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Using Pinterest To Market Your Business

With over 11 million visits last month, and and over 4 million active users estimated, Pinterest is one of the fasted growing social networks around. What is amazing about this? Pinterest is still in beta mode and invitation only, and everyone I know is using it.

What exactly is Pinterest? Pinterest is a virtual pinboard allowing you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. Here’s some basic Pinterest language to help you better understand what Pinterest really is.

Pinboards: A Pinboard is a collection of images or videos that you “Pin” to it. You can have as many as you want, and they can come from almost anywhere. You see a photo of something you like, Pin it by using the pages URL and Pinterest will grab the image of what you’re talking about.

Pins: A Pin is an image or video that you’ve posted to a specific Pinboard. You can add a description to your Pin as well!

Gifts: Here’s where Pinterest gets even better for to help market your products. If you place the “$” sign followed by any dollar amount in the description of a Pin it will insert a banner displaying that dollar amount in the top left corner of the image, and also place it in the ‘gifts’ category that can be found at the top of the page.

Some pretty neat things about Pinterest is that just like Facebook and Twitter users are able to follow you, they can even follow one of your Pinboards separately. Users of any kind are also able to add comments to your Pins. You pins can also be shared via Facebook or Twitter, creating a seamless integration with other social networks. And, if you see something you like that someone has Pinned already, just hit the “Repin” button and add it to one of your boards!

Pinterest has even launched mobile apps to integrate Pinterest with the day-to-day life of its users. It lets the user take images with the camera on their mobile device (or to choose an existing image from their camera role) and then use it as a pin on their boards.

Although still prominently new, Pinterest has already proved itself to be a great way to market your business and even increase your SEO. The best way I have found to use Pinterest for your business is to avoid self promotion. People want to see things that relate to what your business does, things you find interesting and that others will find interesting as well. That brings us to what you should be “Pinning”, naturally you want to Pin the things that relate to what your business is about. For instance, here at Troxell Web Design we have been posting things such as really cool design tools we’ve found, awesome fonts, neat jquery plugins for websites, all the things we think are cool and want to share with others. That’s what Pintrest is all about! In doing so, we hope to capture some peoples attention, get them to follow us, share new and awesome things with us, and hopefully even get some leads out of it.

Pinterest is becoming an amazing tool is you have products, with the “Pin It” button for websites, you can add it to product pages and/or blog post allowing your customers and readers to pin your products and/or blog entries onto Pinterest! Personally, I think this is becoming one of the fastest ways to get your product(s) seen. The Pin It button even blends in nicely with your current social media buttons for seamless integration. There are even “Follow” buttons available.

Once you set up you Pinerest account, get your feet wet by following and posting things, then use the channels already at your disposal such as Facebook, Twitter, Email, to tell your customers that you’re on Pinterest. Oh, and make sure to follow us and see what cool things we’re posting on Pinterest as well.

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