Unless you live off the grid, there’s a good chance that you either use Pinterest yourself or you’ve at least heard about it.

But if you haven’t heard about it or don’t know much about it if you have, Pinterest is a social network that allows users to visually share and discover new interests by pinning photos, videos, links, etc. It is essentially a visually-focused discussion board.

So, what does it have to do with your funeral home? Well, there are a lot of reasons why getting on Pinterest would be good for your funeral home:

• You would reach the more than 100 million active users on Pinterest
• More than 70% of users are women, and women control 65% of global spending and 80% of U.S. spending
• In addition to female users, male users have grown 120% in the last year
• People who pin are open to marketing — two-thirds of the content pinned comes from businesses like your funeral home
• According to research by Millward Brown, 87% of Pinterest users have purchased a product because of Pinterest
• Pinterest drives traffic to your website — it is second only to Facebook in referral traffic

In the research published by Millward Brown, they also mention that a big part of what makes Pinterest so useful for marketing products and services is its ability to help users plan for future events. Most users get on Pinterest to find ideas for weddings, parties, house décor, etc.

So, since people already are using Pinterest to plan other events, it stands to reason that they also could plan funerals for themselves or their loved ones, using pictures and descriptions of your product and service offerings. And in fact, many already are doing so.

So how can your funeral home get started? Check out our Pinterest as we walk you through how to get the most out of the social media site.

First, you’ll need to set up an account with a description of your funeral home, your location, a profile picture, and a link to your website. Completing your profile to the best of your ability will make sure people can find information about you more easily.

After setting up your profile, create a few boards — these are sort of like threads on a discussion board. Each one has a different topic or theme, and these boards are where you will pin different items relating to that topic or theme.

After that, you can start pinning material from your website (like flower arrangements, urns, caskets, or other things you offer from your website) or uploading pictures and descriptions from your computer and including a link to your website. Everything you pin can then be re-pinned by other people who find your pins while they search.

Here are some tips to ensure that your pins get found in a Pinterest search:

• Make sure you are including keywords that people will be searching for in the description, like “funeral” or “memorial”
• Always include a URL in your pins, even if you uploaded a photo instead of sharing something online. This is especially true if the URL contains one of the keywords that might be searched for
• Be patient. Pins are much more likely to show up in search if they have been re-pinned, so it may take a while for your pins to take off
• Re-pin old pins. After you’ve been pinning for a while, some of your older pins might get buried in the rest of your pins, so don’t be afraid to re-pin every once in a while

Once you get started, using Pinterest isn’t difficult at all, and it can be really beneficial to your funeral home if done right.