How to Use Pinterest To grow your Business

Pinterest is a very special platform for small businesses. With a Pinterest for business account, you can access a very unique audience: 85% of Pinterest users bought something after seeing it on the platform.

Because of the nature of the platform being geared towards non-essential consumption on Pinterest, we can find that over 40% of US adults with an income over $75,000 a year are active on the platform.

It has 445 million monthly active users worldwide, with the biggest user base being the United States. With all this information, you can see why Pinterest can be helpful to your business. Pinterest should be a must for you if your target audience is women in the United States.

The first thing you should keep in mind is something I always tell my clients. Remember that Pinterest is a search engine, which means that to get traffic, you have to rank for keywords. Consider Pinterest to be a hybrid of the ease of searching for something on Google and the visual aspect of Instagram.

Ok. Enough of me selling you on Pinterest; now let’s talk about the things you can do to take advantage of the platform.

1. Create a business account.

The first thing you need to do is create a business account to have access to analytics and rank higher for your target keywords.

2. Start Your Keyword Research

Keywords are the backbone of audience targeting on Pinterest for businesses. If you want to have success and get customers on Pinterest, identifying the right keywords for your business is very important.

There are two ways I’ll suggest you use Pinterest if you’re just getting started with it for your business. The first one is looking at the suggestions when you type keywords relevant to your business. The second option is to use the ads keyword tool, which can be found in the ad group creation section. You do not need to run ads to use the paid ad tools.

Here is an example of the Pinterest ads manager where you can do keyword research.

One thing to keep in mind with keywords on Pinterest is that you should go for short, high-volume keywords, even if you’re just starting out. There is no point in looking for long-tail keywords on Pinterest because that’s not how users utilize the platform. For example, for this article, the main keyword I was targeting was "Pinterest for business".

3. Initial Boards & Pin Set-Up

The first month on Pinterest is by far the toughest one, not only because you don’t see results popping up but also because it requires more work.

To start, you should create a list of five boards with the keywords you have from your previous research. Then you’ll try to create at least 2-3 pins (make sure they’re good) for each board. After you post your own pins, you should then share at least seven other people’s pins on each of your boards. Make sure all these pins are relevant to the boards you’re posting them to.

To end the set-up, you should add a keyword-rich description to each board and also add a description to your profile that targets your main keyword.

4. Pin Design Is Everything

One thing you’ll never see on Pinterest is ugly pins ranking first. A couple of essential tips to keep in mind when designing pins:

• You can use Canva for free to create your own pins (that’s what I used to create the pin you just clicked).

• Use high-resolution images for your pins.

• Pinterest prefers vertical pins, and the aspect ratio they recommend is 2:3. If you’re using Canva, you can just select the "Pinterest Design" tab, and it will give you the perfect ratio for Pinterest.

• Use a text overlay with your main keyword. Make sure it engages the user and that you’re not just using it to rank for that keyword. As a quick reminder, the Pinterest algorithm is capable of reading images.

• Always use a call to action to take people to your website.

5. Posting frequently

The fifth and last tip is to make sure you post daily on Pinterest. Try to share at least 1-2 of your own pins at the best hour to find your target audience (usually 9 p.m. EST if you’re targeting US customers). Aside from only posting your own pins, remember to always share other people's pins that are relevant to your audience.

If you'd like further assistance or help with everything you just read, feel free to book a call with me.

Happy Pinning!