Excerpted from the new book Entrepreneur Magazine’s Ultimate Guide to Pinterest For Business
Pinterest—as the name aptly indicates—is all about pinning images of interest to your visitors. The content you feature (your pins) and the way you organize them (your boards) are what define and promote your brand in your audience’s eyes. Here are 10 boards every business should consider in building their brand.
1. Boards That Are Tangential To Your Topic
Most brand boards speak to the obvious themes, subjects, areas of interest, and issues that are important to their clients and potential clients. But boards that aren’t spot-on with your business but are related in some way, can be a draw. For example, if you sell high-end stainless steel cookware, it’s a safe bet that your visitors are foodies, chefs, or cooks. While a board on party planning might not be directly related to your products, it is tangentially related and would be of interest to your audience.
For example: The Food Network (http://pinterest.com/foodnetwork/), features not only recipes but entertainment and holiday craft ideas as well—both of which are a natural extension for their core audience.
Their “Let’s Celebrate” board has both a Fourth of July pin for a strawberry rhubarb shortcake as well as several red, white, and blue tabletop decorating ideas.
2. Boards that Feature Feedback for Your Business
Thinking about launching a new service or product? Looking for opinions about how a particular aspect of your business is being received? Want to know what your customers like or don’t like about your offers or delivery? Try a virtual focus group by creating a Pinterest board that allows you to test what your target market thinks. Brand managers can post and pay attention to what is getting liked, repinned, and commented on, then pivot as needed.
3. Boards that Promote Upcoming Events
If your business is hosting a training, meeting, or upcoming event, create a board that introduces it to your audience. Some ways to promote the event without being overly spammy include pinning information about:
- The speakers
- Workshops and other educational breakouts n Sponsors
- Location and surrounding area
- Special events within the event
- Blog posts related to the topic of the event n Special offers for early registration
- Event photos and attendee comments
4. SAQ and SAQ Boards
You know the types of questions your clients are always asking … and you know the ones they should be asking—the SAQs. Create a board for each type, and use them as a place to send curious clients.
5. Boards That Showcase Your Company Culture
Generate greater customer engagement by giving your clients an inside peak at your business through a board or boards that offer a feel for your company’s style, ideas, projects, and commitments.
For example Whole Foods (http://pinterest.com/wholefoods/) has a board called Whole Planet Foundation that features pins of projects from around the globe that reinforce the Whole Foods commitment to sustainability, organic farming, and green in general, as well as inspirational sayings that reflect the company’s whole living message.
6. Boards that Provide Social Proof
According to Wikipedia, social proof is “a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation.” In other words, if it worked for the Joneses, it should work for me. There are several flavors of boards you can create that will help create social proof.
- Feature Your Customers Using Your Brand
- Create a board that shows how current customers are using, interacting with, and integrating your product or service into their businesses.
One way to do this is to ask people to send you photos of them engaging with your brand.
You can also provide social proof with boards that profile your customers.
A board that showcases who your customers are, what they do, and links back to their websites establishes you as credible.
7. Educational Value and How To Content
What learning can you offer your customers based on your business, book, or product? Boards based on “how to” information do very well on Pinterest. So if you have access to content (video or print) that can educate, inform, teach, or transfer knowledge to your audience, by all means create some boards around it.
The nice thing is that as long as the information relates to your business, it doesn’t even have to be your original content, so long as you properly credit it.
For example, Flourish Design Studio (http://pinterest.com/weheartdesign/) has a board titled “Wordpress Training” that features a whole series of pinned how-to videos on using WordPress, covering everything from how to create links to embedding video.
The kicker is that these videos were not created by Flourish but by a site called wp.tutsplus.com. Flourish has simply pinned them and given proper credit and a link to the content creator’s website.
8. Holiday Boards
Users are always searching for fun things to pin at the holidays, including things to wear, eat, create, do, and buy. Holiday boards allow you to capture some of this traffic and increase exposure for your brand by pinning relevant and timely images.
For example, Chobani (http://pinterest.com/chobani/), a yogurt company, has over 21,000 followers. Their “Holiday Treats” board features non-yogurt goodies users can make. Pins such as Mummy Meatloaf, Skeleton Brownies, and Shamrock Spinach Quiche all entice users searching for fun holiday foods to click on their profile.
9. Discussion Groups
Like an online forum, a Pinterest discussion group board features a designated topic for discussion and invites other pinners to weigh in with responses in the description box. For example, PediaStaff (http://pinterest.com/pediastaff/) has over 34,000 followers and 130 boards, several of which are dedicated to discussion groups. The School Psych Discussion Group hosts a board where they encourage school psychologists to talk about ideas or resources they see on Pinterest.
10. Ebooks On Your Expertise
Most companies are built around a particular expertise. A great way to share yours is to create boards that relate to eBooks (or whitepapers) you have written. The cover of your eBook makes a good image to pin since it makes it crystal clear what the user is looking at. Be sure to link the image to the page on your website where the eBook can be downloaded.
Before you even begin to bring new boards into being, it’s a smart strategic move to consider what types of boards would serve you best given your overall Pinterest marketing goals. The above boards are just a starting point in the limitless possibilities on Pinterest.
Karen Leland is the bestselling author of 8 business books including the recently released Entrepreneur Magazine’s Ultimate Guide to Pinterest For Business, which can be purchased at Amazon as a hard copy or kindle version. She is the president of Sterling Marketing Group, where she works with small businesses and Fortune 500 on building stronger personal brands for leaders and entrepreneurs and business and team brands for organizations. She writes the Modern Marketing Blog at www.karenleland.com.
Thursday May 16 – Educational Information for Pinterest – Reviews From Educators on American Muslim Mom Homeschool channel
Tuesday, May 21 – Does Your Profile Make a Good Impression on Kid Bloggers Club
Wednesday, May 22 – 7 Questions to Consider Before You Pin on American Muslim Mom
Thursday, May 23 – 10 Pinterest boards every business on Publicity Spark
Tuesday, May 28 – 5 Ways Authors Can Expand Their Pinterest Audience on Ebook Bestseller Journey
