Pinterest has single-handedly upgraded how marketers conduct their business.
Pinterest lets you link to your websites, promote products or services to wider audiences, and spread brand awareness through unique boards and pins to supercharge your business efforts.
Use these tips to utilize Pinterest for your business and expand your reach to new markets.
Pinterest Crash Course: What You Need To Know
Pinterest is the perfect platform to spark inspiration, share ideas, and promote your brand. Hundreds of millions of users scour Pinterest daily, trying to find the perfect product or service that’s right for them.
Let’s get into everything you need to know to become a Pinterest pro.
Pinterest Demographic
The majority of Pinterest’s users are women, almost doubling the amount of men who are active on the platform. However, male interaction on Pinterest is on the rise, along with Gen Z interactions.
Nonetheless, Pinterest’s algorithm caters to the majority of their audience. Here are some Pinterest demographics that can help shape your content:
- 76.2% of women make up Pinterest’s audience, while men make up 17.2%.
- The U.S. has 90.1 million active Pinterest users.
- 30.9% of Pinterest’s total audience is 25-34 years of age.
- The second highest age group active on Pinterest is 18-24-year-olds, with 27% of Pinterest’s total audience.
Remember these demographics when curating pins and content, as these people will likely come across your posts. Tailor your posts for them and begin driving higher engagement.
Dos & Don’ts Of Pinterest Language
Users hop onto Pinterest to find new ideas and plan their next purchase. With this in mind, we can expect users ranging from well-versed in their area of expertise to users looking to try something new for the first time.
It’s time to tap into your “Pinterest voice.” Keep things light, conversational, and informative to attract any user level. When in doubt, avoid negative language and hard-to-understand jargon. Keep it simple and to the point.
If your content remains striking and “punchy,” your business will practically drive itself.
So, to sum it up:
Dos
- Maintain a conversational yet informative tone.
- Keep your writing clear and to the point.
- Define and express brand personality!
Donts
- Avoid negative language.
- Don’t use hard-to-understand Jargon. Keep it simple.
- Don’t let your writing get bulky. Each sentence needs a purpose.
The 4 Special Types Of Pins
Pinterest has 4 different types of pins that help you stand out amongst the rest. Each of these special pins achieves their own goal:
4 Special Pins
- Promoted Pins boost traffic to your site and boost engagement.
- Buyable Pins (Shop Tabs) speed up a user’s purchase process.
- Rich Pins allow you to provide extra information to your pins.
- Repins enhance and grow your audience reach.
Exercise any of these pins to kick your marketing up a notch and turn heads on Pinterest.
Optimal Post Times
Don’t let your carefully created pins go unnoticed—post with purpose and confidence on the right days and times so you receive optimal results. Avoid posting during work hours, and engage with your target audience in the evening or on the weekends. Better yet, combine the two: The most optimal time to post is Sunday at 12pm or between 8-10pm.
How Pinterest Marketing Benefits Business
Learn how to propel business efforts forward with Pinterest as your platform. Start off by creating a Pinterest business account and begin seeing increased web traffic, improved rankings, and enhanced audience reach.
Recommended Reading: A Cheat Sheet for Marketing on Pinterest
Thrive With A Pinterest Business Account
To kick off your business journey on Pinterest, it’s best to begin by creating a new business account or linking a business account to an existing Pinterest account.
A Pinterest business account and a Pinterest personal account are similar, but a business account on the platform offers access to analytics on your pins and the ability to run ads. Business accounts are also certified to see Pinterest Business Hub and the entirety of Pinterest Analytics.
Increase Web Traffic
Pinterest is home to over 400 million users who enter keywords daily to find the products and services they love. When you use core keywords, your products can easily be found by those looking for them.
On top of this, for every pin you create with popular keywords, you can also create links that lead back to your website. With your visually appealing pins, users will click pins to find out more and can be directed to your website, driving traffic and engagement.
Arguably the most effective way to drive traffic on Pinterest is by sharing and repinning. Pinterest is known for sharing and repinning posts users may find helpful, interesting, or engaging. Before you know it, your pins can be shared and repinned repeatedly, reaching an entirely new audience.
Improve SEO Rankings
The Pinterest algorithm bases its top rankings on four characteristics:
- Quality of your pin
- Keyword matching
- Account activity and engagement
- Quality of your profile
To boost your SEO rankings on Pinterest, focus on improving these characteristics. Make an effort to include high-quality pins and heavily searched keywords to increase your account’s overall activity on the platform.
Leverage Pinterest Analytics
With your business account set up and running, you can dive into everything Pinterest Analytics offers. You can see your brand’s overall presence, account insights, and even your best-ranked pins.
Within your brand’s overall presence, you can view organic, paid, and earned engagement across all pins. You can even find out how people interact with the content they save from you.
See past the numbers with Pinterest Analytics to build your business strategy with confidence.
Enhance Target Audience Reach
Conducting marketing on Pinterest allows users to see real-time audience insights. Discover exactly what topics your audience is most interested in based on their pins. All insights are backed by data and based on their behavior on the platform.
Review what topics drive the most engagement to build your content core. You can be sure your future pins and posts will be well-liked among your target audience and build your business with precision.
How To Use Pinterest To Promote Your Brand
Pinterest has made it easier than ever to promote your brand/product. You can directly engage with your audience with shop tabs, rich pins, and boards. Speed up purchasing processes and drive home more sales right through Pinterest.
Implement Shop Tabs
Shop tabs on Pinterest are simply shortcuts interested customers can use to bring them to checkout. You can implement these shop tabs on any product or service, so the second a viewer decides they want to purchase, they can avoid any hassle and get to the good part—the purchase.
In the image below, you’ll see an orange arrow pointing to a link. That’s Ruggable’s shop tab, and it does wonders. Ruggable was able to streamline the purchasing process for their users by including a shop tab on Pinterest. By making the purchase process easier with fewer clicks, Ruggable saw an increase in sales and click-through rates.
Pro Tip: If shop tabs are something you want to include in your Pinterest profile, your first step is to apply to the verified merchant program. Once you’ve joined, you’re all set to begin implementing shop tabs and speeding up that purchase process.
Include Rich Pins
Rich pins are simply pins that link to sync information from your site. For example, if you click on a pin and see additional information above or below the pin, those are rich pins at work.
Not only does it offer helpful information for viewers, but if anything changes on your site, so do your rich pins. This way, you can be sure your rich pins are always up-to-date.
Whole Foods had the right idea when they included rich pins throughout their Pinterest content. They used rich pins to their advantage to offer cooking information, provide real-time product availability, and direct users to their blog posts!
Use High-Quality Images
Pinterest is a visual platform, so your content needs to be visually appealing to stand out above the noise. Your brand will see the most success with the use of high-quality images.
Here’s an example of how Dunkin’ Donuts cut through the noise on Pinterest with an eye-catching Halloween ad. Dunkin takes advantage of a popular holiday, spices up their graphics, and provides drinks for their users to make! With this tactic, you can kill three birds with one stone.
Master The Art Of Pinterest Boards
Pinterest boards are where categories of your specific pins live. Every board should be labeled with an attractive title that will draw in viewers and motivate them to follow it. Your Pinterest board should all represent an aspect of your content core. Simply put, your content core is a mix between what your audience cares about and your brand’s expertise.
Here’s an example from PoppyTalk. Their boards express a vibrant, fun, colorful feeling. With a consistent look and feel to their Pinterest boards, viewers pick up on their content core. No wonder they harnessed over 10 million followers with these outstanding boards.
5 Real-World Examples Of Effective Pinterest Marketing
See how brands have superpowered their business strategy by harnessing marketing opportunities on Pinterest.
Joy Cho (Oh Joy!)
With over 15 million followers, Joy Cho has mastered marketing on Pinterest. Her boards and pins fall under a bright, poppy, quirky filter. This consistent look attracts viewers and speaks volumes to her target audience.
She has made her brand recognizable and familiar to those who follow her!
Michael’s Seasonal Content
Michael’s excels at using the seasons and holidays to their advantage. They jump on the trends their audience wants to see, and in return, their audience loves it. As you can see below, their page dives into everything fall-related, from crafts to pastries!
By providing content from season to season, their viewers depend on Michael’s for inspiration for every holiday and season need.
Ashley Furniture Highlights Products
One thing Ashley Furniture does well is their ability to highlight specific products. Let’s face it: furniture stores can feel overwhelming and full of items you may never see. Creating pins specific to one item at a time makes it easier for viewers to digest what Ashley Furniture offers.
Interested users can find what they are looking for more easily and avoid the hassle of scrolling through dozens of pins and boards.
Airbnb’s Eye-Catching Boards
Remember when we said that Pinterest boards need to attract users? Motivate them to click into your boards and follow them? Here, Airbnb understood the assignment.
Their use of simple graphics to represent their boards was a genius move. Users can’t help but want to see what potential locations and homes are in them.
Airbnb took the simple route, and it worked, grasping users’ attention and increasing clicks.
Good American’s Consistent Aesthetic
Good American does an outstanding job defining the look and feel of their brand. Their Pinterest posts all offer the same fashion-forward, street-style looks. That’s exactly what their target market looks for, so they can depend on Good American to give it to them.
With a consistent look, their audience is more than motivated to stay updated with their posts.