While Pinterest may be completely addictive to those who love it; spending hours curating boards for everything from home ideas to wedding plans, is it actually a useful social media tool for your business? The answer is yes. Ranking higher than Instagram, Pinterest is the 5th most popular social networking site. So, it’s worth considering how you can tap into their 250 million unique visitors every month.
Here’s what you can you do to get the most out of the platform:
- Consider whether Pinterest is in fact the right platform for your brand.
The first thing to consider is your target audience; who are they and are they using Pinterest? With around a 70% female to 30% male gender split, if your audience is predominantly male, then you may be better to put your efforts elsewhere. 50% of users have children and close to half of them are aged between 18 and 34. A study by Pinterest and Millward Brown identified that 93% of Pinterest users plan future purchases. So we know that users are looking to make a purchase and Pinterest makes and it’s so easy for them to simply click through from the image and end up in your online store. With these stats in mind, it’s worth considering which types of products are best suited to the platform.
- The type of products most suited to Pinterest
Consumers use Pinterest to curate versions of their ideal self. Twitter is a platform to share and link to what is happening right now, Facebook is about who I am and what I’m doing while Pinterest is about who I want to be in the future. People go to Pinterest to get inspired. Don’t just show them the pair of boots you have for sale, show them what they can DO with those boots. Although Pinterest predominantly drives sales in food, clothing, home décor, beauty, health and fitness, it doesn’t mean that your product has to fall within one of these categories. Other popular searches include kids, travel, events, men’s fashion and technology. Sharing lifestyle imagery associated with your brand can also drive traffic to your site if your particular product category is not high on the search list. Or, if you don’t have a physical product at all or your product won’t photograph particularly well, try using quotes, tips or infographics instead. Quotes and tips are easy to create and share to create a branded experience that inspires your Pinterest followers.
- Pinterest is a visual platform – so create beautiful visual content!
On Pinterest you are pitching to people’s aspirational and idealistic lifestyle. So you want to share content that inspires people and talks to their hopes and dreams. Pinterest provides some great advice on how to create better pins. Part of Pinterest’s appeal is that it is beautiful, inspiring and on the whole very positive. So create really beautiful content that people want to re-pin and save on their own boards. Moorea, a gift and homewares store in Seattle has built close to 1 million followers and nearly 50% of their sales come from Pinterest. Closer to home, a local Australian brand called Spell based out of Byron Bay, has achieved great social media success with the quality and styling of their imagery.
- Capitalise on the lifespan of your pins
The lifespan of a Pin is much longer than posts on Facebook or other social media platforms. Much like a magazine which can sit around on a table being browsed by different people for months (or years if you think of the doctor’s surgery) Pinterest content can be viewed over and over again. Click your own Pins to make sure that links still work and fix them if they’re broken. Create timeless content such as tips, how to DIY’s and quotes. Content on Pinterest lasts longer than on any other platform. What you pinned 10 weeks ago, can keep building pins through the power of Pinterest’s algorithm and go viral.
- Perfecting your pins
Being a visual site, your images are the cornerstone of everything you share so you need to put the effort into perfecting your pins. Pins all have the same width with an unlimited length. Using images that are taller than they are wide will attract more eyeballs. A good size to aim for is 736×1102 pixels for a typical pin – this is the template size used by Canva who provide awesome templates for all of your social media content. Clear, high res images are more visually appealing and professional. Lighter images are re-pined more than dark ones and interestingly images without faces also get more re-pins.
- Create multi image pins
Using multiple images within one image is great or DIY posts showing key steps or for sharing different angles of the same product. You could also try a close up of a product combined with product placement in your lifestyle. Again, Canva is great for creating mosaic style images.
- Create pins with text in them
Adding text to your image such as a headline or a description referencing the full article or pin can give viewers just that little bit more encouragement to click through. Not so much info that it becomes an article rather than an image but just a few key words as a teaser to get their attention. Canva makes it easy to add text to your images – one key thing, check the legibility of the text before uploading.
- Prolific pinning!
Pinterest takes work because the most successful Pinterest marketing requires constant pinning. The more you pin, the more people re-pin, like, follow or comment. To make the most of it you really need to be pinning multiple times every day. Pins need to be spaced out not shared in batches so if you don’t have time to be pinned to your Pinterest account, then you will need to schedule your pins – thankfully there are great tools to make this easier.
- Take the time to be social on Pinterest
You need to remember to be social with Pinterest – it is a social platform after all. While scheduling a batch of pins might feel very one directional, using Pinterest properly is more akin to a two-way dialogue. Be active and comment on and like other pins, @tag other pinners by name, track re-pins from your site and be sure to thank other pinners for re-pins.
- Curation is just as important as creation
Don’t just share every image you have, share the best ones. Be strategic about what you share. Share a variety of types of pins from rich imagery, to text and specifically created graphics. Don’t just self-promote by sharing constant product images, it’s important to share the lifestyle behind your brand as well – remember Pinterest is aspirational. Learn from other brands who pin successfully – go to the major players in your industry and learn from what they do. With 2.1 million followers, the official Lululemon page is a great best practice example.
- Measure, evaluate and adjust
Check your stats regularly to see what’s working and what’s not. Pinterest has its own analytics tool but if you’re looking for even deeper insights you could try Tailwind or one of the other tools in the marketplace. You’ll be able to see which strategies and content work so you can constantly improve your marketing. You can see what people like to save from your website and who your Pinterest audience is, including their gender, location, and other interests as well as which devices people use when they’re pinning your stuff. It’s essential to track growth in followers, boards, re-pins, likes and comments. You can also analyse the revenue produced as a direct result of Pinterest traffic by linking your Google analytics account.
Like every other social media platform, effective marketing takes effort and practice. A considered, thoughtful strategy is likely to produce greater results than a scatter gun approach. If you’d rather have someone else put in the ground work to develop a Pinterest strategy for your business and then implement it, we have a team of content curators at your disposal.