Business Plus Baby

Over the last few weeks there has been an explosion of interest in new-ish social media platform Pinterest.

I wasn’t going to write a post about it because there are loads of posts out there about it already!

But there haven’t been that many about using it for marketing your business. And when I shared a particular post from Copyblogger on how to use Pinterest for marketing, so many people found it helpful that I thought I’d mention it here at Business Plus Baby too.

So here is that seriously useful post: 56 ways to market your business on Pinterest

If you haven’t tried out Pinterest, it’s a social network where you pin pictures and video to virtual pinboards. Here’s how it works.

For a long time I didn’t join because although it looked pretty (VERY pretty in fact) I didn’t think it was all that useful. Then I read how people were getting tons of traffic to their websites from it I started to take more notice!

So how do you make money from Pinterest?

1. More traffic to your website

If you’re in a ‘visual’ business like photography, fashion, crafts or any kind of design then there’s a good chance people will share your photos. And as Pinterest is so easy to use and so addictive, the chances are that your pictures will be shared more than on other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. If your image is shared, the link to your website is shared too which brings visitors to your site.

However, do be aware of Pinterest’s copyright issues – there’s a great summary in Karen Gunton’s post What people are talking about: Pinterest and copyright

Also remember that like any other social network, don’t just post your own stuff. Share other people’s stuff too!

2. Get paid commission as an affiliate

You can get paid commission if someone buys an item you’ve pinned. You recommend it, they like it, they buy it, then the seller pays you to say ‘thanks’. Here’s an article explaining this: Leveraging Pinterest for affiliate marketing

3. Run a competition (and other creative ideas)

Ways of making money from a new social networking platform are only really limited by your creativity (and their terms and conditions, so always check these!) Which is why I loved this ‘Pin it to win it‘ competition from Lime Tree Kids. Here’s how it works – make a pinboard from your favourite products in the Lime Tree Kids online store, then email the link to the board to Lime Tree Kids to be entered into a prize draw. A simple but brilliant new way to use social media for marketing.

Here’s a nice infographic showing other creative ways of marketing with Pinterest.

And here are ways that your customers could use Pinterest to tell their friends about your products. Maybe you could drop them a few hints on your blog? 🙂

Do you know of any other ways of using Pinterest for marketing? Please leave me a comment!

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