Tips to Market Yourself and Your Business on Pinterest
Pinterest is a highly addictive and fast growing social media platform. If you don’t know yet, well, as Geico says, “what? do ya live under a rock?” Pinterest is a wildly popular virtual cork board to pin up everything and anything you may find online. From recipes and home decor ideas, to fashion statements, personal photos and… wait for it… real estate listings.
There are even web and seo ideas and of course business people to follow. It all depends on what you want to check out and who you want to follow. You can follow a particular board or someone’s whole profile if you want. For example, I am NOT into shoes and while I like this one follower I didn’t care about shoes so I unfollowed the shoe board, same with someone that only pinned baby things.
You can follow particular boards if you just want to know about those subjects or an entire profile of the person. YOu start to figure out what someone posts by the frequency of particular posts and then decide whether you want to keep them or not.
So how do you market yourself or your business on Pinterest?
Set up an account first. Done that? Great. Now set up boards. Not sure what to name them? Start looking around at things that interest you and repin a few things, you will quickly find that certain things fit into certain boards more than others. You can name the board after you repin (or while you are repinning) which helps figure out the genre better.
Once you have a few boards make sure they are into categories. If you are really new, you may not have any followers and the quickest way to do this is to make sure all your boards are in a category. You simply click on your name in the top right and click boards. From here you can click on a board and at the top of the screen it will ask you to place it in a category. By doing this your pin can now be seen by everyone that goes to that category, not just floating around in your own little world.
From this page you can also rearrange your boards. Once you get a good amount of pins up, arrange your boards with the most popular or more important boards first to last. This allows Google to crawl through the site knowing what you’re about more. This also helps those interested in following you a better idea of what you pin the most of.
Once you have repinned a few things you can venture out to pin original links. This is where it really gets good! From the home page you want to click the Add+ button at the top. From here you can upload a pin from your computer such as a real estate listing photo OR you can add a link from anywhere on the web.
Once you add the link (say from your website showcasing your new listing) make sure you put it into a board with a category and add text talking about the listing. In the text section you have 500 words but of course you don’t want to bog someone down with marketing blah blah blah.. so make it interesting. “Beautiful Ruidoso Home and Estate – FOR SALE” You may want to add your email or phone number or a simple web address. If you post the same on every pin people may start to unfollow you, so keep it interesting. I pin a lot of beautiful pictures of places that link back to the real estate site. Many times people repin because its somewhere they want to visit.. who knows, if they find you at every turn, they automatically think of you when the time comes to move there.
If you want to promote a listing or product with a price you simply add the price in the comment and it will splash it up across the product. It will then be listed in the “gift” section as well.
Once you get going you can create more of a name for yourself by commenting on other people’s pins, requesting to be a contributor on other people’s boards and encouraging others to contribute to yours such as agents in your office to your real estate board.
Utilize the Pin buttons. Under the about section you can choose several ways to add a pin-it button to your website or create a favorite button on your browser tool bar so where ever you are online, you click the pin-it button and it automatically pins whatever you want, wherever you want. (LOVE IT)
Find out who has repinned you and comment on the post, not pushy but in agreement or an answer to the way they may have repinned it.
Pin videos or virtual tours of your homes and again, make sure your comments are inviting and catchy.
Pinterest is a wealth of information and great marketing tool. Don’t be spammy but have fun and get your stuff out there!
Here are some great titles of boards for real estate professionals: (Use Your Own Area or Niche)