Karen from The Media Mesh and I run a monthly series called She said/She said. Once a month we will cover the same topic on the same day from our individual perspectives. Sometimes we’ll probably have similar views, sometimes we definitely won’t.
We chose this topic because Karen has not been convinced on the merits of Pinterest yet and we can’t always be agreeing in these she said posts now can we? :)
I’ve written about Pinterest before, so for this post I am simply going to delve further into why I think Pinterest is worth spending some time with. If you haven’t read about Pinterest before, please go read my first post.
I mostly think that Pinterest is fun and a great place to find ideas on everything from food to home organization, and crafts to do with the kids to how to clean the grout in your bathroom. I will also say that I believe the primary audience of pinterest is women looking for these types of topics. Given that, I probably wouldn’t say a high tech firm should rush out and start trying to use Pinterest, but there are definite business uses I can see for the tool and I am listing several for you here.
Community/Support
If you have a membership, or a lot of staff that could share ideas with each other, curating a Pinterest account, or even just encouraging members to use the tool could be an great tool for people to help each other with ideas, tools, guidelines, etc
The types of professions I could see doing something like this:
- Teachers and early childhood educators (or daycare providers)
- Photographers
- Direct sales companies
Inspire people into needing your product
People are constantly looking for inspiration, for cooking, for their homes and for their crafts (to name but a few).
Create a Pinterest account for your business and start curating inspiring ideas for your customers. Some of them could be ideas that you’ve had, from a portfolio or blog, and others can just be things you’ve seen other people do.
A few examples of businesses I could see doing something like this:
- A fabric store
- A paint store
- A professional organizer
- A hair stylist
- A producer of food
Motivate
If you have a business that requires you to keep people motivated, curating a Pinterest board with motivational quotes and meaningful thoughts could be something your customers put a lot of value into.
A few examples of businesses I could see doing something like this:
- A life of business coach
- Weight loss/Fitness businesses
- Healthy eating businesses
Portfolio
A Pinterest board of just your work in certain field would be a way to share what you’ve done with your followers and potentially have them forwarded on.
A few examples of businesses I could see doing something like this:
- Photographers
- Event planners
- Cake decorators
- Graphic designers
- Fashion designers
There are many ways that Pinterest can be used for business (here’s a post about what some companies have been doing) - have you seen any interesting ones?
Now go see what Karen has to say! :)