5 ways to use Pinterest to market your wedding business

Your head may be slowing down its spin from all the Facebook hype and how to use it to book more brides.  But there's another social media beast rearing its head...Pinterest. 

Pinterest is now the third most popular social network in the United States and  traffic to the digital pin-board rose 50 percent from January to February of this year.  What does that mean?  It means that Pinterest had over 21 million visits in the last week of January alone. 

Those numbers reinforce the potential for wedding businesses to utilize yet another social channel for brides to engage and share their services. The problem is how?

Below you will find 5 ways to use Pinterest to market your wedding business and book more brides:

1. Create visually compelling pin boards. - When you create your “pin boards” make sure they are filled with color and black and white images, exciting videos, illustrations, etc. Be creative and show your personality!
   
   
2. Follow the popular people around. - Remember in high school when you finally broke into the popular crowd and now everyone wanted to follow YOU around?  The same is true with social media.  To raise awareness for your wedding business you need to get eyeballs on your pin boards. You do that by following the big names. Figure out who's who on Pinterest and follow them.  Once they follow you (and they will if you share great content) then you're golden.
   
   
3. Cross promote on your website. - I hate to see wedding vendors using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and blogging but there's no sign of links to them on their website.  STOP that!!!  If you’re promoting one of your products on Pinterest, make sure you include a link back to your website. Although it’s a “no-follow” link, it still counts as an inbound link. And, if a product gets “re-pinned”, you could get some nice traffic to your site. Also be sure to add the “pin it” button on the products and images on your website. This will help your website visitors share your product or image with their Pinterest followers.
   
   
4. Get out the video camera. - Pinterest isn’t only for pictures, it’s for videos as well and brides loooove watching testimonial videos, product highlights, services in action, etc. Do you have videos of brides using your products at real weddings? Or how about videos of your booth at a wedding show?  If so, Pin them up! Create a visually compelling pin board that tells a story about who you are and why a bride would want you with your videos and pictures together.
   
   
5. Don't keep talking about yourself. - No one likes a self promoter right?  Pinterest users don't either.  Try not to talk about your own wedding services and products too much.  Being a good pinner is about providing value to the rest of the community. Post interesting images of weddings, informational tips, celebrity gossip (did you hear about Brangelina's engagement?) and products from multiple sources as well as your own.

Pinterest's popularity is the only reason why a wedding vendor would want to market there.  It's like I said in bullet #2 - follow the popular people around and you'll get popular.  To catch the attention of brides and book more weddings you have to be seen..and Pinterest has the eyeballs you need.

One thing about Pinterest that's different from Facebook or Twitter is you must be invited by Pinterest to open an account so get started now - and let us know how you do.