5 Practical Pinterest Uses for B2B Companies

Social media undeniably plays a valuable role in successful marketing for both B2C and B2B businesses.

While many companies have well-adapted platforms like Facebook and Twitter in their marketing strategies, some have struggled using Pinterest as a viable option to gain visitors and convert leads to customers.

Pinterest is hands down one of the most underestimated social media networks. As the third largest social media platform, Pinterest serves as an interactive place for idea generation, collaboration, and curation.

To break down common misconceptions about Pinterest, here are some key facts:

• 40% of all new Pinterest sign ups are men
• Over 175 million users are active on Pinterest each month
• 2/3 of pins represent brands and products

Pinterest is a creative whiteboard for B2B companies to share content and engage with their audience in an organic setting. One million businesses are already using Pinterest to build their audience and reach their customers.

Still unsure if Pinterest is something your company should dive into?

Check out these five practical uses of Pinterest for any B2B business:

1. Boost Your Company's SEO

Since Pinterest boards and pins show up in a Google search results page, it's important to optimize a B2B company Pinterest page with relevant keywords and phrases that describe what the company offers or sells.

Include keywords in the:

• Pin title
• Pin description
• Photo alt-text 

Avoid being too “keywordy” on your boards; stick to only one or two keywords that specifically relate to the content you are publishing.

Also, include a full hyperlink to your website in the description of all your pins, making sure that the link relates somehow to the context of your pin, whether it’s to a landing page of an ebook download or a call-to-action for a blog post.

If someone views or repins one of your pins, guiding them to your website for any additional or helpful information they may want or need can drive website traffic and possibly create new leads for future business.

2. Visually Repurpose Your Content

A huge benefit of Pinterest is that everything a user sees is visual. With Pinterest, B2B companies have the opportunity to transform content into effective visuals for users to see, engage with, and repin.

A few ideas for repurposing your content include:

• Create infographics that offer tips and tricks or summarize benefits of a product or service your company offers.
• Pin covers of company white papers and ebooks.
• Pin blog posts, using an eye-catching photo as the visual pin.

Create a separate board for all of your blog posts; doing so keeps all your blogs in an organized, easy-to-find location. And don’t forget to briefly describe the blog topic with important keywords in the pin description.

By repurposing your company’s content for another platform, you are increasing the likelihood of gaining leads by giving your content a second home and providing useful information to help bring leads further down the marketing funnel.

3. Humanize Your Brand With Unique Pin Boards

Pinterest isn’t just a platform to pin your content and highlight your company’s strengths; it’s a platform to showcase your company and the culture that forms it.

By creating an “About Us” board with photos of your employees and company culture, people get a glimpse of the environment your company works in and what their interests are.

Take HubSpot for example; aside from blogging, content marketing, and design pin boards, they also feature a "Bad Marketing Kittens" and "Marketing Cartoons" board. Add fun content to your account to show the lighter side of your company. 

4. Interact with Your Audience on a New Platform

The engagement variety on Pinterest is similar to that of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in that companies can like or comment on pins.

Users can also repin content that other users post. In fact, 80 percent of pins are repins, compared to retweets, which only take up 1.4 percent of Twitter feeds.

As a B2B business, repinning relevant content from other users shows that you're not only focusing on your own content, but you're also interested in the content that inspires your audience.

A unique feature that Pinterest has for all users is group boards. In a group board, invited users can add and share pins for other contributors to view.

Joining group boards as a B2B business can not only help you grow your Pinterest account quicker by finding new users who have similar interests; it can also help you find new, valuable information, tips, or tricks that your own company can benefit from.

5. Track Performance with Pinterest's Analytics Tool

Just like other popular marketing platforms, Pinterest features an analytics tool for your account. From the analytics dashboard, your B2B company can track information like:

• Daily impressions
• Most popular pins
• Who your Pinterest audience is
• Referral traffic

As you build your boards and grow your following, you will start to see which content works and which doesn't, allowing your company to hone in on its strong points for better social media marketing.

Pinterest is a great, visually-driven way to attract new leads and grow your company as a whole. Through content repurposing, audience engagement and collaboration, and personalization, your B2B business can successfully implement Pinterest into its marketing strategy.