Social media has been serving as a channel for various marketing activities, such as customer relationship management (CRM), customer service, and buyer research and branding (Ashley & Tuten, 2014). Social media has also been categorized as a branding channel which branded social media activities can be used to enhance brand awareness and visibility, promote customers engagement and loyalty, encourage word-of-mouth communication about the brand, and drive traffic to brand site online or offline (eMarketer, 2013).  But, what motivate or drive consumer engagement on social media i.e. Pinterest?

McQuail (1983) suggeted four general gratifications that consumers obtained from using social media, which are entertainment, information, personal identity, and integration and social interaction. Following table shows the details of sub-motivation of each general gratification:

Table 1 Motivations that drive consumers using social media. Source: (Ashley & Tuten, 2014)

While table below presents the main motivations for using Pinterest (Ashley & Tuten, 2014):

After understanding the motivations that drive usage of Pinterest, small businesses may want to include the above elements to their content of pins or boards in order to attract and fulfill the needs of their targeted consumers on Pinterest thus enhance users’ engagement.

Several foundational tips below might allow a business to optimize its Pinterest profile to gain better visibility and engagement for the brand.

1. Searchable profile. A business should ensure the business name is self-explanatory and easy to spell which a length of username between 3 and 15 characters. Moreover, including links to other social media accounts enable to increase crossover and visibility. Filling a brief description about business or company through using keywords will make the business profile more visible and discoverable (Mccoy, 2016).
2. Easy to pin. Adding a Pin It button to all the content on a business website is able to increase crossover between the business site and Pinterest account. This also allows users to connect and share the company’s content on Pinterest thus indirectly encourage engagement.
3. User-generated content. According to Honigman (2015), user-generated content is 35% more memorable and 50% more trustworthy than other types of media creation, thus user-generated content should play a key role in Pinterest strategy. Businesses should utilize Pinterest’s feature of collaborative board to invite their followers or customers to pin images of how they interact with the businesses’ products and services. However, businesses might need to include some rules in the description of the board to avoid irrelevant images or content are pin as that may bring negative impact to others fans’ experience while searching and contributing their ideas in the board. The figure below shows that the invited followers of users are able to contribute images to the board. GoPro is one of the brands which has active user-generated content boards.  Click here to learn how GoPro get their fans to engage with them on Pinterest.
   

   Collaborators box allows business to invite its followers and customers to interact with business through pinning images on the created board.

4. Relevant content to business’s industry. By keeping the boards and content focused may enable a brand to provide its fans the pins with quality, useful and interesting content. To find out what kind of content a business’s targeted consumers like the most, business are able to see what’s popular on its competitor’s website in terms of what’s being pinned by the targeted customers through using the url www.pinterest.com/source/(competitor.com). For example the popular pins shows from Nike in below figure. There are also several ways to check out competitors on Pinterest.Popular pins from Nike
5. Correct pinning time. Pinning at the right time allows brand to reach its targeted customer more effectively. Therefore, brands need to understand their targeted audience’s habits. While SocialFresh suggested that 2PM-4PM EST and 8PM-1AM EST are the best time to pin in general, and HubSpot‘s research showed that Saturday morning is the best time to post.
6. Connected with other social media platforms. By linking Pinterest account to other social media account enables businesses to get more followers from its existing networks, and also to spread Pinterest’s content across platforms to increase visibility.
7. Sharing Pins through the newsletter feature. Instead of waiting consumers to search your pins, businesses are able to being active rather than passive by sending their popular and latest pins directly to subscribers or fans from other platforms to encourage engagement from them.
8. SEO for Pinterest. SEO strategy will get businesses pins discovered by their targeted audience easily. Businesses should first start with research the poplar keywords related to the business by using Google AdWords Planner. After that, adding the keywords to pin titles, pin descriptions or to pin image file names.
9. Call-to-Pin. Call-to-pin is similar to call-to-action which will be included in businesses’ pins in order to boost the engagement of pins. Call-to-pin showed in pin’s description will provide 80%more engagement (Mccoy, 2016).
10. Pin actively. Post frequently on Pinterest may allow a business to get more Pinterest followers thus increase brand awareness.