Pinterest is an ideal place for businesses to showcase their products and services while engaging with current and potential customers through eye-catching images.

Many businesses have a presence on Pinterest, but few are using Pinterest to its full potential as a social media marketing tool. Follow these pro tips to help your business get the most out of Pinterest:

1. Verify Your Website on Pinterest

The Pinterest for Business Blog recommends not only making sure the name of your business is in your profile name and username, but also verifying your account. This will help your business profile show up higher when people search for you on Pinterest. You can see step-by-step instructions for verifying your website on Pinterest here.

2. Use the Pin It Button

While it’s great to pin images of your products and services on Pinterest, it’s even better when your loyal customers share your photos with their own friends and followers. You can install the Pin It button on your website so that people visiting your site can quickly and easily pin the images they like to their personal Pinterest boards. Pinterest provides handy instructions for installing the Pin It button, and a recent blog post walks you through installing the Pin In button on WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger and Wix.


3. Use Hashtags on Pinterest

Hashtags aren’t only for Twitter and Facebook — Pinterest lets you use hashtags too! Hashtags can help your pins turn up when people search Pinterest using terms that describe your products or services. For instance, if you run a professional photography business, you might consider using the hashtags #NewbornPhotos or #SeniorPortaits to drive traffic to your Pinterest profile. Just remember not to overdo it; using too many hashtags is considered spammy.

4. Use Rich Pins

You can use Rich Pins to include a greater level of detail on the Pins you create. Right now, Pinterest allows five different types of Rich Pins: Product Pins, Place Pins, Article Pins, Recipe Pins and Movie Pins. How much value you get out of Rich Pins will depend on the nature of your business, but we think Product Pins are a great way showcase what you sell, and Article Pins are a great way to showcase your business’s blog content. Major companies like Four Seasons, Virgin America, Nestle and Netflix are already using Rich Pins to their advantage. Why not you?

6. Create Seasonal and Holiday Pinterest Boards

By staying in tune with seasonal topics that are of interest to Pinterest users, you can drive traffic to your business profile. For example, the next three months are perfect for creating boards related to fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and other end-of-year holidays. Don’t forget to reference these holidays in hashtags to draw traffic from those specific searches. Learn more about how major companies like Home Depot and Jo-Ann Fabric have used these types of boards to their advantage.

7. Keep an Eye on Pinterest Analytics

Businesses can use Pinterest Analytics to see which of their pins are most popular, explore topics their audience is interested in and gauge any new traffic they get from adding the Pin It button to their website. You can also see how your Rich Pins perform compared to your regular pins. Learn more about all the insights and metrics at your disposal through Pinterest Analytics here.