Setting Up Your Pinterest Business Account

Just a few days ago, Pinterest made a major move forward by now offering Business accounts.  This is right on the heels of other recent changes including secret boards and website verification.  Clearly Pinterest understands that businesses are using the site to promote products and brands and they want to find ways to take advantage of this practice.  Pinterest is still working to figure out how they are going to incorporate monetization and this appears to be a move further in that direction.

Back in August, Pinterest crossed over a major threshold, surpassing Yahoo making it the fourth largest traffic driver worldwide.  Not only that, but it also sent more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined in January, Twitter in February and StumbleUpon, Bing and Google referral traffic in June.  No matter how you look at it, Pinterest is becoming a major force online and it’s going to be interesting to see how things progress in the near future.

Facts & Figures

If you haven’t really paid attention to Pinterest for your business, let me share a few facts that you might find to be rather interesting.  On average, there are 10% more purchases using Pinterest than on any other social media platform.  The average amount spent on purchases through Pinterest is $80.  There are over 2.2 million ACTIVE daily users.  Pinterest users are twice as likely to buy stuff than FaceBook users are.  Do I have your attention yet?

Pinterest is becoming a powerhouse for businesses to get products in front of people and to turn that into sales.  Take Boticca for example.  Boticca is a fashion e-commerce website who has been using Pinterest to drive customers to their website.  They have found that users that come from Pinterest to their store, spent $180 compared to FaceBook users, who spent only $85.  It just makes sense for some businesses to turn to Pinterest instead of FaceBook.

Pinterest is only for Women

One of the biggest statistics I see reported about Pinterest is that it’s mostly for women.  Yes, it’s true that mostly women are using Pinterest, in fact the latest stats show that it’s almost an 80% to 20% division.  But that doesn’t’ mean that men aren’t using it.  I did come across a statistic that honestly surprised me quite a bit.  According to Compete.com, 25% of users report that they purchased a product or service after discovering it on Pinterest.  However, when you look at men versus women, 37% of men reported they purchased a product versus only 17% of women.  Of course, 17% of women still adds up to a huge number, but don’t discount the possibility of marketing to men using Pinterest.

Pinterest Business Accounts

So back to the discussion of Business accounts.  Prior to this change, businesses had to fit their way into the Pinterest account format, which was a little challenging.  When signing up for an account, you had to put your business name in the First and Last name fields.  You couldn’t tell this by looking at their Pinterest profile page, but it was a little awkward.

Pinterest has fixed this issue with the new Business accounts.  You can now fill out your business name as how you will appear on Pinterest.

Other than that change, not much is different from a Personal versus a Business account.  Then why should you make the change?  Well there are a few reasons to make the move.

First, Pinterest is truly focusing on businesses and helping them to be successful using their platform to marketing their businesses.  They have already released new educational material focused on helping businesses and I would assume that this will continue going forward.

Secondly, with this move of adding business accounts you can bet that there are going to be a bunch of new features that are going to be added down the road.  It’s already been mentioned that analytics and reporting are some of the features to be looking forward to in the future.  You can bet that you won’t have access to those through a personal account.  You’ll likely need a business account for those features.

Convinced, then let us look at how you can convert your existing account to a business account.

How to Convert Your Personal Pinterest Account to a Business Account

There are really just 4 steps that you have to take to convert your account over to a business account.

Step 1: Go to business.pinterest.com and click on the big red button, Convert your existing account, to begin.

Step 2: The next step you need to take is to choose your business type.  Pinterest does a good job at helping you determine where your business fits, by giving you some examples next to each option.  For me, as a blogger,  I choose Professional.

Once you make that selection, fill out the contact information and email address.  The Contact Name can be anyone you choose and it’s not publicly shown on your account.  As for the company email address, it’s a good idea to choose one that isn’t tied to anyone in particular, such as an info account.

Step 3: Fill out the Profile Info which is shown publicly

Scroll down just a little on the page and you need to complete the Profile Information found here.  Most likely you won’t have to change anything here if you had already filled it out previously.  It will look exactly like it did before on your personal page.

Step 4: Read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Scroll down a little further and read through the ToS and Privacy policy.  You do read the ToS and Privacy Policy, right?

Once you’ve checked the box and have finished the rest of the steps above, you can click on the large red Convert Account button.

That’s all it takes and you’re now converted to a business account.

Setting up a new Business Account

What if you never had a Pinterest account or you want to open a new account for your business, how do you accomplish this?  It’s just as easy to accomplish this too.  It’s exactly like what we just did above with one exception.  Instead of clicking the big red Convert your existing account button as we did above, click the words below that button that say New to Pinterest? Join as a business.

Once you click this link, you will be brought through the 4 steps we listed above.  The only difference is that none of the fields will be pre-populated with your information on your Personal account.

That wasn’t that hard now was it?

Pinterest is a great way to promote your business and I highly recommend setting up a business account and start using the site.  If you have any questions or comments please let me know.  I’d be more than happy to help if I can.

I am also working on the Ingenious Guide to Pinterest and that should be ready soon.  So keep your eyes open for that in the coming weeks.

Steve Eason (66 Posts)

Steve Eason is a professional blogger, internet marketer and social media enthusiast located in the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina area. Find out more on Facebook, Twitter or Google+.

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