There are 53 million unique monthly Pinterest users in the United States, and Forbes reports that is about 22% of all Americans, ahead of Twitter at 19% and about equal to LinkedIn.
When it comes to marketing on Pinterest, many businesses are stuck and don’t know where to start. Here are a few quick tips that can get you started on using Pinterest for business and take the intimidation out of Pinterest marketing, for almost any business.
Cover Image
Choose a cohesive cover image for all your boards, with the board title on the image.
Pins
You can pin gifs and videos, as well as regular images. Be sure to do all three for a good variety. Pin and repin regularly (at least 1-2 times per week).
Titles
Be really specific with your boards and include clear titles. For instance, boards like “Delicious Desserts” and “Easy Supper Ideas” will usually do better than one board called “Recipes.”
Categories
Make sure all your board and pin categories are correct so they can be found easily when users are browsing.
Hashtags
You can use hashtags on Pinterest. Make sure you only use 2-3 max per pin and keep to keywords, not made up words, like #reallygoodideaforsummer.
Analytics
Take advantage of the free Pinterest analytics once you’ve verified your website: http://www.pinterest.com/source/YOURSITE.com/analytics/
Verification
Verify your website and add your Twitter account to add authenticity.
Collaboration
Invite your power users or community to a shared board for collaboration or creative brainstorming.
Display Your Company Culture
Have a board that shares images from your office or company events to humanize your business and its employees.
Pin It Button
Install the Pin It button on all your eCommerce pages to make sharing as easy as possible.
Use Alt Tags
Make sure all the images on your website have alt tags so they can be pinned easily (the alt tag auto-populates the description field for the pin).
Pin Your Articles/Newsletters
Automatically pin all your blog posts or newsletters on a specific board for each, OR in their applicable category.
Place Titles Over Images
Pins that have blog post titles on them may be more likely to be shared, since they explain what they are linking to. Create a featured image for your blog posts with the title on it using a tool like PicMonkey or Canva. You could also add your company or blog logo in the corner, on a transparent background. Here’s an example from Buzzfeed:
Pin Infographics and Charts
Studies have shown that the more space a pin takes up the more likely it is to get pinned. So look for infographics or useful (and colorful) charts you can pin.
Repin
Follow your customers’ Pinterest boards and make it a point to regularly repin their pins to show you like what they do, in an authentic way.
Display Pinterest on Your Website
Add a Pinterest follow button and profile widget to your website, either in the sidebar or footer.
Respond and Engage
Make sure you respond to comments and questions on your pins. You can @ tag usernames in comments, like Twitter and Facebook.
Fill New Boards
When making new boards, make sure you pin at least 10 images at once so it looks filled up on your profile. 5 is the absolute minimum.
Use the “Follow Boards You Love” Tool
Use the “Follow boards you love” tool to find boards and users to follow. Hopefully, like Twitter, they will follow you back.
Use the “Everything” Search
Use the “Everything” search to find pins outside your followed boards (like Twitter, the home feed is pins just from users that you follow). This can help get you more visibility because users are notified when someone repins their pin or follows them.
Search Hashtags
Search via hashtags of popular industry terms to find more users to follow, pin from, or connect with.
Step Outside the Box
Because Pinterest is about being creative, think outside your industry box. For instance, an ergonomic pillow manufacturer likely has a target audience who is also into healthy living, so health recipes or exercises would be good pins for them.
Host Contests
Hold a contest for creative DIYs with your products. Turn them into blog posts with lots of pin-worthy how-to photos.
Use PinAlerts
Use PinAlerts to receive an email whenever someone pins something from your website, so you can thank them via the comments or follow their boards.
Complete Your Profile
Make sure you fill out your profile bio and photo. Change it to reflect new promotions or branding campaigns.
When it comes down to it, any company’s strategy (no matter what industry they are in), should be based on presenting a creative and fun side, without trying to be too pushy or salesy with their own products. Think of creative ways to feature your products and services in tutorials or other content, and it will work much better than simply pinning your latest advertisement.
Additionally, not all businesses will find that Pinterest is a good fit for them. As with any social network, don’t try to force it! Remember, users can tell when a company isn’t passionate or authentic about what they are doing online.
Pinterest Photo via Shutterstock
I’d say the over-arching theme for a business social media account of any type is this: Be Useful. If you’re not contributing something, like exclusive information, curating great content, etc. why should anyone pay attention to it?
I have received email messages from Pinterest that I can shift my personal account to a business one. I will use this post as a guide in order to get the process going.
OK, I’ve bookmarked this post. I have a dormant Pinterest account. These tips will come in very handy when I finally get round to looking at my account. So thank you.
Very useful tips for business users. We’ve started marketing on Pinterest few weeks ago and I’ve found that infographics work really well. It’s by far the board that got the most views, repins, likes and clicks.
We get some traction around videos as well. I can’t say we’ve seen a fast growth but I’m definitely learning a lot. I talk about all the lessons we’ve learn on Pinterest in my last article: http://customericare.com/why-pinterest-marketing/ Would be awesome to get some feedback on it.
Nice tips. It will definitively help me to promote my company as I already going to use it very soon. Thank you Sujan for investing huge time and expertise to write such informative, useful article. Pinterest already announced Analytics for public so now it become easy to market content.
Thanks for all these tips. I’m newly getting involved on Pinterest but think it could be pretty beneficial for my site. I’m mainly looking to share fans pictures that they send in. Along with other pictures of luxury watches.
Not too sure what to use as my cover image yet. And i hadn’t noticed the analytics.
Hopefully in a few months time i’ll be doing much better. Thanks.
Aira Bongco
I like Pinterest. But I am not so sure if you can use it as a promotion tool for information-based businesses. Sure, there are infographics but you can only do so much.
Like your example from Buzzfeed to use titles on images. We will do that for our online fashion store images we are pinning on Pinterest. Thanks for all the good ideas.