Pinterest marketing for your business: start now before it's too late!

(source: www.pinterest.com)

Pinterest is an interesting social media site. It is kind of like Stumbleupon, but it's much more visually appealing, and also easier to use. And businesses are starting to notice Pinterest's fast growth and open their own Pinterest account.

It's actually not that difficult to do. It's great for businesses, especially e-commerce businesses, because all you have to do is to pin anything that interests you (a person who will be in charge of Pinterest marketing.)
No, it's not like Facebook or Twitter in which you have to think of what to say. You don't have to set up any games or contests. And yet in my opinion, it works just as efficiently as Facebook/Twitter marketing.

Here's what you need to do:

First, you set up a Pinterest account (you request "invitation"). When you are approved, you start creating new "boards" (=categories).

Let's say you sell chocolates through your own e-commerce site "Chocochoco." (I just totally made that up. Not sure if it exists for real.)  Then you might want to create boards on food, desserts, baking, fancy restaurants, inspiration, recipes, DIY, or whatever. But it should be related to chocolates to some extent.

You are almost done. Now, you start pinning. You install a little bookmark bar that Pinterest asks you to put on your browser, and you start pinning anything you think is relevant to your boards. You only need about 15 minutes a day to do this. Just google the right keywords and Google will take you to blogs filled with great posts that you would want to pin, such as "recipe on how to make chocolate-covered strawberries."

What you have to be careful though, is that you can only pin photos. So, the page you are pinning should have at least one photo so that you can pin that photo. People who see your pin will click on it so that they can be directed to that web page.

Sidenote: You might want to pin a page that has an "interesting" photo. In this case, your pin should show  a plate filled with chocolate-covered strawberries that look so delicious that people can't help but repin it.

As you start to fill in your boards with a full of yummy food photos, people will start to notice your pins, repin what they like, and "follow" you. Having a lot of followers is important just as in Facebook or Twitter, because whenever you go to Pinterest, it shows you pins from the people you follow. Your pins will be seen by more and more people as you gain followers. You should also follow people who have boards similar to yours. They will often follow you back if they like your boards too.

So how does this turn into profits?

Well, let's say you have 10 pins on your "Desserts Board." You allow 1 or 2 of those pins to be on chocolates you sell on your e-commerce site. In other words, you can pin a photo of one of your chocolate sets from your site. However, you shouldn't pin from your website too often. 1 out of 10 is usually a good bet. Why 1 out of 10? so that people won't think that you are doing Pinterest only to advertise your products, or so that people will think that you are doing it for fun, not really for your company.

Your followers and people who see your boards will click on the pins that come from your website if they are curious about them, which direct them to your website, and if they think your product is excellent, they will buy it! There, you just made profits.

In my opinion, this is much easier than Twitter or Facebook. There's always too much going on on those websites. What you just posted can disappear from your followers' feeds in 5 minutes. They won't even notice that you posted something if they don't check their feed consistently. But if you can do Pinterest marketing well, you can get people's attention quite well. Pinterest is growing fast, but it is still relatively young compared to Facebook and Twitter. So why not take advantage of Pinterest and create your own boards now?