Why small business cannot afford to overlook Pinterest

Pinned content on Pinterest

You have probably heard some of the noise lately about Pinterest , a new social media service that is supposed to help keep track of all the other social media services.

One week my seventy year old mother is telling me to “check out this new thing called Pinterest” and the next week it’s the darling of the blogosphere.

To its credit, the two year old company has obviously captured everyone’s attention and the concept is definitely pretty compelling.

Basically, Pinterest is a free service that allows its members to organize the things they find on the Internet by “pinning” them to their own personal online “pinboard” where the items can then be repinned, liked, and commented upon by other users.

I have to say, it really is pretty unique compared to anything else I’ve seen before and, just like other social media, I’m sure there are all kinds of ways that small businesses can take advantage.   Certainly too many to try and do it any sort of justice here.

In most cases, small businesses will get out of it whatever they decide to put into it.  Mistakes will be made, time will be lost, and not everyone will find the secret sauce, but the same could be said for any other sort of marketing.

Of course, like so many of the other social media services, small businesses must now decide if it’s worth a try and, if so, how to actually make it work for their particular size and type of enterprise.

Just creating a page and hoping people will find it probably isn’t going to cut it so take some time to develop a goals-based strategy that addresses the same tried and true questions: what’s your market, who’re your customers, and how can you excite their interest?

As always, the best place to start is at the beginning so do yourself a favor and at least take a little time to check out the Pinterest site and see how other small businesses are using the service.

Once you understand how it works – and it really isn’t that complicated – then you will probably see right away if it has any real value or not for your particular situation.

Just don’t ignore it because with millions of users and growing, Pinterest may indeed be yet another way to help you grow your business.