Will Pinterest actually help me grow my business?
Written by: Irina Lerner and Blair Mlotek
We all know how useful Pinterest is when you’re trying to decorate your living room or plan a big event, but is it useful to grow your brand?
Pinterest can be used to grow brand awareness, product sales and even leads for service-based businesses (did someone say organic web clicks?). What makes Pinterest so powerful is that over 367M+ users are already looking for ideas, products and business solutions--so when someone connects with your brand on Pinterest they are already (p)interested!
Pinners use the platform to inform their purchases, with 84% of weekly users using Pinterest as a research tool for shopping. If you want to be a part of a community that is actively searching for your products and services, Pinterest is just the place to make a name for your brand.
So, how do you do it?
1. Use keywords to appear in organic searches
If you’re not sure what keywords will help boost your pins, search for a similar brand or topic and use the suggested (see: often-searched) words that populate under the Pinterest search bar as your guide. Keywords can be included directly in your pin descriptions or titles, enabling them to do the SEO work behind the scenes. To double up on that power you can include relevant hashtags in your pin descriptions as well.
2. Create useful, visually appealing content
Similar to Instagram, Pinterest is a visually driven platform. Curation is key and it’s important to stick with your brand guidelines. Educational pins are a great value add to your brand since pinners are often looking to learn something new or find the perfect product to make their lives easier. Creating graphics (or adding graphics to existing images) on programs like Canva can also bring viewers to your pin while they scroll through their search results.
3. Repin with a strategy
A lot of your brand’s Pinterest presence is built on what you repin. The reason to repin is twofold: it’s a way to engage with others to create a community and it helps build your brand’s boards, keeping your account active and resulting in your pins being shown to more users.
But how do you know what to repin? Keep in mind your brand values and ensure that everything you’re pinning aligns with those. The pins should also be similar to your brand voice. For example, if your brand is very classic and chic, adding in a pin focused on humour may not make sense, even if it does make you laugh!
Just like all your content, you want to make sure that everything you’re adding to your boards, owned or repinned, adds value for your audience.
4. Keep the algorithm happy
It’s important that you consistently add new pins a few times a week, and try to repin daily if possible, since the Pinterest algorithm is more likely to pull up recent pins in a search result. Once visitors click on your pin, they may be led to click on your link or look through your boards to see what else they can find, and if they see you are consistently adding useful content, are more likely to follow you as well.
5. Consider putting some of your ad dollars towards the platform
The value of Pinterest ads come from the fact that they show up in the user’s search results. You can send already interested users directly to your website through a promoted pin. They’re already searching for something related to your ad, and now you’ve supplied it for them.
Irina Lerner and Blair Mlotek are longtime friends and creatives, and the co-founders of Cleo Social - an everything-social agency based in Toronto. Cleo is named after the original girl boss - Cleopatra. A woman with serious flair who wasn’t afraid to go after what she wanted: her desire to be heard and seen, and that’s exactly what Cleo will do for you: give your brand a distinct influential voice on the platforms that matter most. We are not a full service agency: we know what we’re good at and we only give you our best. We manage our clients’ social media platforms from strategy, to content, to execution and community management, ensuring they stay relevant on the channels that matter most to help them meet their goals.
