Last week, AIMCLEAR had the honor of hosting the Zenith Social Media Marketing Conference with the Duluth Chamber of Commerce. The conference was jam-packed with enlightening sessions covering an array of social marketing topics. Here’s a recap from (just a portion) of the Pinterest & Instagram: Trending Visual in the Marketing Mix session, which featured Matt Siltala, President, Avalaunch Media, and yours truly, Marketing Director at AIMCLEAR. Miss out on the session? Don’t worry; we’ll recap how to dominate Pinterest for your business. Let’s jump right in!
Please note: we decided to go with a Dinosaur theme in honor of the soon-to-be released Jurassic World movie. Enjoy!
How to Dominate Pinterest for your Business:
Pinterest launched five years ago in April. Since its launch, there have been tremendous advancements and growth on the platform. Pinterest’s collection of pins is now an astonishing 50 billion pins compiled on over one billion boards.
Pinterest Business Statistics:
- 80% of visitors to Pinterest are accessing the Pinterest platform via their mobile phone. This dramatically shows how important it is to make sure your website is mobile-friendly. Ensure that users have a good experience so that when they click on a pin, it takes them directly to your website.
- In 2014 International users grew more than 135%! This number will only continue to grow, as Pinterest becomes a social media platform used worldwide.
- Currently, approximately 500,000 business accounts exist on Pinterest.
- 83% of active users say that they would rather follow a brand than a celebrity.
- The average sales order value for visitors referred by Pinterest is $58.95.
- 47% of US online shoppers bought something recommended on Pinterest.
*Stats are according to DMR (Digital Marketing Stats)
These statistics confirm that Pinterest users don’t mind following a brand as long as the brand gives users the content they want. Users want beautiful imagery that captivates them and brings them to a landing page or website that provides more information on a product, service or content.
Whether you already have a Pinterest business account or are considering getting one, ask yourself:
- How can Pinterest benefit your company?
- Does your business lend itself to the Pinterest community?
Pinterest is a give and take relationship. Don’t be present on the channel just because you think you should. How are you going to add value to the community?
Adding the Pinterest ‘Pin it’ button to your websites pages is REALLY important. The Pinterest ‘Pin it’ button has now overtaken Facebook’s ‘Like’ button and Twitter’s ‘Tweet’ button on brand’s product pages.
The Pin it button is one of the best ways for your business to get discovered on Pinterest. When you add the button to your site’s pages, visitors can save things they like from your site onto their Pinterest account with the push of a button. You make it really easy for website visitors to save content and images from your site onto Pinterest, which will then ultimately get you more impressions and website traffic. You will need to add a few lines of code to the backend of your website to make this happen. Refer to the Pinterest help section to learn how to easily set this up.
Pinterest is a visual discovery tool. Think of Pinterest as another medium to drive traffic to your website. Since Pinterest users are sometimes surfing Pinterest without a goal in mind, your brand might come across their feed and be discovered by someone that has not heard of you before. If you are creating very captivating pins that lead to a very visual and relevant landing page, users may come to your site, become a brand advocate and possibly even make a purchase or use your service.
Pinterest Must-Dos:
Let’s get into some must-dos, or Pinterest SEO, for your profile. You can update your Pinterest business account by going to the (edit profile) section.
Pinterest username: Your username is the unique URL that is associated with your business account. You get 15 characters for your username. Try to use your company name, but if it happens to be longer than 15 characters, you’ll have to get creative on how to shorten it up. Consider using a memorable keyword related to your business or industry. The New York Times, uses Pinterest.com/NYTimes and Martha Stewart Living uses MS_Living.
Business Name: Your business name should simply be your business name. You get approximately 37 characters for this. Pay close attention here because you do NOT want your business name to get cut off or truncated with an ellipsis… and leave people wondering what your business name is.
No no
Good job, Pizza Hut.
About You:
The about you section is located directly under your business name. You get 160 characters to explain who you are and what you are going to be pinning about. This is where you might want to use your company mission statement or company tag line. Tip! Use Google Analytics to see what keywords and phrases drive people to your website and incorporate these keywords as well.
NOTE: Take advantage of every location Pinterest allows you to add content. Be very methodical with your choice of words. When you use keywords related to your company and industry, you have a better chance of showing up in the search results when someone searches for that particular keyword.
Your profile image should be an image that is easily recognizable and memorable for users. The image may simply be your logo, product, service, person, etc. Whatever it is, make sure it clearly represents your brand. TIP! The file name of the image affects alt text & image search results. Make sure your profile image name is also keyword rich.
Board Names: Make sure your board names don’t get truncated with an ellipsis either. You get approximately 20 characters to use. Get creative! Board titles should be captivating to entice people to click on them. Use keywords for board titles mixed with creative and unique keywords.
Board Description: Pinterest offers up to 500 characters for the board description. 500 characters is a lot of space and we don’t necessarily recommend using all 500 characters. People want their information short and sweet. Simply explain what your board topic is and what will you be pinning about. Again, keywords, keywords, keywords!
Pinterest Categories: When you create a board, Pinterest allows you to select a category that is most fitting for your board. By selecting a category, your board has a chance of showing up in that category page to be seen and pinned by other users.
Pins: You get another 500 characters for each pin. Again, keep it short and sweet. Explain what the pin is. TIP! You can add a live link right into the pin description. If your goal is to drive traffic back to your website, try adding a link as a test.
Re-Pinning: Make sure that you’re also pinning a healthy mix of non-competitive, third party and complementary pins to supplement your boards. When you re-pin, consider deleting what the previous pinner said and explain why you are pinning it to one of your company boards.
Verifying Your Website: If you haven’t done so already, verify your website on your Pinterest business account! Having a verified account means your account will have a site verified checkmark next to your business name. Doing this helps boost your profile in search results. It also tells users that you own the website associated with your account, no impostors here. 🙂
One of the biggest reasons to verify your account is to receive access to Pinterest Analytics. Pinterest Native Analytics is a fantastic free tool that will help you understand who your audience is, what pins and boards from your profile people love the most, what people like to save from your website, what devices people are using when they’re pinning your stuff and SO much more.
There are two ways to verify your account: with meta tags or by uploading an HTML file. You can refer to the Pinterest help section for how to set this up.
Features You Need to Know:Â
“Picked for you pins” are not promoted pins. No one is paying for these pins to show up in your feed. Pinterest is giving you these pins based on the pins you’ve pinned or clicked on, boards you follow and sites you may have visited. TIP! Use this as a business tool to get more ideas for boards and content ideas for your website.
Guided Search: Guided search is also a newer feature. Guided search helps give you more keyword ideas when you are searching within Pinterest. Pinterest is giving you other keyword ideas based on popularity and what others commonly search for.
TIP! Explore keyword recommendations in your niche. Start with your business name & see what comes up for recommendations. Then branch out with business related keywords and industry related keywords. Doing this exercise will help you come up with other board ideas and content you should have on your website for others to pin.
Take it a step Further:
Use the Pinterest search box and do some keyword research & optimization to your account. Start with your business name and go through the alpha pattern. Let’s use Maurices as an example. Begin by typing in Maurices A, Maurices B and so forth. See what Pinterest drops down in the search results. Pinterest is giving you commonly searched for results. Put these keyword recommendations in an Excel spreadsheet. Once you’ve gone through the whole alphabet, weed out what is irrelevant, and begin to create website content, boards and pin content that you know others are searching for related to your business & industry.
Gift Category & Featured Categories:
In the upper right corner of your business account, there’s a drop down where Pinterest has a new-featured section every couple of days. Consider creating a board that is similar to what Pinterest is currently promoting if it makes sense for your business.
Keep watch of the popular feed as well to gain an understanding of what is popular on the channel. Use this as a guide for content ideas.
If you are a product-based business, consider using product rich pins that display price, stock information and the website to purchase.
Rich pins are pins that include extra information directly on the pin itself. There are six types of pins currently available: app pins, place pins, article pins, product pins, recipe pins and movie pins. To get started, you’ll need to prep your website with meta tags, test out your rich pins and apply to get them on Pinterest.
If you have a blog or a lot of content on your website, consider applying for rich article pins. Article pins display the article headline, description and website in a neatly laid out visual.
Messages:
You can send messages to anyone that follows at least one of your boards. The message feature can be used as a marketing tool, as well. Pay attention to your notifications. When someone follows your business on Pinterest or pins/repins something, send them a message. Thank them for pinning & ask them if they have any questions. You want to interact, reply back, ask questions and start a dialogue. Doing this will help you start engagement and build community!
Is anyone pinning from your website? Even if you’re not currently using Pinterest, your audience may be using it for you. TIP! Use the below URL + your company URL to see anyone that has pinned anything from your website.
http://pinterest.com/source/YOURWEBSITE.com
This will show you what content people find pin worthy on your site currently. Analyze data to get an understanding of what content and visuals people enjoy… and make more of it!
Use this as a competitive analysis tool as well. Type in a competitors website to see what people are pinning from their website. What content and images do people enjoy most from their site? Analyze data and make adjustments to your website.
Measure the effect of cross channel paid organic social psychographic distribution.
What a mouthful! If you have a business Facebook account, follow these steps and see if it works for your business:
- Share a pin on your Facebook wall
- Boost the page post in Facebook to a highly targeted audience you create within Facebook.
- Drive QUALIFIED traffic from Facebook to Pinterest to gain followers and build awareness of your Pinterest business account.
The key to this test is to understand who your target audience is and build out a couple campaigns within your Facebook ads account. Facebook’s targeting capabilities are light-years ahead of Pinterest’s promoted pins. This can be a relatively cheap test to understand if driving traffic from Facebook into Pinterest will benefit you. Give it a try!
That wraps up a good chunk of the key tactical takeaways from our session. We hope you learned a lot and that you’ll apply these tips to your Pinterest Business account. Do you have any good Pinterest Business tips to share? Let us know in the comments below!
