Using Pinterest For Your Business

What to Consider When Creating Pinterest Boards for Your Business

Karen Leland, author of Ultimate Guide to Pinterest for Business, suggests looking into the following things when deciding to create a Pinterest account for your business:

Choose topics that interest your target market

• Create boards and re-pin pins that your target market wants to see
• Make connections between your product and the consumer:
• Example: If you sell high quality art supplies, chances are your consumers are artists, art students, or seriously enjoy painting as a hobby. You could then create a board with different famous artists' paintings, art shows, murals around the world, etc.

What is the educational value of the 'pins' or 'boards'?

• The best kinds of pins are "How To" and informational pins.
• Be sure to credit any videos that are not your own.
• Educating your audience will draw followers to you.

Have you gotten any feedback about your business?

• Similar to a virtual focus group, testing the waters on Pinterest with new products/services or new ideas is a great way to see how your target market will respond to it if/when released.

Think of your upcoming events.

• Create boards for information about your upcoming events like speakers and workshops.
• Re-pin pins about the speaker, sponsors, location, and other information that may interest your followers about these events.

Do you have new products/services being released soon or recently released?

• Pin things about the product/service like features, uses, and testimonials.
• Promote your new product/service with special deals.

Show your followers your company culture & employees.

• Giving your followers a peek inside your work area forms trust and a more personal bond.
• Pin pictures of the office and employees.
• Pin fan photos (be sure to get permission first).

Provide your followers with "social proof".

• Create a board of pictures or videos of testimonials and and your customers using your product/service.
• If people see other's using and enjoying your product/service, they will assume they will also have a good experience with it.

Encourage group discussion.

• If you give a brief description of the pin and also a question, this will help generate discussion and spread awareness of your company.
• Similar to an online forum or blog.

What kinds of businesses would Pinterest be perfect for? To what type businesses would Pinterest be of little to no help?

Response to Jade Brulotte

Johnson & Johnson's Reaching Out to Consumers' Emotions

Do you think that consumers will change their mind and trust after all of the recalls and lawsuits Johnson and Johnson has faced?

Johnson and Johnson is attempting to recover from all the recalls and lawsuits they have faced in the past few years. Their latest action is their new campaign, "For All You Love". The ads will be aimed towards consumers' emotions.

I'm not sure if these ads will entirely change consumers' views but I do believe that the ads will help. It is very hard for companies to recover from bad reputations resulting from recalls and lawsuits. Most people find it hard to see the company as trustworthy or reliable afterwards. In my opinion, I respect the companies that recall their products because some companies do not recall anything in fear of receiving the bad reputation and to avoid the cost of recalling the product(s), refunding consumers, and replacing/fixing the product(s).

I hope that Johnson & Johnson will be successful in gaining their good reputation back and earn back the respect of their current and former consumers.

Why do you think Johnson & Johnson decided to focus on consumers' emotions for their campaign? What kind of strategies are they using? What else could they focus on to achieve their goal?

Jade's post can be found here.