As a small Business owner, you likely understand the importance of getting your name out there through social media. Maintaining a Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter profile allows you to engage with your customers, get feedback, and drive additional sales. For many small business owners, social media is their main point of contact with their clients. Despite how essential social media has become, many small business owners are overlooking another important platform: Pinterest. You may think of Pinterest as more of an image search application than social platform, but it continually drives website traffic and purchases for large and small business owners alike.

For getting your business services or products in front of the right people, It’s important to utilize every platform available to you, including Pinterest. Keep reading for insight on why Pinterest is a great platform for small businesses and how you can create your Pinterest Profile today.

Why Pinterest Works for Small Business

Pinterest isn’t only for bloggers and creatives to create mood boards — 250 Million people use pinterest every month, and almost 90% of Pinterest users use it to make purchase decisions. They aren’t just pinning things they dream about, they’re using the images shared on the site to help them decide what they’ll buy. This can range from decor items, to recipes, home DIY, and fashion. If it’s something you can photograph, it likely has a board somewhere on Pinterest.

Since so many people are using Pinterest to make purchase decisions, this means that 97% of monthly searches on the platform are not branded. Users on Pinterest are therefore very open to discovering new brands. This helps to make Pinterest a great platform for smaller businesses and brands, who would otherwise struggle to compete against more recognizable brands.

This effect is coupled with Pinterest’s search algorithm. While ranking on Google depends on the quality of content, relevance, the number of referring domains, and the authority of the website, Pinterest removes an essential aspect in their ranking factors. The authority of the account pinning an image does not impact rankings. So as long as your content is relevant and high-quality, your content has just as much opportunity to be seen as other larger businesses.

Pinterest also offers strategic advertising options for those with a budget. While organic shares do drive traffic, studies have shown that 50% of users make a purchase decision after seeing a promoted pin. You can get the most bang for your buck by targeting relevant demographics.

Who Are Pinterest Users?

At this point, you may be wondering: who can you reach on Pinterest? Of the 250 Million monthly users, 81% are Female. Though the platform is trending towards a more equal distribution, as 40% of new users are male. As might be expected, the users also tend towards the younger ages. Millennials use Pinterest as much as Instagram. It makes sense, since both platforms are driven largely by visual content.

Despite the fact that the platform tends to skew younger, the users still have plenty of purchasing power. In fact, 40% of users have a household income of over $100,000. Since 2/3rds of pins represent brands or products, this means that those using Pinterest are incredibly open to purchases, and have the means to make them.

How to Set Up Your Pinterest Profile

If you’re convinced that creating a Pinterest profile is what your business needs, then it’s important to learn what makes a great Pinterest profile. Despite the fact that Pinterest is still somewhat underutilized, there’s still plenty of competition for every valuable market. There are three areas that you should focus on:

1. Optimize Your Profile Page

When creating your actual profile, you should make it easily discoverable to your target audience. Just like with most other social media profiles, it’s important to fill out the “About me” section. Be sure to include relevant keywords in your market in order to show up more often in searches. If you’re familiar with Instagram’s hashtag feature, Pinterest uses a similar system to help users find the content they’re looking for.

Another important thing to consider when creating an account, is whether you want to create a regular or business account. There’s no real downside to creating a regular account, but with a business account, you’ll gain access to additional marketing education, as well as audience and performance insights.

2. Make it Easy to Post

With likely more than one platform to post on each day, it’s essential to make sharing and posting as easy as possible. One way to do this is through optimizing the content you share on your blog. To do this, you should include shareable formatting for any images on your site, which can be shared  by other users on Pinterest. To make it even easier for others to share your content, you can include Pinterest share buttons that appear when the user scrolls over your images.

In addition to tailoring your content to Pinterest, you should consider using a post scheduler. For any business owner serious about generating traffic and leads on social media, regular posting is essential to grow your audience. One of the easiest ways to maintain a regular posting schedule is to use a tool that allows you to create several posts for the week or month, and posts them for you on the correct day automatically. You’ll need to do your research on which is right for you, but it can make sharing regularly much easier.

3. Create Great Content

As with any successful marketing strategy, it’s essential to create content that is appealing and exciting to your audience. For Pinterest, you should spend some time on the site to understand what kinds of posts do best. These are usually either visually beautiful, or are informative. If your business doesn’t necessarily lend itself to visually compelling posts, that’s still okay. 30% of Pinterest users want to see pins with links to more information. If your content is interesting, or solves a problem, chances are users will click through to learn more.

Pinterest is a great way to reach an engaged and receptive audience, without changing much about your content strategy. Pinterest allows users large and small to them to compete alongside each other, making it an ideal platform for small business owners. To learn more about how to set up the ideal Pinterest profile, take a look at this infographic by Fundera:

Mastering Pinterest for Small Business owners

Related:

The Quick and Dirty Guide to Pinterest Marketing

What Pinterest Analytics Tells You About Your Audience

6 Ways to Get Pinterest Traffic To Your Website

The post How to Setup the Perfect Pinterest Profile for Your Small Business appeared first on Brian Manon.