Key Takeaways
- Pinterest is a powerful platform for businesses to connect with a highly engaged audience and drive meaningful results.
- Pinterest offers unique features like Pins, Boards, and Feeds that allow businesses to showcase their offerings and capture the attention of potential customers.
- With Pinterest Analytics, businesses can gain valuable insights into the performance of their content and target their strategy to the exact audience they care about.
In the vast digital landscape, Pinterest stands out as a visual powerhouse, attracting millions of users who seek inspiration and ideas. For businesses, Pinterest presents a unique opportunity to connect with a highly engaged audience and drive meaningful results. This comprehensive guide delves into the world of Pinterest for business, empowering entrepreneurs and marketers to unlock the platform’s full potential.
Pinterest for Business: A Lucrative Avenue for Growth
With over 200 million monthly users, Pinterest may not boast the sheer numbers of Facebook, yet it holds its own as a significant social platform that penetrates valuable demographics. Half of US millennials, a tech-savvy and influential generation, actively use Pinterest. Moreover, 68% of US women aged 25-54 find inspiration and ideas on the platform, making it a powerful tool to reach a significant portion of the female population. While Pinterest does skew female, it’s important to note that 40% of its users are male, indicating a diverse and engaged audience.
Why Use Pinterest for Business?
Pinterest stands apart from other social networks in its unique purpose. People flock to Pinterest not just to connect with friends or share updates, but to seek inspiration, explore new ideas, and discover products they might love. This mindset creates a fertile ground for businesses to showcase their offerings and capture the attention of potential customers. According to eMarketer, only Facebook surpasses Pinterest in influencing users’ purchase decisions in the United States, highlighting its remarkable impact on consumer behavior.
The statistics speak volumes: more than two-thirds of Pinners admit to discovering new brands or products on Pinterest, and an impressive 93% use the platform to plan their purchases. The platform’s influence doesn’t stop at planning; half of Pinners have made a purchase after seeing a Promoted Pin, and two-thirds have encountered saved Pins while shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, underscoring Pinterest’s ability to drive both online and offline sales.
A Quick Overview of Pinterest for Business
Before delving into the strategies for leveraging Pinterest for business, let’s establish a common understanding of key Pinterest terminology:
Pins:
A Pin is simply any image or video saved on Pinterest. For business accounts, the link associated with the Pin holds greater significance than the image itself. Each Pin is directly linked to its original source, making Pinterest a potent channel for generating referral traffic.
Boards:
Pinterest users, also known as Pinners, save a vast amount of content, with over 100 billion Pins saved to date. To organize this vast collection, users create collections called boards. For instance, Hootsuite’s Pinterest account features boards such as Case Studies, Best Practices & Trends, and Infographics. Other users can follow your entire account or specific boards that align with their interests. Once they follow you, the Pins you save will appear in their feeds.
Feed:
A Pinterest feed resembles a feed on any other social network: it’s a collection of links and content from different boards and users that each Pinner follows.
How to Set Up a Pinterest Account for Your Business
To harness the power of Pinterest for your business, it’s crucial to create a Pinterest business account rather than a personal one. Business accounts offer a suite of tools specifically designed for businesses, including Pinterest Analytics and the ability to run targeted ads.
If you already have a personal Pinterest account, you can effortlessly convert it into a business account. Simply add additional information about your business and agree to the terms of service specifically tailored for business accounts.
For those new to Pinterest, creating an account is a straightforward process:
Step #1: Create your Pinterest business account
Navigate to Pinterest for Business and click “Create an account.”
Enter your email, password, business name, and website. Then select the category that best describes your business.
Be sure to review the terms of service and privacy policy.
Step #2: Complete your profile
You now have the foundation of your Pinterest account, but it’s time to flesh it out with details that make your brand appealing and trustworthy.
Log in to your new Pinterest account. Hover over the Profile icon in the top right corner and click “Edit profile.”
Scroll down to the Profile section to upload a profile photo (optimal size: 165 x 165 pixels), fill out the “About you” section, and add your business location. Then click Save.
Step #3: Verify your website
Verifying your website offers several benefits. It allows you to see what other users are saving from your website, adds your logo to any Pins created from your site, and boosts your Pins’ rankings in search results.
From your Pinterest settings, navigate to the Profile section and click Verify website.
Copy and paste the provided text into the HTML of your website’s home page.
Click Finish.
Step #4: Create boards
With your account ready, it’s time to start sharing and organizing content to entice other Pinners to follow your account or specific boards.
From your Pinterest profile, click the Boards tab, then click the red + symbol to create a new board.
Choose a descriptive name for your board. Use catchy yet simple language to convey the type of content you’ll be sharing. Keep the name concise, with a maximum of 20 characters.
Return to the boards tab and click the pencil icon to add more details.
Write a description of the content you’ll be saving to your board and select an appropriate category. If you want to start saving Pins to your board but prefer to keep it hidden until it’s ready, you can make your board secret.
Step #5: Start pinning
Now that your boards are set up, it’s time to add some Pins. The easiest way to save content quickly is by installing the Pinterest browser button.
Install the appropriate Pinterest browser button for your preferred browser.
To Pin something you find on the web, click the Pinterest icon in your browser’s toolbar.
Select your favorite image from the options and click Save.
Add or edit a description.
Select the board you want to save your Pin to.
Once you have a few Pins added to your board, you can choose the most visually appealing one to be your board’s cover image.
From the boards tab, hover over your board and click the pencil icon in the top right corner.
Scroll down to Cover and click Change. Then select the image you want for your Pin.
How to Use Pinterest with Hootsuite
Streamline your social media management by using Hootsuite to manage your Pinterest account alongside all your other social networks.
Create new boards, pin fresh Pins, schedule Pins for later, and Pin to multiple boards simultaneously—all from the convenience of your Hootsuite dashboard!
Using Pinterest for Business: Tips and Tactics
Follow these strategies to leverage Pinterest effectively for your business:
1. Add save buttons so people can save things from your site
Make it effortless for people to save your content by adding a save button to any element on your web page. This allows Pinners to Pin your content with a single click, even if they don’t have the Pinterest browser button installed. Unsurprisingly, offering this option can significantly increase the amount of content saved from your site.
You can choose automatic buttons (a Pinterest Save button will appear on every image on your page), hover-over buttons (which only appear when someone mouses over images), or add a Pinterest Save button to a specific image on your page.
Create your Pinterest Save buttons using the Pinterest Widget Builder. For step-by-step instructions and more information on using social save and share buttons, refer to our post about social media buttons for every platform.
2. Be consistent with your Pins
Pinterest recommends Pinning at least once per day during peak times (evenings and weekends for US-based brands). Consistency is key—if you plan to post a lot of Pins during the week, space them out and Pin multiple times per day rather than posting everything at once.
When creating Pins that coincide with an upcoming event, celebration, or season, start posting them at least 45 days before the date.
3. Focus on visually appealing content
Pinterest is a highly visual platform, so investing effort into creating high-quality images pays off. Ensure your photos are simple, well-lit, properly composed, and most importantly, in focus. If you lack the time, tools, or skills to create your own images, numerous websites offer high-quality stock photos that you can use.
Think about visually creative ways to showcase your product and brand. After analyzing the performance of 50,000 Promoted Pins, Pinterest discovered that lifestyle images generally outperform product images. For instance, fashion and style Pins showing products being worn in everyday life generated 30% more clicks and 170% higher purchase rates than those showing the product alone.
This Pin from Hunter Boots exemplifies this concept, showcasing how their boots can be worn instead of offering a flat close-up of the boots alone.
80% of Pinners use the Pinterest app on mobile phones, suggesting that images should be optimized for small screens. Vertical images are ideal as they provide more real estate to work with. The image aspect ratio can be up to 1:2.8, but 2:3 is ideal, resulting in an image size of 600 x 900 pixels. Images larger than 1560 pixels will be cut off.
Adding a few words to your images can provide immediate context about the content linked to your Pin. For instance, food-related Pins with short, concise text receive 23% more clicks and are saved 31% more often. However, avoid cluttering your images, as Pinterest specifically recommends against it.
Remember that you can create multiple Pins with different images that link to the same page. This is not only allowed but also recommended, as certain images may appeal more to one audience than another.
4. Don’t forget about the words
Despite Pinterest being a visual platform, great images alone aren’t enough to generate meaningful engagement. Make the most of the description field to inform people about the content they’ll find when they click through to the content linked to your Pin.
Include relevant keywords to help your Pins appear in search results, but do so naturally and helpfully, avoiding keyword stuffing.
This description on a Pin from BobVila.com incorporates excellent keywords related to power outages (and the weather events that cause them), yet it’s clearly written for people, not robots:
When creating multiple Pins with different images pointing to the same content, ensure you create a unique description for each one.
Lastly, ensure that the linked content delivers on the promise made in your description. Quality content excites Pinners and encourages them to follow you and engage with your brand on and off Pinterest.
Interestingly, Pinterest penalizes Pins with broken links, so verify that all the links attached to your Pins are correct and up-to-date.
5. Use Rich Pins when appropriate
Rich Pins are enhanced Pins that utilize metadata pulled from your site to provide additional information about what Pinners will find when they click on a Pin. Rich Pins are available for apps, recipes, products, and articles, making them applicable to content you’re Pinning or hope others will Pin.
For example, Rich Pins for articles include a headline, the author’s name, the date the article was published, and a descriptive story. They also indicate which link leads to an article and include a call-to-action button that says “Read this.”
Follow these instructions from Pinterest to set up Rich Pins on your site.
6. Be social
Remember: Pinterest is a social network, not a billboard. To encourage engagement with your Pins, you need to engage too.
Follow boards or accounts of related but non-competing brands in your industry and actively like and comment on Pins related to your niche.
Engage with your brand’s employees and advocates on Pinterest by inviting them to contribute to group boards.
7. Use Pinterest analytics to improve your results
Pinterest Analytics offers valuable insights into the type of content that performs best on the network, allowing you to strategize and improve your Pinterest for business results over time.
You’ll see which Pins are the most popular and which ones drive the most traffic to your site, enabling you to focus on the metrics that matter most to your business.
You’ll also discover which boards your Pins are being saved to, providing insights into what people think about your business and services. This helps you brainstorm new ideas for positioning your Pinterest efforts.
Additionally, you’ll receive information about the demographics and interests of people who engage with your Pins, offering valuable insights for targeting your strategy to the exact audience you care about.
For example, fashion brand Reiss was surprised to learn that their Pins of men’s clothing received more clicks and impressions than their Pins of women’s clothing. They adjusted their previous Pinterest strategy of targeting women to target men more, resulting in more male followers and a significant jump in referral traffic from their men’s clothing pages.
Access Pinterest Analytics directly from your profile by clicking the Analytics tab at the top left of the screen. Learn more about using Pinterest Analytics to refine your strategy in our post on Pinterest Analytics for business.
8. Try Pinterest ads
Promoted Pins (aka Pinterest ads) are an effective way to increase the visibility of your Pins to a wider audience, creating new exposure for your brand.
Promoted Pins can deliver exposure beyond what you pay for. Pinterest’s internal data shows that ads receive an average of 20% more organic clicks in the month following the launch of a Pinterest ad campaign.
Pinterest identifies Promoted Pins by placing the word “Promoted” underneath the Pin. Clicking on the more icon reveals who paid for the ad.
However, when other Pinners save your Promoted Pins to their boards, they become regular organic Pins, and the promotional labels are removed.
We’ve provided a step-by-step guide on creating a successful Pinterest ad campaign in our comprehensive guide to Pinterest ads.
For more Pinterest tips and success stories, check out our post highlighting ideas from famous bloggers who use Pinterest as part of their business strategy.
Save time managing your Pinterest presence using Hootsuite.
Create new boards, pin fresh Pins, schedule Pins for later, and Pin to multiple boards simultaneously—all from your Hootsuite dashboard.
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