No one can avoid social media marketing but some social media channels get more attention. There are the big three that most companies pour all their attention into: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
These are all important but Pinterest is another major social media channel that shouldn’t be neglected. Pinterest is often forgotten or neglected because it is underestimated. But if you can unlock the secrets of Pinterest it can become a huge tool for growing your business.
Why Pinterest Matters
Pinterest isn’t just for bloggers looking to promote their latest recipes or blog posts. In fact many business are waking up to the potential of Pinterest. While it’s obviously a social media platform it’s also a search engine as well.
Despite the fact that it’s often underestimated, nearly 30% of American adults use Pinterest. That’s more than Twitter or Snapchat.
On Pinterest users can find you and learn more about your brand based on what you’ve pinned. This can help you build credibility and trust between you and your audience. In fact 50% of Pinterest users have made a purchase after seeing a promoted pin and 67% say they’ve discovered new brands and products thanks to Pinterest content.
Build a Professional Profile
The first thing you’ll need to do is build out a professional looking business profile. Your Pinterest profile is another opportunity to share your brand. Creating a business profile is free and easy, you can even convert a personal profile into a business one.
Make sure that you completely fill out your profile including the bio. Be sure to put some thought into writing your bio by including important keywords. You’ll want it to reflect your brand voice and clearly communicate what your company does.
You can further customize your profile by creating unique custom pin board cover images. It will give your profile a really professional and polished look. It’s also just another place that you can really have the look and feel of your brand shine through while also making your boards easy to navigate.
Create Amazing Pins
It’s easy to hop on your website and pin every image in sight, that’s not the best way to catch the eye of pinners and to get clicks, repins and shares. Scrolling through Pinterest is a great mindless activity and pinners are drawn in by posts that make them easy to spot and quickly understand.
That’s why there are a few must have for every pin. If you don’t have these four elements people will be more likely to pass over your posts without giving them a second thought or having noticed them in the first place.
- Proper ratio
- Beautiful imagery
- Good description
- Call to action
The Pinterest marketing team breaks down all of these must haves in this video. They combine must haves one and two but I thought they were important enough and different enough to mention separately.
Proper Ratio
Pinterest is arranged in columns so long images rather than wide images are more likely to stand out. If your image is very wide it will just get downsized and appear smaller because it needs to fit within a column.
The proper ratio for a pin is either 2:3 or 1:3.5. This is just the ratio and not the dimensions. You’ll want to create large images that fit this ratio so that they don’t get stretched or look blurry or pixelated.
Beautiful Imagery
Much like Instagram, Pinterest is all about visual appeal. The best pecan pie recipe in the world won’t get very much attention if the picture makes the final product look unappealing. Use only the best quality pictures that you can.
The pictures you use can be stock photos or ones you take yourself but again make sure that they look good. There are some really weird stock photos out there so be picky and choose wisely. Use images that you think your audience will like.
Good Description
Your description is your opportunity to tell your audience more about the pin but even more importantly it’s where you tell the search engine about your pin. Even if you don’t think pinners are very likely to actually read your description it needs to be there.
The max length for a pin description is about 500 characters but only the first 100 will show up on the preview. Make sure the first 100 characters capture what you want to say in order to draw your audience in. The rest of the description can add more detail. While you should include important keywords don’t keyword stuff your description!
Call to Action
Pinterest isn’t just a place to store things they like and walk away. While many people use it for browsing and may never come back to some old pins you don’t want that to be you. You want your pins to drive pinners to action.
Make sure that your pins link back to the correct places to make it even easier for them to complete their actions. There’s nothing worse than someone deciding to take action only to be lost because you linked them to the wrong place.
The Takeaway
These tips should help you get started and on the right path to success! We’ve only just scratched the surface here and Pinterest has a lot to offer business owners to help them grow. Have fun with it, test things out and don’t wait to get started.
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