For business opportunities and exciting marketing channels, Pinterest likely doesn't spring to mind first. After all, the platform is only the 13th most-used social media channel globally.
However, Pinterest has just rolled out some fascinating new features, and from a business perspective, they provide a fantastic opportunity to interact and engage with your audience in real-time and facilitate conversions and sales.
So, how will Pinterest do this exactly? Read on to learn more.
What Are Pinterest's New Features?
What are these exciting new features that are so intriguing for businesses? Let's examine what's happening and why these introductions could benefit your businesses.
Live Videos
The introduction of live selling on social media has been excellent for businesses. For instance, Facebook is already in the process of creating live shopping experiences for its users, and companies have seen super-high engagement levels when using live video on the platform.
Pinterest, already an entirely visual-based platform, now allows creatives to engage with audiences via the new live video feature. Pinterest creatives can showcase their products and services through live videos, meaning business owners and marketing teams can interact with their audience in real time — answering questions, offering solutions, and selling through live video. Pinterest's 440 million users will also be able to pin these videos and watch them on-demand if they miss the live broadcasts.
Pinterest live video has full shopping functionality, including links to a seller's website. While actual transactions won't take place on Pinterest itself, live video allows a smooth, easy way for customers to explore your products and then head to your site to make purchases. Creatives have also seen a following increase of 50% after using live videos.
Pinterest TV
An answer to Instagram's feature of the same name, Pinterest TV allows popular creatives to showcase products in 30-minute episodes. Pinterest will show episodes every Friday, and users can access Pinterest TV by simply clicking the TV icon in the top left of the app interface.
The live, shoppable episodes allow the platform's most popular creatives to showcase and tag products directly through Pinterest. Creatives hosting episodes on Pinterest TV will have access to a shopping toolbox, which will include helpful tools such as shopping experiences, product drawers, prices, product details, and brand collaboration opportunities.
Carousel Posts
Another one of Pinterest's new features is incredibly enticing to businesses. Carousel posts are similar to a standard post but pack a much larger punch. Carousel posts allow creatives to pin multiple images under one post.
This is fantastic from a marketing perspective, allowing you to showcase multiple product features, introduce team members, or tell a captivating brand story through a series of images all within one post.
How Will Pinterest's New Features Benefit Business?
So how exactly will these new features benefit you as a business? Let's explore.
Run Ads and Include Website
Unlike standard posts and idea pins, carousel posts are a little more versatile and excellent from a business perspective. You will now be able to include links to pages on your website and run ads through a carousel post. Yep, wow!
The introduction of the carousel posts is a breath of fresh air. Instead of dreaming of a "nice-to-have feature," Pinterest has done it, making it super easy to do business directly through their platform.
Live Selling
Live selling is a super-powerful new feature, most exciting for businesses looking to channel their marketing through Pinterest. The live selling feature allows you to sell directly on the platform, engage with your audience in real-time, and answer questions about your products/services right there and then.
Although no transactions occur on the platform, creators on Pinterest can provide a link so users can go directly to your website while watching the video.
Summary
While Instagram still leads the way for engagement, and Facebook remains the best channel from a business perspective, it will be interesting to see how these new features on Pinterest will affect the platform's popularity with businesses and marketers and if such features work for genuinely effective marketing.
To recap, let's revisit the main points we've discussed:
Creatives can now broadcast live videos to showcase and sell their products directly on Pinterest.
Carousel posts now allow you to post multiple images in one post, with links to your website.
You can pin Pinterest TV episodes to watch later if you miss live broadcasts.
If your business isn't currently on Pinterest, there's no better time to sign up and see how the platform can become a new marketing channel for you. If you're already a long-term user of Pinterest, the visual-based platform's new feature additions mean this could be the time to double down and focus some attention on your marketing on the platform.
Fifth & Cor can help your brand benefit from these new features and thrive. Contact us to discuss how to create a successful Pinterest marketing strategy.
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