Your Ultimate Guide to creating a foolproof Pinterest Strategy
Creating a foolproof Pinterest strategy can be daunting – if you haven’t used Pinterest before it might be really disheartening when you first start out, not seeing any traction or click through to your site. But like everything, where there is a will there’s a way!
Before we get started – Download our simple Pinterest Cheat Sheet!
In the online world, there seems to be this funny misperception of “If I build a website, people will come”.
If you’ve had your website or business for any amount of time, you’re probably nodding your head in agreement, right?
But you may wonder, where is the best place to market your business online? There are so many websites and social media avenues to venture down to promote your business. Where do you start?
If you’re new to sharing your business online, then I would highly recommend marketing through Pinterest. It’s easy, simple, and can provide lasting results for marketing to your business if done properly.
What is Pinterest?
So you may be wondering “What is Pinterest, anyway?” and “Why do I need this for my business?”
Visual search engine
For some reason, Pinterest is often classified as a social media site, when instead it is a visual search engine. People search for things they need, ideas, and inspiration, and the results are presented in a visual format rather than text format (like Google).
Why people use Pinterest
Everybody uses Pinterest a little differently. Some people use it for specific things, like recipes or how to grow a blog. Other people use it for inspiration. Some use it for future ideas they’d like to pursue: wedding design, baby room decoration, future tattoos, even learning how to sew. It’s easy to use and even easier to organize interests into categories, which allows people to use Pinterest for many different things all at once.
Why your business should use Pinterest
Pinterest is a very easy way to sell your products, get your audience into your email funnels, and even to get people to your website. The other beauty of Pinterest is that you get to learn a lot about what your audience is interested in not only from how they engage with you, but how they engage with their competitors. This allows you to easily adjust your strategies to meet their needs better.
Now that you’ve decided you absolutely need to start using Pinterest for business marketing, you need to create an account and set up your profile. Thankfully, this process is incredibly simple.
How to create the perfect Pinterest Account
Setting up your account as a Pinterest Business Account instead of a personal account is a necessity. There are many features and tools you’ll have access to as a business account for marketing purposes that you will not have with the personal account.
Oh, and a business account is free to have, so may as well take advantage of the service!
Why you need a business account for Pinterest marketing:
Pinterest Analytics
Pinterest analytics alone make the business account worthwhile. Their analytics can tell you information such as:
- How many people are getting access to your pins
- Which pins are getting engagement (meaning clicks/saves/comments)
- How much website traffic comes from Pinterest
- Which boards have the best engagement
While you can only see analytics for your own content, you are also able to see other accounts that share your pins. That can give you ideas on future boards you may want to implement, or even keyword ideas that may be getting a better reach.
Rich Pins
Rich pins give you the ability to add extra information to your pins, along with other important information from the website the pins lead to. Through enabling Rich Pins, if you make a change to your post from the website, Pinterest will automatically make adjustments on older and future pins alike.
The three types of rich pins you can utilize are:
- Product Rich Pins for items you are selling through Pinterest
- Article rich pins for blog posts
- Recipe rich pins for sharing recipes and food-related content
The more you are able to share up-to-date information, the more likely your content will keep surfacing. Rich pins also allow additional areas to use relevant keywords for your content, so your content is more easily found when people use the search function.
Ability to run ads
I love that, as of right now, you can actually build up a decent Pinterest page and not have to pay for ads. However, if you do want more focused targeting to your specific audience, having a business account on Pinterest allows you the opportunity to create Promoted Pins. Promoted Pins are more likely to show up in searches for your niche, as well as home feeds of people in your target market.
Looks more professional
A business account will include elements you will not have access to on a personal account.
People will be able to:
- Visit your website from your profile page
- See which types of Pins are being shared from your account
- Visit your featured boards, which are boards you want your audience to see first
- Determine which types of posts are being shared within your community
Ability to see Pinterest trends
A newer feature, Pinterest trends can give you a feel for how a certain topic is performing at any given time. This can give you a feel whether it may be worthwhile creating boards or pins about certain topics. It can also give you a good feel for when content may have a better chance of being seen and shared.
Jessica, owner and head chef at the Forked Spoon, has this to say about this feature: “One timely tip I have is that Pinterest recently rolled out the new Trends dashboard. This is for Pinterest Business Accounts in the Analytics menu at the top. Since it rolled out, I have been using this new Trends section strategically to help me make informed decisions on what content I should be producing next. Being able to effectively time a rising tide in searches on a trending topic in Pinterest and pairing it with strategic content can greatly enable traffic to websites and stores.”
More in-depth look at your audience
You may want to know what your particular audience is interested in when it comes to Pinterest. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to keep everything in your Pinterest boards strictly on topic.
The audience insights tool is fabulous for breaking down your audience into smaller demographics and interests.
If you find that your audience has a tendency toward certain related categories or topics, then you can also create boards, pins, and possibly website content related to their interests. This increases your ability to outreach to new followers who may not see your content otherwise.
How to Brand Your Pinterest Profile
Setting up your Pinterest Bio
Setting up your Pinterest bio may not seem that big of a deal, especially considering that you only have 160 characters to play with. However, done correctly, your Pinterest bio can play a huge role in presenting your page to other accounts interested in your niche.
Tom Spicky, digital marketer at tomspicky.com states that
“A common mistake businesses make on Pinterest is focusing on *who they are.* Don’t make it overly promotional. Instead, focus on what you’re doing to help your customers. They won’t care about you if they don’t know how you can help them. So aside from briefly saying who you are, your bio should include who you’re helping and how you’re helping them.”
Presenting your first name and who you help through keywords will help get the right people to your Pinterest profile more than anything else.
Connect Website and Social Media
After setting up your profile, you’ll want to connect your Pinterest page to your website, social media, and shops. This will allow your audience to take actions directly such as:
- Shopping your site from Pinterest directly
- Watching your Youtube videos while on Pinterest
- Sharing your content to their social media
Create Pinterest Boards Relevant to Your Audience
After you’ve finished setting up your profile and claiming other websites or social media accounts, you will want to set up the organization of your page with Pinterest boards. Pinterest boards allow you to focus your board on a certain topic (which can be both general or very specific). That means all the content you post or repin will go into focused locations. This helps you better rank for your own content when people search.
Tom Spicky says that “Putting keywords on your board descriptions or pin descriptions help it rank on Google, not just Pinterest itself. Plus, keyword descriptions give your followers a solid idea of what you’ll be posting.”
Pinterest Marketing Best Practices
Now that you’ve set up your Pinterest account for marketing your business, now is the time to start actively marketing. While the following tips may seem a lot for a Pinterest beginner, with some time and practice you will easily be able to perform these tasks.
Create interesting and engaging content
Now that you have your Pinterest profile complete and boards created, now you can start creating your own pins for your boards.
Pinterest pins should:
- Be easy to read from a mobile device (bigger, plainer fonts)Have a call to action or a thought that makes them want to save/click
- Be of 1000×1500 pixels in length (2:3 width/height ratio recommended)
- Stand out so people see them from their home feed or search results
One great way to see which pins are performing well are to focus on the first 20-30 pins for any given keyword search. See which pins have higher engagement numbers (through comments, likes, and repins). What types of photos do they use? What type of language is in the posts? How are the pins formatted? Consider these aspects as your creating your own Pinterest pins. Do not copy others, but do regular searches to get a feel for what people like on Pinterest.
Pin regularly
Pinterest does not like it when an account pins a ridiculous amount of pins the first few days and then doesn’t pin again for three months. It’s important that you are able to hop on your account for at least 15-20 minutes per day and share content regularly.
How many pins are you supposed to pin? Honestly, this number appears to vary wildly, from 5 per day to over 100. Many experts seem to agree that the best practice for daily pinning will be around 15-30 pins per day.
Here is what Dipesh Purohit, Owner of Blogging Kraft, has to say on the topic:
“For a long time, pinners who are promoting their businesses didn’t know how much pins to pin in a day or how frequently they should be pinning.
But recently, Pinterest announced that the most famous profile on Pinterest tends to pin around 15-25 Pins a day, which gave a fair idea to small and large businesses.
If you are pinning a lot more like say around 50+ pins in a day and also sharing old duplicate pins will be considered harmful for your business as Tailwind mentioned – “You’re exposing your account to unnecessary risk and hurting the distribution of your content on Pinterest. This leads to less engagement for your Pins and less traffic to your website!”
Optimize for SEO/Keywords
Using Search Engine Optimization is important for Pinterest, too. Using the right keywords in your pins, your board descriptions, and even your profile biography can help get your content in front of the people directly searching for what you have to offer.
But optimizing your words doesn’t just help your Pinterest profile. Angel Lawery of AngelLawery.com says that
“Pinterest helps your Google ranking. The more traffic your content you pinned gets, the more Google sees it as a relevant source. Which raises your content higher in Google’s search results.
At one time my Pinterest profile was on the second page of Google search results simply because of my Pinterest strategy. That’s better than being on page 10 right?”
Angela also says that “This includes knowing exactly how your ideal clients talk about the problem you solve so you can learn what keywords to include on your Profile, Board Titles, Pins, Pin Descriptions and in your Content.
Knowing what words your ideal client uses in the search is the most important piece of a successful Pinterest strategy. Pinterest is a visual search engine and to increase your visibility you have to use the right keywords to be found.”
Use hashtags
Using hashtags in your Pin descriptions is another easy way to label the type of content you are creating. Scot Chrisman says “Remember to use Hashtags: Hashtags help pinners discover your content.
It tells the user the subject matter of your content.”
Make sure to pick 3-5 hashtags that you can add to the end of your pin descriptions. This helps boost the reach and searchability of your content.
Create content built around Pinterest trends
One aspect that Pinterest can really help with is building future content that is engaging for your audience. Luisa Zhou, online business entrepreneur, recommends the following tips.
“Start by searching for the right keywords to use in your content, for example as blog post topics. You can do this by using Pinterest’s search bar and looking at the keyword suggestions that are shown when you type in a word.
And for newer websites or blogs, she also recommends this
Start by creating around 10 high-quality blog posts that each targets one of the keywords you find. You then want to pin consistently every day and create at least one new pin for every post you have on your website every Month.”
Create new pins for old posts
Just because you wrote a blog post a few years ago doesn’t mean you can’t create new Pins for old content! Recently, Pinterest appears to be favoring its users creating new pins for old posts, rather than repinning old pins constantly. New pins for old posts are considered ‘Fresh Pins’, and here is what Dipesh Purohit of Blogging Kraft has to say about them:
“Pinterest defines fresh Pins as “images or videos that they haven’t seen before.” New Images count as new content even if its an old blog post when saved to Pinterest for the first time. You can create new images of an already existing old post and pin it with a description (new or old) and this will be considered as a fresh pin for your profile.”
Creating fresh pins can be as difficult as creating a new pin style, to changing up a simple element on the older pin itself (colors/fonts/images).
Repinning your content
Once you’ve pinned your content, you will want to occasionally share it in hopes it may gain future traction. Reposting pins to other relevant boards you own, subject related group boards, and Tailwind Tribes is a great way to refresh old content.
Dipesh Purohit of Blogging Kraft says
“according to Pinterest and Tailwind: “You can reshare your pin once or twice a year to surface it in the following tab of your newest audience members (…) There is a natural rate of duplication of Pins and some very legitimate cases for resharing. For example, you can share timely, seasonal Pins once or twice a year, surfacing content when it’s most relevant, meaning more engagement and traffic for you. But (…) a few really great Pins are better than more, lower-quality Pins.”
Repinning others content
While getting your content out on Pinterest is a priority, Pinterest also rewards those who share others’ content as well.
Use unique images
Photos from Google searches or free stock photography sites can be really tempting, but you run the risk of competing with other accounts who may use the exact same photos. You also run a higher risk of potentially taking a copyrighted photo that you should not be sharing.
The best images to use, of course, would be pictures that you take yourself. If you are not much of a photographer, do not fret. Paid stock photography is another great option to use, as fewer people will be paying to use the same photos.
Make sure the photos you use are of high quality, easy to see, and stand out most for your own pins.
Group Boards
Group boards are a super simple way to expand your reach beyond your audience. What is a group board, you ask? Group boards allow multiple contributors to provide content on a related topic all in one Pinterest board. That means other businesses in your niche are sharing content that is relevant to their audience, and you are sharing their content on your boards. All it takes is the right account sharing one of your pins to generate massive reach, traffic, or sales.
Angela Vonarkh, senior content manager at TheWordPoint, states this about group boards
“People from these group boards will repin and like our pins, and spread our message organically all over Pinterest. Some of them will visit your website/blog for pinning. Share pins on a regular basis to increase your engagement on Pinterest. The whole process will certainly increase your website/blog traffic.”
Research competitors
Chances are that you will find multiple businesses on your niche all over Pinterest. Chances are also good that some of them will have successful Pinterest pages and a large following. This can help you gain better understand of what types of content gets shared, what boards you need to create for your own page, and even possibly get into industry-relevant group boards.
Scot J Chrisman, CEO at The Media House, highly recommends that you “Follow your Competitors Followers: This lets you know what your competition’s followers want. This gives you a leg up to innovate and make your brand stand out from your competition.”
Other Helpful Pinterest Marketing Tools
While Pinterest is a phenomenal marketing tool for your business, it’s helpful to have other tools for creating pins and scheduling your content to Pinterest.
Pinterest Scheduling
Not everybody has the interest of pinning content every single day, or may not have the time or availability to complete this task. One way you can deal with that hurdle is by using a Pinterest scheduler, and the most recommended one is Tailwind!
Pin Creation
You may be wondering how to create Pinterest pins and which services are the best for Pin creation.
Linda Chester, founder of the Health Hour, says “I use Tailwind to organize when and what pins are posted on a daily basis. I also use a feature called Tailwind tribes to get viral pins and repin them to relevant boards.”
You can even use Tailwind to easily repin your own content in a way that is appropriate. Meg Marrs of K9 Of Mine adds “Tailwind has the option now to re-queue your favorite pins, which means you can automatically schedule pins to post at certain times of the year (so for example, if you have a collection of Christmas craft or recipe pins,
you can set up that batch of pins to always re-publish in December).”
This feature is called Smartloop and can help you appropriately reshare older content appropriately.
Tailwind also has a feature called ‘Tailwind Tribes’ which operates similarly to group boards. You can share your pins to relevant tribes in your industry’s categories, which is a terrific way to expand reach.
Ren, freelance writer and owner of House Fur, recommends these services when creating Pinterest pins:
“Create appealing looking pins and graphics that catch people when they are scrolling. I am a professional photographer, so I do have that advantage, but! there are incredible sites such as Canva and Adobe Spark that you can use to create beautiful pins. What works best for me is having the main photo with large centered text and then my website at the bottom. 99% of the time always use colored images and then overlay white or black text.
Pinterest says 1000 x 1500 pixels is optimal for your pin size.
Pinterest for Business Tips
Marketing on Pinterest can be a huge boost for more traffic, email followers, sales, and brand recognition from your followers. It’s easy to use, there are tons of tutorials online for anything you aren’t sure how to do yourself, and often only takes a little extra effort per day into creating an engaging profile.
Have you used Pinterest to market your business? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments!
