Tips on Promoting Your eBay Store Using Pinterest

Many eBay sellers are already familiar with the use of platforms like Facebook or YouTube for marketing purposes. With its emphasis on visual images, Pinterest offers unique opportunities for socially-minded eBay sellers to reach potential buyers.

Using Pinterest effectively as a social marketing platform takes more than pinning everything in your eBay store to your Pinterest page. 

Here are some other ways to make Pinterest work for you as an eBay marketing tool.

Marketing Tips

• Have Great Photos: If you're going to leverage Pinterest to its maximum capabilities, it's crucial that you have good photos that show what you're selling (or what you've sold) as attractively as possible. It doesn't mean you have to spend money on professional photos, but make sure the ones you use are all well-lit and show the item you're selling from the best possible angle(s). For photo and page layout inspiration, consider following eBay's Pinterest page.
• Make Your Pins Easy to Find: Add Pinterest buttons to your e-commerce site, any blog posts, or email you use to promote your eBay business. Set up different boards if you have different segments in which you sell; one for laptops and one for smartphones, for instance.
  If you have items that have sold or auctioned that you plan to restock, it's a good idea to create a separate board for "sold" items as well. Be sure you differentiate between items that are still available and those that aren't, to avoid confusion among potential customers.
  And if you maintain a web presence that links to your eBay store, make it easy for people to pin you and any links that lead to you or your listings.
• Engage with Other eBayers and Pinterest Users: For social media to work, it can't be all about you. Engage with others. Re-pin their pins, like their pins, and be part of the community. With marketing and social media, you must give before you take. Give others a reason to engage with you by reaching out to them first. Eventually, you will establish a presence and others will reciprocate. 
• Make Your eBay Store Easy to Find: Though eBay and Pinterest don't have a direct relationship, you can create the link between your Pinterest page and your eBay store. Create a Pinterest profile that matches your eBay selling member ID and include a direct link to your eBay store, list of eBay auctions, or your About Me page. 
• Pin Great Customer Testimonials: Nothing drives sales better than a wall of testimonials with photos. Create and pin on more focused Pinterest boards for testimonials, positive customer service stories, product categories, seasonal promotions, and other similar narratives about your business. Pinterest boards are uniquely suited to building great marketing this way.
• Use Pinterest Analytics: If you have a website of your own outside of eBay, check your analytics to see what's generating interest. Monitor current popular pins to see what kinds of goods, images, and motifs are driving consumer interest at the moment. Also, check Pinterest's eBay source page and search for "eBay" on Pinterest to see what eBay shoppers and sellers are pinning, buying, selling, and generally getting excited about.
• Be Consistent and Genuine: Participate in your Pinterest life as an eBay seller; don't just think of it as a task or job that needs to be done now and then. Pin a great deal and repin a great deal; be a Pinterest user, not just a visitor, since the more you participate, the more likely it is that others will see your pins. Build a community, not just a group of customers.
  As you put these tips into play, remember, too, that enthusiasm counts in social media. If you engage with the Pinterest community as both a seller and as a person who enjoys what they're doing, you're more likely to achieve genuine social marketing for your selling rather than just traditional marketing using yet another social tool.

Updated by Suzanne A. Wells