Considering utilizing Pinterest for your business but not exactly sure how? Well the first thing to know, is that Pinterest may have started as social network, but these days it’s a visual search engine. It sees itself as a visual google. This is great when you consider the power Google has to send new clients to your business – Pinterest is the same – only with a slightly different language. Just like any marketing tool, you do need to commit time and energy to make Pinterest really work for you. But if you sell tangible or digital products to a national or international audience, Pinterest could be an incredibly powerful new partner in your customer acquisition!
What’s the Deal with Pinterest?
When embarking on understanding how to use it for your business, it’s important to recognize the personal way in which users typically use Pinterest. Rather than expecting strong engagement with brands, users are using the platform to dream, plan, do research and to help make purchasing decisions (93% of Pinterest pinners use the platform for planning or making purchases – this is by far the highest percentage for any social network)
5 Steps to Start using Pinterest for Business
1. Claim Your Website
As a business son Pinterest one of the first things you want to do is ensure you’ve confirmed your website. Confirming your site through your account is how users can share content from your site and puts your logo in the bottom corner of any pin from your site.
2. Integrate your own website
You can add Pinterest save buttons to your site, making it easier for people to navigate between the two and connect with your brand more deeply. You can also add descriptions that automatically go along when your website content gets pinned. Remember, the vast majority people on Pinterest are using it to plan their purchases, so getting your website content onto their boards is a good way to make sure your brand is part of their plans.
3. Create an effective profile page
- Choose an awesome profile image
- Write a powerful profile description that conveys your company’s story and mission (hello brand statement!)
4. Create your boards
‘Boards’ are the building blocks of Pinterest (imagine them like little virtual bulletin boards). They help organize your brand messaging, products and interests and each one individually or the collection, can give users reasons to follow your account. Boards should create a narrative in some way or at least convey a sense of mood — make sure to give each board a clear, relevant title and choose a great cover pin.
Niche audiences are just as important as broad audiences on Pinterest. Engage with and grow your community by being as specific as possible with your boards and pins – for example, instead of ‘our products’ or dog stuff’ – consider ‘organic dog stuff’ or ‘vegan dog stuff’ – a board that could include your products AND potentially complimentary products too, with board titles that are also terms that your ideal client may be searching for.
BRAND EXPERT TIP: I love to use the first 5 boards (the ones that show up at the top) to represent your brand’s pillars – especially if your brand pillars relate directly to the categories of content you’ll be producing throughout the year. This gives you the ability to pin your best stuff right to your top boards! See the image above for Working with Dog’s boards: Dog Marketing, Dogly Wisdom, Dog Brands, Dog Media & Dog Parents relate directly to our brand pillars.
5. Focus on the visual
Pinterest is an extremely visual platform. Focusing on awesome visuals will make your Pinterest presence more attractive and your content more pinnable. Also, since 80% of Pinterest users are using the platform on mobile devices, make sure your visuals are optimized for mobile viewing (vertical images tend to look better on mobile devices — use a vertical 2:3 aspect ratio). Pins also show up in feeds (not just on boards) and feed may squash images, which is important to keep in mind.
11 Ways to Leverage the Power of Pinterest
1. Pin stuff and keep pinning stuff
Pins are the language of Pinterest. They should be inspiring, beautiful, actionable, and specific to your brand and they can include photos, drawings, links, videos, and other content. Pinning content to your boards communicates your brand to potential followers and provides curation value to current followers. Pin your own content as well as that of others, especially other content that is already popular with your target audience (though maybe steer clear of repinning content by direct competitors). And remember pinning is not a one-time thing — just like with posting on other social media platforms, it’s important to pin regularly and at high traffic times to bolster engagement.
BRAND EXPERT TIP: This is one platform where having gorgeous imagery and professional design can REALLY catapult your results. This is yet another reason it’s so important to invest in imagery for your brand!
2. Add text to your images
While it’s important not to overwhelm an image with text, one study found that food photos with text had a 23% higher CTR and 31% higher save rate. This makes sense if you think about people searching for recipes (not just yummy food photos in isolation). Just make sure it’s legible on mobile devices and don’t overdo it… This means one short headline or hook – not a paragraph 🙂 This is especially valuable as the ‘featured’ photo on any blog you may post – as it makes that image very ‘pinnable’ – while conveying the content a user will find when they click – as opposed to the value of the pin being simply the image itself.
3. Write great pin descriptions
Even though Pinterest is mostly about visuals, a well-written description, especially one that includes keywords, can have a big effect on search ranking and engagement. Pinterest pins have a much longer shelf life than most social media posts, so it’s important that your descriptions have a timeless quality to them. Also, make sure each pin has a unique description to maximize SEO.
4. Utilize the Rich Pins function
Rich Pins carry more information than regular pins and, when used effectively, they can help convey more information to whoever has clicked on the pin. Many Pinterest users are using their time on the platform to help them make purchasing decisions so it’s important to use Rich Pins to convey as much helpful information as possible. There are four types of rich Pine: app, product, recipe and article.
5. Be Social
Pinterest may be becoming more of a search engine, but is still a social platform and if engagement goes both ways it will make your brand’s presence more genuine (and very possibly boost how your content gets showed to users). Follow relevant accounts and boards and active about liking and engaging with pins. Creating group boards (that other people can pin to) is another good way to develop community.
6. Understand Pinterest analytics
Pinterest analytics will help you better understand how your content and account are doing, as well as the Pinterest audience more generally. Use these analytics to inform your approach to Pinterest and continually adapt to build upon what’s working.
7. Consider promoting your pins
Advertising on Pinterest can be an effective way to find and engage potential customers. When setting up your adds, make sure to target strategically (hello Avatars), using keywords and demographics. And just like any advertising, you want to to stay on top of how your ads are doing in order to optimize their performance. This can be especially useful for a new product launch or
8. Integrate Pinterest into Your Marketing
Integration is an important part of all of your marketing – in other words – making sure that one campaign over here, integrates with your channels over there. You want to have cohesive messaging and utilize the strengths of one platform or channel, to boost sales in another. In Pinterest, it can be helpful to regular check in and see what pins are working best (which is easy if you subscribe to the updates from Pinterest because they regularly email you and tell you!) One good way to take advantage of popular pins is to showcase them in your digital store or on your website.
Equally, if you’ve already got an audience (e.g. mailing list or Instagram following), some portion of them are on Pinterest. An effective call-to-action like ‘looking for inspiration? Check out our Pinterest board’ will bring them to your page and help boost your ranking. Also consider including a Pinterest follow button in your mass emails.
9. Optimize your search ranking
The description, title, and image of your pins should all match your targeted keywords to ensure the best possible search rankings. Just like a blog post, this level of consistency will help increase the SEO power of your content.
10. Use hashtags
Hashtags are relatively new to Pinterest but they’re already an effective way to reach new potential customers. Create unique hashtags based on your own keywords and research or jump on hashtags that are already trending. Read more about how to use hashtags on Pinterest.
11. Utilize geolocation
Geolocation is useful on Pinterest for reaching local customers. As buying local is increasingly important to consumers, especially millennials, this can be a powerful function. If you have a locally-based service business this is an essential functionality to get familiar with on Pinterest so you ensure you’re reaching potential clients. Here’s a helpful article about using Pinterest to target local customers.