In the world of online marketing, Facebook and Twitter are the prime choices for hotels and wedding venues to connect with potential customers, but for more granular results (i.e. potential brides and grooms), every wedding venue worth their salt will know that Pinterest is full of low hanging fruit and potential bookings.
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is basically an online pin board where you can group photos together on individual boards. Think of it like a scrap book; photos can be of your property or found online linking back to the original source. Great news right?
According to Mashable, shoppers referred to a website via Pinterest are 10% more likely to purchase a product or service. This can only tell us that Pinterest can potentially be viable source to increase bookings from your website.
The even better news is that there are so many other ways you can utilize Pinterest for your business:
- A Visual Aid For Meetings: Your Pinterest boards can be brought into “real life” with a variety of mood boards of your venue, which you can produce when couples come in for their show round.
- A Continuing Storyline: Have you recently renovated? Maybe you have just launched a new package. Either way, keep fans updated and document real life events in your venue.
- A Source of Website Traffic: Pinning photos from your WeddingDates listing or other booking sites you use may be just another way to increase traffic flow and income to your business.
Pinterest Tips to Pin Like a Pro:
- Create an interesting profile inline with your venue’s brand strategy. Make it informative and be sure to link to your site and other social media.
- Find out what your competition are doing. What type of boards do they have up? How many pins have they uploaded? Are they very active? Maybe there is a way you can improve on what they are already doing. Four Seasons tracks increases in followers, repins and likes and visits to their site, digital magazine and blogs. They use this data to figure out what’s popular on Pinterest and then create more content like it.
- Optimise your boards with names that contain your keywords, and consider hashtags in your description. For example, our WeddingDates Pinterest contains boards from the geographical locations listed on our site with keywords for that location, each linked to the venue’s WeddingDates listing.
- Be active! Comment, like, share other boards and use it as a means of reaching out to a potential couple. Like any effective social media, Pinterest is more about having a conversation that is relevant to your fans rather than simply posting boards of the latest offers you have available. Try to think like your potential bride and imagine what they would be interested in seeing float through their Pinterest account.
Pinterest Accounts That Are Doing it Well
There are plenty of other businesses who are really making the most out of Pinterest; below are some of our favourites:
- Four Seasons Hotel
- Starbucks
- Etsy
What are you waiting for? Get Pinning! Check out our WeddingDates Pinterest for inspiration.
