Easy enough and very easy to get your site content “viral” on the internet in a very short time. However, with anything there’s always the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good
Your site content is loved and shared and you get a gazillion unique visitors to your site and your sales increase.  What business owner wouldn’t love that, right?

The Bad
If you are an artist, photographer or in a similar field where your images are your products, and having those freely shared around the web on sites such as Pinterest, can be seen as anything from copyright infringement to outright theft.

The Ugly
I can see lawsuits stemming from something as simple as someone sharing image content they liked and the owner of the image getting upset.  It’s gonna happen.

Is Pinterest Right for Your Business?
1. No – Pinterest isn’t right for my business. If you would prefer that your site content not be shared on Pinterest, there is code you can add to your site to prevent your images from being freely pinned.  However, anyone with even rudimentary tech ability can simply save your image to their computer and upload and pin it directly and at that point, they could link that image to whatever site they want.

I would also suggest you add a watermark to every image you place on your site.  This is always a good practice for images that are exclusively yours and you own copyright to.

2. Yes – Pinterest could bring me some serious traffic! If you are willing to embrace Pinterest, then I suggest you make sure to read their Terms of Service thoroughly, as while they do allow for the occasional promoting of your own site, the main gist of Pinterest is for you to share what you love and what appeals to you.

So Pinterest is not all about self-promotion, but about sharing.  It’s very important that you realize that and how that will effect your usage strategy with Pinterest.

The Two-Step Social Media Marketing Strategy
Like any social media site, the overall marketing strategy goal should be two-fold:

1. To engage and interact with your customers and/or target market.  Don’t just broadcast one-way blasts to them, respond to them, talk with them – be social.  That’s why it’s called “social media”.
2. To provide valuable content that is shared to increase traffic back to your own site and convert that traffic to paying customers.

Without the two step approach above, your efforts are off kilter and will likely not be well received. If you apply the above two step strategy approach across all social media platforms, you will gain credibility and connection with the needs of your market, and ultimately see increased traffic to your site that converts to sales.

Are you using Pinterest as part of your social media marketing strategy in your business?

* Twitter
* Facebook
* LinkedIn
* YouTube
* Blogging
* Offline Networking

Every aspect of social media (online and offline) works together like pieces of a puzzle to expand your business boundaries to reach new potential clients in your target market.