Many businesses are always looking for ways to get into the digital space and social media marketing. However, Pinterest is often overlooked in terms of priorities or interest.

Pinterest, an image-sharing and discovery app, has over 459,000,000 monthly users around the world and generates more leads than any other social media site. This makes it a platform that brands don’t want to underestimate.

Continue reading this Bold and Collective guide to learn more about Pinterest’s potential as a digital marketing tool.

What’s Pinterest?

Pinterest is a social media platform that allows users to share and discover images, animated GIFs and short-form videos through pinboards.

Pinterest users use it most to share and/or get inspiration from content that is relevant to their hobbies and interests. A pin is a representation of an image saved by users. It’s also known as a “Repin”, rather than a repost/share, or retweet.

Each “post” on Pinterest can also be called a “Pin”. Every pin can link to a website. This could be a blog post that a brand is looking to get more traffic to or an online shop to increase sales. The “Board” is a way for users to combine and organize multiple Pins and Repins into one folder.

Why should you use Pinterest for business?

There are many other established social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Why should brands not focus on Pinterest?

These 5 statistics are the final word:

• Pinterest is able to generate 3.8 times more sales per user than any other social media platform.

• 87% of Pinterest users purchased a product due to Pinterest.

• 93% of Pinterest users use Pinterest to plan their purchases.

• 40% of Pinterest users have a household of more than $100k.

• Pinterest users spend twice as much per month than people who use other platforms.

This shows that Pinterest is a great place for businesses to advertise their products and services. Pinterest can be used not only to grow your online audience and presence but also to drive traffic to your website and online store.

Pinterest for Business:

You now know the value and impact Pinterest has on your brand. How can you integrate Pinterest into your overall social media marketing strategy for your brand? Here’s how to get started.

1. Register for a Pinterest Business account

Sign up for the platform to create a new business profile or convert your existing personal Pinterest account (if any) into a business account.

Click on the three dots symbol in the top-right corner of the page to upgrade your account. You will have access to Pinterest Ads and Pinterest Analytics tools once you create a Pinterest Business Profile.

2. Optimize your Profile

Add your brand logo to your profile picture. Create a brief description of your brand that describes what you offer your followers. To drive more traffic, include your website link.

3. Check out Competitors

It is a good rule of thumb to check out what your industry’s competitors are doing on social media. A brand can also be inspired by the content they see on Pinterest.

Your brand can generate content ideas by researching what other people are doing and what is working well.

4. Make compelling content that is worthy of being pinned

Similar to Instagram, Pinterest content is based entirely on aesthetics. High-definition pins are best. To avoid having your content cropped, 82% Pinterest users access the site via their mobile devices.

Last but not least, make sure to post images of products/services with context. Pinterest is all about inspiring others. You want to inspire people to incorporate your product/service in their lives through your visuals.

5. Optimize your pins for SEO

Pinterest’s ability to optimize SEO is a major reason for its success in driving brand traffic. It is important to use keywords in your Pins’ descriptions, boards and hashtags to make sure that Pinterest users can easily search for your pins.

6. Cross-Promoting

Pinterest has a lot in common with Instagram and Pinterest, namely high-quality images. Pinterest can be used to cross-promote Instagram or Facebook accounts.

You can increase traffic to your Pinterest page by sharing the same content on other social media platforms, and backlinking to the Pins from those social media sites.

This is a great way to increase your reach across different platforms, but keep the end goal of driving traffic to a particular site/post.

7. Pinterest Boards

To organize and categorize Pins that share a common theme or interest, create multiple boards for your brand. This will allow your followers and Pinterest users access to the boards and content that is of interest to them.

8. Pinterest Ads: Experiment

Similar to other platforms, Pinterest allows you to target ads at a specific audience by targeting them based on their interests, age and location. Keywords, for example, are all options. A brand can target very specific Pinterest users by targeting them with detailed audience targeting. This includes those who have clicked on your pins and similar content (“Actalikes”), as well as those who have visited your website via uploading your customer lists.

This platform offers a variety of ad formats that brands can experiment with, including the standard image ad, video, shopping, carousel and collection ads. To optimize your ads, you can set your daily budget and the time the ad will run. You can also track your performance to improve your advertising.

Pinterest’s best-performing ads blend well with other feeds, rather than being obvious sales techniques. Increase traffic by having users click on your ads organically, rather than users immediately recognizing it as an advertisement.

Conclusion

Although Pinterest is often overlooked by brands in their social marketing strategy, research has shown that it is an excellent platform to drive traffic and increase sales. Our agency has assisted with many successful Pinterest campaigns for clients.