This article is aimed at Members who may not have joined Pinterest yet, or maybe you have a dormant account and aren’t quite sure what to do with it?
Pinterest began back in 2009 and quickly became a popular part of social networking. It began as a site where one could save or ‘pin’ favourite finds while browsing the Internet by creating mood boards, meaning you could refer back anytime and find everything in one place. Imagine your cork board on the kitchen wall where you might ‘pin’ favourite things, Pinterest is a virtual cork board!
Small businesses such as ours soon realised the potential for promoting their items on Pinterest as each item can be linked to your online shop. A click of the photo on Pinterest will bring potential new customers your way. The hard part as with all social networking is getting views for your pins!
Getting Started with a Pinterest Business Account
Pinterest has stated that anyone wishing to use the site for commercial purchases must do so through a Business Account with a verified website, many people are still using Pinterest for promoting via their personal accounts but strictly speaking this is against Pinterest T & C’s.
Go to https://business.pinterest.com and sign up for a free business account. If you currently have a personal account the link above will also enable you to convert to a business account. You may decide to open a Business Account alongside your personal one rather than converting, but you will start with nil followers and will need to build up an audience again.
Once your account is up and running you can create as many boards as you like, and move the boards around on your Pinterest page, you will have made a board for your own products, place this board as number one so if anyone browses your page that’s the first one they will see. The site will give you instructions how to add a ‘Pin It’ button to your tool bar so you can start building your board of products, if you are selling on Folksy or Etsy, there is a Pinterest button on your product page so that you can pin direct.
Group boards are an excellent way to become part of the Pinterest community. The Professional Crafters Guild has its own Pinterest group board, just request to be added to the group and you can then pin your products to the group collection. Right, so we’ve only covered setting up your account and boards, and adding pins, next time we will move onto how to use Pinterest in detail and how to make the most of it for promoting your shop.
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