Many eBay sellers are already familiar with the use of platforms like Facebook or YouTube for marketing purposes, so viral marketing isn't a new thing to the eBay community. Pinterest, on the other hand—a new social media platform all about images—is different enough from the rest to offer new kinds of opportunity to socially-minded sellers.
Here are eight ways to make Pinterest work for you as an eBay marketing tool.
- Pin your items to promote more sales. Look closely at any current
eBay listing and you'll see something that wasn't there until recently: a
red button for pinning listings on Pinterest. In short, use it. (But before
you do, make sure that you've got your
best
photo foot forward, otherwise your pins won't generate attention.)
- "Marry" your eBay and Pinterest accounts. Though the two
companies don't have any direct relationship with one another, you can
be sure to create a Pinterest profile that matches your eBay selling
member ID and to include a link to your
eBay store, list of eBay auctions, or
About Me
page from your Pinterest profile.
- Make it easy for people to follow your Pinterest pins. Visit the
Pinterest goodies section
of the Pinterest website to find code and buttons that can be added to your
ecommerce site, your blog posts, forum participation, or email communication
to enable people to quickly and easily follow your pins.
- Make it easy for people to pin you beyond eBay. If you have an
independent ecommerce site or maintain a web presence in other ways that
links to your eBay selling, use the same Pinterest goodies collection to add
buttons making it easy for people to pin you and any links that lead to you
or your listings.
- Use Pinterest boards for marketing strategies. Nothing drives
sales better than a wall of testimonials with photos. Create and pin on more
focused Pinterest boards for testimonials, positive
customer service stories, product categories,
seasonal promotions, and other similar narratives about your business.
Pinterest boards are uniquely suited to building great marketing this way.
- Do market research using Pinterest. If you have a website of your
own outside of eBay, check your source page at pinterest.com/source/your-website-URL.com
to see what's generating interest. Monitor
current popular pins to see what
kinds of goods, images, and motifs are driving consumer interest at the
moment. Also check Pinterest's
eBay source page and
search for "ebay" on Pinterest to see what eBay shoppers and sellers are
pinning, buying, selling, and generally getting excited about.
- Pin your customer service materials. If you maintain a separate
website with
customer service materials (manuals, specifications, even policies and
instructions for packaging returns), these are prime candidates to be pinned
on a Pinterest board or two in a way that makes them feel both organized and
appealing.
- Be prolific. Participate in your Pinterest life as an eBay seller; don't just think of it as a task or job that needs to be done every now and then. Pin a great deal and repin a great deal; be a Pinterest user, not just a visitor, since the more you participate, the more likely it is that others will see your pins.
