When you think about marketing platforms, Pinterest may not come to mind as often as Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok.
But this visual discovery platform attracts almost 500 million monthly active users worldwide. That fact alone is enough of a reason to consider Pinterest for business growth, but there’s so much more to understand. Pinterest is a social network that allows users to visually share content and discover new interests. With a visual-first format, Pinterest draws in viewers and sparks a desire to learn more. Not only that, but Pinterest users are also there specifically to look for products and services. This provides a great opportunity for small businesses to find new customers that your traditional marketing platforms may not reach. If you aren’t using Pinterest to market your products or services, you’re missing out and so are your potential customers! So, let’s fix that.
Before you go sign up and start “pinning,” let’s make sure you understand how to use Pinterest to grow your business.
To get the most out of Pinterest it’s best to familiarize yourself with its terms.
Pins: All the content that is shared on Pinterest is called a Pin. These pins are meant to inspire and draw in the attention of the pinners. Pins can be a variety of different content and can even link to website when clicked.
Pinners: This term is what Pinterest calls its users.
Boards: Think of boards as a visual bookmark or a digital bulletin board. You create boards to organize the content that you Pin.
Feed: Similar to a Facebook or TikTok feed, this home feed is a group of pins from people you follow or from what Pinterest thinks you’d be interested in seeing.
Lens: This is a feature found in the Pinterest app (yes, there’s an app for that too). It uses your smartphone’s camera to suggest pins based on the pictures you take. For example, if you snap a picture of a specific product, it’ll show you similar products.
Tagging: You can tag other users on Pinterest using the @ symbol.
Now let’s talk about how to implement Pinterest into your marketing strategy.
Pinterest marketing is incredibly effective.
When you incorporate Pinterest into your business’s social media marketing strategy you are opening the door to reach new audiences and grow awareness for your brands products and/or services. Just as you would with any other social media platform, start by mapping out a social media strategy for Pinterest; don’t just jump right in. Consider learning about your brand’s specific Pinterest target audience. And be sure to plan and incorporate on-brand content for Pinterest into your social media content calendar. Once you’ve set a clear strategy, you can begin working toward your goals. It’s important to have clear goals as to why you are wanting to use Pinterest for business growth.
Let’s review some Pinterest marketing strategies to help you improve your influence and impact on your audience.
- Post a variety of content: Pinners search for and prefer visual content. That’s why they are on Pinterest. This makes it a uniquely strong place to distribute all types of content, including blogs, graphics, videos, reels, links, and more.
- Build a community: With a Pinterest community, you can count on your followers and fans to interact with your content and make their way to your website. This drives traffic in the process. Online communities bring together like-minded people and help with overall business growth. Remember that millions of people use Pinterest every month. By treating your Pinterest platform as a two-way street through which you can interact and engage users, you can build a loyal community of Pinterest users who may become clients or customers too.
- Educate your customers & clients: Because it focuses so heavily on visual content, Pinterest is a powerful platform to educate and engage clients and customers. While you are creating and sharing content to be marketed to users, be sure to keep your target audience in mind. Similar to the way you would when creating new products, posting to other social media platforms, or developing your brand, you want to ensure that you’re pushing content that appeals to the right audience of users.
- Drive website traffic and boost online sales: Unlike Instagram, users can click through live links while browsing on Pinterest. This feature allows you to share both written and visual content and direct users back to your website in the process. This is a powerful addition to your marketing strategy as it can boost online sales too. You can use Pinterest for business growth by integrating Pinterest on your website. Doing this will allow you to easily drive traffic from one of your web pages directly to your Pinterest profile so your leads and customers can begin viewing your content in seconds. If they like what they see, they will hopefully want to see more and start following you. The goal is to substantially grow your following to increase the chances of finding new clients and customers.
Consider these methods to build your followers on Pinterest.
- Promote your Pinterest account on your other social media platforms.
- Follow accounts you believe would be interested in following you back.
- Learn new techniques to increase your base followers based on what’s trending.
- Use keywords in your posts.
- Use relevant hashtags to make it easy for other pinners to find your pins and content.
If you want to use Pinterest for business growth, it’s important to sign up for a business account.
Pinterest business accounts are free and give you access to sales-minded features such as analytics. It is a powerful channel for content distributions. To get the most out of your Pinterest marketing strategy, you need to track your success using Pinterest analytics. Pinterest metrics such as pin clicks, impressions, and saves pinpoint how your Pins are performing. When you know how to read your data to its full potential, those analytics keep your Pinterest business strategy sharp. Whether you’re a Pinterest beginning or a Pinning pro, these analytics can help you make sense of what’s working and what’s not.
Once you have your business account set up, you can start creating boards and adding pins.
On Pinterest, you share your content on Pinterest boards. These boards save all of your Pins and distribute your content for your followers to explore. You can have as many boards as you want, and they can be organized into ideas, themes, topics, plans, or inspiration; however you feel is best to make it easy for your audience to find the content they are looking for. You can also invite people to join your boards. This would create a “group board” and is a great way to increase engagement and use Pinterest for business growth.
While Pinterest is a social media platform, it has a powerful search engine function. Majority of people are actively typing in searches to find what they are looking for and are on Pinterest to look for something in particular. On traditional social media platforms, such as Facebook or Instagram, the audience is passively just browsing the site. Because Pinterest is similar to a search engine, it’s important to properly label and categorize each pin and board.
Pinterest offers businesses of all sizes a unique way to market their products or services.
It’s great for drawing new potential customers to your brand because Pinners come to the platform for inspiration. They want to try new things, discover new ideas, find great products, and get inspired to make their next purchase. Pinterest is a powerful marketing tool with the ability to help you organically increase brand awareness, boost conversions, increase sales, and create lasting relationships with your target audience.
