How To Use Pinterest For Your Business: Tools And Tips That Really Work
Pinterest is the ultimate source of inspiration. It helps battle creative blocks, serves a shopping planner, and a mood board for new projects. But not many people know that this platform is a useful and powerful tool for promotion.
With the platform’s business account, you get a range of useful tools that boost traffic to your website. You can advertise your services and products, create a community around your brand, and make content go viral. So, if you are wondering how to use Pinterest for business, we cover everything from starting out to implementing new tools and tricks.
To get a comprehensive explanation of why you should switch to Pinterest for business, it makes sense to start with explaining the main difference between personal and business accounts.
Personal vs business Pinterest accounts
Both personal and business accounts have similar layouts, but the latter gives you access to e-commerce, promotions, and free rich analytics. Pinterest highlights that any account created for commercial purposes should be registered as a business and agree to different terms of service.
Once registered with a business account, you get an opportunity to promote your products and services to a larger audience. You can create pins, group products in boards for specific audiences, or create ones for special offers or collaborations. Pinterest also serves a catalog where you can showcase your product and link to your website.
Why use Pinterest for business?
To underline the power of Pinterest as a platform for sales and promotion, Oracle Data Cloud has researched Pinterest’s influence on in-store sales of consumer packaged goods and figured out that it delivered 3.8x higher sales than an average digital campaign.
Another advantage of using Pinterest for your business is that it drives additional traffic to your website. On the platform, you can offer exclusive content that will encourages users to interact with your website. All these advantages can also be used for collaborations, as Pinterest provides group boards. These boards are managed by the owner who can invite other users to add content to it.
No matter how simple it sounds, Pinterest is a way of interacting with your audience and in the long term perspective, it is a tool that builds a loyal audience. Don’t forget that Pinterest is actually a social media platform with the help of which you can create a community around your brand. This can be done by writing to users who repinned your images, creating the aforementioned group boards and establishing other ways of interaction.
Step-by-step guide on how to use Pinterest for your business
Pinterest statistics say that every month 250 million people use Pinterest and 98% of them tried services and products they found on the platform. Another interesting fact is that 84% of people use Pinterest when they are making their shopping plans. Thus, if you still wondering whether you should use Pinterest for your business or not, see how easy it is in our step-by-step guide.
1. Create a business account or if you already have a personal one, switch it to business in settings.
2. Connect your account to other platforms (Facebook, Youtube, Etsy, Instagram).
3. Set a particular goal. These could be “to sell”, “to inspire”, “to create a community” or any other purpose. But watch out that creating an account for the sake of its existence is irrelevant, as it will not benefit your business and can even influence (positively or negatively) your brand’s image and reputation.
4. Make a schedule. On Pinterest, posting consistently is no less important than on other social media. Thus, create a content plan and make sure new pins and boards are added on time.
5. Create your own pins and boards, as Pinterest users are always in search for something new and exclusive. Here is some advice:
- use high-quality visuals
- be specific with the message
- provide context for people to understand why they need a product or service from your pin
- include a logo
6. Use keywords and follow trends. Think of Pinterest as a search engine that can help your visuals get to the top of Google search. Time-relevant and well-optimized (in terms of metadata) images increase chances for your brand to be discovered by a larger audience.
7. Optimize for mobile. As the largest amount of users access Pinterest from mobile devices, your duty is to make sure that the content you publish is easily viewable.
8. Engage with your audience. When someone starts to follow your account, repins your publications or comments, you get notifications straightaway. Your social media manager should pay attention to those actions and provide feedback to your audience.
9. Study analytics. A Pinterest business account provides a user with an analytical tool that allows you to explore your Pinterest audience and fit your content to their needs.
10. Add the pin button to your website. If your business has a website (sure it does), a great option is adding a “Pin It” button so that users planning their shopping trips or any other leisure could easily pin your products or services to their boards directly from your website.
As some of the tools mentioned above are crucial for your business promotion, let’s have a closer look at what Pinterest offers for these purposes.
Pinterest tools that are great for your business promotion
Pinterest Ads
Advertising is one of the best ways to increase brand awareness and, luckily, Pinterest provides users with versatile formats of the tool among which:
1. Promoted Pins. Although it looks like an ordinary pin, it greatly influences brand awareness, increases engagement and boosts traffic. It works the same as post promotion on Instagram – more people see your content.
2. Promoted Video Pins. You may have noticed that among all the images and infographics, you can also find videos. Those who have business accounts can upload videos directly to the platform. “Promoted Video Pins” is an effective tool to catch the audience’s attention while they are surfing the feed. This kind of content stands out and allows you to engage and learn more by tracking saves, close-ups. and clicks to your website.
3. Promoted Carousels. Another tool that is similar to ads on Instagram is carousels – a gallery of images that you can promote at the same time. With this tool, you can create a story or introduce a new context for your audience.
4. Promoted App Pins. As 80% of Pinterest users access it from mobile devices, it’s no wonder that the platform has the option of an app promotion. This format makes the platform a competitor to app stores, as it allows users to install apps directly from Pinterest.
Rich Pins
“Rich Pins” are also called “Enhanced Pins”, as they provide context to a product or service you’re promoting. They use metadata and make users pin from your website. Pinterest offers four types of Rich Pins:
- Product Pins, obviously, promote goods and make shopping easier as they include price tags and a direct link to product webpage.
- Recipe Pins. A lot of people use Pinterest for culinary inspiration and these pins are great for providing all the recipe information to a user. For instance, to this pin, you can add a website link for the purchase of ingredients.
- Article Pins. Not only product brands use Pinterest for business promotion. Media and blogs also have Pinterest business accounts where they provide services and share articles. Each article pin has a filed for a headline, author, and short description of a piece you’re promoting.
- App Pins. As has already been mentioned, Pinterest is a real competitor to app stores, as its app pin shows an install button (for now, only compatible with iOS).
Pinterest Analytics
Everyone has already got used to Facebook and Google Analytics which are quite comprehensive and useful for any business. Pinterest also has an analytical tool that will help you to develop a strategy and track metric effectiveness. The most important thing is that it shows traffic not only from Pinterest but also from other channels as long as you have connected other platforms and your website to your business account. In short, Pinterest Analytics shows performance, demographics, and the interests of your audience.
Widget builder
For people to pin visuals directly to their boards, you can install Pinterest buttons and widgets to your website or app. Save and follow buttons, pin widgets to embed pins on your website, profile widget to show your latest pins and board widget to showcase a particular board are to make your business promotion as successful as possible.
If you make time for setting up a Pinterest business account, you’ll get a wide variety of benefits for your business. Great engagement and traffic, useful tools of promotion, loyal audience and, finally, higher sales. Do you use Pinterest for your business? If so, share your experience with us and explore our business and marketing rubric for more useful information.
