Pinterest is not a social media network. It’s a visual search engine. Surprised? It may also surprise you to know that like Google and Bing, search results for Pinterest drive more traffic to web sites than most other social channels combined! Can you use Pinterest to plan your business goals? Yep!
If you’re looking for a place to store all those great online ideas and links you come across, Pinterest is great for that. But actively using Pinterest to plan your business goes beyond just pinning good articles. It can help you visualize your business’s path, while also supporting it along the way.
We have our own business Pinterest account (link) of course, but we also have a series of boards (all public, but you can create private ones too) that help us plan our own business success. You can do the same – and your customers might even be inspired by your own business goals.
Best practices for using Pinterest to plan your business goals:
Create a single board or multiple boards for business goals.
- If you want to grow sales this year, you might consider having a marketing board for helpful articles on growing your business (be sure to follow our Pinterest boards for great tips and re-pin them to your marketing board!)
- Have a marketing board, an organization board, an industry board (follow your competitors!) and a book board for business books.
- Create a TedTalks board of things that inspire you so you can watch later
- Create a how-to board of specific tips to improve an aspect of your business
- Create a vision board of what inspires you
- do you want to spend more time on vacation? Pin a few vacation photos to a business goals board.
- Do you want to move into a larger office or redecorate your existing office? Pin inspiration pics.
- Consider adding organization pins to your board to help you stay ahead of your desk
- Do you want to work with a new type of client? Pin images of what you believe your new client looks like
Why create Pinterest boards at all? Pinterest, unlike every other social network is a visual search-and-save engine – you can’t save the results of that Google search (and the next time you search it up, it will be a different result anyway.) But you CAN pin a link to a site that you want to come back to.
Our favorite business resources
- What other startups are doing in your industry
- Financial models and worksheets to help you analyze how well your business is doing
- How-to articles
- Inspirational talks
Consider, too, setting up your Pinterest account with boards for your clients by category. If you work with, say, women in their 40s and 50s on their fitness or health and wellness, curate a board just for them.
If you tailor boards for your buyer and pin things along their journey, their search-and-find becomes a lot more relevant. These boards can be inspriations to and for your clients – but they also serve to help YOU zero in on your buyer. The better you understand your buyer, the more profitable you will be as a company.
Want to get started? Follow us here. Pin a few things from our boards to your own and continue to come back. We’ll post a new blog post (which always can be added to Pinterest one-click from the story) pretty much every single week. Add this to your marketing board and check back often.
Do more than pin, read and then take action!
Take an hour per week to review your recently pinned articles or how-to videos and watch them. Plan this hour into your calendar. Use it as professional development or whatever you tell yourself you need to do to be more successful. I like to devote this hour at lunchtime, using my ‘off’ time to learn at least one new thing. I do this several times per week, but once a week is sufficient for most busy entrepreneurs.
Pinterest is a great visual organizational tool to that can help you build your business but also grow your business. Whether you use it just as a promotional tool now, consider using it for your own planning and success as well.
