How To Use Pinterest Effectively To Market Your Business

    Businesses who use Pinterest are quite happy if you keep using Facebook and Instagram

    And if you still think of the scrapbooking site as Facebook’s little sister, they’re okay with that too.

    They’ll just keep their secret weapon to themselves and keep getting the traffic you should be getting.

    And guess what?

    Little sister is all grown up. Pinterest has over 250 million monthly active users and is the fourth most popular social media site, ahead of Snapchat, Twitter and LinkedIn.

    Unlike Facebook users, pinners are shoppers. More than 84% of pinners use Pinterest to help them decide what to buy.

    Here’s how to create a Pinterest marketing strategy to drive incredible traffic to your business.

    First off, why should your business use Pinterest?

    1) Your potential customers are there.

    Marketers believe Pinterest is getting hotter and hotter across all sectors and industries, and with good reason.

    Take a look at who’s on Pinterest:

    2) Pinterest is more than a social network.

    People don’t visit Pinterest to be social and see photos of their grandkids. They come to be inspired. They come to try new hobbies and crafts. They come to discover and do what they love.

    According to co-founder Evan Sharp:

    Pinners see Pinterest as a place that improves their lives. They love to hang out and find new pins and ideas. In fact, 78% of people on Pinterest believe the content they find is helpful, and the time they spend on Pinterest valuable.

    3) Pinners are ready to buy.

    I mentioned this above, and it’s worthing pointing out again. Pinners are in a shopping mindset. They’re open to discovering new products. For a large part, that’s why they’re on Pinterest in the first place.

    Conversion rates tend to be higher on Pinterest than other platforms. And Pinterest works hard to make it easy for retailers to showcase their products.

    They recently replaced buyable pins with product pins. And they’re loaded with new features to help pinners discover your products, view product catalogs and shop your brand.

    4) Pinterest wants you to share content.

    What’s different about Pinterest is that people are open to ideas from brands and want to see your content.

    In fact, content creators play a huge role in inspiring people to hang out, and Pinterest knows it. They want your pins to be found!

    The algorithm is designed to show your pins to as many people as possible so you reach a broad audience.

    These two things combined give you a huge opportunity to steer the decisions people make about what they want to try or buy.

    And pinners are happy to fill up their boards with pins they love. All you have to do is catch their attention with beautiful pins, and they’ll click, repin and share.

    How do you use Pinterest to market your business?

    There’s a strategy for marketing your business on Pinterest. You can’t show up one week with twenty pins and disappear the next.

    And you probably won’t get too far without setting up the right boards or designing pins that stand out in the feed.

    Visual content is one of the most effective ways to capture people’s attention. And on Pinterest, it’s the name of the game. Graphics play a huge role in driving traffic.

    If you can harness the power of visual storytelling, you’ll likely get great results from Pinterest.

    Here are six ways to market your business with Pinterest:

    1)Cross-promote your pins.

    Chances are, most people don’t know about your pins. It’s your job to make them visible.

    Here are some ways to help people find your pins:

    • Join Facebook Groups. There are many niche groups on Facebook that allow you to share your Pinterest profile and pins. You can even find Pinterest-specific share groups.
    • Use promoted pins. Promoted pins are a powerful way to give new pins a spike in engagement and traffic. Once Pinterest sees high repin and click counts, it will start showing your pins higher in the feed – and to more people.
    • Embed them in your blog post. This is probably one of the fastest ways to get eyeballs on your content. Add a vertical pin image to your blog post. Then add a Pinterest share button to encourage web visitors to repin it to their followers.

    If you’re a retailer, you can do what Nordstrom did and use in-store displays to highlight popular products on Pinterest:

    When shoppers see items that are already popular on Pinterest, they’ll likely feel more inclined to buy them in the store.  

    Nordstrom, Target and other brands even have apps that help shoppers find pinned items in their stores.

    2) Share pins that help people.

    Most pinners are women. They’re interested in things like fashion, crafts, parenting, fashion, health, business and DIY topics.

    You may need to get creative with your pins so they don’t look overly promotional.

    Think about how you can feature your brand’s lifestyle. Give people a peek under the hood of your business. Help them accomplish something. Show them something aspirational.

    For example:

    Lowe’s shares home decor, organization tips and gift ideas to inspire their audience. This strategy helped them gain 3.5 million Pinterest followers.

    General Electric uses a similar strategy to inspire their followers:

    If your business isn’t visual by nature, think of ways you can translate what you do into graphics and photos.

    All you have to do is understand what motivates your audience. Then create pins that grab their attention. They’ll take notice.  

    3) Join group boards and tribes

    Group boards are open to multiple contributors and can help you reach pinners who don’t yet follow you.

    When you share to a group, your pins show up in both the feed of your followers and the followers of the group. And if you find an influential group, it can be a game-changer for your traffic and engagement.

    A word of caution with group boards though:

    Some can have the opposite effect. Groups with low engagement or too many contributors can negatively impact your profile and pins.

    Make sure you use Pinterest analytics or Tailwind to monitor group activity. Only share to those that are pulling real weight.

    4) Get personal

    Without followers and fans, it’s hard to build a profitable business.

    After all, social media is about being authentic and making real connections. Don’t be afraid to show your human side. Reach out and thank your followers. Show them you appreciate them. Share behind-the-scenes images.

    When the “Today Show” hit 100k followers, they celebrated by pinning an image of a cake that linked back to a cake recipe on their website.

    Ben and Jerry’s shows their human side by sharing pins about their history, process and factory.

    Make sure you show your followers some love! Simple gestures like these will help you build a community around your brand.

    6) Use Pinterest to dominate social media

    Consistently creating Pinterest-worthy content is tough for a lot of us.  

    One way you can leverage the content you’re already creating on Instagram and YouTube is to repurpose them on Pinterest.

    This makes sense on so many levels…

    First off, your profile will be buzzing with fresh quality content on the regular. Pinterest with thank you for it with better engagement and reach for all of your pins.

    Plus, you’ll gain new followers, views and subscribers on YouTube and Instagram. Remember, Pinterest is a powerhouse for traffic. You can direct that traffic anywhere you want.

    You can even claim your Instagram and YouTube accounts on Pinterest. That way, when someone shares a post or video to their board, Pinterest will track all of that pin’s activity.

    Be careful with Instagram posts though, they don’t have links. You’ll need to manually link pins to your Instagram profile, link-in-bio page or website.

    7. Use keywords everywhere

    Last but not least, don’t forget about keywords!

    You’ve probably heard this one a million times, and it’s true:

    Keywords should be the backbone of your Pinterest strategy.

    Pinterest is a visual search engine. Much of the traffic you get will come from pinners searching on the platform.

    Add keywords to your profile, description, board titles, board descriptions, pin descriptions, meta title and more. Use tools like Keyword Planner, KWfinder, or Pinterest Guided Search (the search bar at the top of your profile – it works just like Google Autocomplete).

    Wrapping it up

    Pinterest has a unique culture that’s almost cult-like. People hang out for hours hunting for new ideas. They love visual storytelling. They love finding ways to create better versions of themselves.

    Make sure you share quality content and optimize it so that pinners can find it. Then watch Pinterest become your #1 source of social traffic.  

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    • Tom La Vecchia

      Founder of New Theory & X Factor Media

      Founder and Publisher of New Theory Magazine and Podcast. Serial Entrepreneur who loves wine, cigars and anything that allows to people to connect and share experiences.

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