In this edition of Pinterest for Real Estate, I wanted to cover the subject of Pinterest Etiquette. Pinterest has outlined their own etiquette guidelines of course, including some recent changes. But there are some items that need to be stressed, especially if you are new to Pinterest.
Be Authentic
You’re not all business all the time, are you? Pinterest can be a true representation of who you are, especially if you spend the time to curate boards of things you like, things you want to make, things that inspire you, and things that you have made. Include a great mix of yourself and your business by making boards that represent your personal life, and then creatively making boards related to your business. (Need some ideas? Read this post here). And for the boards you have that ARE business related, go ahead and pin images used in your blog posts or your website, since it is great for driving traffic to your sites.
Still Avoid Shamless Self Promotion
In the beginning of April Pinterest removed the “avoid self promotion” rule in their terms, which opened up more possibilities for business use. There are some great benefits that Pinterest can bring to businesses, like increasing traffic to your website/blog, but one needs to strike a delicate balance. A majority of Pinterest users are on there for personal use and are not necessarily there to shop for real estate or other products. And nothing will turn off your followers more (and Pinterest users ignore your boards completely) if they see nothing but shameless self promotion. So doing nothing but promoting your listings with it (unless they have some awesome and inspiring photos), putting a photo of yourself up as “Worlds Best Realtor” or constantly promoting some other product you sell just won’t garner much attention and you could lose followers.
Pin Images From Their Original Sources
We must work to keep Pinterest from being dilluted with images that are not pointing to where they originally came from. For example, I find it incredibly frustrating when I find an image of a recipe I really want to try, but I cant get to it because it’s not linked to the source. So be sure when you pinning something, that you are getting it from the original source. I also recommend that wheneer you repin something, first click on it to check to make sure it came from the original source. Don’t use Google Images for pinning, because you run into the same problem. Go to the site the images actually came from to give proper credit to the source. And if you find images on Pinterest not sourced correctly, leave them a comment to let them know.
Be Sure to Write Descriptions and Tags
When pins have descriptions and are tagged right, they are so much easier to find. So don’t be stingy and write a description for your pins, or change them on your repins. You’re helping the Pinterest community to find them and letting them know why they should click or pin them too. Also, tag it back to the creator if possible. It helps the creators a bit in tracking where their pins are coming from. And if you are pinning images that came from your own site/blog, be sure to have a good description and tag so your items can be easily found too.
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