12 Easy Steps to Branding Yourself on Pinterest

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Guest

A guest post by Sam Peters

How to Brand Yourself on Pinterest

You work hard to build your business. You take care of your clients and work honestly with your vendors. Isn’t is about time that that the world knew who you were? Isn’t it about time that your business, your brand, is talked about?

Your business’s brand can greatly benefit from Pinterest. Through your pins, repins and followers, you can generate interest, start conversations, and develop relationships with new vendors and potential clients all over the world. Through Pinterest, you can also notify your followers of your new products and services, point them to articles on your blog, feature products from other companies and promote new ideas. Pinterest allows you to promote your business by telling the world what’s on your mind.

Pinterest is easy to use. Small businesses like yours can easily set up a Pinterest account and use it to strengthen your brand. How can small businesses brand themselves on Pinterest?

1. Choose someone on your staff (or a team of staff members) to be the voice of Pinterest. This person needs to be strong visually and have skills in social media. (And it would help if they had the self-discipline not to get distracted by those cute summer shoes.) This person needs to have a complete understanding of your brand and have the vision for what Pinterest can do.

2. Choose your audience. Who do you want to see your brand? Other prominent pinners? Your local clients and vendors? Your brand can potentially be carried around the world. Follow pinners that can benefit you the most.

3. Write your Pinterest bio carefully. Your photo and bio are important players in your online presence.

4. Create pin boards with your brand in mind. Not only do you want boards that feature your products and services, you also want to feature pins that can benefit your clients, encourage your vendors, highlight your community involvement and show your altruistic interests. Your pin boards say to the world, This is what my company values. Make your pin boards interesting enough to inspire others to follow you.

5. Pin Carefully. Every pin has the potential of reinforcing or distracting from your brand. You found the perfect stools for the office kitchen? Pin it! When you pin this, make sure all of the links credit the original source. You don’t want your potential clients to go down a rabbit trail of nonexistent links.

6. Follow, follow, follow, but don’t get carried away. Follow and repin your vendors and clients when they pin something that fits you. This builds relationships and helps your brand gain momentum. Follow your employees too!

7. Don’t forget to search. Use Pinterest’s search engines daily to find mentions of your business, your products and items associated with your clients and vendors. Follow these pinners. Leave positive comments.

8. Don’t forget self promotion. Pinterest is the perfect place to offer coupons and discounts to followers. But savvy pinners can smell a scam and a hard sell. Be clear and generous and don’t require new customers to jump through too many hoops to find you.

9. Coordinate your pins with your LinkedIn account, Facebook page and your Twitter account. Ideally, those who like and follow you on those sites will follow you on Pinterest too. All of your social media has the potential of maintaining your online image well if you keep it consistent.

10. Encourage your employees to follow you and to repin for you — if they are consistent with your branding. It’s likely that their online relationships can develop into followers for you.

11. Don’t forget your competitors. Are they using Pinterest? Follow them (maybe discreetly) and find out what they’re doing. They may have a good idea worth borrowing.

12. Be patient. The long term effects of having a Pinterest account is hard to measure. But like all social media, Pinterest is about relationships that reinforce a positive online presence.

Pinterest is a lot more than collects of funny sayings about Mondays or links to the cute shoes for the summer. It is a worldwide visual pinboard of art, design, crafts, products, ideas and images that the world shares with each other. Pinterest is the perfect way to use and develop your brand so that you can grow relationships online.