I love Pinterest, it’s my Social Media guilty pleasure!

This week though, I’m looking at it from a business perspective and rounding up current opinion from the web on the best ways to use Pinterest for Business.

So, what is Pinterest?

Pinterest helps people discover things in a simple, visual way.

Each Pin is an idea—a gift, recipe, or even a quote. They always point back to the sites they came from (like yours!) If you add the Save button to your site, people can use it to add your content to Pinterest.

Boards are where people collect and organize their Pins.

Pinterest connects people through shared interests—their passions, hobbies, tastes and values.

Get Started

Sign up for a Business Account

For businesses – specifically sign up for a business account. Using the main sign-up page creates personal accounts — to create a business account, click here. Business accounts are also free but also give you access to features to help your business thrive on the platform, like analytics tools.

Confirm your Website, and

Add the Save Button

Create a Board (or 3!)

Entering a name for your board, a description of what your board is about & selecting a category for it helps people discover your boards more often.

Add “Collaborators,” – you can invite other Pinterest users by username or email, this creates a group board, which will show up on both your profile and the other users’ profiles; everyone added to the board can contribute pins.

Add pins

Rich Pins

A special type of Pinterest pin which include extra information beyond just the image, click-through link and the pinner’s description.

Types of Rich Pin

• Place pins: create a map with the content they share. To enable, check the “add a map” option, you can then add places to your existing pins and pin new places as well. Place pins include important details like addresses and phone numbers.
• Article pins: make it so that users can automatically see the article’s headline, author and a story description — thereby making them much more searchable and distinguishing them from other content.
• Product pins: these show where the product you’re pinning can be purchased, the current price and a direct link to the product page. Additionally, product pins prices’ are updated in real time, and if a user pins a product pin to one of his or her boards, that user will be notified when the product’s price is lowered. Since many Pinterest users create boards that serve as wish lists for things they want, product pins are a great way to convert pins into purchases.
• Recipe pins: show users important information like the necessary ingredients and their amounts, cooking times and serving info. Also display details about whether a recipe is vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, paleo, etc. Users can still click-through to the website from which the recipe came to see detailed instructions and more photos of the recipes they’re pinning.
• Movie pins: information like the year a film was released, its rating, the director and the main stars of the film.

To use Rich Pins, you need to follow a simple two-step process.

1. Add the appropriate metadata to your website content. This metadata is different for each type of Rich Pin, but you can add multiple types to your site, and Pinterest will prioritize them.
2. Validate your Rich Pins and apply to get them on Pinterest. Once you’ve completed step one, you have to enter your site’s URL into Pinterest’s validator page to make sure there are no mistakes with the metadata. After everything is finalized, you can click Apply Now.

Learn more here

Best Practices

Put your clients first – what does your target audience want to see?
Create a few boards to start your collection. Great boards are inspiring, with beautiful images that attract people in. Make them about a specific topic.
Use your boards to show your business values, personality and taste.
Promote your Pinterest account and showcase your Pins on your own site.

Lots of resources below……

Leverage Pinterest

I found so many ideas, here are just a few

1. Name images strategically

To ensure your website images are found when users are searching for pins, name your images with keywords and hyphens (versus underscores) so search engines are sure to recognize the image name.

2. Optimize Pinterest for SEO

Content and SEO go hand in hand regardless of the platform. Pinterest is no exception.

HubSpot outlines 10 fantastic tips for optimizing a business’s Pinterest presence for search that include:

• Choose an optimized company username
• Optimize the “About” section
• Include links back to your website
• Differentiate your inboards
• Speak your customers’ language
• Use your pins’ descriptions wisely
• Make sure the images you pin have descriptive file names and alt text
• Incorporate hashtags
• Leverage the long tail
• “Pinjack” relevant search terms and images

Do what it takes to ensure that your pins are findable, and include a reference link back to your website to drive traffic.

3. Title Boards With Keywords

Pinterest boards are more discoverable via search when the board name contains keywords.Optimize your boards for Pinterest search and you’ll get higher placement in results.

4. Write a Good Business Description

Use your 200 characters well to describe your business in the About section. Use keywords and consider SEO

5. Check out Pinterest Statistics to see if Pinterest is right for your business.

Sources for this article
What’s Pinterest?
Pinterest Business Guide
Pinterest Guides / How to’s
26 Ways to Make Pinterest Work for Your Business
Pinterest Analytics
Get your Pins Noticed on Pinterest
The Marketer’s Guide to Pinterest SEO