If you’re clever, you can make Pinterest work for B2B - by thinking about it less as a tool for e-commerce but more as a visual representation of what you do.

Everybody is still talking about Pinterest. In the last year the site has gone from having 700,000 unique users to over 20 million. The site has a strong bias towards the B2C (business to consumer) sector – interiors, style, food and crafts are the most pinned categories on the site.

That said, if you’re clever, you can make Pinterest work for B2B too – by thinking about it less as a tool for e-commerce but more as a visual representation of what you do. Here’s how:

• Pinterest as a showcase for your business – Think about what you do, the key topics in your sector and what your target market might be interested in is a great place to start. Make sure you have a full profile, including your social network links, profile picture, bio and, most importantly, a link to your website.
• Start with a company information board -This is the place to tell people about what you do, link people to your websites and social networks – it is your business in a visual format. Check out the ‘Find us’ board we set up for Our Social Times here.
• Optimise your website for Pinterest – Make your site more visual with images that can be pinned, and add a ‘Pin It’ button to your site so people visiting can add to their Pinterest boards. Create a board with pins showing what you do, whether you offer services such as accountancy or products like heavy machinery.
• Infographics – These are really popular on Pinterest, and chances are there will be one related to your sector. Search on Pinterest for keywords, make your own infographics or find infographics using sites like visual.ly. Pin and repin them and feature them on your Facebook page.
• Free downloads, eBooks and white papers - These make great reasons to click through from Pinterest to your site. Give each an attractive cover image/page and pin this to your board, then link through to your website where people sign up to receive the paper by email. This way you’ll build a better Pinterest profile and grow your email list at the same time.
• Find your counterparts - This might be clients, colleagues or industry blogs. Follow their boards, repin their content and, off Pinterest, start pinning images, blog posts, infographics that would be interesting to your followers.
• Cross promote – Think about Pinterest as a way to feed content in to your other social networks. Images, infographics and video all transfer really well, especially to your Facebook page. Be selective about this though, you don’t want to flood your networks with Pinterest content.
• Be social – Repin, comment and follow others. By networking on the site you’ll build more followers and your pins will be repinned more often. Find people who are interested in the same subjects as you and repin their pins that would be interesting to your audience.