How to use Pinterest for Business

Marketing

Jun 25

Pinterest may not be the first social media platform entrepreneurs think of when creating a social media strategy, but Pinterest is more than just a place to collect pretty photos. It is a powerful search engine and a platform that needs consideration as e-commerce continues to grow.

Before the internet, people looked to magazines, newspapers, and books for collecting 'clippings' of ideas when considering a purchase or working on a project. With Pinterest, users now have a virtual place to gather and organize their ideas, and be inspired. Pinterest allows people to create 'boards' on various topics of interest where they can 'pin' articles, images, or other visuals from the internet or within the Pinterest platform.

"Some 84% of weekly users use Pinterest to help decide what to buy. According to Pinterest, 55% of Pinners are specifically looking for products. And 83% of weekly users have made a purchase based on content they see from brands on Pinterest." [1]

With more than two-thirds of Pinterest users being women, the most popular topics on Pinterest right now are health & wellness, parenting, food, and beauty/personal care.[2] However, if you are a business owner that sells products in different categories, there is still an opportunity to leverage Pinterest to drive interest and traffic to your online store or website to build your business. As well, for service-based businesses, there is an opportunity to share your thought-leadership on topics that are relevant to your audience to drive lead-generation traffic.

Pinterest users are typically looking for something specific rather than just browsing and look at their feeds several times a week. The purchase process may take a while as they will gather various pins, add them to their profile boards, and then consider before purchasing. What this means for business owners, is that they need to get in front of users at the very beginning of the buyer's research phase.

Here are some tips on how to start using Pinterest for your business

Set up your Pinterest profile

Create an account - You can either add a free business account to your personal account or set up a separate business account. Here are instructions on how to set up your Pinterest business account.
Brand your account - Add your logo. You can crop, trip, and add logos and text in the Pin editor. You can find the specs for images here, or use the free templates on Canva
Connect your other digital platforms - Verify your website, and connect your Instagram, YouTube, and/or Etsy accounts. The benefit of connecting these accounts is to ensure that it will be linked to your account when people pin from these profiles, which helps when tracking results in your analytics

Create your boards

Find the topics that relate to your business, set them up, and start pinning. How do you know what topics to choose? Get to know your audience and refer to your content marketing strategy when selecting the types of content needed to help you reach your business goals. Remember, personalization is one of the most important things in digital marketing. Provide relevant content, while reducing the time it takes for your customers to search for that content, helps to provide the best experience possible.

Three things you should know when optimizing your Pinterest boards

Add board sections - to help organize your board, and assist people in helping find the right content quickly, create sections within your boards. Think of these sections as sub-categories.
Showcase your best boards by featuring specific boards at the top of your profile.
Archive older content When you archive a board, it moves to a hidden section of your profile. It's generally better to archive boards, rather than deleting them so you can keep Pins and its followers, it just doesn't get prime real estate on your Pinterest account.

Pin consistently

Pinterest recommends posting something once a day rather than creating a board and filling it all at once to help your content reach a wider audience. Third-party tools such as Hootsuite offers the ability to schedule pins. https://hootsuite.com/pinterest To help with planning, here is a calendar of seasonal inspiration. https://business.pinterest.com/sub/business/insights/PinterestSeasonalInsights-2019.pdf

Create great content

Use high-quality, vertical images - Pinterest recommends a 2:3 aspect ratio (ex: 1000 x 1500 pixels). If you don't use this ration, your pins may not show properly, which may negatively impact performance. Mobile device usage continues to increase in popularity, so keep the image vertical and optimized for a smaller, screen. Test your pins on your own mobile device if you aren’t sure how it will look.
Watermark your images with your logo. Avoid the lower right corner, as the product icons may cover that area.
Your image needs to make sense. Keep your product/service front & centre, make it relevant to the article link, and avoid using abstract images
Adding text overlay on the image is an option, which can add additional context
Show your brand in action - Showcase your product in use.
User-Generated Content - Create a board where you can get other people to create and share content.
Add videos - video is popular across all social media platforms, and views have increased more than 3x on the Pinterest platform in 2020 [3]

Use Keywords

Pinterest is one of the only social media platforms where you don't benefit from using hashtags. Because of the power that Pinterest has as a search engine, keywords are far more critical than hashtags. Use these keywords in your profile and the descriptions of your pins/posts. Just like your website, don't 'stuff' keywords in the pin descriptions, but instead, use the opportunity to give some background information and context about the image. Encourage your viewers to read more in the link provided (e.g. link to your blog)

Make it easy for people to shop on Pinterest.

There is now (as of April 2020), a Shop tab, a dedicated section where users can search and browse in-stock inventory from retailers.
Add a 'pin-this' to products on your website
Shop the Look pins takes your right to your website so they can purchase the products in your image

Boost with Ads

Pinning articles, images, and videos regularly help with organic traffic. More than half of Pinterest's users made a purchase after seeing business content on the site. Leveraging the Pinterest advertising platform helps get your content in front of your customers. Why pay for ads on Pinterest?

"Pinners spend 29 per cent more than non-Pinners, delivering an average of $2 in profit for every advertiser dollar." [4]

Options for ads include promoted posts, carousel ads of multiple images, video ads, download app directly from PInterest, buyable pins where customers can purchase directly from Pinterest, and story pins (still in beta at the time of this blog post).