Dallas Social Media Breakfast November 29, 2012 Pictures Paint A Thousand Words... Why You Need Pinterest For Business Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter -- you probably have pages, profiles, or accounts with all of these, as is typically best practice. But not every social site out there is worth investing a lot of time, money, and effort. Fast-risers like Pinterest seem to be enjoying skyrocketing growth and popularity, but the question is are they well worth it? The question to pose to yourself is: why does my business need to use Pinterest? We will uncover: Are Mom’s really this awesome? Who has time for this stuff? Where are all the men? And, how long does it take to make Pinterest work for me? Say NO to theory! Pinterest isn't successful for nothing. Let's take a deep dive into what comprises Pinterest -- from its structure to its etiquette -- and then take a look at its uses for business and marketing.

2. @dallasSEOguru
Mike Stewart
Director of Search

3. Thank you for having me…
We can assume:
•Some of us don’t know a thing about Pinterest
•Some of us are addicted to Pinterest
•Some of us “fiddle” with it ---- like myself
So, Please …don’t hate. 
Our agenda:
•What is Pinterest?
•How to Pinterest?
•Why Pinterest?
•Let’s Get Technical.
•Define Awesome.
•What Can Pinterest Do
For Your Business?

4. What is Pinterest?
• Pinterest is a social image sharing website
• More social than Instagram
• Less engaging than Facebook, in terms of what the website actually offers
• Virtual pinboards collated and organized by members
• Users "Pin" images of what they find online to their pinboards, called
"Boards," and share it to the community and their network of contacts
• A Board is a pinboard of images, the images are called Pins, and Pins can be
uploaded from a computer or taken online
• Pins “should” link back to the content source
• Each user can create multiple Boards
• Boards can be categorized however the User pleases
• Users can follow other users and their existing and new Boards
• Users can also choose to follow only individual Boards
• People can also "un-follow" and their loss of interest will not be announced
to the users they un-followed

5. Who came up with the idea?
Silbermann was raised in
Des Moines, Iowa.
In 1998, Silbermann attended the
acclaimed Research Science
Institute at MIT. He graduated
from Yale in 2003 with a political
science major
• He and his girlfriend (now his wife)
moved across the country to Palo
Alto. She became a recruiter for
Facebook. He briefly worked for
Google in customer support.
• His wife came up with Pinterest
name.

6. How to Pinterest…
*Used with permission by Kathleen Shannon and Tara Street of Braid Creative & Consulting - Branding and Business Visioning for Creative Entrepreneurs.

7. Why Pinterest?
It's social, and it's large.
• Social media is huge right now
• Active Internet users spend nearly a quarter of their time on social media
• Social factors in heavily with ecommerce and online retail
• Anything "social" is potentially good for business marketing
It's visual in nature.
• Textual content still rules the web,
• Visual content such as videos and images are quite popular
• To resort to a cliché: “pictures paint a thousand words”
• Image will convey more information faster than text
• They don't have time to read all of it, and seeing stuff with one glance is much easier and faster
• It also allows them to connect to one another within community via accounts they connect with each
other
•
Its viral potential is limitless.
• When a video on YouTube becomes "viral"
(means that so many people have watched it that they can account for the population for a small to mid-sized
country)
• Viral = lucrative medium of marketing for online businesses
• Easy to go viral through practical and easy to use functionality
It's intuitive.
• It's hard to find somebody who doesn't know how a pinboard works
• Pinterest chose well in virtualizing the concept and not limiting it to work or productivity
• Opened it to larger field of social sharing and personal interests websites --- Reason for popularity and
growth!

8. Center of Your Universe
“You should definitely begin leveraging its potential, but without making it the
center of your marketing campaign.” - says any qualified SEO expert

9. Not a fad… more of a social addiction
Active and Engaged?

10. Phenomenon?
In February Pinterest drove more traffic to
websites than Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn ,
and YouTube combined.
Over $37,000,000 in VC funding raised.
Let’s not forget… Fail Whale.
‘Fail Whale’ Gives Frustrated Twitterers
Something to Smile About. Wired Magazine
Traffic to Twitter has leveled off.

11. Why Is It a Big Deal?

12. Why is Pinterest Already Successful?
Women trust recommendations from Pinterest more than any other
platform. (per BlogHer’s annual study on women and social media)
81 percent trust Pinterest versus Facebook (67 percent) and Twitter (73
percent).

13. It is like an explosion of interest

14. Pinterest is now #46 out of all websites
Jan 2012 – 11,716,00 visits
Oct 2012 – 26,739,000 visits
My Prediction:
It will be a top 25 site in
2013.

15. Not a “Search Engine” but great for search

16. What can you ACCOMPLISH on Pinterest?
• Plan a wedding (friends can leave comments about
ideas for the dresses, flowers, cakes, and ties they pin
up)
• Learn something with
infographics
• Collaborate
• Share common
interests
• Decorate a house
• Join a Focus Group
• Crowdsource
• Participate in Contests

17. is Awesomeness!

18. Some Pin Awesome Animals

19. Awesome food…

20. Awesome Places to visit…

21. To some this is awesome…

22. and this…

23. I define awesome…

24. According to Pinterest this is awesome

25. maybe Awesome?

26. Yes… Moms are Awesome

27. The U.S. Army is Awesome!

28. Big Brands Who “Wannabe” Awesome

29. Infographics
are still
Awesome!

30. “Who’s Awesome?”

31. What do you sell?
What can you pin?

32. Who can you find using Pinterest?
• Real Estate Professionals (cool homes)
• Interior Decorators (redecorate your home)
• Construction (things you can do to your home)
• Hobbyists (crafts, cooking, cars, woodshop)
• Someone sharing your pin on a pin board with
"Spring handbags I'm considering," there's a good
chance you'll click through and make a purchase.
• Pinterest users are more often in a shopping
mindset when they are using the service

33. What will you really find on Pinterest?
Like Facebook, it is what you make of it.
– Dream
– Adventures
– Hopes
– Prayers
– Humor
– Events
– Travel
Magazines

34. Big Brands

35. Ebay is to __, as Pinterest is to __?
Cash for your hobby?

36. Pinterest is at the TOP of the funnel.
Pinterest efforts should lead potential leads to the right stages of your sales funnel.
What you change is the content (Pinned images) & the URLs (landing pages).

37. Why?
• Brand Signals… socially engaged brands look
authoritative and more trust worthy
• Reach the Awareness State of Buying Funnel
Why Not?
• Pinterest hurts your sites conversion rates.
• Pinterest becomes another daily “social media
activity” and may become another distraction
• Copyright nightmares

38. Pinterest respects DMCA
Pinterest ("Pinterest") respects the intellectual property rights of others and
expects its users to do the same. It is Pinterest’s policy, in appropriate
circumstances and at its discretion, to disable and/or terminate the
accounts of users who repeatedly infringe or are repeatedly charged with
infringing the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of others.
In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, the text of
which may be found on the U.S. Copyright Office website at
http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf, Pinterest will respond
expeditiously to claims of copyright infringement committed using the
Pinterest website (the "Site") that are reported to Pinterest’s Designated
Copyright Agent, identified in the sample notice below.
If you are a copyright owner, or are authorized to act on behalf of one, or
authorized to act under any exclusive right under copyright, please report
alleged copyright infringements taking place on or through the Site by
completing the following DMCA Notice of Alleged Infringement and
delivering it to Pinterest’s Designated Copyright Agent. Upon receipt of the
Notice as described below, Pinterest will take whatever action, in its sole
discretion, it deems appropriate, including removal of the challenged
material from the Site. DMCA Notice of Alleged Infringement ("Notice")

39. DMCA Concerns:
• Pinterest also has introduced an opt-out code web
publishers can embed in their sites -- Yahoo's Flickr
(YHOO) has done so too -- to prevent pinners from
republishing material.

40. Add a Watermark

41. How does Pinterest Make $?
(according to the Pinterest website:)
How does Pinterest make money?
Right now, we are focused on growing Pinterest and making it more
valuable. To fund these efforts, we have taken outside investment
from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. In the past, we've
tested a few different approaches to making money such as affiliate
links. We might also try adding advertisements, but we haven't
done this yet.
Even though making money isn't our top priority right now, it is a
long term goal. After all, we want Pinterest to be here to stay!

42. Getting Started
Go to: http://business.pinterest.com/

43. It is easy to create a Pinterest for business
You can will figure out the rest on your own

44. Facebook and Pinterest

45. Don’t be a Pinterest newb! Rules 101
• A board for “infographics” is
not necessary.
• Check for original sources.
Don’t repin spam links.
• Curate the best.
Don’t repinEVERYTHING!
• Board Covers are cool.
Take the time, make em!
• Inform.
Add context by creating
helpful descriptions.
• Set a goal.
SEO or “just to be there” is no
goal.

46. What is the difference?
• Liking a pin adds the image to your profile’s Likes
section; the image does not get added to one of your
boards.
• Repinning an image allows you to categorize the
image onto one of your boards.
• You can edit the description of a repin.
• The source-link of an image is saved automatically,
no matter how many times it’s repinned.

47. Buy my stuff!!!!
You may also:
add a price to a pin, just type the $ symbol
followed by the number amount in the
description. When you are finished, click Pin
It. Pinterest will automatically add a price
banner to the photo.

48. Links matter… what do we know:
Here’s a brief rundown of what we already know about Pinterest links:
• Each “Pin” links back to the page the image is shown on OR the
actual file location using a do-follow link. The difference depends
on how the image was pinned. For example, opening an image in its
own window/tab and then using Pinterest’s bookmarklet will create
the pin and link to the file location jpeg. The “Pin It” button will
usually link to the page the image is featured on. A page-targeted
link is probably better than a jpeg-targeted link unless you’re
purposely optimizing for image search.
• Do-follow links are found on multiple parts of a pin, as shown
below. The “From:” link and the image link are both standard in
every pin. All image ALT attributes read “Pinned Image” with no
way to edit. You can also insert links into the pin description and
comments (here comes Pinterest comment spam). A pin comes
with a custom embed code for easy syndication onto other
websites, creating backlinks to the pin page.

49. Where are the links?

50. Spammers exist
•Scrapes items from Amazon and re-submits them as pins to Pinterest along with your affiliate link in the
description and the linked image.
•Automatically creates a relevant board as well.
•A Pinterest Scheduler: Automatically creates unlimited scheduled pins to post to your accounts and creates
your boards as well.
•A Pinterest Follower Bot: Automatically finds and follows Pinterest users by keyword.
•A Pinterest Popular Pin Re-Submitter: Finds the site’s most popular pins via keyword and resubmits them with
your own links and descriptions.
•A Pinterest Invite Code Generator: Uses your account(s) to create invite codes for you to send out.

51. Etiquette… It is expected.

52. Etiquette…

53. Is Google Coming for Pinterest Next?
• Zaggat
• Frommers
• Motorola
• Youtube
• VirusTotal
• WildFire
• Milk
• Katango
• SocialGrapple
• DailyDeal
• DealMap
• Fridge
• SparkBuy
• Zave Facebook purchased Instagram on APRIL 10, 2012

54. WordPress Plugins are Cool.
Non-Wordpress at http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/

55. CMS and Cart Integration

56. Pinterest Marketing Tips:
Also, feature your social media profiles and
accounts (including your Pinterest account)
wherever applicable. If you Pinterest does a
good job of leading people to your website,
your inbound marketing should also be
efficient in offering your visitors the option of
following you on Pinterest.

57. How to Avoid Failure:
• Link Facebook and Twitter. Facebook links only to your
personal profile (not Pages), so you may find it better to
link to Twitter for business posts. Post to Facebook
selectively as relevant – all linked Pinterest posts are now
featured in a Facebook “album”.
• Link your website to your Pinterest . Add Pinterest sharing
buttons and apps to other social
• Integrate with other social media platforms. Add Pinterest
sharing buttons and apps to other social media platforms,
such as Facebook. Give a Call-to-action to your Google+,
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn Followers to
follow you on Pinterest! Integrate, integrate, integrate!

58. Build your own community of followers
• Follow Follow Follow.
• Add weblinks to your descriptions. The more information about
the source of original pins (preferably your website) the more
longevity your pin will have for brand awareness. Edit the pin and
add the correct permalink to blogposts so they can be traced
correctly. And check that your pin-links work!
• Space Your Pins. Don’t do a pin dump! Pinterest is unlike Facebook
and Twitter where the feed-time is limited. Pins will remain in view
for days or weeks due to the cyclical nature of their
exposure. Pinning for a few minutes a couple of times per day is
enough to get you started.
• Time Your Pins. Take note of the times when your fans are pinning –
be flexible, and if all else fails, 2-4pm and at night are popular for
pinning according to Pinterest. Weekends are too.

59. Ask yourself:
How do I create content that is visually engaging and pinnable”?
• Choose great images for your blog. If you
have interesting, engaging, quality images,
your content is more likely to get pinned.
• Pin different types of images. Include
photos, infographics, videos and text. Don’t
discount text.
{Tweetable}
“A great font on a simple background,
does a “pinnable- image” make!”
• Pin Videos. Video is the most under-pinned
visual format on Pinterest… but the most
engaging! Be one of the first in your niche to
use Video.

60. Easier said than done?
Don’t just create content!
Curate it!
Think in terms of incoming
and outgoing traffic.
What content will bring
users to your site, what
action do you want them
to take when on your site
(how will you entice
them to stay?)

61. What is your Goal?
• Create your boards with an ideal client in mind. Provide
answers to their questions. Feed their inspirations.
Solve their problems.
• Get them to take an action!
• try to keep most of the boards that I want people to
see the most "above the fold“
“Likes, Pins, Shares, and ReTweets is a quantifiable,
but not logical, goal for Social Media.”
– Mike
Stewart

62. Questions?
mike@smbSEO.com
@dallasSEOguru
@smbSEO
801 Forest Ridge Dr.
Bedford Tx 76022
Phone: 214-267-9553
www.smbSEO.com