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While many business owners are familiar with Pinterest and Instagram, many are scratching their head as to how they can be used to benefit their business. If you are willing to invest a small amount of time each week, you may be amazed at just how helpful these platforms can work for you – no matter your industry or target audience!
If you are unfamiliar either of these platforms, take some time to explore them. You will quickly discover that while Pinterest is similar to a personalized bulletin board where you can pin many types of information, Instagram is more like reading the headline of a newspaper. With the right plan of action, they each can be helpful to generate traffic to your website.
- Does your company have a blog page that is updated frequently? Then be sure to post a link and images to your Pinterest board(s). For best results, create a graphic that depicts what the post is about. Include numbers in the graphic whenever possible and be sure to link back to your website.
- Create a board with images of completed jobs or projects and explain to followers how to get similar results.
- Engage locally, think locally. Be sure to connect with local businesses – ideally several different ones each week. In addition, help promote community events by creating a community board and pinning pics of area events. Be sure to #hashtag your city and the event in any posts.
- Connect your Pinterest account to your other social platforms so notifications are made when you pin something new.
- When adding images to your website, be sure they include a “Pin” option.
- Connect with your followers by responding to any questions, comments, etc. Build excitement by posting contests.
- Pin things to your wall often. Ideally, pinning 5 to 30 items a day is recommended.
- Optimize your Instagram bio so it includes a professional header, a brief description of your company and also include a link back to your website.
- Show off images of what you can do, but don’t just promote yourself! Take time to connect with others and like their pics, too.
- Use tools like Iconosquare to optimize when you post and to track what types of posts are working.
- Use #hashtags and @tags to connect with others and make it easy for people to locate your posts. And speaking of hashtags, come up with one or two specific to your business and use them with every post.
- Post often – in fact, a minimum of 3x a day is a must to be effective!
- Respond to every comment made on your posts!
- Create special offers just for your Instagram followers.
Sure, you can just stick with Twitter and Facebook, but if you really want to make waves with your followers and build a social media presence, you must also take time to set up and utilize newer platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram. Get started today. Do it yourself, or talk to one of our web specialists to learn how we can help. We would love to hear from you!