12 Tips for Effective Pinterest Marketing

Published by Kevin Florence on April 26, 2022

Are you wondering how to improve your Pinterest marketing? With 55% of the 322 million active users on Pinterest using the platform to shop, you cannot overlook this visual search engine in your digital marketing strategy. Read on for 12 practical tips to boost your Pinterest marketing strategy.

1. Develop boards for your brand

Pinterest boards help you curate pins and organize related content. They can be made public to enable other pinners to spot your board when looking for new products and ideas. Whether you develop your Pinterest board to showcase your products and services or offer inspiration, other pinners may opt to follow your board to see new pins whenever you add them to your feed.

Ensure your Pinterest boards make sense to your brand. For instance, if your company deals with hiking gear, you could create a board of beautiful trails. You could even establish a complementary board to showcase new bags for summer camping. Dedicate time to interacting with pinners who comment or save the content on your boards to identify the wants and needs of your target customer and improve brand recognition.

2. Leverage keywords

Like Google and Bing, Pinterest is a search engine. So, you must ensure your brand’s pins appear on users’ feeds and are easy to find on search results. An effective way to achieve this is by using keywords that Pinterest’s algorithms can easily pick up. However, ensure that you choose keywords closely related to your products, business, and industry. Some ideal locations you could insert keywords to boost your chances of organically ranking on Pinterest include:

• Board descriptions
• Profile and bio
• Board titles
• Pin descriptions
• Image-alt-text

If you are looking to promote your business through the various Pinterest ad types, consider using the site’s keyword targeting tool to enable you to reach your target customers.

3. Include hashtags in your content

Hashtags are keyphrases preceded by the symbol “#.” They provide an excellent way to reach your target market and help your content be more search-friendly. When a user clicks on a hashtag you have included in your pin, they are directed to a page where they can view all content ever published under that particular #. Be sure to include hashtags to your promoted content, boards, and pins to improve visibility.

4. Use unique videos and images

Pinterest is all about visuals, so not only should your videos and images enable you to market your products and services and promote your brand, they should also stand out from the rest on the platform. This triggers more engagement and spikes users to pin your videos and images on their boards.

The following are ways to ascertain that you are sharing unique and exciting visual content on Pinterest:

• Develop and share branded videos that promote your services, products, and company
• Share branded images without faces as they receive 23% more pins on Pinterest than pictures with faces
• Establish a budget to pay for the Pinterest’s promoted videos feature
• Avoid sharing images with excessive blank space. Users often pin pictures with 30% less white space in the background
• Share videos and images showing your products while in use to allow your potential customers to envision themselves using them
• Create 30 to 90 seconds long videos as they have the highest performance on the platform
• Develop specific boards to share videos and images of your business’s most valuable infographics and data visualizations so that your target audience uses them as resources for their companies

5. Schedule your pins

Once you identify great content to share with your Pinterest audience, you should schedule it ahead of time, preferably two weeks in advance, to ensure that it is spaced over a few days. Be sure to identify an ideal amount of content that works for your brand and then begin by sharing a few pins and gradually add your pins consistently to avoid bursts of content.

Ensure you are up-to-date with upcoming holidays your brand could exploit to create seasonal content and boards. According to Pinterest, you should save seasonal pins 30 to 45 days in advance, then grow activity steadily as the holiday draws closer.

6. Add rich pins to your blog or website

Rich pins are pins that include real-time data on the pins themselves. They allow you to add more information on a pin, making it more customer-friendly, which leads to more traffic to your site. There are five types of rich pins, including:

• Product pins which include availability, where to purchase, and real-time pricing
• Article pins that have the author, link, story description, and headline
• Movie pins that have cast members, ratings, and reviews
• Recipe pins which show the serving information, cooking times, and ingredients
• Place pins that have a map, phone number, and address

To start using rich pins, you should first validate your website. You should click the edit my profile button, tap “confirm” website, and copy the provided meta tag. Next, install the Yoast SEO plugin to your site, then tap on the SEO tab on the sidebar. You should then click “Social,” select the Pinterest tap, paste the meta tag and save. Enter your URL into the Pinterest validation tool, then follow the provided instructions to apply for rich pins.

7. Interact, engage and follow other accounts

Following and interacting with other users and their accounts helps you initiate and sustain personal relationships between them and your brand. Through such engagements, your followers may feel a certain level of loyalty towards your company, triggering them to return to your profile to purchase products or for ideas and inspiration.

Below are ways you could establish a solid and lasting relationship with your target customer via your Pinterest marketing strategy:

• Like, comment, and repin content your fans and followers share
• Follow accounts of new users who show interest in the content you share or what your business does. You can achieve this by reviewing users who follow your current audience or searching hashtags and keywords
• Create engaging content that establishes you as an expert in your field
• Respond to follower messages on your posts to personalize their experience and make them feel valued and heard

8. Partner with Pinterest influencers

There are bloggers and other individuals who have established a decent following by being active on Pinterest. Consider identifying individuals who align with your brand and partner with them to make the most out of your Pinterest marketing efforts. For instance, you could collaborate with a designer to handle a DIY project or a styling tutorial if you run an excellent home brand.

Having influencers incorporate your products into their custom boards or pins helps you build brand awareness among their followers. It also enables you to tap into 66% of Pinterest users who will only purchase a product after seeing a brand’s endorsement from a reputable or influential person.

9. Host a Pinterest contest

Pinterest contests are fantastic marketing tools to boost engagement with existing followers and attract new leads. For instance, if you run a pin to win a contest, you request followers to repin a selection of posts. This leads to a variety of your content being shared by different users. The content can also be saved and repinned organically by other pinners who encounter it, expanding your target customer outreach. Here are a few rules to follow when running a Pinterest contest:

• Always add a note about the end date of a specific contest on the pin
• Avoid encouraging spammy behavior
• Use simple and clear instructions to make it easy to participate
• Do not imply that Pinterest endorses or sponsors you or the contest
• Reward quality instead of quantity

10. Share content on other social platforms

To promote your content and Pinterest account, consider sharing images, videos, and pins in other areas to increase the chances of being seen and followed. For instance, you could claim your brand’s Pinterest account, YouTube, Instagram, or Etsy, to inform your followers about your business’s other accounts and how they can access more content. Claiming your accounts allows you to access data and analytics on your pins to determine which networks your target audience prefers.

Be sure to link your Pinterest profile to your Google accounts and Facebook to easily share content across different platforms, find and add friends, backup profiles for when you forget or lose your password details, and speed up logins to other accounts.

11. Leverage trending content

Be sure to review the popular page regularly to determine trending content. While what is trending may not always be relevant to your prospective clients, staying informed gives you an idea of what appeals to most users. Be sure to evaluate how the current themes and trends can be implemented into your Pinterest strategy to cater to your consumer’s needs.

12. Include outbound links

One of the primary goals of Pinterest marketing is to boost sales and engagement. To achieve this, you have to direct followers to your primary sales channel, the website. Be sure to include outbound links relevant to the pins they appear in to direct pinners to your website to purchase the products and services they identified on Pinterest.

Endnote

With the preference shift to more visual content among consumers today, Pinterest is key to the success of your organization. Implement the above strategies to improve your brand’s Pinterest marketing to drive more sales and stand out from the competition.