Pinterest: For Service Businesses

I’m a big fan of Pinterest and in a post on it to a group over on Linkedin I was asked:

“Do you have some examples of using Pinterest to market a service?”

I made a quick search and came back with these examples. 

Service Businesses Using Pinterest
This is a building company that provides new building renovations, new homes and home maintenance. 

This is a new one I set up for my coaching (my personal Pinterest board is more expansive with a wider range of topics covered on boards)

Here is a legal firm 

This is a new one by an accountant firm 

This is a female plumber 

This is an architect 

This is one I set up with a home theme and example that would work for anyone in the building and decorating or styling industry - Dream Home

This is a tour guide company

This is a dentist 

This is a hair salon 

This is a mortgage broker 

As I went looking for examples a few came readily to mind since I know the businesses personally. What was striking was how few businesses are making good use of this fantastic resource to stand out from the crowd and show some of their personality and importantly – understanding of the topics that are important to their customers and network.

Pinterest has a lot of uses that can help business with curating their online content and effectively bookmarking and sharing information that is useful in one’s own business – and for customers and other members of the community in which one resides.

Business has to be more than one dimensional. We don’t work with “customers” our customers are people and they all have interests and needs, and aspirations that Pinterest can help us learn more about and understand. The more we know about our customers interests the better we can serve them. Pinterest is fantastic for uncovering topics of interest we didn’t even know we had!

Sharing them can be very powerful.

Just opening a Pinterest account is not enoughLike any social media platform just having an account is not enough. It needs to be active and have something interesting to say. People follow people and that means following those people on Pinterest who have good habits of pinning stuff that is a match with your interests that you want to share.

When you understand the personas of your client segments then this becomes much easier to fathom how to make your selections of which boards to follow. Sometimes you might want to only follow particular boards – for example, someone might have a lot of craft boards that are not what you like but they also have a good board of quotations, so you might follow that. Keep in mind a lot of people pin quotations that are just bad thinking so pick well.

The other aspect that many who are using Pinterest have still not yet mastered, is to make their account work for them to drive traffic to their website. You can repin other pins but it is important to also use your own blog posts and articles that showcase your expertise, and optimise these for SEO and link them back to your own website.

Think Niche
Pinterest is a great place to find out how to do things. How to learn things, how to save money, how to discover new things you didn’t know about. Great for planning trips, or creating boards for a vision or setting goals, or getting some inspiration on what things you might like to set for goals later.

It is the ultimate window shopping platform that you can “buy” things on without spending money and research against other things in the market. You can save your finds and refer back to them later – and Pinterest will even notify you if something you have pinned with a price, comes on sale.

And remember, the more niche the interest – the more popular it will be with people who love that topic and find it hard to get good information and resources on it.

Work Out A Strategy For Using Pinterest

Again, just like other social media platforms, a business needs a strategy for making the most of Pinterest.

Spend some time and get help you need to get started the right way. This should be just a part of your overall marketing plan that incorporates your online activity.

While a lot of what is typically pinned to Pinterest is cooking recipes and handy crafts ( all good skills that can save you money and be useful), it doesn’t  have to be just about nail polish and fitness articles.  Pinterest boards can be just as easily set up for historical notes for academics, stock market monitoring, investment education, sales training, business development, the list is endless and the only real restriction to how useful it can be is our imagination.

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Lindy Asimus
Business Services, Coaching and Social Media Made Easy.
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