The Best Ways to Grow Pinterest Business

Pinterest is a successful visual search engine app popular with both men and women. According to a recent study by ComScore, more than 80% of its users in the United States are women, especially moms. With a strong online presence of women, Pinterest is much more than just a database of beautiful images from all walks of life! As smart as it is, Pinterest has plenty of features to offer to content creators and brands alike. Then, what are the best ways to grow Pinterest Business?

In this article, we will walk you through the different ways you can use Pinterest to achieve business growth. Read on to learn more!

What Exactly is Pinterest?

Pinterest is not a social media platform. It is a giant visual search engine app that has millions of different ideas shared by different types of people all over the world! Yes, it’s like Google, but instead of text, people search for information through visual images, called Pin.

As unique as it is, Pinterest allows for the sharing of content from other sources. The more content is shared, the more valuable it becomes, reaching a larger audience and potentially increasing its engagement rate and website traffic. Before you can use Pinterest for business, it’s important to first understand its various elements and how each of them works.

How Pinterest Works For Business to Grow

Big platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have gained a huge following over the years! But Pinterest has only become powerful with an increase in active users of 335 million last year! Businesses could take advantage of their growth by creating a business account to start promoting their content, ideas, brand, or services.

eMarketer had suggested that because of the data presented, brands and content creators could use Pinterest to discover their target audience and promote their products to them.

With a good Pinterest marketing strategy, the more likely they are to influence their target audience to respond positively. Check out some tips below to know how to build your brand, market your business, and generate more sales through Pinterest.

Tip 1: Prepare your Business Profile

While Pinterest has made it easy to create a business profile, it is the user’s responsibility to write down information that appeals to their target audience. The more accurate, interesting, and professional your business information is displayed, the more seriously Pinterest will take your account. Here are several important things you need to consider carefully:

1. Your Display Name

Display names should be clear and professional. When the name displayed is understandable, clear, and professional, the more seriously your target audience and Pinterest will take you.

2. Your Profile Image

Profile pictures should look professional and authentic. Remember, the profile picture you post is mostly the first thing people notice or want to check out. So make it appealing and eye-catching as much as possible. Also, be sure to follow Pinterest’s sizing guidelines for your logos and profile pictures. See the example below:

3. Your About Me Section

Your display name and profile pictures are as important as your text bio. While most Pinterest users use images to find relevant information, keep in mind that they also read text. It is the same as the Pinterest algorithm. The clearer your text, the better Pinterest understands your account context.

Additionally, the About Me section gives first-time visitors information about your business, so make it as informative, clear, relevant, and interesting as possible. A detailed bio text will make it look like you’ve taken the time to provide all the important details. Include in your bio text any links to relevant landing pages as well as what subscribers can expect from your account.

4. Your Featured Boards

Featured boards should be interesting, useful, relevant, and eye-catching, especially for first-time visitors, to help create a positive impression of your brand. What they should see in your Featured Boards are your best Pins and the best content.

5. Your Boards

Your boards in your Pinterest business account should contain relevant, high-quality, and interesting Pins. Categorizing each board by topic makes it easier for your visitors. In addition, Pinterest boards must contain relevant keywords for the title and description to be properly optimized by the Pinterest algorithm.

Tip 2: Keep Track of Relevant Trends

One of the challenges of growing a Pinterest business account is finding and creating quality, relevant content to share. It will be difficult if you don’t know what your target audience looks like. So by profiling your audience, you can easily determine the type of content they’re interested in.

Trending topics are considered useful, but they come and go. To keep up with these trends, it’s best to spot a relevant trend under your niche and make a content out of it. Sometimes you just have to think outside the box and not focus on just one category. Find out what else your target audience might be interested in. For example, an audience that loves fashion may also be interested in travel, etc.

Following the trends can be overwhelming at times, but with a little effort it will be worth it in the end! Whether you are a brand or a content creator, avoid being too commercial. Most audiences prefer the content to be informative, so add value to what you’re about to give away.

Tip 3: Focus on Content Types Proven to Work

Since Pinterest is a visual search engine app, most of the weight is on the images or photos used. Either hire a professional or learn how to be creative by playing around with text and images to create an eye-catching pin. For a brand to grow, the images to use must be carefully chosen with a perfect content strategy.

When content isn’t performing well, it’s okay! Check out Pinterest’s analytics to gauge what type of content works best, and use that data as a basis when creating your next Pin.

When creating a Pin, the image should be relevant to the content linked to it. Pinterest’s algorithm likes when content linked to that image is relevant and useful. The more valuable this content, the more likely it is to be shared and get a high engagement rate and traffic to your site. Here are some type of Pins that you can use for your content:

1. Share Do-It-Yourself Tutorials 

Social media marketing strategy needs to be in tandem with a great content strategy. Not just catchy pins, but also content that serves to educate or inform your target audience. Content like easy DIYs and how-to tutorials would be a great strategy to get more backlinks from relevant sources.

2. Spread Inspirational Ideas

Besides informative and relevant content, audiences also want to be inspired, which is why they continue to look for “inspirational boards”. No matter what your niche is, you can always create content that contains different types of inspirational ideas to share with your target audience.

Inspirational ideas have the potential to increase your engagement rate and your traffic to your site. Interior design is a very popular niche on Pinterest. If you are an interior design company, you can take eye-catching photos and include inspirational text on your pin, linked to informative content. Motivational and inspirational quotes for women, businessmen, and families are other good examples.

3. Pin Infographics

An infographic is a collection of imagery, charts, and minimal text that gives an easy-to-understand overview of a topic. This type of content has also been proven to work on Pinterest, as evidenced by the number of social shares it has gotten. 

Since infographics are informative, many people found them interesting and useful, resulting in more shares and repins. The more shares it gets, the more your content will be embedded into different sites. The more your content is distributed on the Internet (blogs, sites, Pinterest boards), the more you can create a large targeted audience on Pinterest.

Tip 4: Curate Pins the Right Way

If you want to grow your Pinterest business, simply repin the relevant content, organize it, and share it with your target audience. Not only do you increase its engagement rate, but you also add more weight to your account.

Part of your Pinterest marketing strategy is to curate your pins effectively to ensure that it gets the best results. In order to get the best results, content must be valuable, ensuring that it is what your target audience wants to see.

Discovering the type of pin to curate doesn’t happen overnight! In fact, exploring interesting and relevant content for your target audience should be done regularly. While resharing of content is a common practice on Pinterest, creating and sharing original content is as important. Go by the rule of 80/20 wherein 80% of your content must come from other accounts while the remaining 20% is your own. 

Here are some tips:

1. Build a community with other Pinterest users by following them, joining a Pinterest group board, and interacting with their content. 
2. Get inspired and pick up key points from curated content to create a solid foundation before you create your own original content and share it with your followers.
3.  Find out who your target audience is and what kind of content they prefer to see.

To grow your business on Pinterest, create an effective marketing strategy that leads to the creation of great content and helps your target audience discover it. This is why Pinterest has been so useful for brands and content creators because even if you curate other people’s content, all the effort pays off because the result is growth for yourself.

Tip 5: Don’t Be Afraid to Sell

Don’t be afraid to explore some small and large businesses online to learn about their selling and promotion methods. Although there are many sellers that can be found on Facebook and Twitter, keep in mind that these platforms are mainly about socializing. Pinterest, on the other hand, has 66% of users who are actively searching for products and services before they make a buying decision. So if there is a good platform to use for your marketing strategy, it would be Pinterest!

Even with Pinterest, the competition can be tough! But as long as you take high-quality product photos linked with relevant and valuable content, there’s nothing to worry about! Pinterest has also made it easier for brands and content creators to sell on their platform with their seller-friendly features, such as “Buyable Pins”. Buyable Pins are Pins of a product or service that customers can purchase directly through Pinterest! It is not only convenient for the seller and the buyer but also improves the selling ability and the conversion rate.

Tip 6: Massively Grow Your Audience

Now that the data has shown how powerful Pinterest is at helping businesses connect with your audience, it’s time to know the steps to massively grow your audience:

1. Pin Consistently And Frequently

Pinning regularly and frequently is important to grow your Pinterest business because it helps build your brand and retain your target audience. If you are targeting a specific group of people, keep in mind that they may be scattered around the world. So what better way to keep them all engaged than by sharing pins in a timely manner? When your Pinterest account pins frequently throughout the day, the more your content will be exposed.

2. Pin Good Quality Images Only

Here are some of the characteristics of a good quality image for Pinterest according to the research conducted by Curalate. 

• No human faces
• Little background
• Multiple colors
• Lots of red
• Moderate light and color
• Portrait style

Here is a good example of a Pinterest pin with a good quality image.

Whenever you create a pin for Pinterest, don’t try to get a perfect one because it doesn’t exist! As long as the above features are incorporated, you will likely end up having a few Pins going viral.

3. Write Keyword-Rich Descriptions For Pins And Boards

What separates Pinterest from the rest of the giant social media platforms is the way content is kept for a long time. As long as the content is continuously shared, organized, and saved to Pinterest boards, it won’t go away quickly! Because the truth is that some information may still be relevant in the years to come!

But the discoverability of this content depends on several factors. In order for their target audience to always find them on Pinterest, pins and boards should be tagged with relevant keywords to optimize them.

Pinterest also no longer displays pins by chronological nature. Thanks to its new feature called “Smart Feed”, any Pin can now reach the top as long as it meets the following criteria:

• Pin Quality

Your Pins are placed at the top of the queue if they are high-quality images that have relevant, valuable content. Don’t miss this first criterion if you seriously want to grow your Pinterest business.

• Source Quality

Don’t just use the same old images that you found on your website, but instead look for similarities from high-quality sources. High-quality sources can have better exposure and a better engagement rate.

• Pinterest Rating

Increase your Pinterest rating by sharing Pins with high-quality, relevant, and clear images, text with little to no borders, and informative descriptions.

4. Confirm Your Website

Pinterest places the highest importance on accounts with verified websites. If you want to build trust with your target audience, confirming your website should be your first step. Once your website is confirmed by Pinterest, any Pins that people have saved from your site will contain your profile and logo. In addition to that, you can have access to Pinterest Analytics.

Here are the steps to confirm your website:

• Step 1: In your settings, click ‘Confirm website’ in the Website field.

• Step 2: Follow the instructions on the next page. You can verify with an HTML file or a meta tag.
• Step 3: Once your website’s confirmed, you’ll see your logo or profile picture on Pins that people saved from your site.

5. Use Rich Pins

What are rich pins? Rich pins are pins that include extra information right on the Pin itself. There are six types of rich pins:

• App Pins: Include an install button, so Pinners can download your app without ever leaving Pinterest. (For now, App Pins are compatible with iOS apps only)

• Movie Pins: Include ratings, cast members, and reviews to help Pinners learn about new flicks.

• Recipe Pins: Include ingredients, cooking times, and serving info to get Pinterest cooks excited to hit the kitchen.

• Article Pins: Include headline, author, and story description, helping Pinners find and save stories that matter to them.

• Product Pins: Include real-time pricing, availability, and where to buy. Pinners may also get notifications when prices drop by more than 10%.

• Place Pins: Include a map, address, and phone number.

Rich Pins helps the content gain visibility and boost with its eye-catching images and text. Rich Pins are likely to gain a high engagement rate compared with normal pins, which will translate into more interaction with buyers on Pinterest. Below is a comparison photo between a Rich Pin and a Normal Pin.

6. Optimize Your Website to be Pinterest Friendly

What makes up a Pinterest-friendly website? A Pinterest-friendly website is one that contains images that’s easy for visitors to pin or share to Pinterest with just a click of a button. See the example below:

This is very helpful if your website is getting lots of traffic from Pinterest. Whenever someone engages with your pin on Pinterest, they will most likely click on your website to check out on you!

Pinterest also offers handy “Follow and Pin It” widgets for brands and content creators who want to start the engagement through their own website. 

Pinterest Boards and Pins can also be promoted on your website to get more followers. They can be embedded on your website’s pages, such as blog posts and “About Me” sections. Take a look at this example below.

Therefore, again, if you want to grow your Pinterest business, make sure to promote your most popular boards & pins first!

7. Build A Community

If you want to grow your Pinterest business, the best way to do that is by starting or being part of a community. Explore a few Pinterest boards in your niche and build a relationship with them. You can also join a Pinterest group board to be one of their contributors. Group boards also allow you to access different content that may be of interest to your audience. See an example of a group board below:

Building a community on Pinterest takes a little time and effort. Spend a few hours finding relevant content in your niche, commenting on it and repin with their names or brands mentioned. The more you do this, the more you gain a positive impression from these people, giving you the opportunity to share more of your work with them. 

8. Be Useful

Although Pinterest is a visual search engine app, it can still be used for socializing purposes. A better way to socialize with your target audience is to provide them with amazing, relevant, and informative content without compromising on visual quality. Useful pins and boards will be noticed and it absolutely will be a positive way to grow your business on Pinterest.

Conclusion

While people are starting to rely so much on digital technology these days, that doesn’t mean online businesses can grow easily and be successful in no time! Pinterest can be one of the ways to help businesses grow because of the features they offer. Whether you’re a brand or content creator, it’s best to get started with Pinterest to grow your business!