Why Pinterest is Important for Entrepreneurs
Pinterest is an image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFs and videos, in the form of pinboards. It is also a pinboard bookmark website where 70% of its users are female. That’s all good, but how will that help me as an entrepreneur with my business? In this blog, we will show you how we used Pinterest to grow our business and reach more customers.
How is Pinterest Structured?
Users access Pinterest as a search engine to find ideas to spark inspiration. Pinterest is all about creativity. People use Pinterest when they want something new, but don’t have a specific idea in mind. It’s like a visual search engine, guiding people to ideas that are just right for them. People don’t always have the words to describe what they’re looking for—but they’ll know it when they see it. As they browse Pinterest content, they fine-tune their tastes and find the perfect idea.
You can’t post on Pinterest, but you can Pin. You can pin images, blogs, videos, products and more. When you upload multiple pins, try to organize them in boards and name each board with a distinguished name to reflect its purpose. When you’re listed on Pinterest as a Merchant, you can save a Rich Pin to Pinterest directly from your website. Rich Pin is a metadata from the product page indicates the Pin is shoppable.
If you’re on Pinterest, join our group boards, add and pin inspirational ideas on and from our boards that could enhance and promote your business. We have at least 23K Pinteresters accessing our boards regularly and inspired with our pins.
Why are We on Pinterest?
When you own a business you know time is important for you. Time can cost you money or make you money. That’s why you are so careful in selecting the type of social media platforms and groups to join to promote your business.
The nature of our business demands us to be on multiple social media platforms. But the benefits we have from each platform vary. And that will be the same scenario for you too. You will find you are building up your customer base on one platform faster and higher than the others based on the nature of your business and markets you target.
For us, we noticed Pinterest is a social media platform that we should dedicate the highest percentage of time on promoting our products and services. But why is that? That’s because of the mindset of people accessing Pinterest. Pinteresters access their accounts looking for ideas to implement, answers to questions and products to buy. Pintersters do not go to their accounts to see how you spent your day or what you’ve been up to lately. They don’t care about your social life, they care about what you present. And that’s what makes Pinterest distinct from other social media platforms.
How did We use Pinterest to grow our Business?
Pintersters mindset is not to be on Pinterest to fend off FOMO or doomscroll. They’re are actually there to try new things. To save new ideas and make their next purchase. We thought why not try Pinterest.
Some discouraged us because of the way you add your posts. Pinterest has it as “Pins”. You need to design these pins. You cannot just design any pin and think it will work but you have to add certain words, elements, logo and high resolution pics for your pin to attract users. But that wasn’t really a challenge for us as we already have websites and other business social media accounts that we manage. Designing and uploading posts and ads are one of the to do daily list of work. So; for us, designing pins on Pinterest wasn’t a challenge. It shouldn’t be for you either. You can easily design a Pin or use ready made templates. We can also help you manage your Pinterest Business Account if you already have a lot on your plate.
We worked on having our Pinterest Business Account up and running. Then we started adding a lot of pins before sharing and advertising them on the platform. We created Group Boards based on the categories our business (and businesses we manage) cover. On Pinterest, these categories are known as “Niches”. We started with only couple of Niches and now we have group boards of most Niches searched on Pinterest.
Here are our Group Boards on Pinterest:
- Decor: Everything related to décor, interior designing and interior designers.
- Affiliate, Products & Services Best Deals: where users find all best deals for all products and services.
- FASHION: Everything related to Fashion. Here Pinteresters share there fashion blogs, business ideas, products, affiliates and stores.
- Start/Have A Business: You will find a lot of information about starting a business and managing a business in here.
- Information and Communication Technology: Everything related to information technology and IT in general.
- FOOD, DRINK & DESERTS: You will find delicious recipes from all over the world.
- Online Businesses: All ideas and information related to starting and having an online business.
- PETS: Users pin everything related to Pets in that group board.
- Websites: Ideas and information related to building a website, hosting and email marketing.
- Antivirus Protection: Everything related to antivirus and cyber protection is in this board.
- Canada Marketplace: Where Canadian Businesses promote their products and services.
- Videos: Ideas and pins related to videos and making videos.
- Products Reviews & Selections: Reviews on electronic products, appliances and equipment.
- Career Opportunities: Everything related to required courses and certificates for certain positions.
- Video Gaming:Pins related to video games, PS, XBox and Gaming.
Does Pinterest update us with Data?
Yes it does. In fact, Pinterest is the only platform that provides a lot of Data. As a Business, that’s what you need. It is very important to know how many saw your pins, their ages, interest and country.
Pinterest Analytics give us a detailed report about total impression, total audience, engagement and engaged audience for our pins. It also gives us an idea about our audience: their interest, age, country and gender.
Here is a screenshot of what Pinterst Analytics page looks like. On the left corner of the page you’ll find all categories covering the impression of group of audience towards your pins at a period of time. This page tells us a lot about our work and how valuable the information our audience saw and read was.
How do Pinterest Analytics help our Business?
When the Pandemic hit, many people lost their jobs. Few were able to turn their full time job to just a part time one but that didn’t help much. At that time; as entrepreneurs working in the business market, we saw there were some opportunities. These opportunities were available to few but the market was not saturated and there were demands for certain types of businesses in certain fields. So we decided to write series of articles about small business ideas that many can start and that does not cost a lot.
Zoom Virtual Background
We also saw people who were able to keep their full time jobs had to adjust. A lot of companies had their employees work from home. Everyone is now using Zoom for meeting with managers and teams. Not all of these employees have the time to organize their home office to look perfect and reflect as a good organized background when they are on virtual meetings with their colleagues. That’s when we stepped up and started offering our services in setting up Zoom Virtual Background.
In addition to that, we started updating our website with mega deals on laptops, computer and electronic devices that Canadians can purchase to set up their home work office.
We reflected all that work through Pinterest Pins and that grabbed a lot of attention. As you can see from that simple shared screenshot 235+ audience were interested in the business ideas we pined. 165 audience were interested to know more about our Zoom Virtual Background service that we provide. And also 164 audience noticed the laptops and the mega deals we have at our store.
Last thing we will end our article with is we neither work for Pinterest nor affiliated to them. It is a Platform that we saw is very useful for entrepreneurs and a lot of businesses use it all over the world. Do not be discouraged if you don’t have a lot of followers. We don’t either. Still we have more than 23,000 Pinteresters see our Pins. Pinterest is all about how attractive your designs and topics are to the Pinterest searcher. Remember, Pinterest audience are not there to follow you but to search for what they want.
Do share the blog with your Entrepreneur friends and help them expand their business and reach more customers. Please add your comments below and share your experience with us or carry the discussion over to our Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, MeWe or Tumbler.
