Pinterest Tips to Grow A Business From Just A Mom With 24K Followers

Growing my Pinterest followers to 24K has been easier compared to explaining to others about how I have done it.  Indulge me today as I am passionate about a variety of topics and sharing Pinterest tips for the business-minded is one of them.

Pinterest Tips to Grow A Business

I can safely say that businesses in general have been slower about taking the Pinterest plunge.  Though that has changed somewhat this past year because Pinterest offers business accounts, some businesses are still slow about joining or are making very basic mistakes.

Sharing some dos and don’ts today, I hope to inspire you to take the Pinterest plunge for your business.

Secrets of Successful Pinners

I know you have heard the saying by John Maxwell that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. 

That is not just motivational hype, but should be the underlying motivation for every pin you pin.

It is especially important when you are a business though because you have one chance literally to grab a prospective Pinterest follower when they land on your page.

Oh they make poke around your page, but what you want them to do is to follow you and make your brand or product part of their everyday life.

Connecting a prospective follower with a useful and hopefully inspirational way to use your product is paramount.

In the beginning when you set up your account, avoid pinning just your products on a board.  Let me repeat that.

Avoid pinning just your products on boards when you start up a Pinterest business account.

When a Pinterest follower sees only your products on your page, they are not engaged.

They don’t want to be sold to, they want to be informed, inspired, and influenced. Not pinning your individual products immediately may go against any business 101 class on selling that you may have taken, but then again Pinterest is about demonstrating your product not just displaying it.

Mixing in beautiful images that inspire with your products is key to a growing Pinterest page.

Give your potential follower a reason to care and demonstrate how your product will change their life.

Will it make them more beautiful, slimmer, healthier, easier to teach their children, streamline their time, save their sanity, how to manage debt, save them hundreds of dollars when planning their wedding, make their skin glow or avoid meal planning stress?

Using Pinterest not as a products display page, but as a demonstration page will pique the interest of potential followers.

5 Woo Me Ways on Pinterest

Because you are the expert on displaying your product, it is also up to you to help your readers discover your content.

How can this be done? It is easier than you think.

Think about your product being part of a recipe.  I love to cook and my kids love pizza.  If my product was cheese, displaying it alone may not be very tempting.

Displaying ooey gooey hot melting spicy cheese over a thick crust New York pizza for this Texas girl would have me smacking my lips ready to buy that cheese and cook that pizza tonight.

The most basic principal of advertising which is how the product can be used and useful for the consumer is no different on Pinterest.

Check out this list of 5 Woo Me Ways on Pinterest

• Post high quality pictures of your readers using your product in their everyday life.  This is quite different than pinning your product alone which may not garner interest if a follower is not familiar with your product.
• Does your product lend itself to a list?  For example, a recipe is just a list.  The list could be anything such as a must-have list for summer vacation if you are advertising sun screen, or summer wear, or a summer drink.  Prepare free lists in a high quality picture format and share them.
• Can you add the Pinterest button to your newsletter or website so that readers can pin your content onto their pages?
• Diagrams, illustrations and how-to guides are big hits with people looking at ways to better use your product. Avoid the thinking that by sharing other people’s content that you are giving your competitors an edge. Obviously you are not promoting a competitor’s product by sharing a visual picture or note worthy article in your field that would educate, inform and draw in your follower.   Another win win for your efforts is that those images become evergreen content that is pinned again and again.
• Because the face of the American woman, which is the largest audience on Pinterest {be sure you read my post How to Grow Pinterest From a Few Hundred Loyal Followers to Thousands to understand your audience} is changing as they are becoming real DIY and out of the box people, pins about how to use your product in creative ways can go viral too.

I have never studied marketing strategy, but I do know that your pins and Pinterest boards are like creativity in action.

By using Pinterest to demonstrate your product in many different ways besides the price, gives its value.  Growth follows value as you set yourself apart from your competition.

Does your business dare to take the Pinterest plunge?

If you are a blogger and want to grow your blog as a business, then checkout iBlog Pro for more of my Pinterest tips.