Sharing is simple!

Pinterest makes it easy to share your products to your pinboard by providing Pinterest branded follow buttons for your website (to let users follow your boards on Pinterest) and Pin-it buttons (that let users pin your images to their pinboards). By putting these buttons on your site you’re letting your customer know that you’re on Pinterest, and encouraging them to share your products with the click of a mouse.

If you build it, they will link

Link building and SEO are key to increasing traffic to your site. Pinterest makes these two goals easier than the other popular social media tools because it embeds a link in the pin. Every time someone pins your product, you get a link back. It’s that simple.

Free consumer research

Don’t just fixate on your own pins, learn how to use Pinterest to do research on what else your customers like. For example, if you’re an apparel company, and you notice that all of your customers are suddenly pinning the new hot color, it might be time to investigate adding that hue in your next line.

Look also at other brands your customers like to find commonalities and opportunities to expand your offerings or selection.

Socialize

Try building community rather than just a customer base. Encourage interaction, by commenting on other’s boards, re-pinning things you like (other than your brand) and getting to know your followers. The goodwill you build on Pinterest with extend to your brand off of the social media site.

I’d love to read your tips how to use Pinterest to boost your business, so please share them below in the comments.

Here’s a question I received today during our webinar and I wanted to answer it because I know there are others who are wondering the same thing.

I am in direct sales (Stella & Dot jewelry) and there’s a lot of do’s and don’t's when it comes to this type of business and Pinterest. How can I use Pinterest?

Great question! As far as I know, Stella & Dot prides itself on using social media to drive sales to their stylists’ website and they encourage their stylists to use social media to promote their products! Check out this article on Stella & Dot’s social media efforts and strategy.

I checked Stella & Dot’s website and Terms and Conditions and I didn’t see anywhere they they don’t allow their content to be shared on social media. If they have a different policy for their stylists, I’d love to know about it (just leave a comment below)…

As a matter of fact, Stella & Dot has its own Pinterest account. You can repin their images to your own boards as well. And here’s a list of all of the pinners who are pinning Stella & Dot’s beautiful jewelry.

But the most important thing to keep in mind when using Pinterest (and every other social media network right now) is that the goal of social media is to create connections, to provide useful content and to create relationships. It’s not for constant advertising of one’s products. When you set up your boards, only about 20% of your pins should be from your own website. The rest should be repins or other pins that your target market will find useful and valuable. In your case, that can be fashion trends, spring colors, outfit suggestions, etc. Think about what your target market wants to learn or know about and create your boards around those topics.

I hope this is helpful for you! And for those who have not yet attended my FREE Profiting with Pinterest webinar, click here to sign up.

Are you selling wholesale and looking to get your products in more stores and boutiques? Whether you’re selling wholesale clothing, jewelry, baby products, accessories, bath & beauty products, home decor, or foods, read on to find out how to let buyers find you.

Where do boutique owners and buyers look for products?

If you’re looking to grow your wholesale business, you know how time consuming it can be to search for boutiques, find their contact info, reach out to them, attend trade shows, follow up & grow your wholesale accounts.
Today, I wanted to share a different strategy with you – let the buyers find YOU. How? By partnering with other companies who work directly with buyers and store owners to help them find products.

Here are a few of them:

• Wholesale Crafts – another great site for crafters and handmade products. They offer a printed buyers’ guide, co-op advertising opportunities and a yearly trade show. They’ll connect you with thousands of buyers at gift shops, art galleries, boutiques, eco stores and more.
• Sourcing Handmade – great for accessories, baby products, bath & body, mom-invented products, jewelry, paper & stationery and home goods that are handmade. You pay a yearly fee to be listed on their site and to be matched with buyers and boutiques.
• Buyer’s Best Friend – mostly for gourmet, natural and artisan food manufacturers, but they also have apparel, jewelry, housewares, pet products and bath & beauty products. They work with thousands of buyers nationwide.
• LA Showroom – for fashion-forward brands. They connect fashion designers (including kids fashion and accessories designers) with buyers. Their online virtual showroom is visited by thousands of buyers looking for new and exciting brands.
  

If you decide to become a member of these sites, makes sure to check with a few vendors who are already on the site and ask them what type of results they’re getting from being listed. Remember, you always want to check references, no matter who you work with. Selling wholesale has never been easier!

Should I mix my personal boards with my business boards on Pinterest or should I have two separate accounts?

Here’s my take on it: If you are using your Pinterest account and setting up business boards to grow your business, I would limit the amount of personal stuff on there, unless it’s relevant to your audience as well.

When creating your Pinterest boards, you need to keep in mind your TARGET CUSTOMERS first and foremost. You want your Pinterest boards to be about your audience’s interests, not necessarily your own interests.

Having said that, it’s ok if you have a board or two with your own personal stuff, but if it’s not related to your business at all, I would maybe create a personal account and put them there instead.

I took the plunge and created two separate accounts – one for my personal use and one for Launch Grow Joy.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to know – use the comments field below to let me know. Are you mixing your business and personal interests on  your Pinterest account?

Introduce your brand

Welcome your followers into your workspace by sharing photos of your business’s day-to-day. Highlight team members, new products and new ideas to truly connect with your users and help them get to know you.

Sell, sell, sell

While this tip may seem obvious, many Pinterest business users are missing out on the opportunities the site provides. Always link your pinned products back to your site so users can buy what interests them without searching for it. Including product benefits, highlights and prices too can help users decide they want what you’re selling.

Ask for input

Pinterest offers amazing opportunities for crowd-sourcing by letting your customers tell you what they want to see. Ask your followers to pin their favorite item from your product selection or ask them to like your already pinned product photos. This will tell you what your most popular items are and help you develop new lines.

Another great way to build Pinterest business is to have your followers pin photos of themselves using your product. Remember to ask them to include a keyword to help you track the images they post and to re-pin them to their own boards.

Pinterest-only discounts

Periodically offer your Pinterest followers a special discount code they can use on your site to save on their purchases. This lets followers know you appreciate them and encourage new followers to visit your site to make their first purchase.

Offer inspiration

Pinterest is an amazing resource for sharing inspiration, and one of the ways you can do that is to post interesting photos to start a conversation. For example, if you sell surf products, you can invite your customers to pin photos of their favorite surf spot to spark a conversation. Once people start pinning and talking regularly, you’ll see more people visiting your pinboard to see what’s new.

There are so many ways to use Pinterest for business and these are just a few. Share your favorites in the comments or let me know which of the one’s above worked for you. I can’t wait to see how Pinterest business users are making the most of this great resource.

More than 97% of the site’s Facebook fans are women, but Visual.ly estimates that of Pinterest’s estimated 12 million American users, more than 2 million are actually men. When you look at other countries, like the UK for example, more than half, or 56% of the site’s British users are men.

While men are just as involved with pinning fashion and décor collections in the UK as their US counterparts (both male  and female), British men on Pinterest are more drawn to entrepreneurial topics, blogging and web info like SEO, content management and analytics. Tech watchers like Website-Montioring.com believe that part of the reason more men are drawn to social site like Google+ over Pinterest is the Google platform’s integration into gadgets like smartphones and tablets.

If you need further proof that there are men using Pinterest, visit the pinboard of site co-founder Evan Sharp to see some stunning architecture photos, and yes, products he wants to buy.

The important thing to keep in mind if you’re interested in using Pinterest to promote your product to men, is that this social-sharing site is among the newest, but it’s build a huge following in a short time. If you use it to reach out to men on Pinterest now, you’ll be ahead of the crowd.

Are you one of the 2 million American men on Pinterest? I’d love to hear your comments on what you use Pinterest for.

What is Pinpuff?

Ok, so the name sounds a bit silly, but Pinpuff is serious stuff. Pinpuff is a young start-up that aims to measure a Pinterest user’s influence, reach and virality on Pinterest. It also assigns a Pinfluence score and monetary values of your pins.

Their goal is to help Pinterest users keep track of their pinning activities and suggest possible tips and strategies to get maximum results out of Pinterest.

For businesses, their goal is to provide an easy to use platform which can be used to create, manage and analyze your Pinterest related promotions/marketing activities and seamlessly engage Pinfluencers.

What is Pinfluence?

Pinfluence is a score (mine is 46, see above) that measures your popularity, influence and reach on Pinterest. It also decides monetary value of your pins & traffic your pins generate. The higher your score, the more influence you have on Pinterest. That means that you have more followers and more of them are interacting with your content – liking your pins, repinning them and commenting on them.

That’s something you want because it means that your audience likes the content you are sharing on Pinterest and they are connecting with you. And the more followers you have, the more likely your content is to be shared.

How can you increase your Pinfluence?

If you want to increase your Pinfluence score, here are five things you can do right now:

1. Fill out your profile completely and use a keyword-rich description. For example, if you sell handmade jewelry, make sure your profile has the words “Handmade jewelry” in the description. That way others who are looking for handmade jewelry can easily find you and follow you. And the more people who follow you, the higher your score.
2. Add a Follow Me button to your website and a Pin It button to your product pages so that your web visitors can easily follow you and Pinterest and pin your products. For more info on how to do that, check out their Goodies page.
3. Search for and follow people whose interests are similar to yours so you can build up your following. Don’t wait for others to follow you – follow them first and hopefully they’ll follow you back. Re-pin their content, comment on their pins and start building relationships with them.
4. Implement the “TEN RULE” which I started doing last week and have seem some amazing results. What’s the TEN RULE? Follow ten new people per day, comment on ten pins, repin ten pins and like ten pins. The more you interact, the more your Pinfluence score will grow. You can set aside 15 minutes to do this and you’ll get some really great results! And of course make sure that those you follow, repin and comment on are things you’re genuinely interested in.
5. Create quality content that’s visually rich – this goes for any social media network, but it’s even more important for Pinterest. If the content you pin is visually appealing, others will be more likely to pin it, share it, like it and comment on it, all factors that will increase your Pinfluence.

I hope these five strategies will help you increase your reach on Pinterest, connect with more customers and grow your business. In the comments below, let me know if you’re using any other Pinterest tools and if you’re using Pinpuff, I’d love to know what your Pinfluence is!

If you haven’t watched them yet, check them out now. The information in them is priceless!

If you’ve watched the videos and you know that B-school is for you, here are some amazing bonuses that I’m offering if you sign up through my affiliate link by clicking here.

1. Get FREE access for three months to any two of my online courses (including Product Marketing Breakthrough and my upcoming course on Profiting with Pinterest) – $800 value
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This is over $3,000 worth of bonuses if you enroll in Marie Forleo’s B-School now through May 25, 2012

Here’s what you need to do to be eligible:

1. Sign up and pay for B-School now through May 25th through my link here (you can’t sign up through any other link if you’d like to be eligible for this bonus offer)
2. Email a copy of your receipt to launchgrowjoy (at) gmail.com
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That’s it. It’s that easy! But you must use my affiliate link here to be eligible. No exceptions made for anyone who doesn’t use this link.

Here’s the link to sign up.

Birchbox – Using Pinterest to Engage with Customers

Birchbox is a subscription service that sends beauty product samples to their subscribers on a monthly basis. The service started out as a beauty box for women, but they’ve recently added a subscription box for men.

Birchbox has almost 12,000 followers on Pinterest and they have pinned almost 3,500 images, including seasonal content, sneak peek at their monthly boxes, a gift guide and inspiration boards. But what I like most about their Pinterest account is that they are getting their customers involved. They have dedicated an entire board to videos of their customers unpacking their Birchboxes. Very clever way to get their customers engaged!

Whole Foods – Promoting an Organic Lifestyle on Pinterest

If you’ve ever walked into a Whole Foods market, you’ll notice that it’s not just about the healthy food – it’s about the lifestyle as well.  A lifestyle of wellness, health, entertaining and living well. They have been using social media with great success and they have seen a lot of benefits from it.

Whole Foods is using Pinterest to promote and focus on that lifestyle. They have over 28,000 followers to their Pinterest account and 800 pins.They have created boards around “super hot kitchens”, gardening, reusing, entertainment, green gifts, vegan recipes and are even boards celebrating Austin, TX, the place where it started it all. By creating boards based around their customers’ interests and lifestyles, Whole Foods continues to promote their lifestyle of health and wellness.

As you can see, these two brands are doing something right on Pinterest – connecting with their customers, which is what social media  is all about!  They have lots of Pinterest subscribers because they pin awesome and relevant images that relate to their businesses and that are relevant to their customers.

Next week you’ll get to hear about two more brands that are using Pinterest with great success. In the meantime, I’d love to hear about how you are using Pinterest for your business. Leave a comment below and let me know.