Since I wrote Are You Pinteresting?, I’ve enjoyed following many professional organizers on the ever-popular social network, including Cindy Kamm. In fact, I fall in love with nearly every outfit, recipe, and dog that she pins! Cindy has joined us today with her tips for using the power of Pinterest to market your organizing business.

You may be asking yourself what is this thing called Pinterest, and how do I need to be on it? Pinterest is a place to organize and share online images you find interesting or inspiring. Once uploaded or shared on Pinterest, these images become known as Pins, which the user can place on customized, themed Boards. You can create Boards for any topic imaginable.

Each Pin in your feed features its own “Pin it” button; select it to Repin that image to one of your own Boards.  Another option is to  “Like” that Pin as a keepsake, without it appearing among any Boards.

Pinning new images is easy with the official Pin It Button, a simple drag-and-drop browser extension. When you come across an image you like, just click the button and select the corresponding picture. Assign the pin to a Board, add accompanying text and you’re done.

Or head to the Pinterest homepage and click the “+” sign to add images or video of your own, or via URL.

An account can also be created and accessed by linking Pinterest to a Facebook or Twitter profile. When a user re-posts or “re-pins” an image to their own board, they have the option of notifying their Facebook and Twitter followers; this feature can be managed on the settings page.

Since its debut in 2010, Pinterest has quickly become one of the most powerful Social Media tools. A study released in July 2013 by French social media agency Semiocast revealed the website had 70 million users worldwide, predominantly women.

While Pinterest has clearly become a goldmine for retailers, it also has tremendous marketing potential for service-based businesses, like organizing.  It’s a great tool to add to the mix to help build your brand, as well as us providing a creative outlet.

We all know that consumers are forever looking for the magic “organizing” bullet. They look to Pinterest for organizing ideas, solutions and products. While I don’t have any statistics, I’ve noticed that images, blog posts and videos on Organizing are very popular.

I became a Pinterest addict about a year and a half ago. At first I created boards for personal use, to capture recipes, décor ideas and fashion finds. After I worked with Janet to revamp my website, convert to WordPress and started a blog, I then added a board to feature my blogposts and videos.  I recently converted my Pinterest account to a business account to take advantage of the “web analytics” service.

I must admit I haven’t taken the time to use this service and therefore can’t share with you any stats on my boards.  This is definitely something I will be looking at more closely in the new year.

To give a brief description, the Pinterest web analytics dashboard is broken up into four main tabs. The tabs are Site Metrics, Most Recent, Most Repinned and Most Clicked. There is a lot of information on this topic (I am still learning), so please check out this link: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/pinterest-analytics/ for a good summary.

If you haven’t yet ventured onto Pinterest, I encourage you to give it a try.  It’s really fun and quite easy to navigate.  As Organizers I think it’s the ideal tool to literally organize our personal interests and hobbies, yet also expand our reach to build our businesses.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

Pinterest Tips

• Get started by creating a business account.
• Use a professional headshot photo on your main page.
• Write a professional, yet interesting profile.
• Include your website and blog address.
• Add the “Pin It” button to your product and content pages on your website and blog.
• Create boards to showcase your products, blogposts and articles.
• Build your audience by cross promoting your Pinterest presence with other social networks by sharing links to your boards.
• Be creative with the names you choose for your boards.
• Play around on Pinterest by visiting other users. You can choose to follow, repin or make a comment.

Feel free to visit my Pinterest page to get some inspiration.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on Pinterest.  Do you use it?  Do you like it?  Has it helped grow your business?

Happy Pinning!

Image courtesy of mkhmarketing, used under a Creative Commons license