Place Map: 5 Reasons We Love It (and You Should Too!)

Back in November, Pinterest teamed up with Foursquare to create the Place Map feature on Pinterest. In the original post announcing it, Pinterest stated that they created it since so many of their users were pinning vacation spots. The new Place Map would make it so Pinterest could be part of the planning portion of those vacations.

However, Place Map isn’t just good for planning vacations. Businesses can use it too (and should!) in 5 ways:

1. List Your Business Locations

If you have multiple business locations—around the world or within the same state—you can create a board featuring every place of business. Adding images and basic office information is useful and can be easily found on your board.

A great example is the University of Michigan’s Tour #UMich board. They feature all the locations on their campus and provide basic information for students.

Even if you don’t have a physical office, you can still put where your main place of business is, even if it’s an entire continent.

2. Identify Other Businesses You Work With

On my business page, I pinned a restaurant where I often take clients. I also included where I got my business cards, and other good locations to meet clients. This can easily be converted to the Place Map feature.

One company that stands out to me is Revive Humanity. It’s a nonprofit that is a sister company to Revive Service Tours. What they did was create a board just for the service tours and created a map with it. This way people can see where they can go on a service tour in one glance.

3. Make Your Business More Transparent

Posting all your employees’ addresses is not a good idea… but posting the city where they live or have lived is a fun way to personalize and lend some transparency to your business. The other benefit is that when someone searches certain cities, your business can still pop up in the search results on Pinterest.

4. Find Relevant Conferences

Whether or not your company is holding a conference, you can feature conferences that are relevant to your industry.

For example, I’m in the social media industry. There are conferences all over the United States that are dedicated to social media marketing and strategy. You can see how that is set-up here.

5. Spot Your Customers

One way to integrate a group board with the Place Map feature is to have your customers pin where they live. This is a fun way to engage with your followers and can show competitors how far your reach is.

It can also help your marketing strategy as well. By seeing where the bulk of your customers are at a glance, you can also see who your main audience is.

I have learned and implemented ways to use the Place Map feature from Pinterest to grow my business. Any business can use this feature and benefit from it in unique ways. Take the time to see how it would work for you and let us know if you find a way to use it that we haven’t listed!