5 Best Ways of Promoting Your Small Business on Pinterest more Effectively
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Pinterest is the 3rd biggest and fast-growing social media platform in the World. The majority of its users are still vastly women in their 30s and 40s with money to spend. They use Pinterest mostly for inspiration, searching for ideas, DIYs, and to get shopping ideas.
With Pinterest, you can drive organic traffic to your website or blog without having to spend thousands of dollars on paid advertising.
Before we explore the 5 Best ways of promoting on Pinterest, let's learn more about it.
In a nutshell, Pinterest is a search engine and a social media network. It pulls in over 2 billion searches every month. Essentially it is a VISUAL SEARCH ENGINE.
The purpose of Pinterest is for its users to search for ideas, add their own ideas, and save them in Pins and Boards.
A Pin is a form of visual graphics, such as photo, image, video, gif ... and they link to outside sources, such as websites and blogs. For example, an art print Pin links back to the artist's website or art shop.
The platform allows users to post original pins, or save images as pins directly from the source (aka website or other social media platform). Users can organize their pins in Boards and Sub-boards. They can also make them public or private.
What type of Pins can you pin to your account:
PRODUCT PINS - these show up-to-date details concerning the price, availability, and product descriptions of your website's items.
STORY PINS - include step-by-step guides, DIY projects, recipes, collection curation, and other pins that tell a story using text, images, and links.
VIDEO PINS - videos allow you to tell a great story and hook people into a visual representation of your products in action. But they are limited in duration, unfortunately.
RICH PINS - refers to organic pin formats that provide more details and context around the pin.
ARTICLE PINS - you can use them to create headlines, titles, and descriptions about an article or blog post.
SHOP THE LOOK PINS - also known as buyable pins, these pins allow users to find and purchase products directly from the pin.
The question remains, why are more and more business owners turning to Pinterest when it comes to promoting their business and their brand?
The answer is simple.
Through Pinterest, they drive organic traffic to their website, blog, or shop. Traffic that is interested in their services or products from the get-go because they searched for it on Pinterest. And because of that, the conversion rates from visitors to customers are much higher.
Businesses can also easily build their brand name and grow faster.
The platform also has incredible analytics where you can track your visitors, how many times your pins were seen, clicked on, and saved. You can also see who is your main audience. With a FREE Business account, you can grow your business faster and easier.
Having said all that, let's look at the 5 best ways to utilize Pinterest for the promotion of your small business.
FRESH CONTENT ATTRACTS
Pinterest encourages and rewards its users for using fresh content.
One of the biggest mistakes that a business can make is not posting fresh content. This type of content is defined as pins that are new to Pinterest. Never seen Pins. Something that is original and not recycled.
You can revise your existing pins. Any changes you make to your pins will be considered fresh content once you post the revised pin to Pinterest. This might be the easiest way to create fresh content. You can do this for under-performing pins and for currently high-performing pins.
MAKE IT "POP"
One of the mistakes of posting on Pinterest and the downfall of any business is posting boring pins. Let's face it, nobody clicks on a boring and dry Pin.
Make your pins stand out, use different colors, make use of the cuteness factor, utilize humor in your titles or descriptions, and use a catchy call to action in your descriptions.
There are various free tools you can use to create catchy Pinterest pins. One of them is CANVA, with already prepared templates you can moderate and use.
UTILIZE PINTEREST SCHEDULING TOOL
If you're like me, chances are you're very busy and don't have much time to post pins every day. And creating fresh content every day can be well somewhat overwhelming. This is why using the scheduling tool in Pinterest comes in handy.
You can create your pins in advance. For example, I create them for the entire week ahead and schedule them throughout the week. They are still fresh and new, I just didn't have to sit by the computer and post them every day. This is also why I dedicate one day of the week to solely Pinterest Pin creation, I make a bunch of different types of pins for different products, blog posts, website searches, etc.
This way I have time during the week for all my other business affairs.
SAME TOPIC DIFFERENT PINS
Even if multiple pins of yours are leading to the same product page or blog post or website, you can test out variations of images and copy to bring them there. Pinterest likes fresh content, so have different interations of images, titles, etc, so that it sees that pin as fresh or new.
You then pin it multiple times over one year. This way you are not pinning one pin to one board multiple times but a new pin each time, and also pin to different boards as well.
CREATE VIRAL PINS
What kind of pins should you be making to get more engagement from your targeted audience?
Helpful – make it easy for pinners to find your pin with a spot-on description. Helpful pins receive 30% more engagement. If someone is searching for a red leather bag, show them a red leather bag. Make sure your keywords and content match up.
Detailed – in a sentence or two, explain what your pin is about. Give enough information to intrigue a pinner to click through to your blog or site. Many retailers will include the product description, price, and product name in the pin.
Interesting – use the emotions of the pinner by utilizing sensory-related words and positive sentiments. You can describe the scene and let them imagine this was their house, their backyard, etc. Don’t just describe what the product is. “Blue and white table lamp” vs “Nautical themed lamp with blue and white stripes that are bound to grab attention.”
Long Image – make sure the image included is at the very least, 2:3 or 4:5. The longer, the better (takes up more room in the feed).
Pretty Image – best practice is to use vibrant colors (reds, oranges, or pinks receive more engagement), a light and bright feel, a contextual background, include text, and no faces.
CONCLUSION
Pinterest's sole purpose is to drive traffic off its platform. The goal for its users is to find what they are looking for, save it, and explore it further off the Pinterest platform.
But to actually make Pinterest work for you and with you, you need a proper strategy that incorporates keyword research, planning out your Pins, great visual property, and a definite call to action.
