You may have noticed there’s a new social media darling in town. It’s called Pinterest and you’ve probably seen it popping up with increasing regularity on your Facebook feed in recent months

Pinterest has actually been around for quite a while and already has a user base of around 48 million. Interestingly, in the US the majority of the users are female aged 25-44 (accounting for 80% of its users) while in the UK the majority of the users are male aged 25-34. Female fans of the site tend to create pinboards of the home they dream of living in, or things they’d like to do, while the guys in the UK use it for blogging, marketing and SEO purposes predominantly.

Here’s how it works – you choose a theme or idea, and then simply ‘pin’ images that tie into that theme to your board. So it’s a great tool for planning weddings, decorating a room in your house or planning a new wardrobe. You can make notes, share your board with friends and followers and even re-pin things that other people have pinned to their boards – this is where the social side of Pinterest  comes into play.

How can you make use of Pinterest for your business?

Active involvement in Pinterest can be a great marketing tool for your business and attract new traffic to your website. Encourage pins on other people’s boards by adding a Pin button to your website, and find out if you’re already being pinned by searching for your domain name.

• Make sure your images are really eye catching in order to create a Pinterest buzz. Standard product shots won’t be enough to pique people’s interest and get them Pinning.
• Try and Pin on a daily basis – which probably won’t be too hard as Pinning can become pretty addictive! New things are added to Pinterest every minute so you need to make sure you’re keeping apace in order to stand out.
• Try and add a variety of things including pictures, videos, recipes and infographics – anything that will give your followers and customers an insight into the kinds of things you like, love and feel passionately about.
• Make sure everything you add to your board is informative but also entertaining in some way. Pinterst is a fun, social site so people will tune out pretty quickly if your content is purely informative or too ‘marketing’ focused.
• Try and stick to one main theme per board so that everything is relevant and well organised, but do add a variety of new Pins on a daily basis. This keeps your followers interested.

To get the best out of Pinterest you need to have time to invest in your boards, but the benefits are worth it. it’s a great way to build up a network and once you’ve generated a loyal following, you’ll have a ready audience when you have a new product or business service to promote.