Pinterest For Business - Is Pinterest right for your business?

Is Pinterest for your business? The BIG ISSUE you should know about

10.5 million unique visitors and counting.  11 million hits in a single week.  4000% growth in just six months.  How could Pinterest NOT be right for your business? Pinterest is the fastest growing social medium, ever and it's giving a new, exciting visual element to social media marketing. There's just one problem, Pinterest could do your business real damage.

First, Pinterest 101

Pinterest is a social networking place where you create a visual collection of things you love, called Pins.  It's designed so that people surfing the net can find stuff that they like and collect it together in one place, for others to look at and admire…and buy.  Pinterest takes social media addiction to a whole new level and they've cleverly made it easy to interlink with your existing social media strategy (through platform integration) as well as integrate a "Pin It" button into your browser's tool bars.  So, it has the ease and all the benefits of a social bookmarking app like Stumble Upon with the centralised "profile" features of other social media.  For you, that means a business owner's paradise!  Sound too good to be true?  There is a major issue that you need to consider...

Pinterest and Copyright Issues for Your Business

With Pinterest, the shares and likes come from what a user "likes' not necessarily what a user creates.  Users can share your content and receive full "Social SEO" credit for it.  Pinterest offers a dispute resolution process if you feel your content has been used in violation of copyright laws. 

Good "Pin Karma" involves sharing the source of all pins that come from third party blogs.  This gives interested visitors a link and potential traffic – however not everyone gives that credit (by either being too lazy to add the information or by downloading the pin and re-uploading it, taking credit as the originator).  As a result the original poster loses his or her own content and any traffic from it. 

 The best way to get around it is to share your great content first, include your web address or watermark on the actual photo and to protect yourself with author tags on the page where the original content appears.  That way it's repined from you, and carries your backlinking information and if there's any dispute, you're covered.

Worried?  There is a solution.

 If you're serious about not being pinned by strangers, you can add this code to the head of any page on your website: <meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" /> to your website.  If someone tries to pin your content, they'll get a polite "no" message.

Pinterest is Profiting From Your Activity

Anyone who has used hub sites or done reviews for popular products on Amazon will know about Amazon affiliate codes.  Pinterest certainly does.  While you happily pin cool books that you love straight from Amazon, any click throughs go via Pinterest's affiliate code, and the commissions are pouring in.  This clever little addition to PInterest coding means that they're one of the few social start ups in history to actually turn a profit from the start.  Such a clever young brand!

 The Epic Potential of Pinterest for Visual Products

Let's say you own an online shoe shop, baby clothes shop, graphic design studio, construction company, photography or hairdressing website….anything where you create or sell beautiful, visually captivating things.  Pinterest is your business's new favourite sales tool.  By pinning high quality photos of your work, you're inviting people to see your brand "up in lights" as it were.  In fact, the beauty of Pinterest for product based e-Commerce sites is that your boards link directly to your products.    One click from your beautifully presented and enticing board and they're on your site and ready to buy, book or enquire.

Potential for Professional and Non-Visual Products

Pinterest can still sell your product or services even if you don't sell eye candy.  Pinning infographic designs, industry pictures, topical information and quotes can position your business as professional and knowledgeable.  Pinning humorous industry based images can give your brand life.  The fact is, Pinterest delivers a high ratio of click through traffic, easy market research data and your ability to attach your link to your pins means every share gives you Social SEO goodness!  Pinterest is for every business, visually driven or not... just decide where you stand on the copyright issue first!