Pinfluence: The Complete Guide to Marketing Your Business with Pinterest

Pinterest: One Piece of Your Overall Marketing Strategy

It’s easy to get lost in the circus of social media. Between Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest, we often trick ourselves into believing that we’re being incredibly productive by spending 10 hours a day interacting with people via all these different platforms. To complicate things even further, it seems like a new social media tool arrives on the scene every six months, and the social media gurus start yelling that you must have a presence within this newest site—otherwise, your business is completely sunk.

Sit back, take a deep breath, and let the circus music fade away. I’m going to straighten out some misconceptions for you.

When it comes to online marketing, your goals are simple: Drive traffic back to your website, add people to your mailing list, and turn those visitors into buyers.

Picture your marketing strategy as the wheel of a bicycle. Your content-rich website or blog is the hub of that wheel, and social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are the spokes. And while they are very important spokes, they are nonetheless merely spokes. Social media tools should act as distribution and traffic-building mechanisms for your website’s top-quality content. Building relationships and trust on social media is incredibly important, as well. However, if the people with whom you’re building these connections never leave your Pinterest profile or Facebook page, then you are spinning your wheels ...