Top Ten Ways to Use Pinterest for Business

Pin strategically by considering your objectives before you begin. Are you tring to: drive traffic to your website, boost your brand awareness, increase your sales, expand customer engagement?

Create inviting boards by making 40 percent of your pins motivational and inspiring. 40 percent instructional and educational, and only 20 percent about your brand-including profiles, specials and contests.

Install the Pin It Button on your website and give every page and blog post a featured image that can be pinned automatically, In addition put a "Follow me on Pinterest" button on your home page.

Buid your brand by engaging with the community via repinning, commenting on and liking other pins. You can also tag @ another pinner you are following in one of your pin descriptions.

Craft keyword-rich pin and board titles and descriptions to boost your Google ranking and be found for your expertise. Use hashtags to highlight key words and phrases your customers search for.

Connect with your other social media by creating a Pinterest tab on Facebook, tweeting your pins, and embedding pins in your blog posts.

Place your most important pins near the middle of the top or second row of the board. Research shows that pins placed front and center receive the highest percentage of viewers.

Drive traffic to your website by offering free items such as e-books, podcasts and white papers to a pin's description. According to Pinerly, pins that have a call to action see an 80 percent increase in engagement.

Make your boards more interactive by sharing videos, screencasts and podcasts. Good multimedia pins include: tutorials, product demos, behind-the-scenes tours and excerpts from presentations and webinars.

Verify your website in the settings page to get access to the Pinterest Web Analytics feature. The info will help you see which of your pinning efforts are paying off and shape your future strategy.