Pinterest Etiquette for Credit Unions

By far the fastest growing social media platform today is Pinterest. What is Pinterest? Pinterest is a web and mobile application platform that’s a visual discovery, collection, sharing and storage tool. Users create and share the collections of visual pins, an image that has either been uploaded or linked from a website, to boards that are saved based on how the user organizes the content.

If your credit union isn’t already utilizing this social media tool, it should. Pinterest is another way to reach your audience, especially considering how many people are using it. According to Semiocast, a Paris-based social media research firm, Pinterest has over 70 million active users. The platform is a great way to connect to members and potential members by providing them with information they care about, but in a more visual – and impactful – manner. When getting started on the social media platform, there is a style of etiquette to follow. Here are some important things your credit union should keep in mind when using Pinterest.

Give credit – Never change the link on someone else’s pin. Give credit where credit is due. Similarly, when you are repining things to your board, you want to check the source of the pin to make sure it doesn’t lead to spam or anything unsavory.

Pin often but not all at once – Your pinning activity should be throughout the day and not for hours at a time. When you pin at various times of the day, it means that there’s a higher chance your pins will reach a larger number of people. It also means you won’t be flooding people’s home gallery page.

Create boards with substance – Every board you have should have at least 20 pins on it. If you can’t initially find five pins for your new board, you probably won’t use it and people will not find the board interesting. The goal is to pin things that are interesting to current and potential members.

Be organized – When creating boards to organizing items, you’ll need to decide how complex or simple to make them. In some cases, it can be better to break up a topic multiple ways. For example, “saving tips” is a great category for a board for a credit union to have. However, a better idea would be to break up saving tips by age to make it easier for people to find the exact saving tips they want to find.

Follow the right people – As a business, your credit union should follow leaders in the credit union industry. Another suggestion for people to follow are the community organizations that you partner with in different activities throughout the year. You don’t have to follow everyone who follows you. In fact, there are many users on Pinterest that were created purely for spam purposes, so be sure you are not just following an account because it started to follow you.

Pin relevant content – The content you are pinning to your credit union’s profile should be relevant to the industry. That goes for the content of the pin and the picture. Pinterest will automatically set an image for you when you pin something. The image might not be relevant to the content. Edit images as you see fit. Remember, your pins and the images that go with them should be related and should tell a person what it’s about so they won’t have to guess.

CU Solutions Group can help your credit union create an impactful footprint on social media. With a dedicated social media team, we can work with your credit union to either fully build out your social media profile if you don’t have one or take your existing profiles to the next level. We make getting social on social networking a breeze.