How to Promote Your Brand on Pinterest
If you are under the notion that Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the go-to platforms to establish your brand presence, then think again. Since Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and the monopolization of promotion policies that followed, Pinterest has become digital marketer’s new best friend, and for good reason. While Twitter offers an average retweet hit of only 1.4%, Pinterest’s pins can be spread a hundred times more than an average tweet. As for Facebook, the life of a Facebook post os 1,6000x lesser than the half-life of a Pinterest pin. There’s no question that Pinterest is a critical mix in your social media marketing.
Also, since a 27% increase in Pinterest (that too of Fortune 500 companies), over the past year, it’s time your business joined the board too. Exxon Mobile, Wal-Mart, and Apple are doing something right by joining the increasing number of 70 million users! Pinterest is no more limited to gourmet food and do-it-yourself projects, its integrated marketing features of business accounts now enable 500,000+ businesses to actively promote their brands.
Pinterest for Business:
An official ‘Pinterest for Business’ account allows you to tap into the full potential of Pinterest’s marketing potency. You can use these features to promote your brand’s reach exponentially:
Pinstitute:
Pinterest is perhaps the only social media platform that provides its users educational marketing materials along with their other marketing features. You can now use these tools to maximize the marketing efficiency of your business. You can now use Pinstitute to organise interactive workshops to connect with other pinners in your domain. Pinterest also allows you to organise webinars and resources for small businesses to help them maximise their reach. With Pinstitute, marketers can glean insightful information about their content and identify which kinds of Pins perform well and what Pinners look for. Marketers can thus use this information to optimize their content for maximum user activity.
Pinterest Analytics:
Pinterest Analytics is the newest and perhaps the most effective features of a Pinterest for Business account. Once your business account is verified, Pinterest gives you exclusive access to crucial tracking information that would provide you meaningful insights for your business. Marketers will thus effectively be able to analyse which strategies and content work for them so that they can continuously improve their marketing strategies in real-time.
Rich Pins:
Pinterest for Business offers five different types of Rich Pins, loaded with ample information than an average Pinterest pin. These rich pins augment the selling ability of your business through the inclusion of tools like real-time stock and price updates, interactive map locations, and direct links to your site.
Promoted Pins:
Promoted Pins basically work as promoted ads on any other social media platform. You can thus use Promoted Pins to reach audience while they make up their mind about what to purchase next. Promoted Pins look exactly similar to regular Pins, with the only exception being that they are paid to be promoted, just like any other advertising strategy. As a matter of fact, 61% of Pinterest users have made purchases influenced by Promoted Pins.
Pin It Button:
The Pin It button essentially works like a ‘save’ button which allows users to directly save your website content to their respective boards. Once you add this button to your website, you can also use Pinterest Analytics to analyse which elements of your content are most popular on Pinterest. Every time a user clicks on the Pin It button, they add more of your content to Pinterest. This would not only enable that user to view your content, but it would be visible to other Pinners too, thus boosting your content across a multitude of users. Businesses can also track what content Pinners are directly saving from your site. The impressions on Pinterest will also drive traffic to your website as users who save your pins would also check out your site.
How to Create Pins that Attract Attention:
Described by Social Media Examiner as a visual search engine, Pinterest can be used to maximise user engagement if executed correctly. A golden rule that applies to posts on all social media platforms applies to Pinterest as well: make your content searchable. For your content to be searchable and visible on Pinterest, it should conform to the following practices that successful marketers use to ensure that their content is visible:
Popular Categories:
You’ll have a better idea of how to market your content if you’re up-to-date with the most popular Pinterest categories. A study by The University of Minnesota has depicted the most popular categories on Pinterest divided by gender. Going by the variety of demographic and preferences, your business would benefit greatly if you create Pins around the most relevant and popular genres.
High-resolution images:
The more visually appealing your content is, the more traction it will get from users who are curious to explore. Incorporation of visuals not only makes your site look interesting but it also gains the attention of a wider audience. Since Pinterest plays such a huge emphasis on delivering the right visual impact, therefore, creating clear, high-resolution images is important to add credibility to your site. Simple, crisp photos that highlight the central message in your pins are more likely to be shared as compared to images that aimlessly dabble in vague themes. Furthermore, if your images are without faces, then they are 23% more likely to get repinned as compared to images that show faces of individuals. Similarly, images of a lighter background and colour are repinned 20 times more than images with a dark background. Also, if you are going to use stock photos on Pinterest, avoid using free ones. Many free photo sites do not have proper checks and verifications in place to make sure images are from the copyright holders. You can always look to buy images from premium stock photo sites.
Optimal Pin Size:
While all pins have the same width, they do provide flexibility in an unlimited length. However, if you’re aiming for an active engagement, 736×1102 pixels is generally considered a good size to shoot. Neither too big nor small, you can use Canva Pinterest templates that are available in this size to make your work a lot easier.
Instructographics:
A term coined by Pinterest itself, instructographic is yet another name for an infographic, except for the fact that instructographics can make use of the long length allotment to create descriptive Pins. Instructographics are mostly popular for DIY and how-to pins (also the second most popular category), and can thus provide a creative and rich feel to your website content.
How to optimise Your Pins:
The next step after creating engaging Pins is to make sure that they get seen and shared. Hence, optimising your Pins for maximum statement is an art that can be mastered if you keep in mind the following simple strategies:
Timing:
A research conducted by Hubspot claims that Saturday mornings gain the maximum traction from the audience, and hence is the best time to post. You can arrive at the best time to pin your posts through a hit-and-trial method. Depending on the habits of your target audience, you can test different posting times to arrive at the time at which your post gets maximum hits.
Connect with other Social Media Handles:
If you’re new to Pinterest, there’s no point in starting over with an entirely new set of followers. You can connect your brand’s Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts to your Pinterest for Business account. Tap into your accounts on other social media handles to not only gain more followers but will also increase user engagement across all platforms.
Engage:
You can grow the reach of your Pinterest account by engaging with followers and other influencers. Maintaining simple habits by pinning up to 30 times a day, responding to comments, commenting on followers’ pins will make you engage better with your followers. Likewise, following popular brands and commenting, inviting influencers and followers to pin on your boards, and building influencer relationships will help build visibility of your brand.
If you follow the above-mentioned strategies and apply insights from the analytics tools that Pinterest has to offer, your brand will continue to develop to attract more of the target audience. This will direct visits to your site, and will thus go a long way to building your personal brand in the digital space.