Back in March, Pinnacle had just hopped on the Pinterest train and I wrote a blog post about how we’re using it as a promotional products distributor.
I read that post today and I started to think about how our presence on Pinterest has evolved since March.
When Pinterest first came out as another social media channel, I think brands were slower to adopt it. There was some confusion at first to whether or not brands actually could have a brand page. After a while, more and more articles came out toting Pinterest as the next best thing in social and brands started to find it advantageous (and fun!) to use it.
I think that as an ecommerce site, Pinterest works well for us. We’re kind of the perfect fit. People pin our products which leads people to our website. From the beginning, we’ve tried to be creative with what we pin, however. I’ve seen a lot of brands that solely pin their own content. I understand the thought process behind that, obviously they want to get people to their site, but honestly, it becomes one of the top reasons that I’ll stop following a brand. I mean, if I only want to see your new products, I’d just go to your website.
So, on Pinnacle’s Pinterest page, from the beginning, we’ve opted not to only pin our own stuff. We have several pinboards that aren’t items from our site.
Our “Not a Promotional Product…Yet” is one of my favorite boards. It’s comprised of items that are fun and would make a good promo product, but at this time, are not. Maybe they’ll never be or maybe some promotional product suppliers will get some good ideas from our board, either way, it’s fun.
We also have a “Promotional Products in Action” board which showcases, you guessed it, promotional products in action! While these products might not be purchased from us (or maybe they were!), this board shows off real life ways that people use promotional products. Hopefully some of our potential customers will get ideas here.
We have boards on both Social Media/Marketing and Creativity. At Pinnacle, we try to stay on top of all the current trends in marketing and art and find these boards helpful and interesting. Hopefully, some of our followers find them useful too.
As we’ve grown on Pinterest, we’ve found that the best way to showcase our products is to integrate them into boards that have both products from our site and products that are not on our site pinned. These boards are usually themed and our hope is that followers will find lots of idea on how to promote these particular themes from us. Maybe that includes buying something from our site, maybe it includes a fun DIY craft. Hopefully it includes both! Some of our themed boards including Promote Pink and Fall Favorites. As certain holidays approach, we are always adding new boards with new ideas.
And of course, we do have boards solely dedicated to our products, including New and Upcoming Promotional Products and Staff Favorites.
In the past six months, our presence on Pinterest has definitely grown and I think we’ve gotten a clearer picture of what our followers/customers like for us to pin. Maybe I’m biased, but I really think we’re doing a good job!
Check out our Pinterest Pagefor yourself and leave a comment letting us know what you think we could do better!
-Lee
Marketing Coordinator