How to Use Pinterest to Promote Your Business

Pinterest is beyond delivering stunning images. It is the first of its kind, a visual search engine. Unlike other social media platforms, Pinterest’s key objective is engagement with graphics. In 2021, Pinterest was the 14th most extensive social network worldwide, with 459 million monthly active users. It was discovered that at least 80% of weekly Pinners stumbled upon a new brand or product on the platform. And as per Pinterest statistics, the number of Pinners and boards created is increasing yearly.

Historically, Pinterest has attracted more women who intend to start a new project or business. In 2021, a new trend emerged. Gen Z consumers were increasingly using Pinterest. The top content searches were skewed towards gaining new inspiration—an inspiration on crochet or running a successful baking business. Infographics have proven to be a format of choice. 

So, where does this data leave us? 
If you are not using Pinterest to promote your business or brand, you are missing out on a significant chunk of digital conversions. In 2021, over 87% of Pinterest users purchased a product, making it an excellent opportunity to reach customers.

How does Pinterest work?

If you have a business or a brand and intend to utilize digital marketing to its full potential, you need to add Pinterest to the marketing mix. 

As Pinterest is a visual social media platform, users can save and organize images and videos on virtual boards. The saved content is called a ‘Pin,’ and the method of ‘saving’ a piece of content is called ‘pinning.’ Like any other search engine, a user can search for related topics in the form of visual content with the help of a keyword. Upon search, a user can discover and browse pins from other users. If they like a pin, they can comment, share or further ‘Pin it’ on their archives. These archives are known as ‘Boards,’ just like a soft board on our workspaces. Boards help a user discover a set of related visual content pieces. These boards act as inspiration grounds for great thematic ideas. 
For example, if you are looking for ‘Living room ideas’ as your keyword. You can discover a pin with an image of a beautiful living room. If you like the pin, you can visit the board where this image has been pinned to explore all ‘Living room ideas’ related to that pin. 

Creating a board works exceptionally for businesses, providing a gateway to all the products or services a business intends to sell. To help businesses bloom, Pinterest has the facility to create an exclusive business account for owners and entrepreneurs. They can also use Pinterest's advertising platform to promote their pins to a broader audience. Creating a business account on Pinterest is free, with accessibility to the advertising dashboard. 

Just like any other social media marketing strategy, Pinterest needs one too. Some strategies businesses can use on Pinterest include;

• creating visually appealing pins, 
• using keywords in the pin descriptions and boards, 
• engaging with other users by commenting, 
• and re-pinning content made by other users.

Businesses can also take advantage of Pinterest's rich pins feature, which allows them to add extra information to their pins, such as prices and availability. Additionally, businesses can use Pinterest analytics to track the performance of their pins and get insights into their audience.

Why should you use Pinterest to promote your business?

It has been repeatedly proven that visual content works better than other formats. Pinterest allows you to play with many visual formats, such as infographics, illustrations, videos, and animations. With these in mind, you can create engaging and inclusive content for a wide range of global audiences on Pinterest. 

Today's most significant struggle of any business on social media platforms is reaching out to audiences who intend to engage with a brand. Pinterest provides a set of audiences already engaging with your brand’s relevant keyword. This means that the probability of your future customer stumbling upon your brand is higher on Pinterest than on any other platform. 

One of the top challenges of businesses today is finding the right audience. As the fourth most popular social media platform in the U.S., with over 235 million monthly international users, Pinterest can open your business to millions of new customers. With these humongous numbers, Pinterest provides a large potential audience for businesses to reach, engage and convert. 

Pinterest is a visually-oriented platform. This feature allows businesses to showcase their products or services in a way that is attractive and eye-catching to users. It helps set visual expectations keeping ambiguity at bay. As an inspiration platform, it is easier for businesses to look for content already working for a given audience. 

For example, for a beauty brand, product usage animations work miraculously. Whereas for a health-tech firm, infographics get pinned the most. 

Initially, Pinterest was considered to be an SEO support platform. Therefore, despite the quality of the content, SEO firms relentlessly used Pinterest to build backlinks. With the evolution in platform utilization, businesses are more aware of the importance of creating great content. Pinterest can drive significant traffic to a business's website, as users can click through pins to learn more about a product or service.

Unlike other social media platforms, the pins on Pinterest have a long shelf-life, meaning that pins can continue to drive website traffic and sales for months or even years after they were first posted. The reason is the non-existent nature of a timeline. You can use the keywords relevant to your business and stumble upon your content anytime. If you have long-term business goals, this aspect of the platform can strongly support them. 

To successfully promote a business on Pinterest, you need to understand your audience's search behavior and interest. 85% of Pinners said they come to Pinterest to start a new project. This point can be considered while posting your content. Pins on ‘How-to’ or ‘inspiration boards’ can engage with your audience more lightly while keeping their conversion interests intact. Pinterest's advertising platform allows businesses to target their ads to specific audiences based on demographics, interests, and behaviors.

Social media promotions have always been a cost-effective and efficient way to reach new audiences. In your media plan, if you add Pinterest to achieve your SEO and social media goals, it will yield better performance than other platforms. 

Best types of businesses on Pinterest

Considering the vast bank of visual content available on Pinterest, the keywords and interests of users have often been a dilemma for businesses. Ironically, this serves as an opportunity for business owners to try varied methods of a/b testing to see which keywords and content formats work the best for them. 

Here are some of the best examples of businesses that have shown exceptional performance on Pinterest;

Hubspot:
HubSpot is a Customer Relationship Management platform. Being a data analytics and technology company Pinterest’s biggest challenge was to create content that sticks on a visual platform like Pinterest. Therefore, they adapted the strategy to present data in visually appealing infographics. In these infographics, they used illustrations, animations, and video footage. This style was highly informative yet fun to engage with. Today, Hubspot has over 63k followers on Pinterest, making it one of the most popular boards to watch for. 

Ruggable:

As the name suggests, Ruggable makes rugs. The value proposition of Ruggable is simple: to make washable rugs for any space. With such as simple proposition comes the strategy to highlight the product's versatility. This product can be used in any space that can get dirty. Be it your new house, an office space that requires restructuring, or a room at your house that needs a renovation. With these ideas in mind, they created inspiration boards for different spaces. Each space, with its style, color scheme, and architecture, was complimented with Ruggable rugs. This approach allowed their users to view their homes incomplete without a rug from Ruggable. Today, their Pinterest page has over 63k followers and more than 10 million views per month. 

Etsy:

Etsy is an e-commerce marketplace specializing in handmade or vintage items and craft supplies. Etsy allows individual sellers to open their online shops and sell their products to customers worldwide. This structure empowers small and medium business entrepreneurs to promote their Etsy stores and gain customers on a dedicated website. Etsy creates Pinterest boards for different product categories and sellers to empower its sellers further. This allows users on Pinterest to view the variety of products available on the platform and discover new sellers. With this strategy, today, Etsy has over 5.5 Million followers and more than 10 million views per month. 

Strategies to be successful on Pinterest

Every brand has custom-crafted strategies highlighting its value proposition and encouraging users to try its product or service. To promote your business, you must strongly align your company and brand objectives with social media strategies like Pinterest. 

For a Pinterest-aligned strategy, you need to understand the motive of this platform. Pinterest is a website for sharing visual content and inspiring ideas. To succeed on Pinterest, you must be creative and share visually engaging pins.  According to Pinterest, most viewed pins are vertical and show how to use a product or service.

To understand the type of content that works, you must research using different keywords. These keywords are your window to understanding trends and graphics formats most appealing to the users who incline that word. One of the most effective strategies for using keywords is to include them in your title and description. 

To promote your business, use Pinterest advertising. Advertising on Pinterest not just maximizes your reach but also gives you live analytics on the performance of your content. With these analytical tools, you can better understand what content resonates with your audience and what strategies are working.

Pinterest has a feature of ‘Group Boarding.’ This feature encourages collaborations between people with an existing board on a selected topic and allows others or brands to contribute their pins. For example, a person who makes crochet hats has kept their board open for artists and brands worldwide to contribute design ideas on Pinterest board. The followers of the primary artist can view this board along with that of other contributors. In this case, a business like Etsy can post design inspirations and attract views from both parties onto their handle. 

One of the tried and tested strategies for businesses on Pinterest is to pin consistently. When you pin consistently, your audiences engage with your brand daily. This leads to an increase in anticipation and loyalty. When posting regularly, your pins can reach a more comprehensive audience and increase the number of engagements on your boards. 

Mistakes to avoid on Pinterest

Though Pinterest was established in 2009, people still haven’t utilized all its features and make mistakes when promoting a business. 

One of the top mistakes to avoid is to ignore the fact that Pinterest is a visual search engine, just like Google images. Therefore, optimizing your pins with the correct keywords and adding clear board titles and descriptions can make your pins more discoverable on the platform. 

The primary law of content on Pinterest is to make it appealing. If your content is pixelated, with good graphics or unreadable text, you may retain the opportunity of engaging with your audience. It is suggested to stick to a consistent aesthetic look for your content and boards. Developing a consistent look and feel for your pins can establish your brand and make it easier for users to recognize your content. 

It has been observed that when new brands launch, they post consistently, and once their SEO objectives are achieved, they stop posting on Pinterest. You must pin new content regularly to keep your account active and relevant. This content database can be viewed and engaged with at any time in the future. 

Apart from posting regularly on Pinterest, you must also record the performance. This can help you understand how your pins are performing, whether your account needs any content changes, if there is a trend you can observe and how best you can optimize your presence on Pinterest.

Pinterest for Business can be a powerful tool for promoting your brand and driving customer engagement. By leveraging the platform's visual nature, you can create inspiring content that showcases how your products and services can be integrated into your audience's everyday lives, thus increasing the likelihood of conversions.