Pinterest is an easy, or relatively easy way to grow your business and drive traffic to your website, especially during this holiday season. According to a social media shopping study by richrelevance, Pinterest shoppers (as opposed to Facebook) lead the way, spending a whopping $153 average per order. Customers, or potential customers are also likely to pin your goods on their own. According to Wishpond, 85% of a brand’s engagement happens away from a brand’s Pinterest boards. What does this mean? People pin independently of what a business pins on their own boards.

If you already have a Pinterest account, follow these ideas below to drive even more visitors to your site this holiday season. And if you don’t have an account, there’s still time to set one up and get started.

Include Rich Pins – Rich Pins give more details about a product, service, or article being pinned, which display when the pin is opened, instead of when someone clicks through to your site. Details include product pricing, availability, and where to purchase the product. If you’re sharing an article, details include author, site, headline and a snippet of the article. This can help drive very interested people to your site. You do need to a little work on your side to set up Rich Pins, but this effort could mean more sales for your business.

Pin Sufficiently – When you’re adding new images to your boards, be sure to include a good description of the product or service, and specifically link to that product/service on your site. This will help when someone searches for specific items, or when someone wants to re-pin that time. Have fun with the boards you create. Create some boards that are specific to your business, especially if you’re doing any special marketing during the holiday season. But also create additional boards that are fun, inspirational and industry related that don’t pertain to your business. Try creating gift guide boards to help people find exactly the gifts they need. If you plan to do any contests on Pinterest be sure you read their newly updated contest rules to make sure you’re doing everything above board, pun intended.

Don’t Forget Emails – Include a Pin it button in your email marketing campaigns so readers can easily add your email to their own Pinterest boards. While you’re at it, include buttons on your website as well to make it easy for visitors to pin items they find there. Remember, 85% of what’s getting pinned isn’t done by businesses, so let your fans do some of the leg work for you.

Pinterest has also added analytics so you can now see what pins are resonating with your followers. Monitor pins and continue to share pins that are most engaging.

What are your Pinterest plans for this holiday season? Let us know in the comments!

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