I tend to get rather caught up in running my business and managing my clients and sometimes the work can be a little dry.
BUT today has been fun! Obviously, my job requires that I keep up to speed with all social media. I have been feeling a bit panicked about the rise of Pinterest, mainly because I didn’t really understand it. So I have been busy today setting up my Pinterest account and having so much fun with it.
As a creative person it is simply LUSH to be able to express myself in pictures and not just words. It does seem to have that dreaded ‘black hole’ effect on time. I had been busy ‘pinning’ for what I thought was maybe an hour only to be harassed by my boys for lunch and so indeed it was not 10am but midday. Oopps!
So what is Pinterest? It is a new kind of social media that allows you to create your own account. You can connect with your friends and follow them as well as anyone else on there. You create your own virtual pinboards ‘boards’ and categorise these into things that are important to you. You then ‘pin’ items to each board to reflect your feelings or style on this category. For example, I created a board called ‘My Dream Home’ and I then went and ‘pinned’ all these delicious things that I found on other boards, the internet and from my own digital photo collection. It was such fun.
So it is all very well me discovering a fun, new social media but how can we use this as a small business. Well there are several immediately obvious applications for Pinterest:
- Our customers can visit our Pinterest boards to learn more about our business. This is all about engaging and making a connection. We like brands (and businesses) that we feel fit in well with us.
- You can create visual representations of your products and services.
- You can encourage user comments on your pins and ‘engage’ with your customers.
- Be clever and use keywords for your business sector and use these when pinning images to your board.
- Be sure to add a Pinterest button on your website.
As a consumer, I must confess to being addicted already. I love the idea of connecting with people that share common interests not just people in my ‘friend’ network. I have put up the Pinterest button on my website to connect with my business Pinterest board – I am after all the ‘face’ of my business.
My general philosophy about everything that I do is if it is fun and interesting, it will engage and for me, Pinterest gets a big tick on both fronts. Be sure to go and check it out and have some fun. If you are considering Pinterest for your business and are not sure where to start be sure to get in touch with me and I am sure we can create a great board as part of your overall social media strategy.