Pinterest Social E-Commerce: Part III

A while back, we covered simple sharing with Pinterest, and how to setup your online business page on Pinterest. Today, we’re going to focus on creating e-commerce specific content and share it using Pinterest. Sharing on Pinterest has thus far been well received by big name brands because Pinterest is so e-commerce friendly. We’ll cover today strategies on adding pins and also lesser known ways to sell products directly on Pinterest.

How to “Pin” Your Product or Service

When you sign up for a Pinterest account, it asks you if you want to install a “Pin It” button to your browser. If you did, you can use it to pin from any webpage. The plugin will ask you to select which photos from the page you want to pin. That generally works well if you have a photo you’ve found on the web you want to pin; however, we recommend that if you are sharing from an e-commerce site, you’re less likely to make a mistake and save time picking the photo if you’re able to go directly to the product page first and then pin the image.

Product or Blog Pin-it.

Another method, which Zuhah integrates into its online stores, is the built-in ability to pin without any web browser plugins. That lets both you and any customers to pin your product images without having a browser plugin. After all, your customers may be on a mobile device or using a different browser than you. If you’re hosting your own online store, you may have to integrate this feature yourself. At Zuhah, you have the option to pin a blog post or a product. Pin by simply clicking on the “Pin it” button on the page with the blog post or product.

Some Strategies to Use When Pinning:

Pin with a Image.

Pin photos from blogs that are related so that people can mentally associated the photo with your company or brand. For example, if you want to cater towards young adults, show photos that would appeal to that age group and still be the right image that portrays your company. Remember that pinning is not that different from sending out a representative of your store.
Pin photos of products that are made to be shared. There’s no point in sharing dozens of similar photos on Pinterest that maybe the only difference is in the product color. Make your shared photo’s unique and attractive so that people have a reason to “re-pin” and comment on your photo. I recently saw a photo of a “pillow arm” being pass around on Pinterest shared by Overstock.com. It make a few people laugh and comment, but more than that, I’m sure it also gathered a few sales too.
Pin photos from blogs or products that are clear and sized right. Although Pinterest will size your image, take a look at what makes a difference when you are browsing through Pinterest. You could pin a square that takes up 100 x 100 pixels of an attire, or you could pin a 100 x 600 long image of the full dress with all the textures intact. Pinterest has limits on how much width to let you use, but has very generous lengths. That doesn’t mean that short length images are not effective, but remember to use long images where they can maximize your advantages.

Pinned Product.

When you are pinning a blog or product page, be certain it has a photo associated on the page so that Pinterest can automatically pull in the image to use. If you don’t yet see a “Pin it” button next to your Zuhah blog or product, go to your store Dashboard -> Settings -> Sharing, and check to see if Pinterest is in the Enabled Services section. If its not, drag the button from Available Services to Enabled Services to use it.

When your pin is finally created, there will be a link from the image back to where you pinned the image. So if someone clicks on your product, they will be taken immediately back to that product’s page to view product details or purchase if they so choose. (Please note that this does not occur if you uploaded a photo to pin separately.)

Selling Products on Pinterest

Add Price to Pin.

A feature known by fewer people is the ability to include sales price directly on the pin. Adding prices to the pin let’s people “shop” on Pinterest and become interested in puchasing your product even before they realize it. Another strategy is to use sales price sparingly to highlight special sales items. Clicking on an item sends customers back to your product or promotion page. Now for the method: The way you do this is actually quite easy by adding a “$” followed by the amount at the end of your pin message.