Do you like social media marketing for your business? Looking to expand your efforts and start making the most of Pinterest? Great idea! Pinterest is a fast-growing social media platform that is ideal for many different types of businesses – but if you want to use it for your marketing efforts, it’s important to follow the rules. Not following the rules is a surefire way to get your business banned from Pinterest, and once you’ve been removed once, that’s it, you’re done. Pinterest states clearly that being banned means being banned for life, so there are no takebacks, even if it was an honest mistake that got you blacklisted in the first place.

Social Media Marketing with Pinterest: 4 Bannable Offenses

Don’t want to get banned? Don’t:

Post content that doesn’t belong to you. On the surface, the Internet looks like something of a free-for-all, with content everywhere, and no one keeping an eye on it, but the truth is that artists and photographers work hard at their craft just like we do and deserve to have their work credited. Don’t use content that doesn’t belong to you or you don’t have permission to use, or Pinterest will ban you.

Automate your Pinterest content. Pinterest doesn’t want you to post any content that you don’t manually add yourself, so any automation software is a no-no. Any content you post to your business’s account needs to be posted via the fruits of your own manual labor, or you’ll be banned.

Scrape Pinterest content to post automatically elsewhere. Same issue as above, just in reverse. Don’t use automation software to scrape content from Pinterest to add to your business blog, Facebook or Twitter accounts, or you’ll be banned.

Spam. This one is pretty straightforward – we all know by now that spam is a big ol’ no-no, but just in case you forgot, don’t spam people on Pinterest. This includes not adding obvious generic comments to other people’s pins in a bid to get them to come check out your own pinboard. Pinterest’s users will know exactly what you’re up to, and you’ll end up banned.

Pinterest’s rules are pretty upfront and not any more strict than most other social media platforms, but it’s important to keep the rules in the forefront of your mind as you work on social media marketing for your business. Missteps can result in a ban, and once you’re banned, you’re banned for life.

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