Pinterest is an image-based social media website. The only posts that appear on Pinterest are images ‘pinned’ by the users. Think of Pinterest as a soft board where everyone can cut up and pin articles, images and photographs from the web or their computer. Pinterest is your online soft-board.
The difference here is that rather than your Pinterest board is public and can be seen by millions of other users on the platform as well., Provided you make your board public. You can also have private boards for your record and viewing as well.
Also a search engine
Pinterest is more than a social media website because of the way people use it. Since it is a place where people record and save information including videos, images and links to websites, more and more users of Pinterest use it to find the information that they are looking for.
The users of Pinterest are able to discover new information on the platform itself, which in this manner and purpose serves like a search engine.
How Pinterest Works
Whenever you come across an article or post that you want to save, you can simply ‘pin’ it on your board, provided that web page has an image on the page. 90% of the web pages do. Some blogs are Pinterest friendly meaning that they have a ‘Pin This’ icon right next to other social media sharing options like Facebook ‘like’ and Twitter ‘tweet’.
For the purpose of ‘pinning’ articles from all other websites you can install an add-on or extension for your browser from the Pinterest website. This browser extension will allow you to pin any image on any web page to your pin board with a single click. These images or ‘pins’ link to the webpage where you pinned it from. And you can add a small description to every ‘pin’ as well.
What is a Pinterest Pin and Board
After you have signed up on Pinterest you will want to start with the pinning. There are two things you need to know, what is pinning and what is aboard. Board on Pinterest is like a soft board you might create for a wall in your office or room.
A pin is any clipping that you might want to post on this board. The difference is that on Pinterest these clippings are images you have either found on the web or uploaded from your computer. For example if you come across an article on the web that you want to save, you can pin it by choosing to pin any image on that page.
The image will appear on your board and will link to the page you have linked it from. You can also add a short description to the pin. You can also upload pictures from the computer, from a URL and link it to any web page of your choice. This is the basic of how pinning works.
In this manner people can create a collection of webpages, articles and images that they want to save, for future viewing. They can also create different boards for ‘pinning’ different content.
Private and Public Boards
You can create as many boards as you like. There are two kinds of boards, private and public. You can see this option when creating a new board. Public boards can be viewed and followed by other users on Pinterest.
Private boards are for your eyes only. So for the purpose of promoting your crafts and art you will want to create a public board whereas for pinning research ideas you will probably want to create a private one.
How Pinterest Works For Business
Whats more, and what really makes Pinterest work for your business, is the fact that these pins can get viewed and shared further by other users. Popular and interesting pins get ‘re-pinned’ by other users several times. This is turn generates huge traffic to the websites the ‘pin’ is linked to.
On an average Pinterest is a larger source of traffic for websites than all other social media websites combined. This fact is true at the time of writing this and since the trend has been in place for some time, it is only expected to grow in the future.
You can use this massive traffic engine to get additional visitors to your blog and to your Etsy shop, or any other platform where you might be selling your art and craft. Many crafters use Pinterest and Etsy in a successful conjunction with each other.
Start ‘pinning’ to generate sales for your art and crafts
Pinterest is an image-based platform. People can not only pin images from websites but they can also re-pin existing ones. Every time that an image gets re-pinned, it is exposed to the larger audience. More people who might be following the ‘pinner’ see the image and if it interests them, they click through to the website it links to.
Images that get re-pinned can result in a lot of people clicking through to the URL of the website.
Usage of keywords in the pin descriptions further increases the discovery potential of your pins. People doing searched on Pinterest can discover your content better.
Highly trafficked and well know sites like Pinterest, eBay and Etsy are very well indexed by search engines. By using keywords on your pin description people can find your images through the search engine results. Since search engines give a lot of priority to these high trafficked websites, your content is likely to get indexed and ranked well, giving you great exposure in search engine results.
The reason why the Pinterest is getting so much attention from small businesses is that its growth has been phenomenal, faster than any other social media. And it’s growing bigger. It’s potential to get traffic to your website or your Etsy page is tremendous if you handle your campaign correctly. And unlike Facebook it is still mostly free to use.
Another article that you should read is about becoming a social media influencer. It is about using these social media platforms to generate income through them itself, without having any other business entity.
