Pinterest isn’t just for pretty pictures anymore. Even the National Hockey League has a page—with over a million followers. If you’re still sitting on the bench, here’s why you need to get in the game and create a business Pinterest page today.
1. 70 million users
Go where potential customers are. With 23% of Pinterest users on the site daily, you can reach over 16 million people a day.
2. Increased referrals to your business website
Pinterest’s share of social referral traffic is exploding, outpacing the combined referrals of Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Google+. Pinterest is responsible for 20% of total social referrals to commerce sites.
Every pin represents an average of two website visits and six page views. Half these visits occur more than two months after the initial pin. This long shelf life helps your site stay relevant for search engines. Search engines are partial to high-traffic sites so they like Pinterest. If you optimize your site properly, Pinterest acts as an SEO tool for your business. Give your pins descriptive names, incorporate hashtags, and include a reference link back to your business website.
3. Pinterest users spend money online
Each pin on your business Pinterest page is estimated to generate 78 cents in sales. Pinterest users spend about $140-$180 per online order (a 25% increase from the end of 2012). They are likely to click from a pin to a commerce website and are more likely to buy and to spend more than people referred from other websites.
4. Increase brand visibility
Pinterest is the place to connect with customers—pins are 100 times more viral than tweets. Over 80% of pins are repinned, and most pins generate 10 or more repins. The typical female on Pinterest has 67 followers. Cultivating a core of loyal customers can quickly lead to hundreds or thousands of people hearing about your business.
5. Your competitors are doing it
This is one time you want to follow the crowd. In the first nine months after Pinterest started offering business accounts, 500,000 businesses signed up. There is a “Pinterest for Business” LinkedIn group and companies are developing analytics and marketing software specifically for Pinterest.
6. Pinterest business pages are free
For now. There are no rumors that Pinterest will be charging for business accounts in the future, but the online world changes rapidly. For now, Pinterest offers a cost-free, easy to use venue for reaching over 25.6 million unique visitors every month.
7. Pinterest wants your business
Pinterest regularly develops new tools to make it easier for businesses to engage on their site. They run a business blog, an e-newsletter, and host a site just for businesses. New offerings in the last few months that help businesses include the “Explore Interests” dashboard search, a “buy from site” button for rich product pins, promoted pins, the ability to post GIFs and other interactive media, and the “now-trending” tool.
Pinterest web analytics make it easy to know how visitors are using your Pinterest business page. Rich pins make it easy to sell services and products. External services are popping up that help you track what happens to your pins.
8. It’s not just for pictures
Even if you aren’t selling steaming, golden-crusted apple pies or red and purple bedrooms with permanently fluffy pillows, Pinterest is still for you. Service businesses and even insurance exchanges and financial services companies are connecting with clients on Pinterest. You can post GIFs, videos, slideshares, and podcasts in addition to arresting infographics and pictures of pies.
9. Informative market research
A little time on Pinterest can let you know what your competitors are doing, what your audiences are interested in, and what’s trending. Using this market research, you can adapt your content to catch the eye of your target audience.
10. It’s fun
Work should be fun. It’s great to spend a Friday afternoon “researching” your competition while reading witty quotes and drooling over photos of steaming java in hand-thrown mugs served on a veranda with an ocean view. You can almost smell the home-roasted beans as you sip the cold coffee you grabbed on your way in this morning.
Hopefully this has motivated you to lace up your skates and score some goals by creating a winning Pinterest business page today.
Stats are mostly from reports by Piquora, Shareaholic and compilations by Craig Smith, Digital Marketing Ramblings Editor/Owner.