With 200 million monthly users, Pinterest may not be a social media behemoth like Facebook, but it’s an important social platform with deep penetration in valuable demographics. Half of all U.S. millennials use Pinterest, but it’s not just young people saving their ideas on the network. 68% of U.S. women between the ages of 25 and 54 use Pinterest, too. And while it’s true that the network does have more female users than male, 40% of new users are men.
If you don’t have a solid plan in place for how to use Pinterest as part of your business strategy, you’re missing out on key opportunities to reach potential new customers.
Why use Pinterest for business?
Pinterest is a network where people look for inspiration, including specifically seeking out ideas about new products to buy. That means they are excited to see posts from brands in their feeds. According to eMarketer, only Facebook outranks Pinterest in terms of influencing U.S. social media users’ purchasing decisions. Therefore if you use Pinterest, then you have a pretty high chance of getting someone to purchase something from your business.
Now that you understand the importance of using Pinterest for your business, here are some tips and tactics you can use to help even more!
Add save buttons to your site
If you want people to take action, you’ve got to make it easy for them to do so. Since adding a save button to your website allows people to Pin your content with just a click, even if they don’t have the Pinterest browser button installed, it should be no surprise that doing so can easily double the amount of content Pinners save from your site.
You can choose to use automatic buttons—in which case a clickable Pinterest Save button will appear on every image on your site—or hover buttons, which will appear only when someone hovers their mouse over the images. Or, you can choose to add a Pinterest Save button only to a specific image on your site.
Pin consistently
Pinterest recommends that you Pin something at least once per day, during peak times—which they’ve found to be evenings and weekends for U.S. based brands. Pinterest also highlights that consistency is key—if you’re going to post a large number of posts over the course of a week, divide them up and post several per day rather than posting them all at once.
If you’re creating Pins to coincide with an upcoming holiday, season, or event, you should start posting them about 45 days in advance.
Focus on great visuals
Pinterest is a highly visual medium, so it’s worth the effort to create quality imagery. Your photos should be clear, well-lit, well-composed, and most importantly in focus. If you don’t have the time, the tools, or the skills to create imagery of your own, there are plenty of stock photography websites with quality photos you can use.
Think about creative ways to showcase your product and your brand visually. After studying the performance of 50,000 promoted Pins, Pinterest found that lifestyle images generally outperform product images.
According to Pinterest, Pins showing someone using a product or service are 67% more likely to drive offline sales.
80% of pinners use the Pinterest app to access the network on mobile devices, so images should be optimized for a small screen. Vertical images are your best bet, since they give you more space to work with. The image should be 600 x 900 pixels. If your image is taller than 1560 pixels, it will get cut off.
Finally, keep in mind that you can create multiple Pins with different images that point to the same webpage. This is not only allowed, but encouraged, since different images can appeal to different audiences.
Don’t neglect the words
Sure, we’ve just told you that Pinterest is a visual medium—but great visuals alone are not enough to create serious engagement. Make the most of the description field to tell viewers exactly what they will get if they click through to the linked content on your site. Make sure to include your most important keywords to help your Pins appear in search (but, of course, be sure to do this in a natural and helpful way rather than engaging in keyword stuffing).
If you create multiple Pins with different images pointing to the same content, make sure to create a unique description for each one.
Then, make sure that linked content delivers on what you promise. Quality content will get Pinners excited about following and interacting with your brand both within and outside of Pinterest. On the other hand, Pinterest penalizes Pins with broken links, so make sure all of your Pinned links are correct and up to date.
Use Rich Pins when appropriate
Rich Pins are enhanced Pins that use metadata pulled from your site to provide extra information about what Pinners will find when they click on a Pin. Rich Pins are available for apps, recipes, products, and articles—in other words, they are almost certainly applicable to the content you are Pinning or hoping that others will Pin from your site.
For example, Rich Pins for articles include a headline, the name of the author, the date the article was published, and a story description. They also specifically indicate that the link points to an article, and include a call-to-action button that says “Read it.”
Get social
Remember: Pinterest is a social network, not a billboard. If you want people to engage with your Pins, you’ll need to be engaged yourself. Follow boards or accounts from relevant but non-competitive brands in your industry, and make sure to actively like and engage with Pins related to your niche.
You can also get employees and brand gurus involved in your Pinterest network by inviting them to contribute to group boards.
Use analytics to improve results
Pinterest Analytics provides important information about what types of content perform best on the network, so you can tweak and improve your Pinterest for business results over time. You’ll be able to see which Pins are most popular and which drive the most traffic to your site, so you can focus on the metrics that matter most to your particular business.
You’ll also see which boards your Pins are included in, which can give you a sense of how people think about your business and your products, and spark new ideas for how to position your Pinterest efforts. And you’ll get information about the demographics and interests of people who interact with your Pins, providing valuable insight to help you target your strategy to precisely the right audience.
Try Pinterest Promoted Pins
Promoted Pins (aka Pinterest ads) are a great way to get your Pins seen by more people, creating new exposure for your brand. But Promoted Pins can provide exposure well beyond what you pay for. Internal Pinterest data shows that advertisers get an average of 20% more organic clicks in the month following the launch of a Pinterest ad campaign.
Pinterest identifies Promoted Pins by placing the word “Promoted” below the Pin. Clicking on the more icon (…) brings up a statement describing who paid for the ad.
Make your Pins more accessible
Pinterest is a hyper-visual platform, relying heavily on images to establish context and meaning.
This has meant that users with certain disabilities, low visibility, or those in need of screen-readers struggled to use the platform, even more so than they do on other platforms like Facebook or Twitter, which are more text-focused.
There are several ways that you can make your pins more accessible to all users now.
After all, being able to connect with more members of your target audience is always a good thing, and making a platform and your content more accessible for everyone should always be a goal.
Here’s some of the ways you can do this:
- Add context through your descriptions. Screen-readers tools can’t process text that is placed on images, because it just registers as colors and shapes on an image. They can, however, register descriptions and captions on your pin, so keep that in mind.
- Use strong typography. If you are adding text onto your images, use simple or bold-faced typography to make it easier for someone with low visibility to make out the text. This can make a world of difference.
- Make sure the text is large enough that it can be read. This is also a good practice, for whatever it’s worth, to ensure that everyone can read the text on your pins on small mobile screens, too.
- Incorporate color contrast. Color contrast is another good practice to incorporate, because it makes your images more visibly appealing and easy to read. Unsurprisingly, it helps users with low visibility be able to make out the images more clearly in many cases.
Try Pinterest’s Buyable Pins
Promoted Pins are doing exceptionally well, and buyable pins are driving major conversions.
Buyable pins enable users to purchase directly off of a pin, without ever leaving Pinterest.
As users are browsing Pinterest, creating wishlists and getting ideas, they can see a product, the price, and purchase it all with a few quick clicks on their mobile device.
Try a Promoted Video campaign
Pinterest recommends using video when your brand has a clear story to tell, such as a D-I-Y project or showing a unique way to use your product. Pinterest’s research shows that people watched Promoted Videos 32% longer when there was a storyline that built over time, compared to GIFs or stitched-together stills.
If you go the video route, make sure to keep it short, hook viewers within the first few seconds, and optimize it to play without sound. Also make sure your logo appears at the beginning or throughout the entirety of your video, so people know what they’re watching—and who it comes from. Branded content is actionable and trustworthy, so tends to perform well on Pinterest.
Our hope is that with all of these tips, you too can optimize Pinterest to fit your needs and boost your sales or engagement for your business. If you have any questions or comments regarding this post, feel free to write in the comment section!