Pin what? Pint?  What the heck are you talking about Karen?   Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies, and more. Users can browse other pinboards for inspiration, ‘re-pin’ images to their own collections or ‘like’ photos. Pinterest’s mission is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting”via a global platform of inspiration and idea sharing.

Great.  So what?  Who has time for this and what does it mean to my business?  Women are the top users of Pinterest, in fact 83% of users in the United States are women.  What do they pin?  Pictures of food, clothing, pets, gardens, boots, shoes…things they want, and things they have.

If your store sells jewelry, clothing, boots, hats, household items like candles, furniture, pictures, animals then yes, you should have a Pinterest Business account.  It’s free, there is no charge and our team is setting them up for many of the stores.  And they’re driving business to the website and driving folks into the stores!

Last week an email came across from a lady inquiring about a dress she saw posted to a clients Pinterest board.  She wanted to know what size the dress came in and how much it was.  She called the store and found out the details.  She said it was perfect for an upcoming Christmas Party.  That lady hadn’t been in the store before, but you can bet she was interested!

Tracking Pinterest traffic via the website we find stores with clothing driving more traffic to their website via Pinterest than Facebook!

Red Mango Marketing is setting up Pinterest Accounts, more than likely we’ve already set up your Business page.  We’ve also added a social share plug-in to your websites so folks can “Pin” photos they see on your website directly to their Pinterest boards.  And we have created boards for your store, each time we receive a new photo of an item we “pin it” to your board, along with the website domain name and store phone number so folks can find you to follow up.

What do you need to do?  Take pictures of new items coming into the store and put them in your dropbox…or call your account manager for help.  Ideally we should have new content to your boards every week.  New content drives more followers.  Once we have a few followers we can run Pinterest Promotions, like “Pin It to Win It”.  Remember, it’s not just clothing.  Gardens, vegetables, pet photos are also very popular on Pinterest.  Stores can have multiple boards.

Tractors, trailers, hardware….not so popular.  Why?  Pinterest appeals to women and most of the items listed here, well don’t appeal to this demographic.  Doesn’t mean we won’t try it!  There’s always someone who may pin it, we have a client whose Windmill Aeration products were pinned to a board!

Talk to your account manager about Pinterest and how we can get your store driving more traffic to your website and store.