Using Pinterest to Promote Your Small Business
So you've decided to venture into the uncharted territory that is Pinterest. Fortunately, the same basic principles of Twitter and Facebook success apply here. However, Pinterest boasts a unique set of tools that you can employ in order to maximize your experience. Read on for six services that will first help you generate a following, then maintain their attention.
Amass Followers
As with any other foray into the social media world, increasing the number of your Pinterest followers is crucial to expanding your audience—and, by extension, your customer base. ViralWoot is a great resource for boosting your follower count, as it primarily serves to network its users. This tool also features pin scheduling, post promotion, and a pin alert system that provides users with basic post-tracking abilities.Another effective tool for generating followers is Woobox, which zeroes in on campaign techniques. With Woobox, you can promote your business through “pin-to-win” contests, sweepstakes, coupons, quizzes, polls, brackets, and even photo or video competitions. Implementing campaigns like these will give your business attention and, better yet, get people excited about it.
Stay Relevant
There’s no point in having a Pinterest account if you aren’t using it regularly. This element is twofold—posts should be consistent, but they should also tie in to current popular content. Viraltag approaches follower engagement with this idea in mind, providing users with a stream of postable images customized to the individual brand’s interests. This tool also comes with a pin scheduler, so users can ensure the selected images will go live at an optimal time. There’s even integration for Dropbox and a few other services if you’d like to view your curated content on the go.Piqora is another great resource for content discovery. This service features a high-quality, multi-network UGC search engine and makes acquiring image rights an easy process. Like Viraltag, Piqora also comes with helpful pin scheduling and data analytics. Notably, this tool features additional options for Instagram compatibility.
Track Your Progress
The smartest Pinterest users identify the reasons behind their popularity and continue to implement the techniques that generate that success. Tailwind, easily one of the most comprehensive Pinterest management tools around, is great for monitoring your progress. An excellent fit for the ardent marketer, Tailwind provides detailed analytics for everything from follower growth to pin performance and even allows you to see how you measure up to the competition. You can use this tool’s wide variety of resources to follow conversations about your products on Pinterest, track campaign success, and more.If you’re interested in something a little more basic, PinAlerts is a simple notification tool that may be up your alley. This handy resource just lets you know when something is pinned from your website. These notifications give you the ability to identify and personally interact with users who are interested in your brand. In short, PinAlerts makes it easy to pinpoint your most popular content as well as the people who like it.
Integrate
Connecting your Twitter and Facebook accounts to Pinterest early on will further unify your online presence. If you’re interested in consolidating and simplifying myriad social media efforts, click here to read about 10 great tools for general social media integration.