Six Advanced Tips That Improve Your Business Performance on Pinterest
From Secret Boards to Ideas Pins, there are some features that richly distinguish your business from others.
Pinterest is a powerful, visual-oriented platform for consulting businesses. I have found great value for both of my businesses by using Pinterest as a low-risk, high-reward tool. These are a few advanced tips for using Pinterest as a viable platform to improve your consulting business performance and brand management.
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest describes itself as the visual inspiration platform people worldwide use to shop for products personalized to their taste, find ideas to do offline, and discover the most inspiring creators. Their mission is to inspire everyone to create a life that they love.
Pinterest admits that it is different. Pinterest promotes itself as a creative space for people and ideas without the pressure to be perfect. The focus is on ideas rather than engagement (likes) from others on the platform.
Pinterest employs various image recognition technologies to help users discover and save images that match their interests and preferences. Their industry-leading algorithms and associated deep learning enable Pinterest to understand the content of images in great detail. In turn, Pinterest can provide accurate search results and recommendations for businesses participating in the platform.
My Businesses That Use Pinterest
Both my primary business and a not-for-profit business use Pinterest. In 2023, both entities moved from a sleepy Pinterest presence to a more aggressive one.
JD Solomon Inc
Branded as JD Solomon Solutions, this company is a management consulting firm that practices across the United States. Our niche services are program development, asset management, and facilitation for facilities, infrastructure, and the natural environment. Essentially, we pull together highly technical aspects where problems contain a lot of complexity and uncertainty. Our business is built on reputation and relationships.
Communicating with FINESSE
Communicating with FINESSE is a not-for-profit community of highly effective communicators and facilitators. Our goal is to teach and train the next generation of knowledge workers to be superior in using soft skills. CWF offers publications, webinars, and publications — both free and paid.
Insider Tip for Businesses on Pinterest
1. Re-Use Blog and Other Social Media Posts
Pinterest is a visual platform. Texts associated with pins are limited to 500 words but encourage you to provide a key link to your product or service. Re-use your image, re-title the Pinterest post, and use some of the core language from the original post. And, of course, use Pinterest to point the captivated viewer to where they can find your products and services.
2. Use Secret Boards
Pinterest allows only you (and anyone you invite) to see your secret boards. Secret boards will not appear in your home feed, in search, or anywhere else around Pinterest. Creating secret boards to save pins allows you to test them before releasing them or keep specific project information available to only the internal team. We use secret or hidden boards for both purposes at JD Solomon Solutions.
3. Collaborate With Other Businesses
Collaborating on boards or inviting other businesses or consultants to contribute to your boards is the way to effectively use Pinterest as a social media (people) platform. The powerful aspect of Pinterest is that collaborating is more visual than narrative, which lets all parties creatively share expertise and knowledge without getting into a destructive online debate.
4. Use Business-Related Attributes in Pins
Pinterest’s visual recognition tools scan your image to provide recommendations to other people and businesses. Make sure the image features the products or services that you offer. A visual that includes your team at a client site may be a powerful image, but it tells Pinterest very little about what you offer. Be sure to use a few keywords in the visual or inset images of manuals or books associated with your work.
5. Focus on Your Boards
Boards are like the aisles in a grocery store or the sections in a department store. They tell the users where to find your focused products and services. Creating boards with names that include popular keywords related to your consulting business can increase visibility in search results. Focusing on our boards was the single activity that dramatically increased our Pinterest views.
6. Create Idea Pins
Pins and boards are great resources for showcasing your core services. Idea Pins are videos that can be used to further develop your brand with inspirational quotes, images that represent your values, or your consulting team at work. JD Solomon Solutions and Communicating with FINESSE are still getting our Idea Pin journey.
Applying It
Pinterest is a powerful, visual-oriented platform for consulting businesses. Pinterest differs from other word-heavy or video-driven social media platforms, so it requires some understanding of its nuances. Use these advanced tips to improve your consulting business performance and brand management on Pinterest.
