How to Use Pinterest for Your Business

Pinterest is a great tool for both personal use and business use. Pinterest is a virtual pin board where you can pin your interests to different organized boards. If you’re the type of person that has a big corkboard in your house with papers, images, and miscellaneous items pinned to it, think of Pinterest as your online version of that! Pinterest is great for personal use. It’s the best tool for saving ideas for later; pinning DIY projects that you want to try, pinning recipes that would be perfect for your next get together with friends, etc. What you may not know is that it’s also a great tool for businesses.
Pinterest now has a new product that allows small businesses to promote their Pins to increase click-throughs, improve reach and potentially drive more traffic to their sites. Businesses of every size can use this DIY Promoted Pins to connect with other “pinners” through pins that show up in search and category feeds. The pins work on a cost-per-click basis.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

The first thing that you want to do is to know who your audience is. The majority of Pinterest users are women (81%). Keeping that in mind, some men do use it as well. Millennials, ages 18-34, use Pinterest just as much as they use Facebook and Instagram. The median age of a pinner is 40, however, the majority of active pinners are below that age. It’s important to decide if your products, services and content are appropriate for these audiences. If your target demographic is primarily male, you may not want to focus your marketing efforts on Pinterest. However, if your business caters to women between the ages of 15-29, you should definitely be making a presence on Pinterest.

PROMOTE YOUR CONTENT – DON’T ADVERTISE IT

Most of the pins on Pinterest link back to blog posts, articles and photos. Pinners are usually more apt to click on those than pins that go to brand or shopping sites. It’s engaging content that users are attracted to. The most popular topics on Pinterest are visual topics such as food, fashion, health and beauty, crafts, décor, DIY projects, and things relating to holidays and events. Not all businesses that utilize Pinterest’s business platform sell products or services relating to these topics. The ones that do relate to these topics will get a lot more clicks and likes/repins than those that don’t. If your business is one of those that doesn’t relate to Pinterest’s trending topics, then you have to get a bit creative. Keep in mind that the types of content that typically get the most visibility on Pinterest are checklists, how-to posts, step-by-step tutorials, master list of resources you love and seasonal content and trends.
When posting to your boards, you can’t just advertise your content. You need to think like a content marketer and promote your content. You have to find ways to make your content highly visual to win clicks. Boards containing infographics, images from blog post entries and even photos of staff members are very popular. The biggest trick is linking your visually creative pins to relevant and compelling content to get more prospects in your sales funnel rather than trying to make a sale too soon.

LOOK AT THE COMPETITION FOR INSPIRATION

Use other pinners, especially your competitors, for inspiration. Don’t steal their content or concepts but keep an eye out for what works and doesn’t work in your industry. Use that to help you come up with ideas for your own business. Another thing you can do is check out the boards of the pinners that are repinning your content. Someone who is pinning your content will most likely have similar content related to the same topics as yours on their boards. That can help you better learn what your ideal customer’s interests are, help you identify the latest trends, and can spark your imagination when it comes to creating new ideas for your marketing campaigns.

ORGANIZATION IS KEY

Pinterest is great for keeping your content organized. A big tip is to make sure your pins are organized and your boards are well categorized. By allowing you to create multiple boards, Pinterest helps keep your users engaged, not only in your general content, but in content that’s specific to their interests. A great way to utilize this feature is by creating one board for each category of your products or services. You want to make it easy for users to find your content. If they’re out and about and want to find a specific pin to reference, they need to be able to access it quickly. The better organized you are, the more likely you’ll get traffic to your Pinterest page. Some questions you can ask yourself when thinking of what to name it include:

• Who is your board marketing to?
• Are you trying to send potential clients to your blog or website?
• Are you marketing mainly products to your target audience?

You want to let your board reflect your purpose. A good rule is to have a minimum of 30 photos per board so it shows users you’re an active pinner. The more, the better!

MAKE YOUR PRODUCTS SHAREABLE

Eighty percent of the pins on Pinterest are repins. Getting people to like and repin your pins from your business Pinterest page is great, but Pinterest also allows users to pin content from your website to their Pinterest boards. Be sure to include a “Pin It” option to your website and blog posts so visitors can share your product photos or blog post images in just one simple click! Another thing you want to do is include a link to your website and your location, if you find it to be relevant. Adding this makes it easy for prospective customers to find you both on and offline.
 

CREATE BOARDS WITH THEMES THAT APPEAL TO YOUR AUDIENCE

Creating specific lifestyle boards on top of your typical content boards is going to help you attract your audience more. Mix in some “Holiday Gift Ideas” or “Travel Necessities” boards or something that will still relate to your content alongside your product or services boards to keep the interest of your audience. You don’t want to shove your business down their throat. You want to ease it in and make them want to find out more about your business. Creating lifestyle boards, the boards that most pinners love to interact with, the more activity your Pinterest page will see.
Call to actions work wonders when you ask for them on social media! You get more retweets when you ask for them on Twitter and you get more Facebook likes when you ask for them. A call to action pin description can increase engagement by 80%. All you have to do is include calls to action like, “Please Repin” and “Please Link” and more likely than not, people will do as asked. If your goal is to get people to visit a website, use the call to actions, “Check it out!” or “Click on the Following Link” and follow the call to action with the link to the webpage or blog post. Be sure to use the full URL rather than a shortened link because Pinterest considers short links to be spam.

DON’T MAKE YOUR BOARDS ALL ABOUT YOU

Going back to the point of not wanting to shove your business down your viewers throats, you want to avoid making your entire Pinterest page all about your business. You also don’t want to make your individual boards all about your business. Just like you don’t want to talk about your business (often) on your blog posts on your website, the same goes with your social media accounts, especially your Pinterest board. You can get away with more “spammy” advertising on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but not so much on Pinterest. Of course, you never want to make it your goal to “spam” advertise, but if you want to get any actual interaction with your Pinterest boards, you won’t overshare your business and shove it down their throat. Make them want to find out more. Make them seek you out. Inbound marketing is all about being relatable to your audience and letting them come to you, not the other way around. By promoting content that your audience will be interested in reading/doing, as well as some business-related content, you’re more likely to get a good, steady flow of traffic.

USE HIGH-QUALITY PHOTOGRAPHY – VERTICAL IMAGES ARE YOUR FRIEND!

Pinterest’s number one aspect is that it’s visual. It’s all about the images! If your photographs are unprofessional looking, such as being too dark or too light, too blurry or just plain not appealing to the eye, then people will just keep scrolling and won’t bother liking or repinning/sharing your pins. Brighter, more color images get liked and repinned more often than others. A huge tip is to make sure your images are vertical in an aspect ratio of 2:3 or 4:5. Vertical images get more repins than long, skinny images or horizontal images. Pinterest is a vertical layout and you scroll through a lot of different images. If your images are too short or too long, they can easily get looked over and ignored. These rations have been statistically proven according to research done by Curalate.

DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE COPY!

While images are more important for attracting pinners on Pinterest, the content behind those pins getting repinned need to have just as great copy behind them! For the image descriptions, use simple, descriptive copy that adds value to the image. Use copy that is casual and creative and used to reinforce your brand’s style and personality.

SEO STILL MATTERS – EVEN WITH PINTEREST

Just like any business and social media platform, SEO is extremely important for getting your content out to the right people at the right time. SEO matters on Pinterest just as much as it does on Facebook or Twitter. Pinterest SEO includes keyword targets for each and every board. Incorporating that keyword into the board’s title once and in the board’s description two to three times and incorporating keywords into the description of every single pin on that board at least once is what you want to strive for.

USE RICH PINS

Use Rich pins whenever possible. Rich pins include important about the product or service on the pin itself. That way, it will eliminate additional research on the consumer’s behalf. If you were selling a shirt, your rich pin would include real-time pricing, availability and where to buy it. This tool makes it easier for your potential consumers to shop on Pinterest. Pinterest offers six different types of rich pins; apps, videos, recipes, articles, products, and places.


ENCOURAGE IMMEDIATE PURCHASES WITH BUYABLE PINS
Buyable pins, distinguishable by a blue price and a blue “buy” button, enable users to purchase products directly from Pins. Buyable Pins are only available to select U.S. retailers and businesses using commerce platforms like Shopify, Demandware, BigCommerce, IBM Commerce and Magento.
 

POSTING SCHEDULE

Just like other social media platforms, having a clear posting schedule is important in order to get to your audience when you need to. Each social media platform has a different schedule that works best as well as how many times you should post to that platform. Blogloving has come up with a great posting schedule. Users who pin 15-30 times a day get the best results.
For every ten posts:

• 5 posts should be content from others, relevant to your audience.
• 3 posts should be content from you, relevant to your audience.
• 2 posts should be personal posts that humanize your brand and help your audience get to know you.

The reason why this posting schedule works so well is that you’re focusing on your audience, not your business. Your focus always has to be about providing your audience with quality content that is going to help and benefit them. You want to earn your audience’s trust by becoming the go-to resource and expert in your industry. Help your target audience form a right bond with your brand just by your Pinterest page.
There have been some studies that prove that different categories are more popular on different days of the week. Use this as a guide to follow along the trends to get the most activity back to your boards.


 

• Monday: fitness
• Tuesday: technology
• Wednesday: inspirational quotes
• Thursday: fashion
• Friday: humorous GIFs
• Saturday: travel
• Sunday: food and DIY crafts

Two o’clock PM to four o’clock PM and eight PM to one AM are the best times to pin on Pinterest. Saturday is the best day.

JOIN GROUP BOARDS USING PINGROUPIE.COM

Pingroupie is an awesome way to showcase yourself alongside other businesses. Group boards on Pinterest allow multiple collaborators to join the same board. When you join the board, it automatically shows up with all of your other boards and on the profile of whoever else is joined with you. That’s a lot of great potential exposure for your company! Typically, how this works is you’ll see a note in the description of the board saying, “Email me at _____ if you’d like to be invited to this board.” You simply email them expressing your interest in joining the board with an introduction about yourself! One thing to note is that you do have to follow the creator of the board in order for them to invite you to the group. Not only is this just a courteous gesture, it’s good to follow them, anyway, so you can use them for inspiration later on and make connections! It’s always a good idea to network! A big tip for group boards is to not post only your own content. Nobody likes a spammer. You just simply want to be a genuine contributor.