Since its beta launch in March 2010, Pinterest has had a big impact on social media and offers yet another channel for businesses to promote themselves and expand brand awareness…and it also can provide some SEO benefits, IF you handle Pinterest properly…
So first, here’s a quick definition of Pinterest, by Pinterest:
“Pinterest lets you organise and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organise their favourite recipes.”
How do you use it?
Boards are where you pin your chosen images. They can be themed or organised any way you want, from weddings to recipes to a collection of your favourite tech…
Your boards and pins can be shared, commented on and ‘repinned’ by anyone with access.
By installing the Pin It button to your browser you can pin any images you like to boards. Your pins link back to the originating website.
Websites can also use Pinterest to encourage the sharing of images and products by adding any of these buttons to their pages:
Why you need to know about Pinterest
Pinterest offers businesses the chance to promote themselves in an entirely new way…the online scrapbook idea behind the platform is ideal for building communities around your branded content.
Naturally, this type of social media sharing is ideal for B2C brands, so does that mean it’s closed to B2B?
Definitely not, but you do need to think creatively….plan a content curation strategy, rather than simply straight promotion of your own services. What would you pick up and share with your friends, family and colleagues?
Remember, if it has no pin-appeal, you’re wasting time. We’ve seen some great examples of B2B brands utilising B2C tactics on Pinterest – check out Dave’s presentation for this and lots of other ideas to get you started (read on!).
We’ve published a number of pieces on the subject of Pinterest and search marketing:
Back in January 2012 Steve offered a quick intro to Pinterest and talked about 10 great Pinterest ideas with SEO benefits…
We then blogged about how to use the Pin It button for Firefox
As Pinterest has opened up some opportunities to increase online reach for brands, we thought it a good idea to offer a round-up of websites that work along very similar lines to Pinterest…12 sites like Pinterest
Our in-house creative, Sarah, really wanted to break-out of the Pinterest demongraphic mould (and failed miserably) – find out why she’s in her thirties, female, a creative and hates Pinterest!
And finally, we have a great presentation created by our own Dave, first delivered at Soton Digital in May 2012, which offers advice and guidance on how Pinterest can be leveraged to increase your brand awareness and support SEO. (full voice over version to come shortly)