6 Businesses that are Using Pinterest to their Advantage

Even if you've never used Pinterest, there's a high chance you've encountered it in one form or another: many websites will give you the option to 'pin' an image if you hover over it, while others will advertise their account along with their other social-media profiles.

In the past few years, the platform has continued to become a bigger part of the online world (with 100 million users and a reported value of $11bn), constantly adding new features and doing improvements that are reflected on a user as well as business level. The platform allows users to create their own boards for various reasons: perhaps brides-to-be like to collate images & link to their favorite dresses from multiple websites; perhaps amateur cooks like to pin pictures of recipes they plan to try someday; perhaps a family exploring their vacation options builds boards featuring images of places they'd like to visit to help in their decision-making process. This is where the connection between businesses and consumers happen.

As useful as Pinterest is in a personal way, it can prove just as beneficial to businesses of all sizes. While Pinterest is free to use, it also offers a service called DIY Promoted Pins designed to help companies connect with people more effectively, creating pins that appear in users' search/category feeds; this is charged on a cost-per-click system. Another cool feature the company rolled out are Buyable Pins. This feature allows users to buy products directly from Pinterest. 

Building and maintaining an active presence on Pinterest can help you promote your business in a fun, dynamic way. Unlike having to compose posts on Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest is all image-based, and when used wisely, can become a powerful tool in your online marketing campaign.

Looking for ideas? Want to start your own Pinterest profile to boost your company's presence? Let's look at six businesses using the platform to their advantage.

1) Nordstrom

With more than 4 million followers, clothing-retailer Nordstrom has made a real impact with Pinterest. With 64 boards – covering DIY, fashion, designer products, and decorating – they offer users plenty of rich, dynamic images, linking to countless of items. As part of their advertising efforts, the company engaged Boo the Dog, also known as the worlds cutest dog to spark engagement and followers. They called the board 'Boo Visits Nordstrom' and features images of the dog at Nordstrom as well as dog products. 

2) Lowe's

Lowe's has more than 3.5 million followers and provides users with more than 50 different boards, all offering tips on home improvement, grilling, putting your own man-cave together, and a wealth of other little essentials. Their Pinterest profile is continually being updated with countless images highlighting their favorite DIY projects from around the web.

3) Design Eat Repeat

Blogger Melissa Rose runs a site named Design Eat Repeat, and has created a vibrant, colorful selection of boards that showcase her professional design work (fantastic promotion for her talents) and her personal passion, baking. Her blog posts include the the Pin It button, which allows visitors to save the things they like onto Pinterest. This results in even more people finding them and clicking to her site. She blends her professional and personal interests & talents to ensure that any potential clients searching for evidence of her work will be able to get a tangible feel for who Melissa is, what she can provide, and why they may want to work with her. Rather than simply making this a dry, work-focused profile, she's kept it fun, dynamic, and well-organized.

All of her boards are clearly laid out, such as 'DIY and Crafts', 'Design and Photography Tips' and 'Cookies'; using clear categorization helps users find exactly what they're looking for when searching for specific topics. Placing the most important pins at the top of the page is key, as people may not scroll your entire profile to learn more. Grab them as quickly as you can! 

4) Popcosmo.com

Created by Kim Gordon and her daughter, Chloe (at the time only 15!), Popcosmo is a website aimed at a teenage audience providing information on the latest trends. They created a Pinterest board to showcase pinned images of fresh fashion, art, pop-culture snippets, and more. Creating content for Pinterest allowed them to find their voice and focus on organic reach. As bright, vivid pictures and videos give Pinterest users a highly engaging experience, Popcosmo's boards have garnered impressive attention, and their profile has helped generate more than 120,000 views per month for their main site.

This is a prime example of how knowing your audience and investing time to give them what they're likely to find interesting (based on Chloe's personal tastes) can boost traffic & visibility.

5) L.L. Bean

As such a well-known iconic brand, it's little surprise that L.L. Bean's Pinterest profile has more than 5.5 million followers. Besides having their boards neatly organized into various categories to ensure users find specific items, they focus on engagement to interact with their followers. The company set up a 'Your L.L. Bean Selfies' board for customers to submit pictures of themselves wearing L.L. Bean products in exchange for featuring them on their board. This message can then be announced across other social media platforms to garner even more attention and interaction. 

There are around 30 boards, covering the outdoors, gifts for all ages, weddings, and even woodland creatures – this latter board boasts almost 5 million followers! Besides focusing on interaction, another key aspect of their strategy is attention-grabbing photography. Their pictures display products laid out out in a unique way, include a pet (always a winner), or tell a story. 

6) Bob Vila

Bob Vila is an industry influencer in the home improvement industry teaching people how to renovate and fix their homes.  They have over 24k pins saved across their numerous boards – such as 'Bob Vila's How-to', 'Bob Vila's Tip of the Day', and Bob Vila's Picks - DIY Projects' designed to help customers undertake small, simple tasks to fix problems around the home. Their content got to this engaging level by trial and error, investigating what would work best for the company. They realized that in their industry, DIY and How-To content performs best.  

As part of their Pinterest marketing efforts, they also monitor their pinning activity with Pinterest Analytics to see which pins do good, which don't, and figure out what to post next. With a fun, lighthearted approach combined with rich, interesting content that users can actually learn from, Bob Vila's Pinterest account is an inspiration.

Hopefully, after reading about the above businesses, you have your own ideas on using Pinterest to benefit your business. As with all marketing methods, it's best to start small and simple: focus on creating a unique look and feel authentic to your company, and then pin content you believe will genuinely engage your target demographic. Over time, with enough creative thinking and hard work, your Pinterest boards could be pulling in millions of followers, and boosting traffic to your site!