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The Under-Utilization of Pinterest for Business

Ad Club Of Buffalo

Weddings, babies, recipes, dream homes. You, like many others, may associate Pinterest with a tool used by women in the process of “planning something”.  But what many people fail to realize, is that the concept of searching, saving, organizing and sharing information with others can easily and effectively be applied to your business.

Here’s how:

Promoting your business

Whether you are a B2B, B2C or a freelancer, there are several ways you can promote your products and services.

  1. Think Like Your Customer. What are their needs? What are they searching for that would lead them to your product? How does your product fit into their everyday life?
  2. Collect. Once you have the answers to number 1, begin collecting content such as articles, infographics and imagery that is relevant, useful and “buzz worthy”. Users are encouraged to see and save what their friends/followers are pinning, so be sure your content is worth talking about.
  3. Organize. Begin creating categories or “boards” to house and organize the content.  For example, if you’re in the healthcare industry, create a “Healthy Recipes” board, or “Explaining the Affordable Healthcare Act” board and pin articles and tips from experts both in and outside of your company. Use keywords and the “category” tool within Pinterest to ensure that users can find your content.
  4. Promote. Add the Pinterest icon to content within your website (it’s usually embedded in a “Share this” tool) and to the bottom of your email marketing. Share pins and boards with your customers, or direct them to the boards using other marketing materials.

Sharing information within your department

Information sharing (especially within major organizations) can be challenging when it’s through a “Did you see this?” email with links that get lost in the shuffle.

  1. Connect Your Team. Create accounts for each team member (you may have to check your company’s social media policy and ensure that you have access). You can then invite each team member to pin to the boards that you create.
  2. Create Boards. What type of information do you share with your team? Industry news? Trends?  If you work at an ad agency for example, you can create boards that will resonate with your clients or relevant within the industry (Email Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Project Management, Copywriting, etc)
  3. Choose Carefully. Pinterest gives you the ability to make your pins and boards private, so that your competition can’t see what you’re pinning.  If you choose to do this, remember that your content will be hidden from everyone, not just the competition.
  4. Get Notified. You can receive notifications when a team member pins to your board and they make it very easy for you to share relevant pins to others within your organization.

Using the search tool to “listen”

  1. Keep up with your competition. Search to see if they are on Pinterest, and gauge the level of engagement from their followers.
  2. Customers are probably already talking about you. Perform a search for your company – you never know if there are pins already out there.
  3. Search for your industry. Find and follow other experts and boards. It’ll prevent you from reinventing the wheel.

Click here to check out Ad Club’s new Pinterest page.

pinterest

Happy pinning!

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Blog

The Middle Ground

Ad Club Of Buffalo

Written by:  Board Member Ben Kirst

As marketers, there is often an overwhelming urge to embrace the latest and greatest tools at our disposal. A new social network that will change how you attract customers, a unique quantitative approach that’s going to reinvent the way you’ve considered ROI, a buzzworthy strategy you want to give a rib-bending embrace… we have all felt that lightheaded desire for new tools with the intensity of a teenage crush.

We pressure ourselves to integrate fresh industry approaches into our workplace and get frustrated when we face opposition. We envision the glory of success, the hearty slaps on our backs, the jealous glares of rivals as our fearless innovation changes the game.

This is fine, by the way. This is not a screed meant to mock people for seeing the value in the constantly changing communication environment (and this is coming from a guy who works at a newspaper, the most notoriously slow-to-change industry in the media world). However, some of the boring stuff in online marketing still works really, really well.

For example, over 59% of respondents to the 2013 Email Marketing Industry Census in a survey of 1,300 British email marketers gave organic search (SEO), email marketing, and paid search ROI scores of “good” or “excellent.” [1]

What’s equally interesting is that these same marketers admitted in fairly significant numbers that they don’t really work that hard to improve their campaigns, despite the solid ROI. My guess is that there is a tendency to cringe at the analytical or developmental grind that will increase organic search results or the suspiciously-like-math work involved in AdWords campaign management.

Mobile marketing, by comparison, feels now, sexy. Social media marketing doesn’t even seem like work. Affiliate marketing looks like a shortcut to a pot of gold. But are the results as apparent? In fact, are you seeing results at all?

Here’s the thing – in the coming weeks and months, we are going to see more and more successful strategies for integrating all of these processes.

Content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing and display marketing are playing together more and more as savvy companies of all sizes get better at fully integrating campaigns. Check out the way Virgin America rolled out its most recent campaign,[2] which included Richard Branson serving drinks on a coast-to-coast flight, digital billboards in Times Square, and a strong Instagram presence.

Content marketing, mobile marketing, and search marketing are already inextricable. Consider the movement Foursquare has made to integrate these fields in its latest app update[3], where the company is apparently trying to “out-Yelp” their competition by offering improved recommendations and location-based exploration.

Promotions – which Borrell already predicts will dominate local media advertising budgets over the next four years, growing from $32 billion to $80 billion[4] — are going to be increasingly relevant to our work as clients demand more exposure in and around the fragmented digital audience space.

So what’s my point?
There is a middle ground that allows us to satisfy our urges to experiment with emerging technology while cementing the tried-and-true strategies that we know will get results. By remembering that the digital audience still engages deeply with brands via search and email, and using these tactics as foundation pieces in campaigns that branch into social media, promotion, mobile, etc., we will find that we are serving our customers and our audience better – while keeping our own skills sharp and our work engaging.

With rare exceptions, most of us don’t have the resources of Virgin America or Foursquare, but that does not mean we are stuck. When you work on your next project or campaign, consider all of the tools at your disposal, think about how you are using them, and most importantly, if they are working in concert with each other. There’s no need to fight against the work you’re already doing in order to innovate now.