Pinterest Marketing 101: what it is and how to use it

Fact: You can raise brand awareness and get your product known more (even make a sale!) on Pinterest.

You’ve been probably sharing the photos of your newest products or your well-written and well-researched blog posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter for a long time now and your statistics show that this is still not enough.

Well, I think this is because you’re forgetting about Pinterest. Most social networking sites are free, and all you have to do is most out of them. There are plenty of social networking sites that you can join, such as Google+, Reddit, Snapchat, and StumbleUpon. But for now, let’s talk about Pinterest.

If you think Pinterest can’t contribute any growth to your business or increase your website traffic, I hate to break it to you but you have been wronged.

I must admit that I was guilty of thinking the same thing before. However, when my team and I gave it a shot last year, oh boy, it’s like we had an epiphany. We got – and are still getting – thousands of website traffic. And since then, Pinterest has been one of our top priorities and one of our top sources of traffic.

So why should you or your business even bother being active on Pinterest? Let the surprising stats about this idea-sharing-social-network site convince you.

The Facts Of Pinterest

The Digital Marketing Ramblings team gathered important statistics about Pinterest, and they discovered that:

• 175 million = active Pinterest users
• 85% = female users
• 70 million = monthly users in the US
• 80 million = monthly users outside the US
• 67% = users who are millennials

In addition, the team of #SMPerth also collected their own Pinterest statistics and they found out that:

• 47% = users who are more likely to be introduced to a new brand than compared to any other sites
• 83% = users who will more likely follow a brand than a celebrity
• 70% = sales from promoted pins
• 36% = pins that get more likes when they have a price included
• 87% = users who have made a purchase on Pinterest
• 2nd = Pinterest is the second highest referrer to Shopify stores
• 72% = users who use Pinterest to research what to buy offline

Are you now convinced? If not yet, there’s nothing more I can do. What you decide to do is beyond my control.

If you are thinking about starting to market your product, getting more traffic to your site, or raising brand awareness on Pinterest, I’m going to show you how you can do it. Don’t worry, it’s actually very simple.

How To Do Pinterest Marketing

If you are selling a product:

• Images are everything on Pinterest. Make sure to take a good picture of your product or a screenshot, if it’s a website or app.
• Before uploading it, name your image with the word by which you want your users to find you. Obviously, they won’t search for your business name. So, name your pin image using keywords.
• Use keywords in the pin description too. You can also write there why people need your product and what your product will do for them.
• Evidently, connect the pin image to the purchasing page so they won’t have to click a lot or go to many more pages on your site.

If you want more traffic to your website/blog:

• Keep your pin descriptions simple and short. And, more importantly, use keywords.
• Share on different group boards. You can find them on Pingroupie.
• Make sure you use the right pin image size for your blog cover, which is 1128px in height and 736px in width. If you have a horizontal blog cover image, create one specifically for Pinterest and when saving the image, use keywords.
• Of course, don’t forget to link the blog post if you upload the pin image manually.

If you’re aiming to raise awareness about your brand/nonprofit:

• Since people usually go to Pinterest to discover new ideas and to see interesting visuals, use infographics so people can easily know more about your product or cause in a jif.
• What’s more, according to HubSpot, Pinterest is the second best social media site to share an infographic. Thus making it easy for you to raise awareness.
• Creating infographics isn’t that difficult. There are visual tools that offer a lot of templates that you can easily customize like, for instance, Visme.
• And oh, link your infographic to your website.

One Last Pinterest Advice

If your Pinterest is set up for business, then you’ll have access to its Analytics. You’ll easily determine here which content or pins are getting more impressions, clicks, saves and how many, and who your audience are. Pretty neat, right?

Using this, you can identify which pin you can promote – it’s like the boost post on Facebook. You can either promote the most effective pin to reach more people or promote the less effective one so you get traffic from the top one organically and from the promoted pin.

Be honest, what do you think of Pinterest as a marketing tool? Share your thoughts in the comments!