.com/kimgarstFacebook: www.fb.com/kimgarstTwitter: www.twitter.cm/kimgarst

Documents

KIM GARST · Once your account is active, optimize your profile under settings. Make sure you include your company name, company description, logo and a link to your website. This