Top 9 Pinterest Marketing Tips

How powerful is your Pinterest Marketing? Follow our 9 tips to build a strong community that interacts with your content and increases your engagement. You can increase attention and achieve higher click rates by building a strong brand presence. Take advantage of the visual search engine, put your products in focus and increase your sales figures. With over 367 million users, Pinterest is a strong platform for your marketing and a place where you can interact with a large community. 

Top 9 Pinterest Tips

Pinterest is more than a social network – it is a visual search engine. With the right strategy, Pinterest will become a powerful tool for your company. Follow these 9 tips to set the foundation for successful Pinterest marketing.

1. Create a Business Account

Signing up on Pinterest will create a personal account by default. In order to use all functions, the account must be converted into a business account. 

In the settings you will find the section “Account settings”. Here you can change your personal account to a business account under “Account changes”. Just click on “Convert account”. Done!

2. Claim your Website and Social Media Profiles

To complete the basic settings, you should verify your company’s website. Verification gives you access to Pinterest analytics and other areas to evaluate the behavior of your users and the performance of your content. It also makes it easier for users to pin images that are on your other channels. 

The menu item “Claim” can be found in the settings. Here you can verify your website, your Instagram, Etsy and YouTube profile and link it to your business profile. This way, your name and profile picture will be displayed next to pins and create a recognition value of your social media profile on Pinterest.

3. Identify Target Group and Influencer 

To perform well on Pinterest it is important to determine your target group. Who are the users you want to address with your content and win as followers? After all, you want to address potential customers with your appearance. Always make sure that your content has a clear added value for your target group and that it is a source of inspiration that can be used to solve their problems. Especially the problem-solving aspect is an important factor for successful pins on Pinterest.

Create your buyer personas and determine their problems and needs. What are the demographic characteristics? What challenges and goals are they facing? What is the user behavior? These are questions that you can use to get a better picture of your potential customers. If you find out what is important to your target group and why they follow other profiles, you can convince them to follow you.

Even on Pinterest, influencers can help you to attract followers and win them for yourself. It is usually enough to follow relevant influencers and share their content. In this way, influencers become brand ambassadors and users become aware of you.

4. Optimize your Pins

Pinterest feeds are full of colorful content. But how does your pin stand out and get the attention of the users? Pinterest is a source of inspiration. Try to focus on the needs of the users while presenting your products. Tell an interesting story about your product and use storytelling to attract the interest of your target group. 

For example, IKEA USA has about 567 thousand followers and 10 million monthly visitors on Pinterest. They know how to stage their products by telling  a story. The products are always shown in an environment that conveys a feeling of home and promise the user to make it look that way. The indirect promise triggers a need and creates an emotional bond between product and target group. IKEA encourages users to add pins to their own pin boards, creates an extended attention and ultimately encourages them to buy the product.

Pay attention how you adjust your images. On a visual platform such as Pinterest, the size and quality of your images is very important. Always crop your photos vertically and use the correct aspect ratio. Pins are displayed in the feed with a width of 238 pixels, in the enlarged single view with 600 pixels. The height can be adjusted as desired. Pinterest therefore recommends that you create your pins with an aspect ratio of 2:3. Create your pins with 600 x 900 pixels or even with 1000 x 1500 pixels. This way you can make your content stand out from the crowd just by its size and attract attention.

5. Pin Frequently

Being a visual search engine, consistency is an important factor for good performance on Pinterest. Try to publish content on Pinterest 20 to 30 times a day. Do not panic: Not every post has to be new, self-produced content. Also remember pins from other profiles on your pin boards to keep your daily pin count constant.  

Nothing attracts users more than a pin board that is regularly filled with new interesting content. Constant maintenance of your content is key. Invest the time to publish daily varied contributions, otherwise you will lose the attention of your followers. Current trends and seasons help you to proceed strategically. Users remain loyal to you, receive up-to-date content and commit to you, because a search for trends is no longer necessary. 

The Danish home accessories’ supplier Søstrene Grene is an example of how to handle seasonal trends and themes on Pinterest. In addition to seasonal articles on the subject, users can find product recommendations, inspiration for interior design or DIY instructions. Around 82 thousand followers and 3.2 million monthly viewers are proof that the strategy is working.

6.Use Suitable Keywords and Hashtags

Similar to Google, Pinterest also uses keywords to classify content and display it correctly to the user. With the keyword search you can easily find the right keywords for your content. Just use the search function of the platform and enter the desired word in the search bar – but don’t press enter. You will then be offered relevant keywords that are similar to your searchword. Like this, you can find relevant keywords on different topics. You can also find keywords by starting a search and pressing enter after entering them in the search bar. Below the search bar you will see a list of related terms that you can use. 

Unfortunately, it is not possible to analyze individual keywords in terms of search volume or competition. It can be said that Pinterest has more general search queries than Google, for example.

Hashtags are also relevant on Pinterest. Try to think like your target group and find out which hashtags they use. The matching keywords and hashtags on your pin board and in your profile description will increase your visibility and make your content visible outside your community. 

7. Use Rich Pins

Create the journey to your offers as simple as possible. Rich pins help you to increase the click-readiness of potential customers and boost your website traffic. Using this format, your pins will be supplemented with additional information, such as ingredients of recipes or prices of products, making them even more meaningful for the user. Rich pins must be activated once, then Pinterest automatically pulls the data for each additional pin from verified websites and social profiles.

Use rich pins to turn users into customers. You can enrich the pins with various information, such as links or information about the availability of products. In general, there are 3 types of rich pins:

• Article rich pins allow users to annotate editorial articles. The pins contain the title, the author, a short description of the article and a link.

• Product rich pins facilitate the purchase process. They show real-time prices, product availability and the website where an article can be purchased.

• Recipe rich pins provide users with the most important information about each recipe. A recipe rich pin provides details on ingredients, preparation time and serving tips.

For example, Publix shows how a recipe rich pin can look like. The supermarket chain specifies the necessary ingredients, adds a preparation tip and links the pin to their own website. Pins like this one make up the shape of their entire Pinterest profile and receive about 66 thousand followers and 7.7 million monthly viewers. 

8. NEW: Story Pins

With this new pin format, you can turn your posts into dynamic stories on Pinterest, such as step-by-step videos, voice covers or image and text inserts. You can publish story pins directly on Pinterest without having a website, and they will appear to users with matching interests. Like all other types of pins, story pins can be added to pin boards. The new format is standing out from the colorful pins and gives you a new opportunity to connect with your followers and build loyalty. Create story pins and use the popular social media format to interact with users on Pinterest.

9. Measure your Success

Pinterest business lets you measure your success and keep track of your activities. This makes it easier for you to review your activities and use current data to question and further optimize your strategy. 

With analytics, you get concrete data filtered by type of content, time period, source, device, format and account. For example, you can find out which boards have the greatest reach and thus which of your contents are best received by users and what your pins should look like in the future.

In the section audience you can find out more about your target audience and their behavior. The audience insights also enable you to get a clearer picture of your buyer personas. 

The image gives you a first impression of the audience section. Here you can find out what your target group is interested in and get concrete information about sociodemographic data, interests and preferred categories. In addition, you will gain deeper insights into different activities such as searching and remembering pins.

Conclusion 

Pinterest is more than a collection of pretty pictures. Rather, it is about recognizing the problems of the users and providing them with concrete solutions with your offers. With inspiring content you present your company and tell a story about your products. This way you create targeted attention and direct more traffic to your website. Put yourself in the limelight with our 10 tips and lay the foundation for successful Pinterest marketing.