With more than 259 million users, 175 BILLION pins, ideas and solutions, and 4 billion boards, Pinterest is already huge, and it’s user base is growing at a rapid rate. Numbers like that only illustrate that Pinterest is a marketing goldmine, and it’s just waiting for you to start digging. But man, it can be difficult to develop an approach to this very unique platform when you’re starting from scratch. This blog post will be sharing my take on Pinterest marketing for 2021.
With other social media platforms, it is easy to look at a couple of winning accounts, get a sense of how they manage their social attack, and develop your approach based on their best practices. With Pinterest the same rule does not apply. Pinterest is geared so heavily toward the individual user experience, it can be hard to glean insights from the greats just by glancing at their accounts.
That’s why I’m here. I’ve done the groundwork for you, and I’ve worked with some of the top performing Pinterest accounts out there. I’ve seen what Pinterest can do for businesses, and believe me when I say, you NEED your business to show up on Pinterest!
WHY OTHER PLATFORMS JUST DON’T CUT IT
Other platforms like Facebook and Instagram will give you some airtime in a feed or a story, but they want to keep users on the platform. This can make it difficult to get traffic to your blog or site, which is what we are looking for. Sure, there are a lot of eyeballs pointed at Instagram and Facebook. And people can hear about you there and eventually find their way to your site if they’re interested enough. But let’s face it: This sounds like a great recipe to diminish potential web traffic.
In addition to that, on these platforms your content is only relevant as you post it. Constantly changing algorithms don’t help either. Trying to figure out how to appear in your target feeds can be very frustrating and fruitless. If you want to show up in front of users, you have to be constantly active, taking precious time that you could be using on your business.
WHY PINTEREST WORKS
Pinterest is the stuff of life! The people using Pinterest are there, literally searching for ideas and inspiration. They are already looking for your content, your job is just to give them something to find.
MORE WEBSITE TRAFFIC: GUARANTEED
Pinterest is the only platform that forces its users to LEAVE the platform, and get straight to your website. Unlike other platforms, when one of the 259 million users is looking at Pinterest, the interaction is very effective: They see your pin, want to learn a little more, and in one click find themselves on your website. BINGO! That’s what we’re going for.
PINTEREST GAINS ARE LASTING
Pinterest is the perfect solution. It can seem like a lot of work at first, but it doesn’t require the daily grind of other platforms. It’s more of a “set it and forget it” approach, because a well designed pin can last, literally, forever. Setting aside 10-15 minutes a day to build up your Pinterest feed is enough to keep your account relevant and driving traffic back to your site.
PINTEREST’S GUIDED SEARCH IS EVERYTHING
Perhaps the greatest thing about Pinterest from a business perspective, is the guided search it provides. It uses computer vision for search, studying aesthetic qualities of the images a given user likes, and chooses more to show them based on that. Pinterest is focused so intently on the user, that your content isn’t just available, it is consciously placed in front of people that have already shown interest in the type of content you supply.
PINTEREST WORKS
More and more brands are seeing the unique value in Pinterest as a different platform to be discovered. It has a high discoverability rate, and dramatically increase brand awareness. More now than ever, it is CRITICAL to diversify your website traffic. Becoming overly dependent on one, fickle platform could spell disaster if something goes wrong. Pinterest provides the ultimate solution to long term, steady website traffic, and is the perfect compliment to any other strategies you have in play, cushioning you from the ebbs and flows of other streams.
HOW TO MAXIMIZE YOUR PINTEREST TIME
Okay, enough of the reasons why you NEED to use Pinterest in 2019, right? Here’s how to use your precious time dedicated to this phenomenal platform, and maximize your account.
STAY PRESENT
It is important to have an organic, authentic presence on Pinterest. This can easily be achieved by just hopping on and pinning good quality content that interests your users. Focus on seasonal content and trends that will help position you, and put you in front of more people. Know your audience and find them some useful, engaging pins you think they’d like to see.
FOLLOW THE RULES
Use the platform the way it was designed. When trying to master the art of Pinterest, it can be easy to forget that people LOVE using it! It’s full of inspiration and ideas, and those are the types of things your followers want to see. When you use your Pinterest account in an authentic way, you will garner the following we’re after, in a very organic way.
Engagement is also a big part of the user experience on Pinterest. Make sure that you’re leaving comments on pins here and there, and if you try one, let everyone know! It’s a simple way to piggyback on the popularity of other pins. A good comment might garner a click, and that could mean more followers for you.
OPTIMIZE YOUR CONTENT
When it comes to your own content, think of your Pin as packaging. Don’t just pin any old image: Make it count! Design your Pins thoughtfully and make sure that all of your products and and landing pages have AT LEAST ONE Pinterest optimized image.
A good pin is clear, engaging and the right size. If you don’t have original content, grabbing free stock images is always an option, from sites like pexels.com. Use Canva (the free account is totally fine) to make pins that draw people in, and have an aspect ratio of 2:3. 600 x 900 pixels or 1,000 x 1,500 pixels is a good rule of thumb.
AVOID THE DUMP
Try to diversify your offer. Share a variety of your own content. Having the same pin show up 100 times in a row looks spammy. Making a couple of images per product or post, gives you the opportunity to post your content more often, and at the same time, appeal to different aesthetic tastes. Win/win! Be sure to sprinkle your own content in and among other pins to avoid having your pins show up as a clump.
DO YOUR RESEARCH
Pinterest relies heavily on search. So it only makes sense to dedicate some time to researching what turns up when you search keywords related to your products. Using the right keywords and phrases, means more people finding you and your pins. The right keywords will bump you up in the ranking and the higher you appear on the page, the more likelihood of your content being viewed.
When it comes to Pinterest and keywords – research always pays off.
A LITTLE INVESTMENT GOES A LONG WAY
Consider running a paid promotion. This will dramatically improve your reach. Like dramatically. Running small ad budget campaigns can help light your organic Pinterest marketing efforts on fire.
2019 IS YOUR PINTEREST YEAR
Regardless of where you’re at in your Pinterest journey, the size of the platform, the rate of growth, the thoughtfulness of it’s search function, it’s long term payoffs and many more reasons, make it imperative that you pay it some attention.
I’m here to help! This blog is full of tips. And I’m always offering up useful tidbits on the ol’Instagram. You can find me here.
CHECK OUT OUR PINTEREST MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM!
If you’re serious about making Pinterest work for you this year, I have started an incredible membership program, designed to give you all of the tools you need, in addition to a community of all types – from experts to novice users – to work with. We have had some amazing success stories coming through the membership! It’s fun, engaging and effective. You can find out more about it and hop on the wait list here. We’d love to have you!
Leave a Reply