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Nearly every business owner uses social media in some capacity to promote their business. It’s one of the greatest advantages of modern marketing. It’s free, and allows business owners to upload pictures, videos, links, and more to draw in more and more prospective customers.
But one social media platform that some digital marketers don’t consider is Pinterest.
Pinterest in a Few Words…
Historically, Pinterest has been thought of as a site where users can create vision boards, remind themselves of recipes, and save images that they find inspiring.
In fact, Pinterest can be a great resource for anyone looking for ideas for a practical solution to a problem they’re encountering, which is exactly why your business can benefit from having a presence on Pinterest.
But how does it work for businesses? Here are some tips and tricks to help you get started with your own business account on Pinterest.
How To Create a Pinterest Account for Your Business
Pinterest has created a special process for those who wish to set up a business account. Rather than setting a personal board, you’ll start here: https://business.pinterest.com/en
If you’re wondering, there are actually many businesses currently on Pinterest, including well-known companies like Apple, Wal-Mart, and Whole Foods Market.
So what makes Pinterest successful?
One thing you’ll want to keep in mind is your overall social media presence. You don’t necessarily want to post the same content across all sites, you do want to maintain the same general tone and branding on every social media outlet.
The goal is to make people want to follow you on all avenues, and share content with other users.
You do, however, want to make sure all of your social media accounts, and website, are linked to your Pinterest account. You want the people who stumble upon and discover your Pinterest boards to be intrigued, so give them an easy opportunity to find out more about you and your products or services.
Getting Traffic From Your Pinterest Page
Another key to Pinterest success is your posting frequency. This is one of the rare occasions where more really is more. A good pinning rate is between 5-30 new posts each day.
This may seem excessive, but bear in mind that pins shouldn’t be posted all at once. A successful Pinterest board for businesses posts throughout the day.
Keep in mind, each pin provides viewers with various ways to interact with your brand. Each pin can lead viewers directly to your website, or landing pages, and can be shared and repinned.
On average, a single pin gets repinned ten times, and draws an average of two site visits and six page views.
You’ll also want to keep your Pinterest boards diverse. You can dedicate one board to pins that inspire your brand. You’ll of course want to pin items from your own site, with links directly to a specific item, or to a section of your sales pages, depending on the purpose.
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Determining what boards to create might take a little thought and practice. You may wish to create a board for every type of product you have.
Examples of How To Organize Your Pinterest Boards
For example, if you sell active wear, you might want a board for yoga pants, one for tank tops, and so on. This can be helpful, but diversifying your boards can increase user interaction.
Using the active wear example, what if you created a board for outdoor winter activities, or yoga, or another type of sport or exercise.
In the image below, you can see an example of how boards are organized for an ecommerce selling products in the Home & Garden niche.
Then, instead of bombarding your viewers with picture after picture of yoga pants, they can be inspired by pins relating to snowboarding news, or how to layer to avoid sweating too much, or travel tips for snowboarders.
Pinterest boards are intended to provide inspiration based on topic, so adding a lot of different content types can really engage your audience.
How To Know if Your Pinterest Boards Are Helping Your Business
The benefit of starting a business-specific Pinterest account is that Pinterest business accounts with several special tools.
The first is Pinterest Analytics. With these tools, you’ll be able to track pin and board performance. You’ll be able to see how people interact with your pins, as well as aggregate data on pin and board popularity. From this, you’ll be able to learn about your audience’s demographics, including age and location.
In the picture below, you can see an example of demographics from one of the websites belonging to our network:
By having all this information, you can prioritize boards and better organize your strategies to gain an even greater following.
Pinterest Analytics also gives you insight into trending topics. The principles of SEO still apply within Pinterest. Researching keywords and including them in your board and pin names and descriptions can help you maximize your reach.
You can also search within Pinterest to see how your top keywords and boards inter-relate within the site.
About Rich Pins
Rich Pins are another tool Pinterest provides to business accounts. Rich Pins provide a direct connection from your pins to your website.
When your linked web content changes, so too will the information in a Rich Pin. Product Rich Pins provide details such as current price, availability, and descriptions or details.
Recipe Rich Pins include information related to the cook time, ingredient list, or serving recommendations.
Article Rich Pins provide a direct link from articles posted on your website with your Pinterest boards.
As a business, you’ll have to apply through Pinterest before posting a Rich Pin, but the process is fairly straightforward, and is outlined in the Pinterest Business Help Center.
The Learning Curve
Like many social media outlets, Pinterest does take a little practice. You will have to interact with your account frequently.
Besides your own pins and boards, you’ll want to follow and repin from other boards in your industry or niche. After all, Pinterest is a social/sharing platform, so the more you share and interact with others, the more authority and following you’ll receive in return.
Start by taking a look at Pinterest on your own to get an idea of how your business can best be reflected there, but remember: each Pinterest board is meant to grow and change.
You may have to adjust techniques a few times, but with the helpful analytics provided by Pinterest business accounts, you’ll have greater insight into what makes your audience repin and interact.
Pinterest can be a great way to expand your social media reach by providing more opportunities for people to interact with your brand.
Be ready to do some exploration and experimentation as you try boards and pins to provide greater introduction to your business.
