Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of months, you’ve certainly heard about Pinterest, a website that allows users to “Pin” images from websites into albums which showcase their interests, things they love or want, and places they’d like to go. Pinterest has become one of the fastest growing websites ever and recent statistics are showing that inbound traffic from Pinterest outnumbers Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter combined! Here are a few ideas to help get you going with using Pinterest for your small or medium sized local business.
- Create an album to spotlight your involvement and engagement in the local community with a “Places We Love” album.
An important part of being a local business is how ingrained you are in the local community. You can use Pinterest to highlight this aspect of your business. Once you’ve created an account you can add images from other local businesses that you are affiliated with or want to help spotlight. Add pictures from landmarks around town, images of your own storefront (from your own website, thus creating an inbound link for yourself), or pictures of ways in which your product could be utilized in the community. Your product or service needs to be supplementary to the community, or it will just appear to be shameless self-promotion and may be ignored.
- Spotlight community members with a “People We Love” album
A key aspect of community involvement is getting to know community members. Use in-store signage or your other social networks to find out which of your customers have blogs or websites that they would not mind having highlighted by you. Create an album of Community Members and start pinning pictures from these blogs and websites. They get increased inbound links and you are increasingly connected on a personal level with your community. Pin images from well established, influential or even famous community members as well. It all is just increased visibility for you.
- Showcase products or services specific to your industry
Become a source of information of what is hot and newly developing in your industry by creating an album full of pictures of new products, developing trends, how-to videos and things to come. You should already be doing this with your other social networks, but Pinterest provides a more visual way of doing so. You can use this as a “coming soon” album for you products or services you carry. Just be sure to update this album often.
- Show off new products or services with a “What’s New With Us” album
A small amount of self-promotion is ok, but make sure that this is not the focal point of your Pinterest page. You can use this as more informative, but not sales gimmicky. If possible, the best way to approach this would be to show OTHERS using your new products, or your new product being used or tested in the local community. These photos could be from your own website or websites of those involved in the pictures. If you can get photos of your product on the website of a local business association, that would be a great way to showcase your product and your local flavor, all while providing a link to the association’s page. The best thing about this is that you can see what your customer base likes and is interested in by watching them share, like or pin items themselves!
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Most of all, and most importantly, remember to be human. Make your page about your customers, about your community, and about engagement. The goal of creating a Pinterest page for your local business should not be to try to get direct sales from it, but to create a close knit collaboration with the local community that will lead to customer retention, brand loyalty, and a focus on your importance as a staple part of your customers’ community and your industry. Set up Pinterest with your Twitter account and you can extend your reach even further, especially if you’ve used the Twitter search function to find and follow (and hopefully you have been followed back by) people in your local community.
Have you used Pinterest? Do you find it to be as much of a “next big thing” as many people are touting it to be?
Also, be sure to check out some of the legal info about Pinterest and copyright, be informed- view here
Thanks for reading. Feel free to share feedback or share online.
Now go get your social on!
Rob Zaleski
Guest Blogger for Starr Hall
More about Rob Z-
Hi, I'm Rob Z! I am a fun loving, gnome-obsessed, coffee drinking, social media and theatre nerd. I currently reside in Austin, TX where I work for a company that helps small and local businesses succeed in managing their social media. I got to Austin by way of Canton, OH and Champaign, IL, where I earned a degree in Media Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I currently blog at robzie-blogzie.blogspot.com and you can follow me @robzie81 on Twitter. In my free time I love to take part in theatre, both on stage and in the audience. If I was allowed one super power, I would decline. I would abuse super powers, that is why I'm not allowed to have them.
I love what I do. I love the people I get to work with. And I love to see my clients dominate in the marketplace. It’s what drives me every day to get out of bed and take action to make things happen.
When I find others who share my passion for marketing and publicity, it gets me even more juiced up!
LEVEL Studios, a Rosetta company, is one of the best creative teams on the planet, with the technology and development to back it up. I’m thrilled to announce my new role as Associate Partner | Consumer Technology & Entertainment with LEVEL! I will be leading the charge for the LEVEL/Rosetta message on search and media strategy in the marketplace, and contribute to both big-picture strategy and front-line implementation across clients. In addition, I will be reaching out to clients with additional approaches socially for them to connect with their consumers in new ways.
And it’s a huge win for my existing clients as well!
Now they can have instant access to the very best for all of their online marketing and branding: a team and agency that would have taken me years to build on my own! Plus, I get to bring my decade-and-a-half of experience as an international publicist to the forefront of LEVEL’s Search and Media team and lead the charge as they expand into new market segments.
Of course, this new partnerships means a few changes to the way I’m doing things now. I have closed Starr Hall Consulting, and all of my consulting will now be through LEVEL/Rosetta. With my increased responsibilities at LEVEL, I will also be expanding my team at starrhall.com, finding the best of the best to bring my readers the most up-to-date research and advice. (See my post http://www.starrhall.com/guest-bloggers-wanted/ for details.)
What won’t change is: I am still me.
My WebTV show will continue, the launch of the new webcast is still on track for April 2012, I will continue as a regular columnist for entrepreneur.com, my book media and speaking tours and I will keep providing updated entrepreneurial and small business training products through my site.
Questions? Feedback? Please feel free to post here or email me direct.
About Level/Rosetta- READ HERE
Thank you for all of your continued support, site visits, conversations and just all around awesomeness.
To our continued success,
Starr Hall
Quick, simple and to the point, here goes:
1. Fiverr.com- get people to do some crazy yet creative things to get your message out there for just $5.00. With all of the online noise, now is the time to be creative, push the limits and fascinate your prospects and clients. Do the different!
2. Feedjit- know what people are doing on your site and when friends or clients visit you. The Feedjit Pro lets you see your visitor’s journey from beginning to end and understand how they experienced your site. You need to know who is visiting and what they are doing so that you know how to better market and communicate with your audience.
3. Pinterest- A “Virtual Pinboard”, jump onto the share movement, this is not just a trend, it is an online movement. With Pinterest leading the way, people are wanting to share more and more- the “products I want” or “things I want for my (wedding, home, car, child etc…). Another site that is gaining traction is Svpply.com as well as the Pinterest for men- Gentlemint.com
4. Kickstarter- Put yourself and or your business out there and get people on board creatively. KickStarter is a new way to find, fund and follow creativity. Yep- raise money for your business or new idea on this site. People will pay $20 to support a passion, cause or creative adventure. One thing on this site you need to know- if your goal is to raise $5,000 and you only raise $4,980, you do not get any of the money raised, it will be returned to the people donating.
5) Apps- Oh you knew it was coming, you now know it is here- you need to start looking at creating an app for your business. Your market connects first via mobile. Make it easy for them to engage, interact, play a game, see your products etc… It doesn’t have to cost a ton of money, check out these free app making sites-
As always, thank you for stopping by. Do you want to add any here- have at it, post and share away.
Marketing addict,
Starr Hall
There are about to be some major changes coming to Starr Hall LLC (announcements coming soon) AND that means I need to expand my team. Soooo, I have decided to open my site/blog up and have guest bloggers. All posts will be read and Starr Hall approved, you can be sure of that! If you are interested (or know someone that is), please email the following topic that you would like to contribute in/on as well as 100 word intro to yourself, your mission and experience. NO MORE THAN 100 words please, I receive over 500 emails per day, don’t have time to read 17 page novels. 
Support@starrhall.com
TOPICS: (all topics must be written/geared for business growth)
1) Mobile Marketing
2) Digital/Technology
3) Apps/Gaming
4) Video/Hologram
5) New Sites- Google +, Pinterest, Svpply, Gentlemint etc…
6) Online Advertising- Google adwords, Facebook, Linkedin ads and soon to be Twitter.
7) Blogging
Here we go!
Starr Hall
I know there is a lot out there on Facebook fan pages, however I felt there were still some basics missing with the masses, hence my latest column with Entrepreneur. It is time that you made some changes to your fan page. The features are changing daily- keep up with them and it is no longer about the “Likes” (actually it never really was).
Article-
As Facebook continues to enhance its fan page options, businesses are not only struggling to keep up with the changes, but they also are still trying to figure out how to brand and market their pages. Because of some of the changes, strategies you used just last month to increase your “likes” and interactions with fans may not be as effective.
Here are a few quick branding fixes that will make it easier for prospects to find you, as well as some tips on getting more fans–or what I prefer to call interested prospects.
No.1 – Brand the URL. If your fan page URL is still set with a bunch of numbers, you are making it harder for prospects to find you and missing out on a branding opportunity. Facebook recently lifted the requirement that you get 25 “likes” before you can name your fan page URL. Now, all you need to do is go to www.facebook.com/username and set your name in the URL, which is great for branding purposes and easy link referrals. For example, instead of www.facebook.com/1283743hreu818, my link is now www.Facebook.com/StarrHalldotcom.
READ THE REST OF MY ARTICLE/COLUMN FROM ENTREPRENEUR HERE
As always, thank you for stopping by. I look forward to chatting with you online (and off) in the near future,
Starr Hall
