Pinterest Drives Purchasing– Pinterest Explained in 5 Easy-to-Deploy Tips

Just like most Social Media channels, it started small, created momentum from its simple form factor and community creation capability, and then harnessed and leveraged the power of the DATA!

Yes, data is and always will be king? Why? At the end of the day, no matter what we do to promote our brand, business, product or service, we must quantify the return on investment. Data is the only means to calculate true return. Did we accomplish the goal in specific measurable data points?

And it bears repeating, one reason to include a broad set of exposure across early emerging Social Media is we never know what they are going to be when they grow up. You could be caught flat-footed while a competitor or new trend emerges, and you are too late to the game to take full advantage.

So, let’s look at Pinterest. The concept is much like a bulletin board, or set of bulletin boards expressing things you like. You start by creating a board, and simply “pinning” your interests…yep, Pinterest. In its infancy, Pinterest was simply a mechanism to look at and post a bunch of pictures and share them with your friends, your Facebook friends initially. With integration to Facebook, happy Pinners can follow and find their friends interests, and meet and follow new friends and trends as well.

Enter the new and improved Pinterest search engine. Let’s say you have a party to attend on Friday evening, and each person is to bring a wine they have never tried, and a dish to share. EP, or easy-peasy in Social Media slang. Simply enter what you’d like to wear in the search bar in the top left corner. But be sure not to be distracted by the cute, cuddly dogs or obstacle-jumping horses in your home feed, or you will be delayed at least 30 minutes.

You can start your journey by typing in “little black dress.” Instantly, your screen is filled with an eclectic mix of little black dress options and ensembles to inspire, delight, or click through to purchase. The search engine pulls from the descriptions of pictures, hence our first and second clues to marketing return on investment from Pinterest:

Create an SEO-rich description for every picture you Pin, and
Originate Pins from the PinIt! button on your website. Don’t have one installed, install it now, because your website visitors can Pin from your website creating links back to browse and purchase, too.

Back to our little black dress. The fun of Pinterest is the vastness of the content people have been Pinning for years. In this search, you are just as likely to see a black and white picture of a classic Jackie-O from 1956 lined up with a crisp color-rich 5^th Avenue haute couture. Also appearing in this collage collection of inspiration might actually be the girl next door or a glam shot from the CMA’s or perhaps a race goer caught by a camera at your local Steeplechase. You can bet you will have an opportunity to make a purchase if you are ready, or perhaps you notice a necklace of 400 over-sized pearls to perk up last year’s dress.

On to the wine. And the dish. By choosing words specific or “long tailed” to exactly what you want, you will get exactly what you prefer with a picture to peruse. And coincidentally our next three points for ensuring success for your brand on Pinterest:

Every description should be “long tailed” to sweep a broad range of subjects and searches,
The more boards the more potential exposure,
And, pictures of your product are hugely important.

Pictures of people consuming your product are important. Pictures become your testimonial. Pictures will get Pinned if they are beautiful, educational, and interesting. Pictures will get Pinned if they are tagged and described correctly, with fun and wit and SEO, and with recipes, accessories, and tips for consumption. If your pictures contain all of this, then your Board will get followed. And if your target customer or prospect is following your board, they see all new Pins to that Board when they scroll their home feed.

Pinterest has succeeded in developing a thriving community of stalkers, I mean Pinners. Is your brand, product or service part of any Pinterest home feeds? B-school and Marketing 101 reminds us of Product, Price, Placement, etc. Perhaps the “P” in Placement is Pinterest. As with any marketing strategy, be sure you are part of where your customer is hanging out. And it’s not the Yellow Pages. And how do you know? Check the data, so hang out a few Boards and follow what the numbers tell you.

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