Differentiate Your Business with Place Pins

By Lisa Schultz

Pinterest is an excellent platform to build relationships with prospective clients and promote your business. If you’re already a Pinterest user, you might have noticed messages and emails letting you know you can now add a map to your Pinterest boards. If you haven’t tried “Place Pins” yet, now is the time to start. These pins are quick and easy to create, and can add immense value to your profile.

What are Pinterest Place Pins?
Place Pins are a location-based product produced by Pinterest that allow users to add a map to any of their boards. Pinterest teamed up with Foursquare to provide this brand-new mapping feature. If a location does not show up on Pinterest, visit Foursquare.com to add the location.

Benefits of Place Pins
Place Pins fall into the rich pin category. Currently there are five types of rich pins: product, place, article, recipe and movie. When using these pins, the pinner stands out in search results, more re-pins are gained, and rich pins rank higher in the search tool. Whenever a change is made to the Foursquare listing, your Place Pin will automatically update, which allows you to have the most up-to-date information.

How Real Estate Agents Can Use Place Pins
As a real estate professional, it’s important to demonstrate your knowledge of local communities. For example, you might service a whole city, but you might typically specialize in three to five specific communities. On your Pinterest page, create boards for these communities. You can create separate boards such as: Best Restaurants in {Neighborhood} or {Neighborhood} Car Washes. You can also create one general neighborhood board and pin a variety of your recommendations to it like your favorite coffee shops, the best place to shop for groceries, top hikes, interesting running routes, and Favorite Restaurants. As you pin your place pins, your board will automatically create a mapping feature. Take a look at the Office Locations Board created by Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties.

Once you’ve established your boards, promote them to your clients. For example, if you’ve created a board titled Running Routes in {Neighborhood} and a prospective client who loves to run is looking for a home in this neighborhood, send a link to your board. This shows your prospect you not only know the neighborhood, but also care about his or her interests. If you’ve recently closed a home sale in a neighborhood, send the buyer your boards for that neighborhood as a way for him or her to become acquainted with their new community.

Get Started
Creating a place board is simple. If you already have a Pinterest account, follow the steps below. If you do not yet have one, sign up at Pinterest.com to get started.
1.    Head to your profile page.
2.    Click the link for “Create Board.”
3.    Name your board.
4.    Write a unique description.
5.    Set a category.
6.    Turn on the map feature.
7.    Select “Create Board.”

Once your board if created you can add locations by selecting your board and following the prompts for adding a place.

That’s it; you’ve created your first Place Pin! Happy pinning!

LISA SCHULTZ is the content marketing specialist for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties in San Diego, CA. To contact Lisa, email lisa.schultz@bhhscal.com.