The beginner’s guide to using Pinterest for business

More and more businesses discover that there’s another social platform with fantastic branding and content marketing potential other than the well-known Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter. (P)interested to find out the name of the platform we’re talking about? Yes, you’ve guessed it. It’s Pinterest, of course.

Founded in March 2010, with over 433 million monthly users worldwide based on Passport Photo Online statistics, Pinterest is a social media platform that focuses on the image. Thus, it works perfectly for promoting visual content. Any business can use Pinterest, but I would say that this platform is ideal for B2C businesses, and for specific types: 

• businesses that sell physical products (fashion, home decor items, home appliances, electronic devices, etc)
• businesses that sell or promote graphic design products
• some service businesses that have a strong visual aspect, such as interior design services, hospitality & tourism industries, beauty services (makeup-artists or hair stylists)

Have we mentioned your type of business on this list? Good. Have you ever used Pinterest for business? If your answer is yes, then you’re on the right track. If your answer is no, then this is really not okay. It’s time to reconsider it. Hopefully, today’s article will convince you to give Pinterest a try. We’ll also discuss why you should take advantage of this visual social platform, how to take advantage of it and what strategy to apply. Here you’ll learn about Flipsnack’s approach to Pinterest.

But before moving on with our article, you still might be curious to know why we cut some types of businesses from our list. The answer is simple. For some businesses such as tech services, consulting or marketing services, it would make more sense to focus on other social media channels. Why? Because it will require a lot more effort to produce materials and it will also take more time to find an audience on Pinterest. However, this is another fish dish that we’ll tell you about another time. Let’s return now to our story.

Why use Pinterest for business?

Before answering this question, businesses must know what kind of account they need. When deciding to use Pinterest for business, you have to sign up for a business account, of course. Simply create a new account, or, if you already have a personal Pinterest account, you can switch it over to business. Only in this way you can take advantage of Pinterest’s entire marketing potential.

Now that you’ve created your Pinterest business account, you’re ready to grow your business. Still not being 100% sure why you should use this visual platform? Let’s try to convince you with these relevant arguments:

Pinterest uses evergreen content and lasts forever

This is how Pinterest is different from other social media platforms: Pinterest’s content is evergreen, which means it will always be relevant to users. You can post whatever you want to Pinterest, anytime. Pins last as long as you want and don’t disappear in 24 hours, they continue to have views and clicks even 2 years after you posted them. 

Pinterest is an efficient acquisition channel

Here’s another reason why you should use Pinterest for your business. This visual social media platform is an excellent tool that increases backlinks to your website, which, in turn, drives a lot of traffic. For many websites, there’s no social media source that drives as much traffic as Pinterest. All this is possible with the help of the rich pins. We’ll get back to this later.

Pinterest gets you more inbound links

Every pin includes a link, and therefore, it is easy to lead it back to the source of the image. You can bring so many visitors to your website only by posting images of your products on Pinterest. Isn’t this amazing? Never again underestimate the power of image search! Pins can also help you introduce your business to a whole new audience. One pin leads to 10 pins, which leads to another 20 pins, and so on. 

How to use Pinterest for business: Tips & tricks

In the previous section, we’ve seen why it’s important to use Pinterest for our businesses. Now it’s time to learn how to use this visual social platform in our interest. There are a lot of tips and tricks that can help and inspire you, but we’ve made a list of the most significant. Take the next tips into consideration and you should see a decent return on investment.

Use high quality & beautiful photos or images

When it comes to Pinterest, images are everything. A study tells us that 85% of pinners place more importance on visuals than text. That’s why you need to be very careful with the images you’re posting. Always use high-quality and beautiful photos, that are sharp, in focus, well-composed, that showcase your products properly. One more thing. Many people on Pinterest use the mobile app, that’s why you should know that taller images work better. They fill more of the screen.

Use images representative for your business – focus on your products

Obviously, when using Pinterest for your business, you have to post photos with your own products. Forget about faces, don’t post photos that show people using your products. Keep the focus on the products. Maybe you don’t know this, but Pinners prefer simple product pictures. Also, try to organize your pins. Since you can have various boards, group your pins into product categories for your audience, such as items for kitchen, living room, bedroom, etc. In this way, you somehow create virtual product catalogs and it’s easier for your audience to find the articles that really matter to them.

Write SEO optimized descriptions

It’s important to pay attention to the SEO part when thinking of the descriptions for your pins and boards. Pinterest gives you the chance to add a short description of your boards, so seize this opportunity and choose specific, concise and depictive keywords for each of your boards. Do the same with the descriptions of your pins. Remember that people can tweet your pins, so keep the descriptions short, interesting, and relevant. Also, try not to sound too “keywordy.” Don’t add too many keywords in your descriptions like a robot would. Optimize your text by simply adding strong keywords within the right context.

Create product rich pins

Product rich pins are a must when using Pinterest for business. Big brands like Target and Wal-Mart take advantage of them, so you should too. They make shopping on Pinterest a lot easier and generate direct traffic to your site. Their main purpose is to show where the product you’re pinning can be purchased, the current price and a direct link to the product page, which is, of course, your site. Don’t worry, product pins’ prices update in real-time. They have really earned their name, don’t you think? However, creating rich pins requires a bit of technical work, so you might need to ask for a developer’s help. Or, you can be bold enough to do it by yourself by following these steps.

Do some keyword research before posting

If you’re using Pinterest for your business, you want to generate as much referral traffic as possible. That’s why the best solution is to do some research to figure out what keywords your customers search for. The easiest method to do so is to explore Pinterest itself. Type a keyword into Pinterest search and discover the relevant keyword suggestions. Include some of them in your pin descriptions, board titles, and image text. You can also do your keyword research with the help of other tools such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner, SEMrush or Moz Keyword Explorer.

Do pin as much as possible

There’s not a secret recipe for how often to post. Big brands all over the world do it differently. But one thing’s for sure: posting more is good. More pins are better because it means more visual content for pinners to look through on your profile. You can start with 5 new pins every day. But don’t just repin other users’ content. Use your creativity and create your own pins. 

Check your competitors’ strategies

It’s important to check your competitors’ strategies when using Pinterest for business. Most likely, you’re going to share the same audience with your competitors, so when you find out what type of pins are popular among them, you’re also discovering what will work for your business as well. All you have to do is to visit their Pinterest profile. Check their pinning strategy. Observe what type of pins are getting a lot of repins. See what they’re doing, reproduce their good techniques and try to do better than them. 

Analyze your performance reports to see what works and what doesn’t

Make the most of your Pinterest for business account to discover what’s working and what isn’t. Pinterest Analytics can help you optimize and improve your Pinterest marketing strategy. Find out which pins are getting the most clicks and impressions and which ones are driving the most traffic and sales. In this way, you don’t have to waste your time anymore on content and strategies that don’t have an impact.

What strategy to apply? Check out what Flipsnack did

This article taught us so far why it is important to start using Pinterest for your business and how to use it correctly. Now it’s high time we learned what strategy to apply. You should know from the start that there’s no secret trick. Just a lot of research and hard work. You should also know that each business has its own strategy, according to its type. There are probably hundreds of different strategies when talking about Pinterest for business. But we are not going to talk about all of them. Today, we’re only analyzing Flipsnack’s approach.

Our success story with Pinterest

The following is a success story about Flipsnack that shows you what is possible with marketing on Pinterest. We, here at Flipsnack, chose to focus on templates. Why? Because as a graphic design platform, we know that templates are in great demand. Both designers and non-designers will try to find inspiration on Pinterest. We also have other types of boards, but none of them have the same engagement and great results as the templates boards.

In total, we have 39 boards filled with hundreds of templates that approach different themes such as traveling, real estate, fashion, marketing, social media, holidays, science, etc. Here are the 3 most performing boards: 

Our Pinterest strategy

Flipsnack started using Pinterest in 2013, but we didn’t invest much time in it. Only in 2017, we decided it’s time we adopted a different strategy with a focus on templates, as we were planning to launch a public library/gallery featuring all of our catalog templates. 

So we started our research. We discovered back then that when searching for graphic design templates on Google, Pinterest showed up among the first results. Like we said before, we also found out that many people look for graphic design inspiration on Pinterest directly. These people represented exactly our audience.

We also noticed that brochure/catalog/magazine templates are usually promoted on Pinterest with long pins, showing all the catalog’s pages.

From the beginning, we decided that we wanted one single image that contains all the pages of the template, to make it easier to pin. Another thing that we considered a must-have for our Pinterest strategy was the pin button on every template’s page. With its help, it was a child’s play for our visitors to pin our templates. When they did this, they automatically promoted our content on their profiles. 

When our research was done, we decided to move on to the next step: we launched our templates directory. This was at the beginning of 2018. Unfortunately, it was a transition period for our marketing team and we didn’t have enough people who could work on this project. 

In 2019 we started to seriously invest in our Pinterest profile. Throughout the year, we have created more than 15 new boards and added over 500 templates. The results came immediately, as you can see in the next section.

Our Pinterest channel’s evolution

In this chart, we can see the growth of our website’s traffic that’s coming from Pinterest. Our pins gather 1.4K monthly viewers. We managed to triple our followers’ number throughout one year. This success is due to the fact that we implemented all the tips and tricks that we suggested above. If they worked for us, they’ll definitely work for you as well! 

In the last 90 days, there have been 1.7M impressions on pins saved from Flipsnack by both users and visitors. The most popular are templates, with hundreds of thousands of impressions. One of them even exceeds 250K impressions.

Wrapping it up

Hopefully, today’s article convinced you to step up your marketing strategy and start using Pinterest for business. We also tried to give you some guidance on how this visual platform works. Pinterest is a powerful marketing tool that can help you increase brand awareness, boost conversions, increase sales and create connections with your target audience. All you have to do is to sign up for a business account and start creating unique and eye-catching content to attract your clients and followers on Pinterest. What are you waiting for? Start pinning!