Fashion companies, food bloggers and travel agencies flock
to Pinterest to take advantage of the social media platform’s reliance on
eye-catching visuals and outbound links. However, all kinds of companies can
take advantage of Pinterest and its marketing tools to build brand awareness
and drive traffic to their websites.
What is it?
Pinterest is a media sharing platform that relies on
high-quality photos and videos from online sources. It puts a visual spin on
content curation and organization by acting as a digital bulletin board for
users’ interests.
Pinterest is the fourth-most popular social media platform
in the nation with over 200 million active users. It’s largely used as an
inspiration platform, but it can also be leveraged to spread information,
how-tos and articles. Aside from being popular for ideas and inspiration
related to hobbies, the social platform is huge for driving traffic to
businesses’ websites due to its outbound link strategy.
Users on Pinterest create and save “pins,” which are
high-quality images with a short description. These pins often link out to the
web source they were curated from. Pins are categorized in pre-determined
topics by Pinterest. However, users can also pin things to “boards,” which are
personal groupings featured on their profiles.
Pinterest operates like a visual search engine, so pinners
must ensure that they’re including relevant keywords and hashtags in their pin
titles and descriptions. This helps them be found by people searching for
related content.
By creating a business profile and sharing themed content
alongside compelling imagery, you can help users discover your company and its
offerings, save your information and return to it later.
Features
Pinterest is a relatively straightforward platform with just
a few key features. However, businesses have a lot of flexibility when it comes
to how to create, organize and share their pins.
- Pins: Pins
are posts featuring eye-catching images or videos focused around an idea,
product or service. A pin might feature photos, illustrations, textual
graphics, infographics or short video clips. Pins almost
always link out to a web source and should be accompanied by compelling
text that makes users want to learn more. Users can like,
comment and re-pin pins posted by people they follow, as well as share
pins to other social media platforms. People can create their own pins
using images they find on the web. Pinterest also curates images from the
web and generates suggested pins based on a user’s interests. Businesses
should create pins based on their products or content and use visually
appealing photos like infographics or quotes to feature it.
- Boards: Boards
are themed collections of pins that users can compile on their own
profiles. People may create boards for recipes, motivational quotes,
industry news and more. Businesses can create boards that categorize the
information they share, such as company updates, industry trends and news
from conferences or events. Boards should be titled in a way
that informs users of what they can find on that board by just reading the
name. Businesses should create branded covers for each of their boards, so
they create a cohesive and professional look on their profiles.
- Ads: In
addition to creating pins that show up on users’ feeds organically,
businesses can also create and pay to share promoted pins on the platform.
Pinterest ads look a lot like organic pins, but they help to get your
content seen by more people and allow you to target certain demographics.
Sending the right message
Although there is a lot of content waiting to be pinned on
Pinterest, your business should maintain a brand-consistent profile, which
includes an appropriate profile picture and cover board or photo, relevant
boards and business- or industry-related pins.
The content your business shares should always blend visual
appeal with information related to your industry. Infographics and “bite-sized”
facts do really well on Pinterest, so get creative with what your pins look
like—it doesn’t always have to be a photo! People come to Pinterest for ideas
and information and are ready to learn, so be prepared to make it easy for
users to find and digest your content. Additionally, businesses might consider
creating a board that highlights customer stories or consumers using their
products and services as a way to engage existing customers and attract new
ones.
One of the great things about Pinterest is that it makes it
easy to reuse your existing content. Creating an eye-catching graphic to
accompany an older blog post gives you the chance to refresh it and drive new
traffic to your website. Or, if you created an awesome Instagram photo, it
would probably do well on Pinterest, too.
Pinterest best practices include posting multiple pins per
day, ideally across your different boards and content areas. The social media
platform moves quickly, and you want to try to share things when your target
audience is most likely to engage. By sharing a breadth of relevant content on
your Pinterest profile, you’ll increase your chances of improving brand
recognition and getting people to take interest in what your business has to
offer.