Pinterest just keeps on growing, and at 70 million users worldwide, there’s no end in sight to its growth in the foreseeable future. If you are not using this valuable social media platform in your social media marketing mix then you are missing out on a whole new set of possible leads. The following are some tips to use your Pinterest business page for your marketing needs.
Now, you may already have a personal page, but the first thing you want to do is set up a Pinterest Business Page. You can easily convert your old personal page to a business page … your profile won’t look any different to other uses, but you will get the added benefit of some built-in analytics to help you understand which of your pins are the most popular.
Okay, now that you have created your business page and have become familiar with the analytics interface you are ready to start pinning, but first you want to build your following. Start by creating a few pinboards – this way, new followers will have a reason to follow your pins. Then you can start promoting your Pinterest page by adding the Pinterest Follow Button to your website, fostering your Pinterest presence through your other social networks and start following users you think would want to follow you back. And now you are well on your way, but how do you want to use this powerful tool as part of your social media marketing mix?
Start by featuring visual content. Pinterest is a visual social network (online bulletin board) and images carry a ton of weight. Keep an eye out for GIFs. In the past, GIFs have been displayed as static images on Pinterest, but just this month they finally started showing up in their fully-animated glory. GIFs that were posted in the past, as well as new ones you add, will now be animated. This is a great way to create engaging content that will ultimately add to your online social presence.
Another tactic to employ is using taller images for more repins. Social Media Scientist Dan Zarrellas has done research into what works best on Pinterest. What he found, interestingly enough was that the taller an image is, the more likely is to be repinned. Now, I am no sociologist, so I cannot tell you exactly why this is the case, but this is what the research shows.
Speaking of images … what about video? Pinners are not only limited to pinning images, they can pin videos too. Why not create a pinboard of some of the videos your business produces or your business is involved in? Video is just a series of moving images, right? But, remember that you do need to add content as well.
Make sure to use hashtags in your content. Just like Twitter, Google+ and Facebook, Pinterest users can leverage hashtags to tag their pins and make their content more search friendly. Use the same hashtags you are promoting on your other social media platforms to create an integrated, cross-channel campaign. Along this same line, you want to make sure you keep your practices consistent across all of your social media networks … spend time to increase your following, be engaging with your followers, keep your account regularly updated and drive traffic back to your website to increase conversions.
Another tactic to employ would be to create a User-Generated Pinboard, allowing other users to contribute their own pins to your hosted pinboards on a user-by-user basis. This will open up a great opportunity to involve fans and customers in your marketing. Maybe pick out a few of your top fans or customers and created a board dedicated to their pins? Ask the customer to pin images that showcase the lifestyle they enjoy because of your brand. Then you should start to re-pin what your followers are interested in. Showcase the cool things your followers are pinning in a separate pinboard, but re-pinning followers’ pins. This will add a non-promotional and interesting dynamic to your collection of boards while promoting engagement with your followers.
Then you might want to add a Pin-It button to your website, making it super easy for your site’s visitors to share your visual content or images. This will help to expose your brand to a brand new audience. While you’re at it, why not add a Pinterest follow button as well? With this in mind, though, you want to make sure that Pinterest is generating results by driving traffic to your website and vice versa. So, whenever possible, include links back to your website and landing pages in your pins to accomplish this.
In May 2013, Pinterest introduced rich pins … pins that include more information than just a picture. Use rich pins. There are five types of rich pins: an Article Pin that includes a headline, author, story description and link; Product Pins that include real-time pricing, availability and where to buy; Recipe Pins that include ingredients, cooking times and serving information; Movie Pins that include ratings, cast members and reviews; and Place Pins including an address, phone number and map. These Rich Pins are naturally going to depend on the nature of your business and typically come from validated sites. But, you can apply to add rich pins from your own website as well (especially handy if you are selling products through your website). If you want to power up your pins, you can use Lunacy. It’s a one of the Figma alternatives, but it also offers powerful tools to edit images, such as Background Remover and Image Upscaler.
And what about the order that your Pinterest boards are displayed? If you have boards that aren’t always relevant, you can rotate them as the weather changes or as your business focus changes. This is particularly relevant here in Summit County as we have the winter and summer seasons, as well as the shoulder seasons where we see a unique type of visitor for each. You are going to want to change the order of your boards to reflect your target market for the changing seasons.
Then there are the multitudes of tools to make your pinning easier. If you pin a lot of products to your Pinterest boards, there is an iPhone product scanner app from LoveList that lets you scan the barcode of a real-life product and quickly add it to your board. Belle Beth Cooper from Buffer says that this is “a great way of making wish lists, remembering things you want to buy later, and sharing cool products you find.”
If you are a Chrome user, check out Pin Search, a Chrome extension that adds a search button to each pin you view on Pinterest that lets you perform a Google image search based on that picture. And what about PinImage for Firefox? This app adds a “share to Pinterest” option in your right-click menu for Firefox users. Then there’s Page2Images. If you are a designer or in the design field and enjoy sharing screenshots of websites on Pinterest, then this app makes it particularly easy. Just click the button and it will create a pin from the current website you’re viewing. Pinterest Image Expander is a Chrome extension that opens up images when you hover over them so that you don’t have to click each time. This is useful when browsing other people’s boards, but do not want to click each image to open up a bigger preview of it. Pinwords allows you to share quotes on your Pinterest boards in a quick and easy way to make good-looking images from text or quotes and share them as pins. And last but not least, there is Pinstamatic, a fun tool to help you share pins made from quotes, text, Twitter profiles, places and Spotify links. This is a one-stop shop if you like to add various kinds of content to your Pinterest boards.
Above all, though, you want to make sure that you become a Curation Expert – become the go-to Pinterest account for pins about a topic relating to your industry. For example, because Imagine That is a digital marketing company, we have created pinboards that feature awesome visual examples of great online marketing. The goal … become the resource that people use to get their information on your industry. If you can do that, then you are leveraging your Pinterest account to its fullest.
This is a very brief introduction to getting started with Pinterest for your business. There are a multitude of articles out there on ways to utilize your business page to gain customers, and I would suggest researching these once you have mastered the above tips. At Imagine That we integrate the use of Pinterest in our Social Media Marketing (SMM) plans, including the creation, set up and integration of your very own Pinterest page. Give us a call (970-224-1930) or shoot us an email () to learn more about what we can do for your business. Until then … Dream Bigger!