So you thought Pinterest was just a space for DIY ideas, recipes, and wedding inspiration.
Have you thought about how you can use it for your business?
Recently I did a poll on my social channels to see if and how my community is using Pinterest. The results proved that most people hadn't considered using Pinterest either for idea gathering or for growing their own brand. A few were not convinced at all about how it could benefit them (which is fair enough as I think we all can already feel overwhelmed by the amount of marketing we need to do on our social media channels!).
But if you're an e-commerce business (especially in fashion, skincare, interiors, jewellery or crafting), or an online service business who wants to extend their reach, I believe Pinterest should absolutely be a key part of your sales and marketing strategy.
In this blog I want to help you understand more about using Pinterest to create brand awareness and drive sales, and explain how I use it with my clients in developing their brand's visual identity.
Why should I use Pinterest for my business?
So let’s talk about why you should consider using Pinterest to promote your business. Chances are, you already use one or more social media platforms for your business marketing, am I right? You might not have considered Pinterest as a channel worth considering, but I'd like you to reconsider! Why? With over 400 million active users each month, Pinterest offers a visually rich, discovery-driven platform that can help your business increase brand awareness, drive sales, and boost marketing efforts. It can also help you to stay ahead of the curve in predicting trends within your specific target demographics.
What makes Pinterest stand apart from the other social media platforms is the search-driven function, which means its users actively come to the platform to find stuff. They're typically planning ahead for a project or purchase, so getting that early exposure to these customers is a huge benefit. Add to this the fact that this is a platform that is under-utilised by business owners, you have two major advantages there already.
But there are lots of other reasons to start pinning (i.e. posting) content on Pinterest...
Unlike your content on other social media platforms like Instagram which are only seen on feeds for a short period of time, once you create a pin on Pinterest, it is 'evergreen' i.e. not time-sensitive - this allows exposure of your content for months and even years after posting it.
Pinterest pins can link back to your website which can help with conversion and SEO and its search engine ties in to Google’s search results, which can also help your content to get found through traditional search.Â
How use Pinterest as a free channel for organic brand growth
Here’s how to get started using Pinterest for your business:
Create a free business account on Pinterest - if you already have a personal account, I would recommend you set up a completely separate account for your business with 2-factor authentication. Creating a business account will give you access to additional analytics tools and the option to create ads if you ever wanted to explore this.
Optimise your bio - as with any other social media platform, this is your shop window for your business, but not only this, any keywords you include in your profile bio will help you to become discoverable by your audience!
Plan your pins - think about what content will work well - it's likely to be similar to what you already use on your other social media channels, so repurpose where you can to make life easier for yourself! If you are an e-commerce business, it might be beautiful visuals such as this. If you’re a service-based business, it could be an image promoting your blog where you are establishing yourself as an expert in your field. Users can click through to your website to find out more, like in this example.
Start creating your pins. You can do this either by creating stand-alone pins or by creating as many boards as you wish to add pins to. You can add the same pin to multiple boards (try to organise these thoughtfully).
Optimise your keywords in the pin title and description. You can test different keywords by typing descriptive text into the search function in Pinterest; under your search bar, you will notice a range of related keyword suggestions. You can include as many of these as makes sense for your title and description.
Try to pin regularly and keep an eye on your analytics to see what is working for you. You can see how many impressions (views), saves and click throughs you have for each pin.
Connect your Instagram account to your Pinterest business account - this will automatically pull your Insta posts through to your Pinterest as stand-alone pins.
If you’re an e-commerce business, you can add shoppable pins directing users to specific product pages where they can buy your products. Pinterest also integrates with Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Shopify and Woo which means they can add your products to a shopping bag and buy directly.
Seeing the benefits from using Pinterest is a long game as it takes time for the algorithm to learn about your content and start distributing it in search results - usually about 3-6 months. But if you’ve pinned content with relevant keywords, it will keep living on, sending you traffic and sales longer than a typical social media post.
Using Pinterest for idea gathering and creative inspiration
Of course, you can use Pinterest not just to promote your business, but for idea gathering and inspiration. Whether that's finding advice from other experts in their field through blog posts (such as more in-depth understanding on using Pinterest for your business!), or visual inspiration for your brand, such as colour palettes or typefaces. If you're a business selling products, maybe you could use it to get ideas for photography, or keep on top of trends.
As a brand designer, I love to use Pinterest with my clients which is why I now set up a private board for every client who invests in one of my brand packages. This allows them to explore, save and share imagery to their board that inspires them! For example, this might be different styles of typefaces that they love or a range of colour palettes that they feel drawn to. It’s also a treasure trove for design, illustration, photography and logo inspiration too. Of course, the brand design I eventually create for my clients evolves as an organic, collaborative process, using my client’s Pinterest board alongside all the information they’ve shared in their 360 Brand Review questionnaire. This gives me a really good feel for the aesthetics that they’re most drawn to.Â
Whilst I don’t make it an obligatory step in the process, I always encourage my clients to use the Pinterest board I set up for them. As Pinterest is driven by searching keywords, like Google, the trick is in using the best terms to find results that are more specific to what you’re looking for. So for example, rather than just ‘fonts’ you could search for ‘vintage fonts’, ‘retro fonts’ or even more specific ‘70s fonts’. You could then redo that search using ‘vintage typefaces’, ‘retro typefaces’ or ‘70s typefaces’ to maximise your result options…you get the idea!
It's just one of the ingredients that goes into the creative pot when you work with me.
I'd love to know whether you use Pinterest and or if you're ready to start? Drop a comment, contact me to chat more!
Karen x
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