I am a huge fan of Pinterest and am finding that I’m using it more and more. There are a lot of skeptics out there that think it’s just for girls, or don’t see the business value, but for you Pinterest virgins out there, I really recommend you try it out.

It’s a great tool for businesses (when used effectively) and I’m seeing more engagement, sharing and traffic back as a result.

As Pinterest has grown and become more popular unsurprisingly we have seen a rise of tools that have popped into the marketplace to help manage, measure and enhance the Pinterest experience. Without further ado, here are my favorite Pinterest tools and the reasons I love them:

1. PinAlerts

PinAlerts is a very useful Pinterest tool that allows you to find out in real time whether someone has pinned something from your website. It allows you to quickly respond and say thanks to those who are promoting your work, as well as helps increasing your followers by asking your pinners to follow some of your other boards. PinAlerts is still in its infancy (aka beta version) and they have plans for more features to arrive soon, such as the possibility to broadcast the number of your repins on your website.

2. Pinreach

Pinreach helps you understand better where you stand on Pinterest and how well you’re doing, by calculating your Pinterest “score.” Another useful feature is that you can see the daily trending members and trending pins. This is great for boosting your engagement: repins, comments and increase in followers to your boards.

3. Hootsuite

Ok, I admit this one is a slight cheat as I use Hootsuite predominantly for Twitter (it’s one of my favorite Twitter tools) but I thought it was worth a mention here particularly as they have now included Pinterest tracking to their portfolio.

4. Followers on Pinterest

Followers on Pinterest is a smartphone/tablet app that costs £0.69.  It’s very similar to another one of my favourite Twitter tools, ManageFlitter. You can use it to find out who isn’t following you back, track new followers, follow and unfollow users and discover new people and boards to follow. One of the most interesting features of this app is that it allows you to keep track of everyone who has everunfollowed you!

5. Pin Search

If you use Google Chrome and Pinterest, then you may find this tool very useful. It’s a Chrome extension that allows you to Google search using any picture on Pinterest. This way you can get all the information there is on a picture as well as similar pictures. A great discovery tool for Pinterest!

6. Piqora

Piqora (formerly known as Pinfluencer) is a great tool for anyone who is serious about using Pinterest for marketing reasons. You can use it to start any promotions on Pinterest, to track your results with their analytics and manage your content (including pin scheduling). Another great feature is Pinner360, that helps you identify your most influential pinners, your brand advocates as well as who engages the most with you. A very useful tool and a must for those using Pinterest for their business.

7. Pinstamatic

Pinstamatic is a great Pinterest tool that helps you make even better boards. Regular images are just not enough anymore to stand out, and with this tool you can get that extra edge over your competition. For example, you can add quotations to your board, which has a much better chance of attracting users to it as well as fun sticky notes. Another great feature is that you can share music on your boards and your friends can play them right from there – a great tool that helps you create more diverse and more fun boards. You can also use Pinstamatic to add a map to your Pinterest board, so that whenever someone clicks on it they are directed to your location on Google Maps.

8. Pinterest Right Click

Pinterest Right Click is another browser extension, but this time for Mozilla Firefox users. Once installed, it adds a “Pin Image” option to your right-click menu, so whenever you find an image that you would like to pin, you can do it very quickly by right-clicking.

9. PinBooster

PinBooster is a great tool for those who want to advertise on Pinterest. It works simply by compensating popular pinners to endorse your business on Pinterest. They can share your photos and videos and promote your hashtags and events to their followers.  It’s a useful way to grow your follower base and even get some leads out of it. And if you are a great pinner yourself and have lots of followers, you can sign up on Pinbooster and actually get paid to pin.

10. Snapito

Snapito is a tool from the Pinstamatic family that has a very simple, yet useful feature. It allows you to pin your website easily, by entering its address on their website and with the click of a button you get a screenshot of the website that you can then quickly post to your Pinterest board. Another very similar tool is a Google Chrome extension calledShotPin, which pretty much does the same thing!

11. Pinpuff

PinPuff is a simple tool that allows you to measure your influence on Pinterest. You can get a Pinfluence mark for your popularity or alternatively, for any of your pins. It’s useful as you can get a glimpse into what types of pins are most successful and bring you the most engagement and you’ll then know what to pin in the future!

12. Shopinterest

Want to sell your products via Pinterest? This tool, in its beta version at the moment, can help you set up a Pinterest store in a matter of minutes, for free! Pinterest has lots of female users, and some types of products are extremely successful. It’s a great medium for selling clothes, jewelry, household items and even furniture! It’s also the perfect place for art, and if you are a photographer, or sculptor for example, you can easily market your art on Pinterest and, why not, even sell it!

13. Reachli

Reachli makes it very easy to market your visual content across not just Pinterest, but also other social networks. Once you start your campaign, you’ll be able to closely monitor it with the analytics they provide, so you are on top of what works and what doesn’t and make the appropriate changes. They also offer a “promote” feature that allows you to, well, promote your campaign beyond your existing networks of friends and followers so that you can reach more people. It’s a great tool for raising awareness and engagement.

14. Wishpond

Wishpond, among other features for Facebook, Twitter and others, has a Pinterest Tab. This tab allows you to showcase all of your boards and pins from your Pinterest account on your Facebook Page and your website. It works well on mobile websites as well, and it’s extremely easy to install. Apart from typing in your login information, there’s nothing else you have to do – the tool will do it for you. Great for cross-promotions and for driving more engagement to your Pinterest boards and pins from your Facebook friends.

15. Curalate

Curalate works with both major visual social networks: Instagram and Pinterest. It helps you stay on top of your performance on any of the two sites by providing in depth analytics of your images. Apart from your images’ analytics, you can also use the tool to get revealing analysis of your competitors, so you can see what you are fighting against and learn from their successes and mistakes.

16.  Repinly

Repinly is a very easy to use tool that I recommend to anyone using Pinterest who wants to keep on top of what’s happening on the popular social network. You can easily find out what the most popular pins and boards are and who are the top pinners. You can also browse popular boards by category, which makes the tool even more useful. It’s great for boosting engagement and for raising follower numbers.

17. HelloInsights

HelloInsights helps you ‘pin intelligently’, as they put it. It gives you very useful insights and analytics that help you monitor your Pinterest account and find out what’s working and what isn’t. Another great feature is that it allows you to see how you stack up against the competition with an easy to understand comparison chart. And the features don’t end here: you can also use it to schedule pins and to find out which pins are driving the most traffic to your website.

18. Pinalytics

Pinalytics is a really easy to use tool that doesn’t require too much of your time but that can offer some great insights.  All you have to do is type any subject or keyword in their search bar and get a feel for what’s trending and what’s getting lots of engagement.

19.  Pinterest Goodies

Pinterest Goodies is where you can get the ‘basic’ (but very useful!) official Pinterest tools. First and foremost, if you are an avid pinner you need to get the Pin It button. Simply drag the button from the website to your toolbar so whenever you want to pin something on the web you can easily do it in just seconds. Another useful Pinterest “goodie” are their website widgets. You can add a Pin It button that allows people to easily pin things directly from your website, as well as Pinterest follow button that people can click to instantly follow you. Great for boosting engagement and gaining more followers with minimal effort on your part. The last, but not least, tool is the Pinterest mobile app, that you can download for your smartphone and tablet in order to be able to keep up to date on the move.

20. Pinterest Analytics

Pinterest offer their own analytics for businesses. You can use these insights to find out what people are pinning from your website, see what pinners like, what gets most repined or most clicked as well as other interesting information.   So there you have it –  my 20 favorite Pinterest tools! I can’t wait for more tools to pop up so I can try them all and do a more extensive list. But until then, is there anything that you think I missed? Any Pinterest tools that I didn’t include but you think are great? Which tools do you use ? Please let me know in your comments and if you’ve found this article useful please share.

Meet Lilach Bullock

About the Author >> Lilach is a business owner, social media consultant, internet mentor and founder of Socialable.co.uk. One of the most dynamic personalities in the UK social media market, she actively leverages ethical online marketing for her own and her clients advantage.

Original Article >> 20 of the Best #Pinterest Tools for Businesses