9 Tips on Using Pinterest to Drive Traffic to Your Vintage Shop

If you're not using Pinterest to strategically promote your online shop, you should be. News out this weekend points to Pinterest as a top traffic driver for retailers -- it's eeked out Google as a place people find your stuff online, click, and purchase.

So how do you strap some reigns on this incredibly powerful beast and bend it to your will?

Have you visited The Vintage Bazaar on Pinterest? Check us out.

It's important to remember that Pinterest is a social tool, similar to Twitter. You shouldn't use it solely to promote or "blast" your products. Rather it's a way to gather a cult of interest around your brand identity. In my shop, BackGarage, for instance, I sell 1970s boho vintage and Scandinavian modern housewares. On my Pinterest account, I've created a few Pin Boards (Seventies Boho, Scando Modern) to reflect my personal style. Like-minded pinners follow the boards, and occasionally I pin my own stuff. I'm trying to create a following and a community vs. doing hardcore promotion.

We should also mention that you need to have dynamic inventory and information on your site in order to fully benefit from Pinterest. Pinterest works to drive traffic to new content, like shop items or blog posts. So before trying to use Pinterest to boost traffic to your shop, make sure you have those things going on for yourself.

Keeping that in mind, here are 9 tips on how to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your shop -- and hopefully boost sales!

1. Open an account and brand your identity.

If you don't already have a Pinterest account, request an invite. Once you open your account, make your Pinterest handle your shop's name (or the closest approximation), and your icon your shop's logo. In the Edit Profile section, add links to your shop and information about what you sell and your personal style.

2. Create boards that support your shop's look.

Using the Add button, click Create a Board, and start boards that would interest your shop's customers. For instance, if you sell 1930s-'50s farmhouse rustic and pride yourself on ingenious re-purposing ideas, start a board to collect pictures of "a-ha" uses for flea market antiques. (Cast iron muffin tins as craft drawer organizers, for instance.)

3. Find like-minded pinners and follow them.

Use the search button to search for subjects that interest you and your shop's customers. Find people who've created interesting boards and follow their pins. Re-pinning and liking their pins is another way to build your network without directly following someone. The goal is to get your profile in more places so people can find and follow you, too.

4. Search for your shop and find out who's pinning it. (And what they're pinning!)

If you have a unique URL for your shop it's easy to see who's already been pinning you by typing in the following URL and replacing "yourshopname" with your website:

http://pinterest.com/source/yourshopname.com/

Check this feature out in action: who's pinning from The Vintage Bazaar? Click here to see.

Once you see who's pinned you you can decide whether or not to follow them. Pinners who have pinned your shop might also lead you to boards and other pinners you might like to follow.

Finding out who has pinned your shop is harder to do if you only have an Etsy shop, but here's a quick tip: Within Etsy, go to your Seller Account and check out your Shop Stats. If Pinterest shows up as a traffic source, click on it. Check out the Landing Pages at the bottom of your Pinterest inbound link stats page. See which of your items appear as landing pages, then search for those items using keywords on Pinterest.

5. Follow boards that gel with your shop's identity.

It's easy to find and follow boards that support your brand. Use the Search tool to search in the Boards category. (For instance, here's our search for Chicago architecture boards.) Following boards with like interests helps create social connections and also provides you with fodder for re-pinning so you can start adding content to your own boards.

6. Add a "Pin It" button to your shop.

"Pin It" buttons have already been added to Etsy shops. But if you have your own website, add the link to individual products so you can make it easy for browsers to share your stuff on Pinterest.

7. Add "Follow me on Pinterest" buttons to your profile pages.

Create a bigger audience for your pins by amassing followers. An easy way to do this is by adding "follow me" Pinterest buttons on your About page, shop listings, and anywhere it makes sense to add to your online profiles.

8. Pin every day.

Like Tweeting, Pinning takes a little work. But there's a big payoff if you join a dedicated network of people who support you and your sales. All it takes is a little bit of pinning every day. Add the Pin It bookmark to your toolbar and make it a habit.

9. Monitor your inbound Pinterest traffic via Google Analytics.

You can do this from within Etsy as mentioned above, or if you're using Google Analytics for your website, monitor your inbound Pinterest traffic to see which items are getting the most pins. See if you can spot trends. If certain items seem to be getting more pins, ask yourself why. See if you can update or change your shop listings to encourage more pinning based on your findings.

(Hot tip here: great photos are the key to getting items pins. The better the picture, the more pins.)

Are you using Pinterest as a shop promotions tool? Have we left anything out? Leave your tips and tricks in the comments or share them on our Facebook Page.