Pinning is Believing: Share Your Winery Story on Pinterest

by Janel Lubanski, Media Relations and Client Services

If you haven’t heard the buzz about Pinterest, the ultimate virtual bulletin board site that takes social sharing to the next level, you may be missing out on a new medium to reach your customers.

Pinterest is a virtual platform that allows users to organize and share photos and videos found on the web.  

How it works:

A user creates a themed board and adds Pins -- photos and videos to his or her board; similar to other social media sites, these can be liked and repined (shared) to followers’ boards. Inspired by the phrase, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, what better way to share your brand’s story than through an infinite imagery portal?

In February, this two-year old company reported a 10.4 million-user count, seeing 11.7 million unique visitors in the month of January alone.

Why should your business care?  While its not as heavily utilized as other social media giants such as Facebook, businesses who have jumped on the bandwagon are seeing increased sales and web traffic -- both of which are sworn to be a direct result from their presence on Pinterest. This is not your “here today, gone tomorrow” social media site. In February, a comScore statistic report noted that daily Pinterest users have increased by more than 145% since the beginning of 2012. See more stats here.

A company profile on Pinterest enables you to share your brand’s life story using product and event imagery and videography. 

The benefits are similar to those of your other social media profiles such as Facebook or Twitter; Pintrest engages customers and drives awareness to your products, brand and website without the high costs of advertising.  The only difference is that customers are engaged by what they see.  It’s an ideal platform for storytelling.

Here are few ways to put Pinterest to work for your brand:

Share and Promote your Products

Add photos, videos, products for sale, recipes, gifts, etc. -- anything that can depict your brand. When adding a photo, include a short, clear description of the pin to help improve your search-engine ranking. Don’t forget to brand your boards. There are currently a total of 32 different categories under which to classify pins on Pinterest.  These categories help code a user’s board under a specific theme.  Photos and videos can be more easily found if the description has a keyword for which a fellow “pinner” is searching.

Appeal to the Masses

Instead of creating only one board of your wine collection to be classified under Food & Drink, create a board of images from your winery and classify it under Architecture, Outdoors, or Travel & Places. 

Let’s say your vineyard is part of a long family history and tradition.  Pin a timeline of photos or a video and classify it under History.  If your winery hosts weddings, create a board of past weddings that have taken place at your winery. Wedding boards are extremely popular on Pinterest.  By creating themed boards and classifying them in numerous topics, you will reach a greater amount of potential pinners and repins. 

Engage Followers and Customers

Follow boards and encourage others to follow you back -- sound familiar? Remember to show what has become the standard in social media interaction etiquette: if someone repins your photo (you can set notifications for this), send a thank you note.

Interlink

Interlink your actions on Pinterest with Facebook and Twitter.  Post a tweet about a new board or encourage your followers on Facebook to follow your boards on Pinterest.  For increased optimization across all your social media platforms, Pinterest allows users to share a new pin on their Facebook and Twitter pages.

Promote your Incentives

Are you conducting a contest or give-away?  Share it on Pinterest.  This will give consumers a reason to learn more about the contest from your Facebook page, which will entice them to sign up through your website and share it with their followers on Twitter – optimization at its finest.

Integrating Pinterest into your social media strategy can be beneficial if you seek more outreach and interaction with your customers.  If you don’t yet have a social media strategy or if you would like to improve your current practices, contact us for a complimentary consultation.