Blog

Pinterest, long considered an irrelevant-to-business haunt of women who have delusions of Martha Stewart-hood, has been waging a battle against that perception for the last year or so. Now it has made its most aggressive move yet in its bid to oust Facebook as the king of social media- or more realistically, carve out a niche for itself as a respectable competitor.

While Facebook and Google+ have both been offering place search for some time, Pinterest is a late-comer to the game, only having begun offering the service, which it calls “Place Pins“, six months ago. In that time, however, the company has managed impressive growth, now boasting over a billion (yes, billion with a “b”) Place Pins, on over 250 million boards, in locations representing over 300 countries or territories.

Not content to rest on their laurels, however, Pinterest has upped the game, making the place-search process more intuitive and easier to use. The company already uses Foursquare for venue information (have you listed your business there yet?), and has now enlisted the services of Twofishes (an open-source geocoder also by Foursquare) to parse searches to separate the “what” of the search from the “where”. This leads to easier searches and better results, increasing the odds of users finding what they’re looking for and doing so easily and quickly.

What does this mean for your business? To put it simply, more visits to your brick-and-mortar store. Users can take pictures (for instance, of a meal, or a cute new outfit, or a cool doodad) and pin it to the board, coupled with an address, a location on a map, and even other contact details. Businesses can also do the same. Think: a user can log in from their smartphone, look for boards that contain pins in the local area, and find pictures and posts from other people relating to the subject in which they are interested. They can find your business, and if they like what they see, they can immediately find the phone number and address, complete with a map directing them to your store.

Combine this with the ability of Pinterest to promote your business (both online and brick-and-mortar) organically, and you have what looks to be a winning combination. Pinterest is, in its very essence, a platform more amenable and designed for commercial use, in a way Facebook can only in its wildest dreams. Pinterest users regularly sharing things such as recipes, fashion finds, cool gadgets, fun craft ideas and the like with each other. While this may not translate well for every business, many enterprising owners will be able to shoehorn even unconventional businesses into this arena.

Not sure where to start? Don’t worry, we have you covered. At The Click Experts, we offer comprehensive social media management. We can help you establish and grow your business’ social media footprint, including building profiles, managing accounts, and making posts, all across a wide variety of platforms. We can even link those accounts to your business’ web site. Don’t have a web site yet? We can help you with that, too. We build custom pages, with attention to detail and prompt service. Our knowledgeable staff know the ins-and-outs of online business, and deliver professional results each and every time. To find out what we can do for you, contact us for a free quote.

Want to know more about using Pinterest? Watch this quick, informative guide: