I have heard of pinterest but what is it?

Pinterest as most of you know is a social media platform using groups of pictures to share with others.  Think of it as a picture list divided up in different categories of all your favorite things in one place. My son created a pinterest site http://www.pinterest.com/gemstonecabs/ to show of his favorite lapidary gemstones that we created over the years.  Even though I worked on each of these stones, I love going and seeing all the colors and patterns in these stones. Right now he has 556 followers and 1050 of the pictures have been “pinned” by other users.  Since all of these pictures were taken from our gemstone site we get about 60-100 people a day that are interested in gemstones come in to the website from his pinterest site.

How do I get started on Pinterest?

The basics-

Get a business account on http://www.pinterest.com,

fill in your profile,

put in the web url to your website and you are ready to start creating your pinterest site.

Boards, Pins and Repins what are they?

You will start by creating boards.  My next blog will get into some suggestions on the boards you may want to create for your real estate business.  A board is just a category or folder that your putting your pictures into

A “pin” is an image that you add to your boards that is pinned from a different website or that you upload from your computer.

To repin is when someone else re-pins a pin they found on your page to one of their boards.  All the original embedded links stay intact. Remember word of mouth in all forms is some of the best advertising.

When you find a pin that you like, click on it.  It will show you a larger picture along with the information on who pinnedthe picture, ne name of the board, the number of repins and likes and how old the pin is.  If you click on the picture you are taken to the website that it was pinned from. Click on the pin it button and you can write in your description and post it to one of your boards.

So how do I know if I get visitors to my pinterest site.

Once you have a few pins and boards under your belt you can go to https://analytics.pinterest.com/?source=pinterest_business_search  Click on the link to verify your website and follow the directions.

Once verified you will start seeing the pinterest analytics  for your pinterest site.

See your daily impressions, avg daily and monthly views, which pictures are shown and repinned the most, what your audience is interested in.  Here is a picture of the last 7 days.  An extra 14,276 people viewing your site is bound to build your brand.

SO how does this help me in Real Estate

I would have originally told you that you won’t get a direct sale, but I actually did get a sale directly from Pinterest.  The client even made the comment that she never dreamed she would find her dream home on a pinterest site and buy it.

For the most part though you are posting pleasing pictures, interesting ideas and people will follow you and repin your pictures.  Along with these pins is your name, advertising your website, your listings, and establishing you as a real estate expert in your area.  A pictures is worth a thousand words and 800 repinned photos mean that the world is going to find you and think of you when they have real estate needs in your area.   This is a great place to repin the pictures you use in your blogs, on your website.  You can give a visual tour of your town and get the word out that you are an expert in real estate and your area and put you in contact with people.

Come back tomorrow to learn what kinds of boards you may want to include on your pinterest site and keywords to use to bring in the traffic.