Instagram is like a fake pompous person that always brags about its travels and wardrobe. Twitter is a colleague always ready to have a quick argument about anything. Facebook is a family member that is always sending you images of his kids and pets.
Pinterest is a cool dude that loves video games and cooking, always willing to suggest new things.
Who would you like to hang around with the most? Yes, that’s right. On Pinterest, there is no pressure. Everything is about your satisfaction and helpfulness. The main goal is to find content that will inspire you and make your day better.
That is all cool but why would I spend part of my marketing budget on Pinterest?
So, 90% of Pinterest users say it helps them to decide what to buy. Majority of people (78%) like the content that companies are publishing and 66% decides on a purchase after they see a Pin from a certain bend.
On top of all that, people love to discover new things on Pinterest.
People are buying products on Pinterest more than on any other social network. It’s every marketers dream, especially for eCommerce.
Of course, Pinterest owners are well aware of this. They try to make the sales process smooth and fast for bought sellers and buyers. Therefore, they have an option like Buyable Pins. It allows your buyers to go through a purchasing process without ever leaving Pinterest. There are also, personalized buying recommendations as well as a product catalog.
There are other benefits of your business being present on Pinterest:
- Having a business profile on Pinterest can have a positive impact on your website SEO.
- It’s good for generating positive traffic by putting your links on pins.
- Brand presentation and great content exposure.
- Great opportunity to build a reputation as an expert in your niche.
- Awesome opportunity for conducting market research and following trends.
- A good opportunity for audience research.
Who uses Pinterest?
According to Shopify, the majority of users are women 70%. Still, the number of men is constantly on the rise. Half of the people are from the USA and majority are Millennials.
What kind of content should I share?
There are different types of popular content. What they have in common is that focus is on quality of the content, visuals and a link towards your website, store or product.
Product Pins
As the name suggests, these are the pins that hold images or videos that show your product. It’s very similar to product presentations in online ads. You can directly buy a product from clicking on a Pin and those ads have the best ROI.
Blog Posts
Blog posts have tremendous potential on Pinterest. It’s important to have at least one pin for every post, as a text over an image and create a copy that will make people’s attention.
Infographics
Infographics are incredibly effective visuals so naturally, they are popular on Pinterest. Just make sure that Infographic is not too big, content would be too small then to get attention.
Video
There is an option of placing your own video or use one directly from YouTube. The autoplay option is only available for promotional pins. When it comes to content, tutorials and DIY are the most popular. There are also a big number of shopping guides. It’s an awesome opportunity for promoting your products.
How can all this be used in a marketing strategy?
Well, I will give you an example.
Let’s say that we are selling jewelry. This could be our content strategy:
- Image of one jewelry piece with a link to our website.
- The blog post “5 simple techniques for cleaning jewelry at home”
- Infographic “Finding a perfect wedding ring – survival guide”
- DIY video “How to create a necklace that everyone will love”
- Shopping guide “10 perfect anniversary pieces”
- 15 songs for Valentine’s Day.
How can your pin be noticed?
A key is for your pin to get attention, it has to stand out from the others. I can give you some ideas from my experience on how to do that.
- Pins that have a few dominant colors, not just one color, gets more attention.
- Keep image lightning in mind. Images that are too dark or light are not very aesthetically pleasing.
- Images with warm red tones are more popular than cold blue ones.
- Pins with less than 30% white surface are most popular.
- People in the images should look happy with smiley faces.
- Text on the images should not take more than 20% of space.
- If you are creating a multi-image pin, it should have a maximum of 4 images.
- Write a copy with 75 to 100 characters.
- Place your keywords to look as naturally as possible.
How to promote your Pins?
Promoting Pins is how you advertise on Pinterest. Similar to Facebook, placement options are feed or search. A pin can have an image or video with a little writing ‘’promoted’’ at the bottom.
Again, conversion goals are similar to Facebook. It can be website traffic – CPC, brand awareness (per 1000 impressions) it’s similar for video and app installs.
You can choose a daily or total budget. Audience targeting is similar to Facebook as well. The difference from my experience is that targeting based on interest and keywords is more precise and important than on other platforms.
Great thing is that there is no minimum budget, it’s all up to you to decide how much you want to spend. Keep in mind that Pin promotion is not available to everyone. Currently, there is a restricted number of countries where this option is available.
Like with all ads, analytics is incredibly important!
Everyone who has a Pinterest account has free access to Pinterest Analytics.
Key metrics that you need to follow are:
- Impressions – How many times you Pin appeared on a feed or search result.
- Saves – How many times people saved your pins on one of their tables.
- Link clicks – this includes any link on your Pin that lead people somewhere.
- All-time – you will see an all-time statistic of your account: how many saved Pins you have, what are high ranked Pins or a number of Power Pins (the ones with a big number of customer interactions)
Here you will not see your top Pins and tables but also Pins that your visitors created using the Save button or Pinterest browser extensions.
Some small advice for the end:
The fact that your Pin has many impressions is not worth anything if a small number of people clicked or saved them.
Pins that are saved can also be spin (re-shared) by your audience. Again, if a number of clicks are small, it won’t bring many people to your website. Keep this in mind when calculating the effectiveness of your Pins.
Useful programs for Pinterest:
Tailwind – It will help with scheduling Pins, creating Pins from your other social media posts and it has good analytics as well.
PinGroupie – Helps tremendously with searching tables on Pinterest.
PinFollow – As the name says, it will help you with gaining new followers.
Woobox’s Pinterest Tab – Allows you to add a Pinterest tab on Facebook.
IFTTT for Pinterest – Another tool to synchronize your Pinterest with other social networks.
