Pinterest is an online pinboard that allows you to collect and display the images you find on the web. You can find boards from other people to discover new things and get inspiration. You can find ideas to plan a vacation, decorate your home or share your favorite fashion items.
Pinterest is really visual. If you find something that pleases the eye, then you would like to pin it on Pinterest. This means that the most active categories on the site tend to be interior design, travel destinations, hobbies, fashion, food, etc.
When you open up the home page of the site, you will see images of resorts, shoes, pies, furniture, and so forth. But not only. When you take a look at the categories list, you can see that there are in total 34 different categories.
Pinterest categories
Let's take a look at 14 Pinterest marketing tactics.
1. Define Your Target Audience
Pinterest has over 100 million active users, making it one of the most popular social media platforms. It has both female and male members, and the age ranges from teenagers to elders.
In Pinterest, you can find people with various interests and hobbies. No matter whether your company is selling fishing tackles, language courses or even web analytics services, it is very likely that your audience is on Pinterest. However, to reach a bigger audience, you need to define who are your customers and what do they like? How do they spend their free time? What are their needs and desires? Having a clearly defined target group helps you to be aware of your customer's preferences when tailoring the posts. Therefore, attracting more people to like your pins.
Eventhough, people love to pin “chicken” and “chocolate” the most, there are people with wide range of interests. Most likely, your company can have a place on Pinterest too, just try to find a right angle to market it.
2. Create Pinterest Boards
In Pinterest, you can make various types of boards. Organize your boards according to the customers' interests. In case you are selling furniture, categorize your boards according to your products. For example, if you sell beautiful vintage sofas, make a board named “Vintage Sofas.” If you also sell dinner tables, make a board called “Family Dinner Tables.” In case you also have Swedish-styled kitchen furniture, make a board “Swedish Kitchen Decor,” and so on. This will help your customers to find the boards that really interests them and not see the pins they don't care about.
Furthermore, make sure your board names are clear and description is catchy and to the point.
Horchow has managed to make a beautiful Pinterest board, categorising all of their products into certain themes.
3. Create Pinnable Content
When creating content think really hard about the images you use. Are they pinnable? It is important to create visually attractive pins. Use high-quality pictures. Make sure your content is inspirational or informative. Use as little text as possible, make sure you use a nice font and colour. Keep in mind to use 735×1102 px for the image size.
Make sure all of your pins are helpful, beautiful and actionable
4. Promote a Lifestyle with Pinterest Marketing
Promote a lifestyle that your brand enables. The most popular boards on Pinterest are lifestyle-related. Especially boards about fashion, food and home decor have the most followers. Give people ideas and inspire them. This will lead to sharing your content with friends and family.
Urban Outfitters have created boards on their Pinterest, where you can follow different styles. The above is Bohemian style, but they also have Vintage, Tomboy, etc. boards
5. Pin Content from Others
Don't pin just your own content. Create relationships by repinning images from other users and give value to your followers by helping them discover new things. Urban Outfitters repins images regularly from other boards. (See the example above.) They have repinned Bohemian style inspiration that they have found on Pinterest and posted it on their board for inspiration.
6. Optimize Your Description
Try to use around 3oo characters in your description or less. To be more visible on Pinterest and get more repins, you need to choose the right keywords and hashtags in your pin descriptions. Using the keywords and hashtags increases the chances for your pin to appear in the search results when someone is looking for this specific search term.
Use these 5 tips to make your description optimized for Pinterest
If you don't know what kind of keywords to use, you can look for guidance in the Guided Search. (Guided Search on Pinterest appears just below the search bar.) This way you can find out what kind of keywords to type, to attract more audience.
Guided Search appears below the search bar
Pinterest marketing has and will always be about valuable content. Having some good analytics tools can help to increase your traffic and get you the most out of your marketing campaigns. These tools are pretty pricey. Pinterest’s built-in analytics is free. However, all have free trials. But these are going to be your best options for Pinterest analytic programs. Read more about Pinterest Analytics Tools to Maximize Your Pinterest Marketing Campaign
7. Share Great Content
Share great content from others. If you find a great content that you can't repost to your site then use Pinterest to get it to your audience. For example, we pin interesting social media & content marketing news and infographics in our pinboard.
8. Run a Contest
It's always a good idea to run a contest where you let people pin your product images or take pictures of themselves using your brand. Or you can create a pin-it-to-win-it contest, where people just have to re-pin your post. This way you can build stronger user-engagement and gain more follower, or perhaps even new customers.
Pin-it-to-win-it contest example
9. Make a Blog
If you don't already have a blog, then make one. Having a blog is a great way to educate your customer and build trust. If you have your blog posts pinned on a Pinterest board, there is a high possibility that people, who click on the pin will also visit your blog to read more.
10. Pin First, Tweet Later
Pin first, tweet later. If you find something visual that you would usually tweet about, such as an infographic, then pin it to Pinterest first and then tweet about the pin.
11. Use Promoted Pins for Your Pinterest Marketing
Promoted pins help you to be seen by more people. You can use promoted pins to raise your brand awareness, to engage more people or drive more traffic to your website. Keep in mind: promoted pins are only available for USA and UK based business.
Besides Promoted Pins, you can also use Rich Pins and Buyable Pins for your Pinterest marketing
Pinterest promoted pins offers a simple advertising module. Just dive in and get your promotions going. To start off, you will select a pin that you want to use to promote your brand. Next, you will set your goals and then you will choose your audience (potential pinners). Then you will set a CPC bid for your campaign and budget. Read Pinterest Promoted Pins: 14 Tips How to Get Awesome Results.
12. Use “Pin It Button”
The more high-quality visual content you have on your website, the higher are the changes that people will pin your posts. So if you have anything visual to share use it!
13. “Follow Me on Pinterest” Button
Add a “Follow me on Pinterest” button to your web site.
14. Pin on the Right Time
It has been identified that the best time to post on Pinterest is on Saturdays at 8-11pm, and the preferred topic is traveling. Fitness posts are popular on Mondays, and quotes are most popular on Wednesdays.
The worst time to post on Pinterest is during the work hours
Now go for a test drive with Pinterest. Let us know in the comments what ideas do you have about using Pinterest marketing for your brand.
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Infographic: CoSchedule
Photo Credit: Visual Hunt