If posting on Pinterest is not in your daily marketing strategy, it needs to be. Why? With visual search on the rise, Pinterest Marketing is increasingly more important. It’s important to get your business on there to start building your following and gaining exposure.
Users visit the Pinterest platform to learn about everything from how to make the latest Thai quinoa soup, to how to wash white sheets. People search for travel, recipes, finances, fashion, parenting… and so much more.
With any social media platform, there are right and wrong things you can do that will make or break your success. If learning how to get your business profile up and running is on your radar, read on for 10 easy to follow tips to get started on Pinterest.
I used these strategies to triple my Pinterest Marketing engagement in just 1 month!
Don’t have a Pinterest account yet? Don’t fear! Take 10 minutes to get set up here.
Lingo you need to know:
Pin: A post on Pinterest (think a recipe, a new outfit, a piece of jewelry).
Boards: Collections of pins that fall under a certain category. For example, my “Design” board has a ton of pins that inspire my graphic design work.
Pinning: the act of saving a pin onto your own boards.
#1. Easy first step – create pins frequently!
I try to post new pins about as often as I post to social media (at this point, 5ish times a week). There are certainly people that do it way more often, and also way less often. It is totally dependant on how valuable Pinterest is to your business. To create a pin, simply click the plus sign in the top right of the Pinterest home page. This is the first step to getting started with your Pinterest account! You can add an image, pin title and description. Read on to learn about best practices in creating pins.
#2. When creating a pin, use as many relevant keywords as you can.
Keywords are the most important targeting feature that Pinterest Marketing offers. Keywords are used to ensure that your content shows up when users are searching for content like yours.
The other reason for using keywords is to make sure that the Pinterest algorithm places your content in the right category. For example, if the content you’re posting is all about a new app to help students save money, you want to make sure that students, aged 18-25, living in Toronto, interested in saving, find your content.
This will help increase your exposure on Pinterest. Try using this tool to experiment with popular keywords:.
#3. Utilize image size
Pinterest is a visual platform, and majority of people (myself included) will only read the description of a pin if the accompanying image catches their attention. While Pinterest has a recommended width dimension of a pin, you can choose your height. This means you can make your image as long as you need to.
Pins are portrait oriented, so avoid landscape photos at all costs. Pinterest recommends a 2:3 image ratio.
#4. Include links to your website in your pins and board descriptions.
This is a simple but effective trick. Essentially, the whole point of using Pinterest for business in the first place is to bring users back to your site to get more information about what you offer. Make sure that you are posting content for this reason. And, make sure you can link back to the appropriate page on your website.
For example if you are posting about a recent blog post, you want to make sure that link is in your pin.
Make sure your website is easy to find in your board descriptions, as well as in your main profile bio.
#5. Take advantage of rich pins.
If you’ve done some Pinterest research, you’ve likely heard of rich pins. But what are they?
Rich pins are a way to make your pins more dynamic. Only business accounts can use rich pins. You have to apply for rich pins separately and link them to your website.
Rich pins are organized to show specific information for recipes, products, apps, places and articles. A product pin, for example, will show product and price information including availability and where to buy it.
The other benefit of rich pins is that you can track how many clicks and views they get, and how many users actually go back to your site for more information. This is how you can judge the success of your pins.
How do you connect your rich pins to your website? It’s easy. Chat with me for more.
#6. Create awesome content.
If you want to be successful on Pinterest, don’t post what *you* want to see. Instead, post what your *viewers* want to see. (Note: these could be the same thing!).
Try this: search for something you’re thinking of writing a blog post about, for example, the benefits of running shoes. When you type in “running shoes”, you’ll see a list of popular topics that people are searching for. Use this to give you inspiration for what to write about. Instead of calling your blog post “Amazing things about my running shoe brand”, you could try “How to choose the best running shoes” and provide real value to your readers!
#7. Explore Pinterest’s Analytics
Once you get into the groove of pinning (and once you have your Pinterest Business account set up), you can start to check out how your pins compare to the overall Pinterest world. You can check out audience insights and learn about what your audience is interested in, how old they are, where they live, what gender they identify as, and what device they use. Yup, it’s a little creepy, but checking in on these stats often can help you improve your content.
#8. Repurpose content.
Got a new social media post? Throw it on Pinterest too! Writing a new blog post? Make sure it’s on Pinterest to drive traffic back to your site.
#9. Be active!
Posting your own pins is important, but you’ll find it beneficial to pin (save) other people’s pins on your own boards as well. This will help you to gain more exposure, start building a community, and show others that you care about their pins, too. The “my pins to other’s pins” ratio that I use is about 1:2. For example if I post my own pins once per week, I’ll try to save other’s pins to my own boards at least twice per week. You can also comment on other people’s pins. Don’t be afraid to do it!
#10. Add the Pin it button and Pinterest Widget to your website.
This is a little technical (requires access to your website’s backend), but it is incredibly beneficial. Adding these elements will connect the dots between your website and your Pinterest boards. The Pin it button allows people to pin your content on to their Pinterest account right from your website. The Pinterest Widget can display your Pinterest feed on your website so that people can see what you’re all about. I can help you with this (and I want to!) – put me in touch with your web developer.
Here’s an example from my last blog post all about Google My Business:
If you follow the strategies here and learn from the engagement you get on your Pinterest Business account, you’ll see crazy growth within only a few short months. And these strategies are fairly easy to wrap your head around! If you need some extra help, feel free to reach out.
And of course, pin this post to your own board for later!
