How To Use Pinterest For Business Growth

Why should your business be on Pinterest? It has more active users than Twitter, and a lot more of those users have purchase intent! Pinterest is a great place to stir up interest in your products or services. Unlike other social media platforms, people can go back to saved pins months after they first saw them. This allows you to create evergreen content that will continue being seen for a long time and builds relationships with your audience.

Get Going On Pinterest

Getting started is easy! Simply go to Pinterest and sign up for a business account. Upload your logo or another relevant pic for your profile photo, and choose an appropriate @name for your business. If you already have a personal account and want to link it to your business, you can do that too!

If you’ve never used Pinterest in your personal life, let me give you a little breakdown of how it works. Users (this is you!) create posts called pins. They’re called pins because you ‘pin’ them to boards that you create. Think of these as virtual corkboards, similar to what you would pin newspaper articles and notes to in your home. 

In reality, these boards are a way for users to categorize and save content to go back to later. For your purposes, they are going to be how you organize the content you want to share with your audience. 

The content you create on Pinterest for your business should always teach, inspire, or both! People come to Pinterest for exactly this reason. When you’re sharing your knowledge and the love of your craft, your enthusiasm will shine through.

Pinterest Boards

For your first pins, upload any educational content you already have about your products. How-to guides, behind-the-scenes videos, infographics, anything of that nature you’ve already created. Keep it real, authentic, and on-brand. This is the type of content that does best on Pinterest. Create a board solely for the content you’re generating. Start with this one board and expand into multiple boards to better organize your own content once you get going. 

You should also create a few boards and save some pins from other users that are relevant to you and what you do! For example, let’s say you have an eCommerce shop that sells hair products. In addition to the board(s) you created for your own content, you can create a hairstyles board, a beauty routine board, and a makeup tips board to start with. Find some amazing pins to save to these boards and just like that you’ve got content for your visitors to see and interact with. You can translate this to whatever industry you’re in!

Be careful and intentional with the pins you save from other users. You don’t want anything that leads to your competitors here. Look for content that would be of interest and useful to your audience without leading them away from purchasing from you. Always click the link in any post you’re saving. There are lots of ‘clickbait’ pins out there that don’t go where they’re supposed to.

Creating Content For Pinterest

Now that you have the basics set up, it’s time to generate some content. The main thing to remember here is longevity. On Pinterest, people will often save pins without reading them fully, then will go back to them later. Creating content that will still be relevant down the road is important. 

There are several types of posts you should be looking at creating. Keep in mind Pinterest is all about finding inspiration, so make sure your content is compelling:

• Infographics - These do very well on Pinterest. If you aren’t familiar with making your own infographics, Canva has a great tutorial, check it out here! Use these to explain unknown facets of your business or industry.
• Tutorials/How-To - You can do tutorials on different or creative ways to use your products! Inspire your audience’s creativity and show off the versatility of your products at the same time.
• Behind The Scenes - Showing how a product is manufactured (especially if handcrafted merchandise is your thing) is fascinating for your audience to watch! 
• Recipes - If any of your products can be used in food or DIY health and beauty recipes, share some of them! People go nuts over recipe posts on Pinterest.
• Human Interest - Share your own inspirations! What got you into your business? What is the driving passion behind your amazing products?
• User-Generated Content - Have any of your customers shared stories about how your products or services helped them? Share that on Pinterest too! I’m not talking just your normal reviews, I mean longer, heartfelt stories about how you truly helped people. Humanizing your brand is one of the smartest moves you can make.

These are just a few of the types of pins you should be creating. Use your Pinterest account to find more ideas. Follow boards that interest you and take inspiration there too! See what’s working for others in your industry and adapt it to fit your brand.

Make Your Pins Searchable

On other platforms, you’d be loading up your posts with hashtags, right? Not here. It’s all about the captions. When users put search terms into Pinterest, it searches the captions for matches. Using the same theory of ‘search intent’ that you do to find hashtags on other platforms, include terms you would normally hashtag in your captions.

Keeping with the hair products business example from earlier, let’s imagine that you’re creating a pin showing ways to incorporate a product into a beauty routine. What would be the caption on the post? Here are a couple of examples:

“Do this one simple trick to kick off your new beauty routine!”

“How (product name) can help (problem solved by product).”

Remember to think about it from the standpoint of “What would someone be searching if they WANT to find this information?” This is what I mean by search intent. If you include terms that your audience would be searching for, your pins will be found more often!

Include Pinterest On Your Business’s Website

You’ve got links to your company’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter on your website, right? You should add your Pinterest account to this lineup too! Making it easy for visitors to access your social media is a best practice for being successful on any platform. 

You can also add ‘Pin It’ buttons to all of your product pages and blog posts! This allows visitors to easily pin interesting things they find on your website to their own boards. This will get your content shared on Pinterest without you having to do anything at all! 

If you have a developer that manages your website, let them know this is something you’d like to do. If you designed your website yourself with a DIY website company like WIX or Squarespace, take a look through their options to see if this is a feature they offer and how to implement it. Don’t forget to add this to your emails too!

Your Aesthetic On Pinterest

Just like with your other platforms and your website, creating a cohesive look for your brand is important. The images you use on your pins should follow your brand’s color palette and feel. Whether someone is visiting your website, looking you up on Facebook, or learning something about you on Pinterest, your content should all have a singular look and tone that is immediately identifiable with your brand. 

Creating your own images for use on social media is important, and Pinterest is no exception! Text-based graphics (or images with a  text overlay) allow you to quickly convey what your pin is about and are the anchor that’ll pull people in. 

If you can’t afford to hire a professional photographer to grab interesting, compelling shots of your business and your products, that’s OK! You can brush up your photography skills on YouTube (Pinterest has some amazing photography content too, BTW) and create stunning overlays/graphics with Canva! This doesn’t need to cost an arm and a leg, a small investment of time is all it takes to learn these skills for yourself.

Follow Others In Your Industry

One of the best things about Pinterest is that everything there is meant to be saved, shared, and passed around. Be purposeful about who you follow so you can share fabulous content with your audience! Others in your industry, influencers that relate to your brand, or any other users who regularly pin content that is relatable are great to follow.

Their pins will come up in your home feed, and you can pin anything you find inspiring or relevant to one of your boards in addition to the content that you’re creating yourself. These will in turn show up in your follower’s feeds! Neat, huh? 

Remember what I said earlier, check out anything that you pin to make sure it is what it appears to be so that you keep your boards full of quality posts. When you’re pinning relevant and helpful content, whether created by you or shared by other users, you will establish yourself as an authority and people will naturally flock to your account to see what you’ll pin next.

If You’re Still Not Convinced…

There are some compelling statistics that you should be taking note of. Pinterest has over 478 million active users, 69% of which are female. They are steadily growing at a rate of over 30% year over year. These facts alone show that Pinterest is a strong platform to grow your business.

While this may not be the platform you think of right away when considering where to spend your limited time and resources, it is a powerful contender that deserves serious consideration. It’s tailor-made for brand discovery and interaction, as well as being a great outlet for educating your customers on how to get the most out of your products or services. Give Pinterest a try for your business and see the difference it can make!