The popularity of Pinterest has quickly pushed it to the forefront of social media. It's now only my top social media referrer, but it's also now my top traffic driver. Yesterday they sent out an email stating they would be experimenting with different ways of promoting select pins to see what types of features and functions to build next. There's a summary on their business blog along with a form to sign up to receive updates on these advancements.
http://businessblog.pinterest.com/In addition, for those wondering how to effectively use Pinterest to market their business, they have shared success stories from top brands.
http://business.pinterest.com/success-stories/While you can't verify your shop through etsy, you can verify your blog or stand alone dot com website. Weebly offers a simple and fabulous framework for building your own dot com either with a custom domain or a weebly subdomain. Their pro-accounts give you TEN websites for a low yearly price. Or you may consider a stand alone shop through a shopping cart host such as big cartel that allows you completely customize your shop's look. Whatever direction you decide to go in, signing up for a business account through Pinterest - or transferring your personal account to a business one like I did as I had over 26K followers when I switched - and verifying your website can really lead to greater success for your business.
If you've been cautious about Pinterest, do some research. Test the waters and connect with other small businesses who do well with it. You may find you change your mind. I know I was super inspired when I discovered that a blog I had been following reached 1 million Pinterest followers.
I've started rapidly gaining lots of new followers by promoting pin it to win it giveaways on my blog as well as encouraging my blog readers to follow my "specific such and such" boards with related content to certain blog articles.
Do you use Pinterest? Have you had success with it? How do you gain followers?
