If you’re not on Pinterest yet, you’re missing out. It’s easy to see why marketers and users love Pinterest so much; this social media platform is wildly popular. It’s essentially just like a dream board or inspiration board. Users get to create different digital boards and pin photos to them. Pinterest allows people to collect inspiring quotes, great photos, DIY tutorials, or anything else they think is neat.
Pinterest stands apart from many other social media sites as users search for ideas, inspiration, and solutions. In fact, a whopping 93% of pinners use Pinterest to plan purchases. In other words, the site is a marketer’s dream.
Ready to work Pinterest into your social media marketing plan? Well, you’re in luck. Read on to discover just how to get started.
#1: The Key To Pinterest Marketing: Start A Business Account
When you first set up your Pinterest account, you can choose between either setting up a personal account or a Pinterest for business account. You’ll want to choose the business account.
A business account comes with a lot of cool perks, including:
- Free educational materials.
- Pinterest analytics, so you can see how many people you’re reaching.
- The ability to create rich pins. (More on these later. You’ll love them!)
It’s important to note that the terms of agreement are different for a business account. When you sign up for a business account, you agree to a few new rules, including:
- You won’t suggest that Pinterest endorses your business.
- You can’t run contests/sweepstakes asking people to repin or like your pins to enter the contest.
- You won’t promote spam. (Spam includes asking people to comment repeatedly.)
This is one terms and conditions agreement you don’t want to skip. Read carefully to make sure you understand the restrictions.
#2: Build A Better Board
Pinterest is all about the boards. Boards let users organize their pins around different ideas and interests. When you create boards on your business account, it allows you to tell your brand story clearly to your audience. In addition, you can use your boards to distribute your content, highlight your products, and as a source of inspiration for your followers.
What makes a winning board?
Well, if you want to build a successful Pinterest board you’ll need to follow a few key steps when setting your board up.
Optimize It!
Optimize your Pinterest account like you would your website or blog. You can use a keyword tool to plan search terms to optimize for. These keywords will become the topics of the boards and pins you create. You can also get ideas for keywords by looking to see what boards and pins are most popular in your industry.
Have a Great Theme
Separate your boards by content types. That way people can follow boards on subjects they’re interested in. For example, you might use themes like nature photos, bike riding, pictures of food, etc. You don’t want to post the same thing again and again. That would get dull. But there should be a distinct theme.
Curate Awesome Content
Keep the Pinterest love alive by updating your boards frequently. Knowing your audience will help you make sure you pin things that will be popular.
Pin from other websites, such as blogs and news sites. You’ll also want to repin things to your boards from other pinners. This is a great way to engage with your audience.
#3: The Anatomy Of A Popular Pin
You want to create pins your followers will love, right? After all, if they love your pins, they’ll share them and draw more attention to your brand or products.
A popular pin most likely has the following attributes:
Searchable
Pinterest is like a visual search engine, so you want to make sure your pins use categories or keywords that people search for. Popular categories include: Food and drink, DIY, crafts, and fitness.
Visually Exciting
Pinterest is an extremely visual site. Make sure your images will grab people’s attention.
What makes a good image?
- Images without faces get repinned 23% more than ones with faces.
- Lighter images are repinned 20% more than darker ones.
Pro tip: Combine the popular DIY category with great images by embracing tutorial-style infographics!
#4: Use Rich Pins to Enhance Your Pinterest Marketing Efforts
One of Pinterest’s coolest features is the ability to create rich pins.
What is a rich pin, you ask?
Rich pins work with the metadata of the page you’re sharing the pin from. That means these pins can show more detailed information than a regular pin.
There are six types of rich pin:
- App pins
- Article pins
- Movie pins
- Place pins
- Product pins
- Recipe pins
A rich pin displays different information based on the type of pin and the metadata of the site it’s linked to. For example, a movie pin may display information about the movie such as cast members and what the film is rated. Recipe pins display things like ingredients.
One type of rich pin is arguably much handier than the rest: the product pin.
Product pins can display current pricing information, the name of the store selling the product, and even info on whether or not the product is in stock.
To be able to post rich pins, sign up for a Pinterest business account, verify your website URL. Then you can apply for the ability to create rich pins from the Pinterest business website.
#5: Promoted Pins
There’s another special type of pin you need to know about: the promoted pin. This pin works much like promoted posts on Facebook.
Promoted pins let you pay to get your pins in front of a wider audience, driving more traffic to your website.
These pins can be be effective, too. Walgreens used Pinterest to more than triple their referral traffic. Bank of America saw twice the engagement on their promoted pins!
Take note: Promoted pins are only available to US or UK-based accounts.
To create a promoted pin, log in to your Pinterest account. Under settings, select promoted pins. Pinterest gives you two options for your promoted pin: boost engagement or get traffic to your website. Once you’ve selected your objective, you can then name your marketing campaign and select the dates you want your pin to be seen on.
#6: Use A Call-To-Pin
Don’t forget to use a call-to-pin, just like you would use a call-to-action for your blog posts.
There are several ways to do this:
- Incorporate a section on Pinterest into your email newsletter. (You can include recent or popular pins you’ve shared, for example.)
- Include Pinterest sharing buttons on your blog posts.
- Invite people to repin your pins at the end of your descriptions.
The language can be as simple as “repin this to your own inspiration board” or “share on Pinterest!”
A call-to-pin boosts engagement 80%!
#7: Be Engaging
Engagement is a huge part of social media success. People don’t want to feel like you’re constantly pushing your own products and information on them. Reach out!
You can engage just like you would on Twitter and Facebook.
Follow pinners who share great content or who are influencers in the community. Repin other people’s posts. Be sure to leave comments on pins you find interesting; social media is all about conversations, after all.
#8: Timing Is Everything
A huge part of social media success is staying active, and posting at the right times. Log in to Pinterest a few times a weeks to add new pins and engage with your followers.
Make sure to time your Pinterest activity strategically. You can set yourself up for success by posting things when your audience will be online.
The best time to post on social media varies for different platforms.
For Pinterest, try late afternoon or evening. If you’re able to, schedule a few pins to go out on the weekend, too.
#9: Use Pinterest Analytics
You know analytics are crucial to running a successful website. Well, they can help you run a great Pinterest account, too.
Pinterest analytics give you information such as:
- Your audience size. In other words, how many people you’re reaching.
- How many people are engaging with your posts.
- Average amount of daily viewers.
- The impression you’re making on people.
Your analytics will help you figure out what works and what doesn’t.
Pinterest is a great social media platform to promote your products and engage with your customers. You may just fall in love with this visual platform- after all, pinners tend to use the website to plan purchases! These tips will help you use Pinterest for effective social media marketing.
You’re well on your way to creating boards and pins that your followers will really find Pinteresting.
