50 Top Tips & Best Ways to use Pinterest for Business

What is pinterest?

“Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.”

That’s their spiel. But as I see it, there’s way, way, way more to it.

When google analytics showed me that pinterest was now the # 1 referrer of traffic to my Facebook page in just 2 weeks, ahead of even this website, I KNEW it was gold.

It has huge potential for small business owners, self employed people, big business, brands, solopreneurs, bloggers, coaches, pretty much … everyone. How? Let me count the ways.

Here are 50 ways small businesses and self employed professionals and creatives can market using pinterest:

1. Sell your products and services
2. Build interest and awareness about upcoming events, services, products, branding etc
3. Offer discounts to pinterest followers
4. Hold contests for your business
5. Promote your upcoming book in storyboard form (or get ideas for writing)
6. Create a visual representation of your business
7. Establish your expertise, go-to-ness and helpfulness by sharing useful, valuable information
8. Make different boards for different topics to segment your audience so people can choose what they want to follow instead of having to follow all your boards (good for targeted followers)
9. Create and build your community in 5 ways
10. Get inspired, motivated and creative
11. Do market research for new product ideas
12. Ask questions and learn new things from those in your field
13. Build your brand by showcasing your blog and website
14. Share tips and images relevant to your industry (even if you haven’t created them yourself)
15. Create your own images and imbed urls in them
16. Collect valuable resources for clients and readers
17. Collaborate on projects
18. Find images and infographics to use in your blog posts
19. Connect with your tribe in a more personal way
20. Create videos and pin them on a special board (thus hitting the auditory AND visual buttons)
21. Add your pinterest url to your digital signature & in your ezine for more exposure
22. Brighten up the day with some funnies – regular happy breaks = more productive work
23. Increase website traffic! Link your pictures to your website or Facebook fan page and get new sources of traffic (pinterest is now the # 2 traffic referrer to my Facebook page, ahead of even this site!)
24. Use your keywords to describe these boards (yay, SEO)
25. Share your pins on your social media networks
26. Let your style attract your right people (esp if you’re a personal stylist, designer etc)
27. Redo your home office
28. Find things to do on a budget
29. Create tutorials and “how to” series via images or videos
30. Do reviews & recommendations of products people want, even if not yours
31. Inspire people - no matter what your business, you are always in the business of inspiration
32. Create a vision board and amp up your daily manifesting
33. Use interesting images to get peoples’ attention
34. Grow your community and network the right way
35. Showcase your portfolio
36. Find useful time management, productivity and lifestyle information (although to be fair, time management will go for a toss – it’s even more addictive than facebook .. but a lot more useful)
37. Use it like a search engine – search terms to find revelant information, get insights and ideas for your business
38. It’s a visual representation of real time trends just like twitter
39. Collect ideas for website design
40. Find and follow like minded people (comment on their pins & repin them to connect)
41. Share your favourite books, connect with your fave authors (interview them, learn from them)
42. Share travel destinations (great for travel bloggers, travel agents, destination home owners, bed & breakfasts etc), recipes (food bloggers) and so on
43. Share generously, not just your own content but that of others
44. Use it to shine and be authentic, it’s a powerful platform for you and your work
45. Give your boards interesting, simple, and descriptive names to make it easier for people to find and follow
46. Facebook is a social connection network, pinterest is about ideas, inspiration, design, visual appeal, and has a high aspirational aspect
47. Follow a few big names to get started, leave comments, tag people
48. Add the pin it button to your browser and pin anything on the web
49. Put a pin it widget on your website so readers can bookmark & share your posts and images on pinterest
50. Get intentional – are you looking to drive traffic to your blog, create awareness for your services, build a brand, connect with people, get ideas, share, or .. ?

If you found this post useful, please bookmark, pin, and share it with others, thanks!

• What other ways have you seen pinterest be used for business?
• Did any of these ideas help you? I’d love to hear from you!
• Oh and I have a handful of pinterest invites – if you’d like one, leave a comment below and I’ll email you one. 

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About Tia & Your Life YOUR Way:

Life Coach / Awesomeness Inciter + Inner Sparkle Activator Tia Sparkles offers tips, advice, community hug-a-thons to ignite your Inner Sparkle — that shimmery part of your spirit that says YES to courage + connection, and NO WAY to ‘shoulds’ + restrictions.

She loves Nutella, New Zealand, Yoda, & Sparkles.

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