Pinterest Launches Business Pages

 

Last week Pinterest announced the latest step in its move towards monetization with the launch of business pages.

The new pages offer verification – similar to Twitter's verified accounts - as well as easier access to new buttons and widgets. 

Pinterest has also created a dedicated site for businesses, which contains best practices, case studies and documentation.

Thiis the first time that Pinterest has officially welcomed brands to its platform.

Pinterest is currently considered to be a useful part of the social mix for most of my clients, though admittedly we would never push it as the 'core' of a campaign, it is clearly going to be a big part of the 2013 marketing landscape.

There are business that are suited to the platform. For example, retailers, real estate, any business where appearance is important and consumers brands with an e-commerce site that contains a large amount of product images are an obvious candidate for the platform.

Pinterest offers an additional channel for products to be showcased, it can be a driver for traffic to your site and is another social community in which to engage with customers and audiences.

That said, as Pinterest is so pictorially focused, it is essential that any brand utilizing the platform ensures high quality imagery is used and properly tagged for SEO benefit e.g. image titles as these are used as the default description for pins.

The simplicity of the platform makes it easy for audiences to engage with the brand and participate in promotions.