6 Reasons You Should Be Using Pinterest for Business

Many businesses are wary about using Pinterest for business, but you don’t have to be!  There are many positive reasons that you should be utilizing this social media network for your business, but here are 6 of the main reasons.

Why Pinterest?

There are many reasons Pinterest is a great opportunity for businesses.  It will help you introduce your business and blog to a whole new audience.  One pin can lead to ten pins, which can lead to another ten pins, and so on.

Benefits of using Pinterest

• Increased awareness
• Additional blog traffic
• New leads
• Increased sales

Here are some of the common misconceptions about Pinterest:

• Only women are on Pinterest (females still make up the majority of the audience though)
• People only pin food and wedding content (travel, clothing, home decor are big too)
• My target audience isn’t on Pinterest
• I don’t have time for another social network

You would probably be surprised to find out:

• Pinterest is one of the largest website traffic drivers in the world
• The popularity of Pinterest spans multiple generations
• In 2012, many considered Pinterest to be one of the fastest growing websites in history
• Pinterest is 80% more viral and 3x more effective at generating leads than Twitter

So, here are the top 6 reasons you should start utilizing Pinterest for your business, regardless of what type of business it is!

1. Pinterest converts more browsers into buyers.

Pinterest helps to reduce the number of steps from discovery to conversion, making it easier for people to get straight to the source.  Visitors from Pinterest are more likely to convert into leads or sales faster than from other social media sources.  Way to go, Pinterest!

Sometimes it’s good to think of Pinterest as a big, visual search engine. People often turn to it during the research phase of their planning. They also turn to Pinterest for inspiration. I’m pretty sure most of us have tried at least one recipe for Pinterest…

2. Pinterest drives traffic (and lots of it).

Pinterest is an excellent tool to help increase links back to your website, which, in turn, drives more traffic.  It is more effective at steering traffic back to a website more than any other social media source.  (Thank you, rich pins!)

This uptick in traffic obviously relies on good content. If you’re creating and sharing content that your audience likes, they’re more likely to follow your links. Good content on Pinterest starts with creating quality visuals.

3. Pins get you more inbound links.

Because every pin includes a link, it makes it easy to lead it back to the source of the image.  Just think of how many visitors you can bring to your website by posting images of your products on Pinterest. This is an often forgotten part of Pinterest. Never underestimate the power of image search!

4. User engagement is ridiculously high.

Users on Pinterest seem pretty content to simply find and share things with small groups of people.  This is good for your business!  Why?  It means that your pins are more likely to be seen, touched, and even go viral!

5. Pinterest integrates with your website, Facebook profile, and Twitter account.

Why is this a good thing?  Because it enables users to automatically post new pins to their news feeds for others to see.  Although we’re not big fans of cross-platform posting, many people find it helpful. If you’re relying on automation, you might be trying to do too much. You might want to spend some time on a social media strategy first.

6. Discover what your audience loves.

One of the beautiful things you can do with Pinterest is use it to see what is trending right now.  Follow anyone who follows you to see what inspires them – you will have a first-person look into their mind.  Pinterest gives you the opportunity to see and understand what’s hot today and use that information to position your offers and products.

Ready to get started on Pinterest? Here’s a quick how-to.