Pinterest is a bit of a dark horse when it comes to Social Media, there's no denying it's reach and scope but businesses often overlook it.
In fact we're so used to managing Pinterest accounts for clients that it was only this week that we thought 'we should probably be doing this for ourselves'.
We've just started an account to share things that inspire us and things we've done to inspire others! If you've ever wondered about using Pinterest for your business, but don't know where to start...

1. Act Professional
Purely in the photographic sense of the word of course! High Res images are far more popular on pinterest for obvious reasons. Being visually appealing on a visual based site is, well, kinda important.

2. Lighten Up
Interestingly lighter images are repined 20 times more often than dark ones.

3. This isn't Facebook
Images without faces get 23% more repins than those with. Pinterest is primarily used for inspiration, so it makes sense that we can more easily visualise a pin in relation to ourselves if someone else’s mug isn’t in it.

4. Optimise
The perfect pin size is apparently 736x1102 pixels. So there you go!

5. Share your Wisdom
Instructographics (a term coined by Pinterest) are essentially infographics. They are those great DIY/How To posts that we all love so much. If you have a product or service that you could create an instructographic for then do it! Don’t even hesitate for a moment. Do it right now!
They are so popular and so re-pinnable and great way to go viral, if it’s good enough!

6. When to Pin
It can vary depending on your target audience’s habits, but research by Hubspot says overall Saturday morning is the best time to post. Lazing in bed, enjoying the first lie-in of the week? Yeh, that’s probably when we’re lurking on Pinterest too!

7. SEO Strategy
Sound scary? It isn’t! You have to use the basics of SEO to make sure your precious pins are discovered by your target audience. You need to research keywords relevant to you and your pins. Once you’ve found the popular ones, add those keywords to your pin titles, descriptions, even file names.
Be careful not to just list a bunch of keywords, you still have to sound like an awesome brand people want to interact with, not just a keywords robot.

8. Call-to-Pin
Apparently posts with call-to-pins get 80% more engagement than those without. It’s like creating a call-to-action for an ad. Something as simple as saying ‘repin to your own dream home board’ will remind people to do just that. Instead of clicking through pins and thinking they’re lovely, but not actually doing anything with them. I'm very guilty of doing this...

9. Friendly People Make Friends
The simple but true fact. You need to engage your audience to build your following!
The three most important factors that enter a persons head when they’re deciding whether or not to click your ‘follow’ button are:
-the number of other people following you
-the number of pins you have
-the number of boards you’ve created.

Bit of a no brainer, what you'd expect right? But have you ever thought about why?
As with any other Social Media platform, what they’re really looking at is how active you are. We’re all so content hungry these days and why would we bother following a brand who doesn’t update?
Research shows to get more Pinterest followers you should post between 5-30 new pins every day! Remember this goes the other way too, you have to make sure you like, comment and reply to your followers pins. This isn’t a one way street hombre.
Don’t be afraid to be friendly to people you don’t know as well, see that really popular post with hundreds of repins, why don’t you just go ahead and comment on it...not for selfish reasons of course...

10. Think of Others
My final tip might not be obvious to businesses who use pinterest; don’t just pin your own content! Mix other peoples content in with your own, remember Pinterest is a social platform so you actually have to be social!
A great way to do this is with an open board, add users and let them contribute their own pins to your board.
It’s a brilliant marketing feature and builds a great community feel. Have a small business in a specific area? Create a board for your county or town and invite followers and people you know to pin to it; you can interact with your followers and network in your area, perfect!

If you want to browse our fledging boards you can follow us here.
If you live in Hampshire why not contribute to our Think Winchester board? Just follow & we'll invite you to pin!

We provide a variety of social media services from consultancy to full social media management. For more information just get in touch or pop into our Winchester studio for a chat!