Pinterest is one of the most undervalued social media channels out there for marketing especially for people who run e-commerce stores.
In case you’re not familiar with it, Pinterest is a social media channel that allows users to save images from anywhere on the web to a collection or some people refer to it as a board. Think of it as a public Instagram channel for brands.
You’ll be surprised at how many people make purchases after browsing Pinterest. For brands, it has become one of the most engaged social media platforms to interact, advertise, and generate high-purchase-intent traffic.
I used to run a few e-commerce stores myself and Pinterest was a big driver in e-commerce revenue. Most people only think of Facebook and Instagram, but Pinterest is highly undervalued as an alternative marketing channel.
Just like other social media channels, Pinterest isn’t easy to get right. Content does play an important role and we’ve helped a few e-commerce clients come up with creative content and research that works.
In this post, I’ll share some of the top tips for growing your Pinterest account in 2019 to drive more growth and revenue.
1. Photo is KING
A while back I put together a post on real estate image copy and what sells in the real estate industry. One of the biggest point that I emphasized was the power of professional images.
This same concept applies to Pinterest. People aren’t going to click on bad pictures, but compelling pictures work.
To ensure that you have top-notch photos, use the following tips:
- Use professional photos of your products, instead of snapping a quick picture with your phone. This isn’t Instagram.
- If you have a collection of products, bundle them in a picture. Those tend to work quite well.
- Add a human element in the photo. For example, don’t just pin a photo of a Warriors hat, instead include the whole gear from sweater to pants.
- Pins related to your site’s content works the best. Instead of pinning a photo of a product, pin a photo that leads to a blog post.
The truth is that real life photos don’t do as well on Pinterest as professionally styled photos, so make things clear and appealing.
2. Yes! Hashtags do work
Most people think that hashtags only work on channels like Twitter, but this is not true. Hashtags work really well on Pinterest as well.
Once you pin a new image, Pinterest usually starts with showing it to your handful of your followers, or to people looking up a specific hashtag or keyword.
If your pin was interesting enough for your followers to repin it, Pinterest will then deposit that image in the feeds of your followers’ followers. If they repin it, the process continues. So, it works like a windmill effect where followers of followers will also see the pins and photos. It’ll appear on their feed and you can get featured if there are a lot of repins and engagement.
Pinterest will use engagement activity to determine how valuable a given pin is, and in turn, present it in relevant search results and category/browse collections closer to the top if it thinks it is a more relevant pin.
Adding hashtags to your pin description increases the chances of your pin being found by users searching for ideas because it expands the keyword and its not just a “general search” anymore.
Hashtags are currently severely underutilized, so they present a HUGE opportunity, especially for new pins and accounts that may not have a ton of organic visibility through pins and repins.
The limit for hashtags on Pinterest is currently 20, but that’s way more than enough. You wouldn’t need more than a few relevant ones.
Ok, so how do I find good hashtags?
It’s actually quite simple. Type the main keyword you want to rank for in the search bar of Pinterest and wait for the pins to load. Then you’ll see a horizontal list of related keywords listed between the search box and the results. Use the little arrow to the right of the related keywords to scroll and see the whole list. These can all be used as hashtags in the pin.
3. Good copy is still much needed
Just like how you would create a detailed meta description and title for your blog post, your pins and boards will be much more visible to users if they contain a detailed, keyword-rich description. It will also make things look way more professional and creative.
Don’t just add a sentence fragment or a general description. Get more into details about the blog post you are pinning about and include things like what would readers learn from visiting the blog post.
The worst thing you can do is leave a pin blank without any words in it.
Taking a few extra seconds to write a thorough description for each pin and board on your account could go a long way.
4. Create more pins for a specific blog post or product
So a lot of people like to set and forget and what I mean by that is that they’ll create a really good pin and link it to an individual blog post or product, but once your boards grow bigger, you can actually create more pins for the same link. You can do this by swapping out the image and description to make it look a little different but link to the same blog post.
This is a trick that works really well when you have a lot of pins in one board.
This means that you’ll be strategically maximizing the Pinterest potential of what you have right now.
No one says that you have to stop at just one pin for a given page on your site. If you have a complex article that offers lots of different information and answers multiple user questions, create a pin to showcase each answer or type of information.
This will be a strong traffic driver.
5. Site verification and use a business account
Pinterest offers two kinds of accounts: a personal account, which is the default option, and a business account, which offers bonus features like analytics and the opportunity to run ads to promote your brand on Pinterest.
It’s crucial that you have a business account for all your brand related pins.
If you already have an account, you can convert it to a business account (free of charge). Make sure you are logged in to your account, then visit pinterest.com/business/convert/. Fill out the information about your business (name, website, industry), and click Create.
There’s an additional process where you have to verify your site, but it’s quite simple and similar to the Google Analytics way of doing it.
6. Adding text within the images
Similar to Instagram, if someone is scrolling through their feed and scanning through the images, they’ll probably only see your image for a quick second, so it’s important to capture all of their attention on their initial scan.
In that very short period of time, your image needs to catch their eye enough so they’ll stop scrolling and click through. Most images can’t do that on their own, at least not in a fraction of a second. That’s why, in most cases, it’s best to add some text to further entice the user to click through the pin to your website.
This is especially helpful with pins that represent processes, such as recipes, meal plans, and workouts.
A lot of brands like to include their logo in the pin as well.
Also consider infographics, rather than photographic pins, when appropriate. This is especially helpful when you want to share a lot of information, such as a blog post about the health benefits of a certain supplement.
Adding a unique title in a good looking font can make the difference between getting a click and people just browsing through it.
Conclusion
Alright, hopefully, you learned a lot from this! Start taking advantage of this channel and start growing your Pinterest account!
If you’re looking for custom content that you can create pins for, don’t hesitate to reach out! We’re an all in one done-for-you content marketing solution 🙂
Contact us – wilson@sumodash.com
