What are Pinterest and Instagram About?
Pinterest and Instagram are two of the latest social networking sites to hit the internet. Both sites have been successful in creating a huge amount of interest from both individuals and businesses – and each have their own particular style that gives them an edge over the rest. Pinterest is a virtual notice board where you can share, highlight, collect and showcase your hobbies and interests, or major events in your life that you wish to share; and Instagram is a photo sharing site that makes easy work out of sharing your photos with other social networking sites of your choice.
Creating Interest via Social Networks
These two sites do something different to the big guns of the social networking arena. Pinterest is particularly useful for drawing attention to very specific things. For example, if you have a keen interest in selling vintage clothing, you could create a board (or boards) on Pinterest and showcase particular areas of interest within your collection. If you were to couple your Pinterest board with an Instagram account you could filter the pictures of your items of interest to wherever you feel you need them to be – and make the best possible use of networking in its fullest sense. All you have to do from there is keep the content alive and interesting and watch the traffic flow to your website. Making use of both of these sites together could create a massive amount of interest in what you are doing and selling. This is the type of interest you want to see following you as this is what will help your business to go viral.
Businesses can Pin, Share and Win with Smaller Social Networking Sites Too
It doesn’t matter how many potential customers you are reaching if you’re not reaching the right customers. Not everyone will care about your products and ideas, but hitting the right notes with the right people can make all the difference to your website traffic – and ultimately, your sales. There’s no avoiding social networking sites if you are to stay in the public awareness, but how can you use Pinterest and Instagram to really pull in that traffic and attract new customers to your site? By looking at some of the examples of businesses already being showcased on these websites, it’s easy to see how Pinterest and Instagram have become part of the expert market in pushing businesses further into the public domain.
MyHauteCloset
Milysan Trouche started her clothes business on Instagram – a business born out of her fashion blog containing pictures of her numerous outfits. Her Instagram presence attracted women from around the globe and from there MyHauteCloset began life as an online store, showcasing the items collected from her thousands of followers, which became part of her online stock. Ms Trouche reports that almost all of her clients came to her via Instagram.
WarblyParker
Eyewear retailer, Warbly Parker, are in no doubt that Pinterest is working for them, reporting 11% of their online traffic coming via Pinterest versus 18% of their traffic coming via Twitter. However, their presence on each site is different – a quick glance at their Pinterest boards shows just how committed they are to pictures, which will soon see their Pinterest traffic overtake their Twitter traffic.
Keep the Momentum Going
If your contributions are sporadic, then your followers’ interest may wane. Keeping the news about your business flowing will hold the interest of your followers and encourage their contributions and feedback. Don’t underestimate the power of pictures in your social networking strategy either. Instagram and Pinterest are already proving their worth with businesses – and the internet entrepreneurs and innovators of today.
Oliver Ortiz works for Expert Market which is a division of MVF Global.. Expert Market is a UK based provider of a wide variety of business related equipment and services. Follow us on Twitter and connect with us on Facebook.
