« Use Twitter Cards to Improve Social Media MarketingWhy you need a Separate Mobile Website »

Pinterest Business Accounts

Published on 25 Nov 2012 at 7:46 pm.
Filed under Informative,Marketing,Social Media.

Pinterest logoPinterest is a social media bookmarking network. Last week they introduced business accounts. So what can you do with a business account?

Evolution of Pinterest Accounts

A few months ago Pinterest was one of the social media networks that I recommended you to check out. At the time it was an invite-only service. They have since opened the doors to everyone.

The BrandBuilder Company Blog Board on Pinterest

The BrandBuilder Company Blog Board on Pinterest

It may come as a surprise to some, but Pinterest’s old terms of service prohibited commercial use. The new terms of service now allows for commercial usage from business accounts only. Pinterest is not stupid. They know that many businesses created personal accounts anyways. They allow you to convert your existing Pinterest account to a business account.

Aside from the legal terms, there are not many differences between a personal and a business account at this time. They are:

  • You must specify a Business Type. The current options available are:
    • Professional (e.g., photographer, blogger, designer)
    • Public Figure (e.g., politician, athlete, musician, actor)
    • Media (e.g., magazine, newspaper, tv news)
    • Brand (e.g., Coca-cola, SF 49ers, Grey Poupon)
    • Retailer (e.g., Anthropologie, Pottery barn)
    • Online Marketplace (e.g., Etsy, Amazon)
    • Local Business (e.g., restaurant, boutique)
    • Institution/Non-profit (e.g., Smithsonian, MoMa)
    • Other
  • Contact Name – Person managing your account.
  • Business Name – How you’ll appear on Pinterest.
  • The signup process is slightly altered.
  • A customizable Buttons and Widgets section. When I tested this last night these buttons and widgets worked even with personal accounts. At the time of this writing they do not work. Hopefully they fix this soon.
  • A source page which displays all pins to your site.

Pinterest provides case studies, guides, and documentation on what they feel works for users. They also promise that business accounts will have access to upcoming features. There have been no hints on what those new features will be.

Issues with Pinterest

Pinterest is not perfect. It is clearly a start-up that has things it needs to work out. Once it does then it can move to the next level. There are a couple of issues I’ve found that brands need to know about.

  • Pinterest accounts cannot be linked to a Facebook page. This goes for both personal and business accounts.
  • There are no managers for business accounts. Business accounts are completely separate personal accounts. Your managers will need to log out of their personal accounts to manage the business account.
  • Pinterest removes some Google Analytics Campaign tracking codes. In my experience they seem to remove the “utm_medium” and “utm_campaign” parameters. They leave the “utm_source” parameter is left if the value is “pinterest”.

This last point worries me the most. Campaign tracking with Google Analytics is very important for brands. The fact that they do any stripping is worrisome. Leaving the utm_source parameter is pinterest is a bug! Say there was a link from Facebook that has facebook as the utm_source. If they pin something on that page the source should still be facebook. That is where traffic really came from. Heck, the only way to even get set the utm_source value to pinterest is to manually edit the URL after you pin it. It’s pointless!

Has your brand already embraced Pinterest? Have you converted your brand’s personal account to a business account? What else would you like to see from Pinterest? Are you following The BrandBuilder Company on Pinterest?

This post was originally published as Pinterest Business Accounts for The BrandBuilder Company.

Comments are closed.