When talking about social media channels, people will often list Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and now even TikTok without mentioning Pinterest. It’s really interesting that Pinterest will often be forgotten even though it has 416 million active users monthly with clear continued growth.
You yourself may have completely overlooked it as a channel when coming up with your social media strategy, so let me tell you some reasons why you should start using Pinterest for your business and talk you through how you can start.
84% of people use Pinterest when they are looking to buy
According to Pinterest, there is a huge amount of people on the platform that are looking to buy, and it makes sense! A large amount of people using Pinterest are using it as a search engine to find inspiration or something to buy. I am getting married in May and my Fiancé is always on Pinterest looking for flower, bridesmaid dress and entertainment inspiration, so making sure you are there when she is looking, might make her go to you to buy your products.
There is a strong spending power on Pinterest over other platforms and they enable you, as a business, to take advantage of this. Every pin (image) you post, you must put a link to a website. This means if you are trying to sell your newly, in stock, luxury black leather shoes, you can get them to click straight through to your store page and make the purchase. When you compare this to another social platform that people might find fashion inspiration on, i.e Instagram, who don’t allow links to be put in their posts, you can see the clear advantage of Pinterest here.
Who is on Pinterest?
Hopefully you are beginning to understand how Pinterest could be a great social platform to start using, but before you go ahead and make your account, let’s look at who is on the platform. If your audience isn’t on there, then maybe it’s not worth your time.
The user-ship is very dominated by females with 79.5% of the users being female. Don’t tune out if you have a business that is aimed towards men however, because a few years ago there was an even higher amount of female users, but this is slowly changing as more and more men start to use Pinterest.
Around 50% of the pinners are from the US meaning that if you are only based in the UK without the ability to support the US market, it might not be for you. Once again, this figure is changing year on year with more adoption from people outside of the US taking part in the social media channel.
The median age of people on Pinterest is 40 but the majority are below 40. This gives you a bit more of a mature age than platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok, which isn’t a bad thing because half of Pinterest users earn $50k/year of more. So they may have the extra money to make purchasing decisions. So you want to give it a go? What now?
The first thing you will need to do is create a Pinterest business account. This account is different to your normal user account and is important if you are looking to use Pinterest for your business.
Next, I would suggest using Pinterest as a user. This is the easiest way to figure out how it works and why people love it. It won’t take you long to start following boards, creating your own boards and maybe even finding something you want to buy.
Then you should start posting yourself. Here are some tips for when you post:
It’s VERY visual
When you are posting images, you want to make sure they are high quality. As you scroll through Pinterest you will see that every picture that stands out is top quality, bold and eye catching.
Post in portrait
If you post your pins portrait, you will be taking up more of the users screen when they are on mobile (which most users are). That way it’s more likely your image will be seen and engaged with.
Make a punchy title
Other than the image, the only other thing shown on someones feed is the title of the image. Make sure the title is punchy and makes the person want to tap to see more.
Use key terms
Like any other search engine, it uses key terms to figure out what to show someone. Make sure you have these terms in your title and description. If you want to show up for “Stylish White Trainers” make sure that you write that in the title and description.
Let’s talk about your profile
Now you are putting out pins, let’s have a look at how your profile should look.
The first thing to take note of is the banner along the top. This is made up of either your most recent pins or of pins from a specific board. To make this look the best it can, I would suggest making it have images from a specific board.
Now your boards might look a bit messy if you only have 2 images in one, then 10 in another. You can actually put board covers on each board. This way it all looks neat and your branding clearly gets across.
Another tip some people do with their boards to add a bit more branding is to start each title of the board with their initials. That way if someone follows a board, they will forever see their initials.
Analytics
I know a lot of you will hate the thought of looking at analytics but on Pinterest they are actually really easy to follow.
You can see how many times your images show up on other’s feeds (impressions) and really importantly, how many times people click through from the image to your website.
If you have tracking on your website you could then follow what they are doing on your website to get even more in depth analytics.
Even if you HATE analytics, it’s good to have a look every now and again to see how your pins are performing. Pinterest make it super easy to understand.
We are done!
Let us know if you are going to get stuck into Pinterest.
