If you have mastered one of the popular social networks, for example, Facebook or Instagram, then you can easily work with other similar platforms (Twitter, YouTube, hi5, etc.). Many marketing tactics are universal and suitable for brand promotion on any of these platforms.
But from this rule, there is an exception … Pinterest is a popular and valuable channel for ecommerce, but it differs significantly from other social networks, which puts marketers at a dead end. However, Pinterest users spend more money on online shopping than users of any of the 5 most popular social networks.
Pages with images are viewed 94% more often than without them. Do you already use this advantage in your marketing practice? Pinterest is one of those tools that allow you to share visual content easier than ever.
In this article, we’ll look at how to use this social network for marketing. Let’s get started!
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a social platform that allows users (pinners) to save pins with links, descriptions, and images to various boards for further use. The boards can be hidden or public.
Users can create pins by uploading images or links manually, searching for pins or accidentally finding attractive photos. The last two options are great opportunities to attract customers.
Pinterest is a storehouse of ideas and inspiration. People here do not try to attract as many fans or make an impression, it is much more important for them to find interesting and attractive content. That’s why in Pinterest you can create hidden boards, which only authorized users can see.
So, you decided to use Pinterest for your business. Congratulations, it’s cool! You created their own account, set everything up … But what happens next?
As Pinterest is a platform for distributing and storing content in virtual collections, called pin boards (“boards”), then, if you decide to master this tool, you probably noticed that working with it takes a long time. You need to constantly search and share useful and interesting content. And if this process is not optimized and not automated, then Pinterest can take up to 80% of the productive time. And the business will simply not have the strength, energy and free hours.
No one will argue that this is a service that will benefit your business. But you can get even more benefits if you configure the programs for auto posting.
Think about how convenient it is to use someone or something to find images, find keywords and optimize contacts, and get a strong return on the audience. And then redirect traffic to your site and make conversions.
You can get sucked into Pinterest
Do you know that feeling when you entered the Internet during the morning coffee for 5 minutes and did not notice when the sun had already set? In Pinterest, this rule works many times stronger. The day is over very soon, and your notebook literally bursts from unresolved problems. This is a good sign! So, during surfing, visitors are likely to run into your records:
- Articles Pins. The fact that Pinterest is very visual in nature does not mean that the place is bad for the exchange of written content. If an article has an image, it can be attached to Pinterest. But article pins are displayed so that users can automatically see the title, author, and description. This makes them much more searchable and different from other content on the platform.
- Product Pins. Shopping through Pinterest is much easier. Unlike the usual pin, these show where you can buy the product, the current price and a direct link to the landing page. In addition, the prices for commodity pins are updated in real time, and if the user connects the contact product to one of his accounts, he learns about the cost reduction. Because many on this platform create whiteboards that serve as lists.
- Recipe Pins. Pinterest has already become a huge gourmet center, and you can find almost any recipe you can imagine on the site. In contrast to the usual pin, which will display the image and description.
- Great for movie lovers. Such pins show more detailed information about the films that you choose. Story clips include information about how the film was released, its rating, the director, and the main stars.
Why is it worth promoting the brand on Pinterest?
To begin with, Pinterest now has more than 200 million active users. Quite a lot, especially considering the effectiveness of this platform for sales.
Pinterest is the secret weapon of online stores. Users of this social network buy organically found products in it much more often than on other sites. And all because the Pinners purposefully search for a certain idea or product, and do not mindlessly scroll the tape in search of something interesting.
The following statistics will help you to verify the effectiveness of Pinterest:
- 98% of users tried new things found on Pinterest, while only 71% of users of other platforms could say the same about their experience.
- Pinners are 39% more likely to be active buyers than non-pinners; when they buy, they spend 29% more than those who do not use the platform.
- 93% of pinners use Pinterest for planning, searching and making purchases.
- 80% of Pinterest traffic is generated by mobile users.
- 40% of users of this social network have a family income of more than $100 thousand a year.
Which companies better use Pinterest?
Many brands can benefit from the promotion on Pinterest, but especially online stores selling physical goods that can be photographed.
B2C companies are much easier to promote their business in Pinterest than the B2B sector representatives. But for them, there is nothing impossible. It all depends on whether you find your target audience among the pins.
Why Pinterest is necessary for online stores
Pinterest is designed to store ideas and inspiration, not links to other sites. Users in this social network do not care at all whether other people see what they have noted or archived — all this was designed not to create discussions. Moreover, Pinterest has the ability to create “secret” boards (board — is a personal catalog-album for storing images, used in Pinterest), which can be viewed only by individual people indicated by the creator of the board.
If you’re wondering how Pinterest goes hand in hand with e-commerce, here’s what statistics say:
- 93% of Pinterest users used it to plan purchases, research goods, or make purchases.
- 66% of women in the US and Canada, aged 25 to 54 years, are subscribed to Pinterest.
- 61% of users said they find new brands or products on Pinterest.
- 60% of Pinterest account holders have children aged 5 or younger.
- 40% of the Pinterest accounts owners indicated a household income of more than $8,000 per month.
Household income statistics are crucial because it assumes that Pinterest attracts users with higher incomes. This is reflected in additional data from “Pinterest for Business”, which show that “pinners” are more likely to spend (and spend more) buying a variety of things: from food to luxury goods.
Women in the first half of 2010 used Pinterest ten times more than men, and with a greater frequency. But in the second half of 2010, the number of men on the platform is growing rapidly. Women now are about 70% of the platform users — and if you take new subscribers in 2018, already more than half of them are men. It is quite possible that in the 2020s the gender ratio of users of the visual network will be balanced by 60%/40% or 55%/45%.
The profile of the online store in Pinterest
When creating your profile, brand it in exact accordance with your site and other social networking profiles. Align your username here with the profile names on Facebook and Instagram, if possible. Use your logo, color, specific phrases and infographic elements.
When you edit your profile settings, you will see the possibility of adding a list of Featured boards. They will be displayed over the rest of your posts, which will give you the opportunity to highlight the important content that you want to direct people to. Recommended boards will also help you create a brighter profile.
How to create a profile on Pinterest?
The first step to effective promotion in Pinterest is the creation of a high-quality profile.
First, register a business profile for your company. If you already have an active personal profile, convert it into a business profile.
Necessary information
When creating a profile, stick to the style of your brand. Specify the same name as used in other social networks. It is also desirable to use the same logo so that your business is easily recognizable.
If you need to update the information, click on the profile icon in the upper right corner and select Settings.
Under the Location field, there is a Popular boards section. Pay attention to it. Click Edit to select the boards that will be located at the very top of the profile. Place only the best content here to attract as many pins as possible.
Do not you have any boards yet? Then go back to this point when you are done with the profile.
Tools for working in Pinterest
We decided to search and test tools for working on Pinterest. Some scheduling programs are very convenient.
What is it? Imagine, your audience is used to sharing something interesting at 2:00 pm and 8:00 pm. But at this time you have just an important meeting with your colleagues or partners. What to do? Here the planners will help you.
Let’s figure out which tool is right for you:
Buffer
This service is convenient for postponed posting in social networks and cross-posting. But postponed publications and planning posts in Pinterest is available only in the paid version. Here everything is simple:
- Register your profile;
- Add all accounts from which you plan to make publications;
- Arrange publications in the calendar by day and time.
Postcron
Here you can simultaneously publish up to 10 posts. If you need more, choose a paid profile.
ViralTag
Another convenient scheduler. Allows you to publish an unlimited number of posts and view analytical data. The service provides 14 days of the free trial period.
SMMplanner
With this tool, you can manage cross-posting, label publications. If you have chosen a free plan, you have 50 publications a month. SMMplanner has a convenient function for deleting publications. It will be useful to those who offer promotions, discounts, and other activities that are limited in time.
Pinography
Let’s see the 8 simple steps to plan your publications with this great tool.
- Create an account. Be sure to register first on Pingraphy.com website. After you log in, open your Pinterest account in a separate tab. You need them to be open at the same time.
- Take the preformed pingture. Go back to Pingraphy, click on the toolbar and grab the “Pingraphy” button. It works in exactly the same way as in the Pinterest “Pin It”, which you are probably already using. Just drag Pingraphy to the browser toolbar. This is an extremely convenient feature since it allows you not only to plan your publications in advance but also to upload many images at once. In just a few clicks, you can instantly reduce the publication time from one hour per day to one hour per week! Imagine how much time you will save? After you find a site with attractive content, just click the button on the toolbar — you will see all the pinned images from this page.
- Select from Pinnable Images. Select the desired images and deselect those that you do not like. Clear the checkbox in the upper left corner. Then press the green button “Next” on the right.
- Optimize signatures. On the next page, add text to each image. If you tie your content, be sure to leave a description with keywords for SEO, a call to action, a price, if necessary, and the address of your site in order to get the maximum benefit from the publication.
- Add links to the header area and the “URL” field. Pinterest allows you to place a hyperlink to any addresses that you add to the header area. This is a great way to get more advertising for your brand or business. A link can direct traffic to any page of your website or blog. You can also link the post to the subscription page to increase the subscription base that sells the page in order to raise sales or attract new customers.
- Choose the appropriate advice. Then you need to choose which date you want to schedule the images on. Pingraphy actually gives you two options: you can immediately download and display posts or schedule publications using the orange “Schedule” button.
- Plan your publications. Pingraphy allows you to select a date, time and even a time zone for posting. If you hover over the time field, a drop-down calendar will appear where you can select any desired date. It is possible to specify the hour and minute by simply moving the cursor to the right on the scale on the specific panel. Select the time zone you want to send the message to. The study of Pinerly, the analytical Pinterest tool, suggests that the optimal time for posting is between 8:00 pm and 12:00 am. Once you have set the time, you can return to the control panel by clicking on the blue Dashboard link, and view the pending posts. Thanks to Pingraphy, you can plan your publications, wherever you are, at the time that suits you. You do not even need to be in front of your computer to use the full power of Pinterest.
- Now when you know how to plan your publications in Pinterest, there is no excuse not to use this tool. You can either make 5-7 publications by copying them directly or download 30 or so posts once a week, spending less time. Here we talked about images scheduling, but remember that Pinterest does not restrict you to only flat images. You can apply the same technique to videos from YouTube or Vimeo.
Guide for Pinterest marketing 2018
Where to begin
More than 100 million people use Pinterest, and their number is constantly growing, which makes this social network the fastest growing to date.
You will surely find your target audience here. You just have to share excellent content with them, find out their interests and help find you. In this case, you need a minimum amount of information to understand what they are looking for.
Focus on creating really good content, which will allow you to become an expert in your field. This directly affects the effectiveness of attracting users.
Create a board
In Pinterest on your board, you share Pins, so give it a unique name. Here’s how it should look from the point of view of the resource creators.
Start with two boards, or edit those that you already have. Delete duplicate entries, check links, add keywords to descriptions. Perhaps even rewrite them, if necessary.
If you devote different boards to different deep niche sub-sectors of your trading area, you will get more followers. That’s why:
- Niche interests cause more demand for Pinterest, niche boards are more appropriate for any target audience.
- Users quickly understand what the board is about if all of its content is on one narrow topic, rather than a few.
- The more boards, the more convenient it is to optimize them for more keywords.
How can this look in practice? Jewelry store can organize Pinterest in the following boards:
- Precious stones for a birthday, with sections for each month.
- The value of precious stones, the symbolic meaning, and history of various types of precious stones.
- Wedding rings, with sections sorted by style.
- Watches, with sections for different brands.
Share content
About 80% of the content on Pinterest is Repins.
Find the content on the site that will be interesting to your target audience, and share it.
Do not forget about the 80/20 rule: share 80% of the content of other Pinners and only 20% of your own. For each Pin, you create, share 4 Pins from other users.
What content to share on Pinterest?
In Pinterest, different types of content are popular. Below we will look at some of the best of them.
But first, make sure that your pins refer to the current page with the visual element. Do not redirect all users to the home page.
Commercial Pins
Commercial pins contain a photo or video of a particular product and refer to the site for making a purchase. This is one of the most popular content formats, it provides the best ROI.
Blog Entries and Content
Blog posts can be quite popular on Pinterest. It is important to choose an attractive image, it is better to add text to it (you can do it, for example, in Canva). In the description, explain to users why your article is worth reading.
Infographics
Infographics and Pinterest are created for each other. But make sure that it meets social network standards, otherwise, the text cannot be read.
Video
A video is gaining popularity on Pinterest. If you have a YouTube channel, you can directly upload your videos to your profile. Especially here they like master classes and video instructions.
Goals at the initial stage:
- Establish connections with other Pinner by subscribing to their updates, kicking their records and sharing them, leaving comments.
- Create a foundation for your content to find an audience and attract subscribers.
- Find out what your target audience likes and share only interesting content.
Great images
Explore your site, you probably will find some excellent images that are ideal for Pinterest. Others will have to be improved.
How to improve images:
- Make a list of all posts and pages with excellent images.
- Make a list of posts and pages with images to work on.
- To update visual content, pay attention to information that can be attractive (citations, statistics, graphs or research results). This will help you with programs such as Canva or Piktochart.
- After reviewing all your entries, you will determine which ones are more suitable for Pinterest.
How should the pins look like?
The following Pinterest marketing tips will help you make Pins as attractive as possible:
- Use effective colors and unique images. Your Pins should be useful, attractive and practical. Forget the stock images, they are not relevant for a long time. To attract attention, remember that images without faces are divided by 23% more often. According to Curalate, Pines with a predominance of red and orange are divided twice as often as posts in blue shades or multi-colored. Do not forget about the emotions that cause different colors, this is very important for the success of your Pins. Also, Curalate found that Pins with a neutral background attracted more traffic. Try to simplify the design, then your recordings will also look very beneficial on mobile devices.
- Add text to the images. Adding text to an image will allow you to make your message more accurate and understandable since images are often of a general nature. This will also be useful when using the Pin outside of a social network, for example, on your website. Tip: you can install the Pinterest plugin to quickly and easily save ideas on the board.
- Use longer images. Remember the size of your images, they should look good on Pinterest. The preferred image width is 735 pixels, while the length can be any. According to Curalate, Pins with a ratio of 2:3 (1102 pixels in length) or 4:5 attract more traffic. Test which option is right for you. Tip: add a long image at the very beginning of your post. According to Buzzfeed, this will increase the number of conversions with Pinterest.
Do not be afraid to experiment, try new designs, but always remain true to your brand.
The quality of the images is certainly very important for Pins, but the text under them is equally important.
How to write for Pinterest
Effective text for Pin significantly increases the chances that the target audience will find your stunning content. Visual content on Pinterest will always be central. Users, after all, move here in a circle of images, scroll the tape with them until something catches their eye.
But this does not mean that the text here is never useful. Quite the opposite: although the visual part will catch users’ eyes, the description will help them determine if they want to click.
For best results, use three strategies:
- Descriptions begin with the main one. Descriptions of pins (posts in Pinterest) can contain up to 500 characters, but users, if they do not click, see only the first 75-100 characters. Therefore, put forward important material that establishes the context.
- Write naturally. Keywords are important, but you do not need to sacrifice a creative feeling. Descriptions of pins, which are a set of keywords, can cause people to refuse to be interested in you.
- Write marketing texts. Although users themselves will see that the pretty T-shirt that your store sells is their style; but the description that it is also made of premium organic cotton, and that you will donate some of the proceeds to the needy — will destroy them completely, and will lead to a purchase. No matter how Pinterest is visual, convincing copywriting descriptions will always matter.
How to write an effective text for Pin:
- Pins with long descriptions are more popular. Focus on the length of 300 characters. According to Buzzfeed, a detailed description not even under the most attractive image can make your Ping quite popular.
- Do not forget to add a link to the site, this will make the entire description clickable.
- Include an effective call-to-action in the description to increase conversion rates.
- Use keywords. For them, your audience will search for content. If you used SEO for your site, you know which words and phrases are most popular.
- Mention other users. When you share the content of other people, mention them in the description. So you can make more friends.
- Do not forget, only the first 70-100 symbols of the description are displayed on the board, so the most important thing is to write in the beginning.
Hashtags
Hashtags in Pinterest do not work the way it does on Twitter. They do not make your content more visible in search results, their task is to designate a category so that users can find information on a topic of interest to them.
Hashtags and descriptions with keywords are an integral part of Pinterest posts — because of the internal search function of the social network, which every visitor uses every time they log on to the platform. The main sense of using Pinterest is the search for everything on a specific topic.
The simplest example. Suppose you sell a subscription service for the supply of toys for dogs with a certain regularity. Let’s call your company WoofCrate. You can have this description:
Let the toy for the dog be delivered to your door once a month!” #WoofCrate #Dogstuff
Tip. If you do not know which keywords to select in the hashtags, run the Promoted Pins creator function in your business account menu. Enter in the interface text field the words from the general definition of your product. The service will immediately provide you with similar keywords with figures of how many searches each request receives, on average, per month.
What you need to know about hashtags:
- When you include a hashtag in the description, users can click on it to find the related content.
- Hashtags are more likely to distract the audience from your content, as returning to it will not be so difficult.
- Using a hashtag does not guarantee its indexing.
- Hashtags are clickable on mobile devices, and 75% of them are used to work with the site.
- Do not use many hashtags, like with Instagram. This can reduce your Pin’s position in search results.
- If you still decide to use hashtags, make them unique.
Four kinds of Pins
In addition to the common Pins and Repins, there are also Rich Pins, Buyable Pins, and Promoted Pins.
- Rich Pins. These are the common Pins but in the extended version. There are five types of such posts: product, recipe, article, film or place. When creating a Rich Pin, you need to specify meta tags so that it appears in the desired category in the search results. This option will be useful for brands that sell their products on Pinterest because every day 2 million users save Rich Pins on their boards.
- Buyable Pins. This option allows you to sell your products directly from the site or from the application. Next to the Pin It button in such posts there is also a blue Buy button. Tip: To include product cost information in your Pin, you need to add the Buy option to it. When you reduce the price by more than 10%, your subscribers will see it. Thus, you can effectively attract the target audience.
- Promoted Pins. Pinterest continues to improve the possibilities of Promoted Pins. Just like on Facebook, you can pay Pin to attract more users. Promoted Pins increase the level of engagement by 2-5% and are paid for each click. At the moment they are only available in the US and Canada.
- Remember that Repins are up to 80% of all content on Pinterest. Therefore, you should regularly share the records of other users in order to attract even more traffic.
Use group boards together
If you have already created boards on Pinterest, you may have noticed the possibility of adding collaborators to them. Using this strategy can lead to great results.
- Create in your profile a board with other influential persons or industry experts, where they share their experience.
- Create a private board with co-sponsored clients where you can share ideas. A store that produces custom drawings or engraves can provide a platform for showing other examples of this work.
- Ask customers to attach photos of their experience in your product area to your board. You can offer incentives for this — for example, a Pinterest contest with a potential prize at the end of their message receives the most responses from other users. To get started, you can contact customers by e-mail and send them a link to one or another of your boards.
Work optimization
Now you know how to create great content for Pinterest, and are familiar with all kinds of Pins. The best time to optimize the work, so that each Pin could attract the attention of the maximum number of users.
Create pins for the most popular categories.
If you post your entries in popular categories, then they attract more attention. Here is a list of the most popular categories in Pinterest:
- Food and drink
- Do it yourself
- Cozy house
- Design
Also, Pinterest presented a list of the most popular topics by the days of the week:
- Monday: Health and fitness
- Tuesday: Gadgets
- Wednesday: Quotes
- Thursday: Fashion
- Friday: Humor
- Saturday: Travel
- Sunday: Food & Drink, Do it yourself
If none of the above categories suits you, Pinterest has an excellent resource that shows the most popular categories for a certain day.
Post pins at the right time.
According to Quick Sprout, the best day for publishing Pins is Saturday, with the highest scores for records posted between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm. Also a good time is 02:00am-04:00am and 2:00pm-4:00pm.
Elle & Co and SurePayroll agree with this opinion. SurePayroll also found that Saturday morning and 3:00 pm on Friday are also suitable for the publication of Pins.
According to Pinerly and Social Fresh, the best time to post is between 2:00pm-4:00 pm and 8:00pm-01:00 am.
So, the best time to publish Pins is:
- Saturday morning and the time from 8:00 pm to 11:00 pm.
- Any day from 02:00am to 04:00am and from 8:00pm to 01:00am.
- Friday at 3:00 pm.
Publish as many pins daily as possible.
Information on the preferred number of publications varies depending on the source.
According to Buffer, this number is 5 posts a day. Michelle MacPhearson also offers to publish from 10 to 20 Pins daily. Ahalogy recommends 10-15 posts. Conclusion? It is better to publish as much content as possible, while not forgetting about Repin. This will allow you to quickly increase the number of subscribers. Start with 11 posts a day and reduce or increase this amount until you determine the best option for you.
Add the “Pin It” button to your site.
According to Buzzfeed research, if you place the “Pin it” button at the top of the images on the site, users of the mobile application save them 10 times more often.
Place the “Pin it” button on the images on your website or blog to significantly increase the number of Repins. SumoMe has an excellent tool that will help you in this.
Include pins in your content on the site.
Add one Pin or a whole board in your content on the site or blog will not be difficult. This will not only help you illustrate any statement but will also attract more Repins.
Just use the code from Pinterest to place the widget on your site.
Invite users to review the content later.
Create an attractive post for the site, post a Pin and share a link to it on Google+. In Google+, share a link to your blog entry and invite users to save Pin to read the article later.
Regularly offer fresh content.
Pinterest gives the following tips:
- Keep Pins on your boards regularly. So your audience will always see fresh content in their news feeds.
- Create a publication calendar.
Now you know enough to effectively use Pinterest for marketing. It’s time to put this knowledge into practice!
Use all the features of Pinterest
Pinterest does not look like any other social network. This platform is ideal for sales, especially in the field of ecommerce.
To promote in Pinterest effectively, you need to know your target audience perfectly, stick to a single brand style in all pins, profile, and boards, and use best practices and monitor all updates of the platform.
Is Pinterest a part of your promotion strategy? Share your experience in the comments.