by Jackie Johnson, Online Marketing Strategist

By now, most everyone has heard of Pinterest, and chances are you fall within one of three categories: 1) you're hopelessly addicted to it, and have created a huge list of "projects" along with ideas for your style, home, office, etc.; 2) you can't figure out what the point is or why you should care; 3) you're a man and think it's just for chicks.

Upon further inspection, though, let's break down the Pinterest mystery so everyone can understand how it's changing the web and, more specifically, how it's changing our web traffic patterns.

What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a website that allows users to share things they love by "pinning" them to their categorized "pin boards". The most recently pinned items are displayed at the top of the Pinterest homepage, with buttons that allow other users to "re-pin" the item, "like" the item (within Pinterest, not Facebook), or add a comment.

When you click on a pinned item twice, you arrive at its website of origin (the first click gets you to the board that it's on). Herein lies the most magical part of Pinterest: generating referral traffic to your website.

(Author's sidenote: Referral traffic = traffic to your site that comes from another online source or "referring source")

In just nine short months, Pinterst has grown to over 11 million users and is sending more referring traffic than LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google+ combined. (Facebook is still number one, sending 26.4% of referral traffic.)

How Can Your Business Get on Pinterest?
Using Pinterest is just like using any other form of social media (or marketing tool, for that matter) – you've got to have a plan going into it and a reason for being there.

Understanding Pinterest and becoming a user yourself is the first step to getting your arms around this relatively new medium. Since it's still in the beta stage, you'll need to request an invitation (or, if you know someone who already has an account, they can send you one of their invites, which is a much speedier route).

Creating a Pinterest account for your company is the same as creating a personal account – just make the "name" of the new business page the same as your brand and write a description that explains what you do. Then create your boards and start pinning.

Tip #1: You can invite your business to Pinterest just as you would invite a friend. All you need to do is type your professional email address into the "Invite Friends" section and you're in like Flynn.

Tip #2: Pinterest requires that you sign in using either your Twitter or Facebook account. For a business, you must use your Twitter account, because Facebook business pages aren't allowed.

Pinterest Marketing Purposes
Based on the most recent demographics of Pinterest users, we know that the site is predominantly used by females (nearly 80%) who are between 25-54 years of age.

But don't let those stats scare you into thinking that your company has to be into crafts, weddings, or kittens in order to have a presence (in fact, here are some pointers on not being sexist on Pinterest). The only stat that you really need to know is that women usually hold the purse strings in the household budget and are in charge of roughly $7 trillion in annual spending.

So how does your Pinterest account tap into this market and sell your company's products or services?

Strengthen Your Brand – Before you start creating boards and pinning, figure out what your target audience enjoys doing, eating, or thinking about. Craft your account in such a way that you not only show your own products and services, but also tap into their interests as well as things that align well with your overall brand message.

Are you a health and wellness company, like Envive Chiropractic? Showcasing a service and a lifestyle doesn't have to be hard; just be creative and show a mix of the things your target audience cares about along with your core products.

Chobani, a brand of yogurt, also hits the mark with its 18 boards of recipes, fitness tips, positive thinking, and other healthy living topics. The key to their success is pinning recipes from their own website as well as user-generated ones where they suggest swapping out an ingredient for yogurt. Genuis!

Sell Your Products – We all want to sell products, make a buck, and keep the lights on, right? Pinterest can play a vital role in driving conversions to your e-commerce site by sending large amounts of referral traffic (this is especially true if you have excellent product photography and your pin gets "re-pinned" a lot). Tip: To let people know that the products in your pins are indeed for sale, make sure you use the dollar sign and a price in the description while pinning the item – this will cause Pinterest to automatically put a price tag banner across the side of the pin:

The flip side of this is finding out if any of your products are getting pinned by other people. Who knows, you might already have pins on Pinterest!

To find out: type in pinterest.com/source/yourURL.com (no "www" in front). For instance http://pinterest.com/source/vibellajewelry.com/ - although this brand doesn't have its own Pinterest account yet, fans of its jewelry are already pinning products onto their own accounts.

Tip: Spend time browsing the boards of the people who pin your products... there's a lot to learn from these customers, such as what interests them, what else they pinned on the board, and what motivates them.

I hope this helps to demystify how you can use Pinterest for your business' objectives. Just remember: there's a strategy behind every successful marketing and social media initiative, and doing it "just for the sake of doing it" is never the answer. There will always be a lot of ongoing maintenance work in posting and pinning, and even sprucing up your photography. Finding the time to keep up with all of your accounts can make you wonder if it's even worth the effort, but trust us – it is!

Shameless plug: Setting up and managing social media accounts is one of Click Rain's specialties. (Hint, hint...) Let us do the work – you've got a business to run.