Top 3 Overlooked Tips For Marketing Your Business Successfully In Pinterest

Most businesses have turned to Instagram and Facebook to express their brand and promote their services. With Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram in 2012.  However, they’re not your only option when planning your digital advertising strategy.

Pinterest represents a unique marketing tool that is more powerful than many people might assume. According to a user survey, 93 out of every 100 Pinterest users use the platform to plan purchases, and 51 actually complete those purchases, either online or in brick and mortar locations.

So how can you tap into this commercially active user base to market your business on Pinterest? Start by following these tips.

Pinterest like all the other social media networks is not about posting, nowadays anyone that can post or follow people on social media think that they know how to do social media marketing. This is the main reason, so many companies don't see ROI in their social media marketing efforts.

Get to Know Your Audience

In order to connect with your followers on any platform, you have to get to know them first.

Pinterest offers a lot of statistics about their user base publicly: 60% of users are women, but male users are the fastest-growing demographic; Pinterest has 291 million active monthly users and about 80 million of those are in the US; the site has a great presence on mobile devices, reaching approximately 30% of mobile phone users in the US.

Pinterest’s early growth portends well for the future; despite initially being invite-only, it has attracted a slew of popular brands, social media influencers, brand ambassadors, and most importantly, eager consumers.

However, to specifically tailor your content, you have to reach beyond the aggregated data and look at the brand and category-specific data. Various organizations have performed more in-depth research looking at Pinterest user engagement; a University of Minnesota study differentiates various categories by gender and offers other interesting insights.

One of the most valuable tools Pinterest offers to business account holders is built-in analytics information. Pinterest analytics show you audience demographic info, topics your viewers are interested in, which posts of yours get the most engagement in the form of repinning or clickthroughs, etc.

Perhaps one of the most helpful tools in the Pinterest analytics suite is being able to see traffic between your various business platforms. Pinterest business accounts are activated and verified once they are linked to your business website, and can also be coupled with other social media accounts. This lets the analytics feature track traffic flow from your Pinterest page to your website and vice versa, as well as from a Facebook page to your Pinterest and so on.

Recognizing how much traffic is going in which directions, and adapting your marketing strategy to those trends is very important to grow your following and create content that has traction with your audience. Demographic info can also influence how you style your content, what tone you use, and your visual choices.

Lastly, knowing your audience’s other tastes and likes can inform what you should be repinning and sharing as well, bringing us to our next topic:

Be an Active User

Being successful at marketing with Pinterest involves more than just creating content or advertisements and sharing them with the platform. Pinterest users are looking for pages that interest them, that contain variety, and that doesn’t just pump out self-promotion.

As a business on Pinterest, you should be aware that every action you take on the platform affects your brand. So, repin but repin wisely. Choose content to share that is high quality, engaging, and is categorically in line with what you know about your audience’s interests. By repinning content that your audience likes, you may also pick up potential new followers who might be browsing that topic. However, avoid being too one-dimensional; according to the University of Minnesota study, diversity is the eighth most important thing users look for when debating clicking the follow button.

Successful Pinterest pages are usually about 80% repins and 20% original content, so this is a good ratio to shoot for on your own page. If your brand is only posting its own content, it becomes disconnected from the greater Pinterest community and will not gain traction. Consumers don’t like being talked at, they like being in the conversation.

Another part of being an active user to engage in Pinterest marketing is to comment on high-quality pins and to develop relationships with respected brands and influencers. Comment authentic and valuable things on boards and posts repined by important people in your field. Pinterest influencers have a lot of sway in the digital marketplace, and by engaging with their content, you can develop a reputation and a relationship to be leveraged later.

Having the respect and acknowledgement of larger brands or influencers is crucial; at this point, you should ask to contribute to their boards or have them curate yours. Future followers of yours will find your business through influencer boards and simply based on the number of followers and important followers you have yourself.

Lastly, make sure you keep up a consistent stream of pins. Spread them out throughout the day, pin at least 15 times a day (shoot for 20-30), and don’t be afraid to repin your own older posts to ensure they don’t get lost or pass your audience by. Sort pins into boards and themes to avoid overwhelming your viewers, and make sure to give them new, quality content each and every day.

Make Pinterest-friendly Choices

Now that you know your audience and know how to be an active user of the platform, your business needs to optimize its content for Pinterest specifically. This involves a few key aspects.

First, make sure that your content itself is Pinterest friendly. The same visual marketing that you might be using on your brand’s website or Facebook adverts may not be suited to Pinterest’s specific tastes. For instance, pins without faces in them are repined almost 25% more than those with faces. In addition, certain colour schemes, like red and orange hues, appear to be more popular.

Since Pinterest pins have a fixed width but variable length, play around with longer, more stretched out pins and reorganize your text and content to fit that format. Text should be large enough to be legible and not overwhelming. Take inspiration from brands you admire or content you are repinning; this will make your page more cohesive as well.

Pinterest offers a variety of different pin types to business pages. Promoted pins, which are analogous to paid advertisements and promoted posts on Facebook and Instagram, can gain more traction than standard pins. Buyable pins enable easy purchasing in-page, without the need for direct links to your business website (which should always be prevalent on your pins).

Now, for perhaps the most important type of pin at your disposal: rich pins. Offered by Pinterest exclusively to business accounts, rich pins can be specialized for articles, movies, products, places, and recipes. Depending on your brand, you can usually many if not all of these and their built-in features like real-time pricing and direct purchasing. Rich pins can lead to more than an 80% bump in engagement and repinning, but make sure not to overuse them and lessen their impact.

In Summary

Pinterest is an oft-overlooked marketing opportunity for brands and businesses. By utilizing it effectively, you can have a leg up on others in the marketing competing for the platform’s active purchasing base.

As with any social media marketing strategy, it’s crucial to know your audience. By using Pinterest’s built-in user analytics tools, examining external research, and using that information to your advantage, you can further both your brand’s reach and effectiveness. Tailoring content, post styles, posting times, and ad targeting makes your content connect more with users. Information about traffic flow from your website to your various social media channels and vice versa is also incredibly helpful. Use this data to decide where to allocate your resources and build a strong online presence in all areas.

By making sure to engage with the platform in an active and organic way, you can create a Pinterest page that is naturally likeable. Make sure to pin well and pin often; spread out your pins and repins throughout the day and keep up a good mix of both. Comment on the content you like and repin content that is related to yours but still has a measure of diversity. Who knows, an eclectic repin may draw in followers who otherwise may have not found your brand.

Make sure to develop relationships with content curators and influencers, and connect yourself to brands you respect and admire. A brand that consistently engages with other high-quality brands is more likely to be respected, and influencers are more likely to collaborate with it.

Finally, your business has to ensure that it dedicates time and money to produce Pinterest-friendly content. The same social media marketing strategies that are optimized for Instagram will not work on Pinterest. Get familiar with the different options at your disposal for business accounts, from Rich Pins to buyable pins, etc. With a little research on what ideal formats and styles are for the platform, you’ll be getting popular in no time.

We hope you enjoyed our tips for Pinterest marketing and will implement them to build a more successful brand. For more on social media marketing, check out our site at socialsongbird.com!

Katherine (Tori) Lutz

Writer, Editor & Social Media Strategist

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