So we’ve spent the past two weeks talking about the appeal, growth and users of Pinterest. Now it’s time to talk about how you can harness this knowledge to market your website by using Pinterest’s social media strengths. It’s actually fairly easy to optimize any e-commerce site for Pinterest. Here are the three simple steps:
1. Update your product info. Generic photos and basic specs are not enough – how about a clever and descriptive blurb about each product? Think about cleaning up old product display images or scheduling a new photo shoot if it’s been awhile. Clean, pretty and interesting images are the main hook for earning people’s pins. You should definitely make sure that all the images and links on your website match the products and go directly to the correct sales pages.
2. Add “Pin It.” Obviously, the most important part of marketing your products and services on Pinterest is having the “Pin It” app on your pages. This means that when visitors are on your site, they can just click once to pin any item they’re looking at to their page. This will encourage people to talk about and share your items; and once your item is on their page, it links right back to your website. So any of that person’s friends who like it will come to check it out – and possibly make a purchase. While being pinned a lot can lead to sales, it’s also good to think about it in terms of spreading brand awareness; people will see and recognize your wares even if the links don’t immediately or directly convert to profit on your end.
3. Don’t oversell. The most important thing to keep in mind is that Pinterest is drawing so many members that convert their interests into sales because buyers feel like they are getting recommendations from trusted sources – i.e., because they don’t feel like they are being advertised to. That’s the very nature and appeal that’s lead to this website’s success, so any venture into Pinterest should keep in mind the site’s fun, casual, social nature. In step 1, you give visitors a reason to pin you. In step 2, you make it easy for them. These are the painfully easy but also extremely powerful tools for Pinterest social media marketing, so you won’t have to go overboard trying to push pins on people.
Contact us for additional thoughts on how you can prime your pages for Pinterest.