Why (and How) You Need to Use Pinterest to Market Your Business.
Many of us use Pinterest for our personal use, but who is using Pinterest as a marketing tactic for their business?
Read on to for reasons why and tips on how you should use Pinterest for your business.
In 2010, I started a Pinterest account. Not a Pinterest Marketing account for business purposes, but a personal account – for my own pleasure. I pinned recipes, photos, and inspirational stuff like travel pics, etc. Things I was interested in. I created ‘boards’ containing collections of similar things and followed my friends and ‘liked’ their Pins.
I created a business account in 2012 for a business I worked with. I hadn’t really created any Pins myself until that point, but creating Pins was pretty easy and fun! We saw some success back in those days of using Pinterest marketing for business. We increased our website traffic and even tracked some leads directly from Pinterest!
Fast forward to today…
Pinterest has evolved into a hugely popular search engine, shopping portal, social website, knowledge portal, and so much more!
Pinterest is a great marketing opportunity for businesses to share their knowledge with a larger audience, with the objective being to draw them into their own website where they can continue to share their knowledge, but also showcase and promote their products and services. The ultimate goal – new customers!
The stats are mind-blowing!
Here are some pretty interesting numbers*:
- 175 Million active users per month
- 50 Billion + Pins
- 1 Billion + Pinterest Boards
- 81% of Pinterest users are actually Females.
- 40% of New Signups are Men; 60% New Signups are Women.
- Men account for only 7% of total pins on Pinterest.
- Millennials use Pinterest as much as Instagram.
- The median age of a Pinterest user is 40, however majority of active pinners are below 40.
- Half of Pinterest users earn $50K or greater per year, with 10 percent of Pinteresting households making greater than $125K.
- 30% of all US social media users are Pinterest users.
- 60% of Pinterest users are from the US.
- There are over 75 billion ideas on Pinterest.
- 87% of Pinners have purchased a product because of Pinterest.
- 72% of Pinners use Pinterest to decide what to buy offline.
- 67% of Pinners are under 40-years-old.
- Over 5% of all referral traffic to websites comes from Pinterest.
- Pinterest said 80% of its users access Pinterest through a mobile device.
- 93% of active pinners said they use Pinterest to plan for purchases and 87% said they’ve purchased something because of Pinterest.
- Two-thirds of Pins represent brands and products.
- Food & Drink & Technology are the most popular categories for men.
- An average Pins made by an Active Female User is 158.
- Recipes: There are more than 1.7 billion recipe Pins.
- Shopping: Every day nearly 2M people Pin product rich Pins.
- Articles: More than 14 million articles are Pinned each day.
- Average time spent on Pinterest per visit is 14.2 minutes.
Are you still wondering why you should add it to your Marketing Strategy?
2 more simple reasons:
- It can be a great lead generator (driving traffic to your website)
- It is great for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) distributing your content and links that drive traffic back to your website. Google loves this.
1. What should I Pin?
One way to see what your niche market likes is by using the ‘search’ tool in Pinterest. Search for keywords that your niche might be looking for – this will tell you what your audience is probably interested in.
On Pinterest, people are looking for ideas and products that inspire to action. So let people find you because of your inspiring content. Build trust by continuing to provide value.
Then make sure your website allows for a smooth transition from Pin to page. That means a beautiful and engaging Pin should link to a beautiful and engaging web page.
A couple of ideas for Pins include:
- Memes
- Videos
- Helpful tips
- Infographic
- Quotes
- Customer testimonials
- Customers using your product
- Recipes or methods to create something (step-by-step guides)
2. Add the Pin-it Button
Once you have a Pinterest account and are Pinning to it, make sure you have a ‘Pin It‘ button on your website. Make your content easy to find and share to get the most exposure for it.
By adding a ‘Pin It‘ button to your website your brand or business will begin to see more activity and traffic.
3. Boards
To get your account setup and active, create 5 boards of a variety of topics that your niche is interested in.
Make sure the board’s title and description have keywords that are commonly used by your niche, align with your overall messaging for your brand and marketing efforts.
Next, create a series of about 7-10 pins in each board, varying the type of pin (quote, blog post promo, video, etc.)
Now you’re ready to go!
What NOT to do:
Promote yourself, your product or service. Instead, be of service. Provide great content that is helpful and useable to your niche audience. Don’t worry – you’ll have plenty of other opportunities to promote your offer or service to them once they are further into your funnel (on your website, etc.)
Create pins about you, your team, your workplace. Pinners aren’t looking for that stuff. They’re looking for inspiration!
Be salesy or pushy! Pinterest will not reward you! No “10% off” or “50% off today!” or “Buy Today!” And don’t ask people to “repin” your content.
Stress about the number of followers you have! It isn’t that important! Pinterest’s strategy is to be a visual search engine where the importance of posting high-quality, engaging and relevant content outweighs the importance of building follower numbers.
Pin sporadically or infrequently. It’s recommended to post at least five times a day to get optimal results. I know… that is a LOT. But you don’t need to create all this content yourself. Curating and repinning popular content from others works (but make sure you have a good balance of your own versus other’s content).
Also, you can pin the same content to multiple boards – using social media management tools (like Canva – see below) to space out them throughout the day.
Use hashtags! They’re unnecessary and worthless on Pinterest. Save them for other social networks.
Tools/Resources:
Let’s face it – who has time to spend hours on Pinterest every day posting pins? Make sure you use these tools to help you build your Pinterest Pins.
- To create your pins (they have great Pinterest templates you can use!): Canva
- For scheduling your pins (schedule your weekly or monthly Pins in advance!): Buffer
- Great tips and strategies: Pinterest’s business blog
Happy Pinning!
*https://www.omnicoreagency.com/pinterest-statistics/
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