New South Wales-based, customised furniture brand Evolvex has also been active on Pinterest for six months.
Founder Priyanka Rao says Pinterest is a godsend for online retailers, saying Twitter’s big drawback is that you can’t post images.
“Like Twitter and Facebook, you can track “hearts” (the ‘like’ equivalent) on the site, with people commenting and re-pinning, which shows on their board,” she says.
“I like it because it’s very trackable. The idea is to put up as much content as possible, as most people are interested in curating and re-pinning. They don’t want to put the effort in to look for cool content, so there is a real opportunity for brands willing to make it easy for them,” Rao says.
“If Pinterest ever went into videos, then I think YouTube would have something to worry about.”
Cotton says, as with most social media platforms, much of what you get out of Pinterest will depend on how much you put in.
He recommends businesses invest in professional, eye-catching photos for your business and take the time to link each one through Pinterest with a Tweet-sized piece of copy.
“Not every click on an image is going to result in a purchase,” he says.
“The best way for small businesses to take advantage of this is by designing images and wording that appeal to the female audience.”
Cotton says Pinterest’s sudden success is due to a shift in focus that’s been taking place across the web for the last couple of years.
Peer recommendation and contextually relevant stories are now king when it comes to providing trust ratings, he says.
“With the advent of single-purpose mobile apps, consumers have become more comfortable with sites and services that offer a particular niche while also remaining linked to their greater communication nexus,” Cotton says.
“It’s less about consumers finding products and services they want to buy, and more about consumers curating streams of information so that products they’re interested in find them,” he says.
Top tips for using Pinterest for business:
