My virtual assistants love Pinterest and are doing some cool, interesting things for our clients, like exploding their blog traffic.
What is Pinterest and why consider using it for your business? It does what it’s meant to do — connect people to the things they’re interested in, unlike other social media platforms that connects people with people.
Despite its misconceptions, Pinterest is a great marketing platform for businesses with content (blog or videos). Pinterest is many things, but one thing it’s not is a social media platform……well, not strictly anyway. It has some social features, like followers and comments, but that’s not the heart of what Pinterest is.
Pinterest is like a search engine that allows users to discover and share products and info in a visual way. It’s the go-to spot to discover new brands, products, and ideas. Users share, save, comment, and click content that resonates with them to create a virtual pin board of their wants, likes and needs.
It allows users to engage with the content they discover, which is an excellent place for marketing your business.
Some of our clients are using Pinterest to:
– Grow their email list
– Bring traffic to blogs or websites
– Sell products or services
– Affiliate products
Because users are there to search for ideas and info, all of these are attainable on Pinterest. Pinning is addictive too. In other words, users aren’t there to do the normal social media activities like chat with friends or check out the latest news.
One thing to remember is to not get hung up with follower numbers. A lot of followers aren’t needed to hit your Pinterest goals because it’s a search engine. Your content will come up in search feeds even if the user isn’t following you.
Another great Pinterest take-away is the effectiveness of a pin, which has a tremendously long shelf-life. When compared to Twitter (27 seconds) and Facebook (90 minutes) Pinterest’s half-life is 3.5 months, which means it takes 3.5 months for a pin to get 50 percent of its max engagement.
Okay, that’s huge. Even after a pin hits its max, the content you shared a year ago can still be contributing to your goals consistently. A pin never dies unless it’s deleted from the platform (by you or Pinterest directly).
(Read more here: https://www.webfx.com/blog/social-media/why-pinterest-better-than-facebook-brands/)
Here are some more stats. According to Pinterest.com, 77 percent of users use Pinterest to discover new brands or products and 98 percent have tried or purchased from what they’ve discovered on Pinterest.
So how do you get started?
1) Create a business account. It’s simple and it’s free. You can either convert a personal account to a business account or start from scratch. Having a business account gives you access to a variety of features, like Pinterest ads, promoted pins and analytics. It also allows you to verify your website with Pinterest and connect your other social media accounts directly to your Pinterest like Instagram and YouTube.
2) Create your profile. This consists of adding a profile image (or logo), business name and a short description. Next step is to create your boards, which will house both your content and shared content related to your niche and interests. You can create public boards (which are seen by other Pinterest users on your profile) or private (which are only seen by you).
Having at least one board to house all of your content is essential. Keep that one right at the top of your board list so it’s the first thing users see when they land on your profile.
Pinterest thrives on discovery and collaboration, so it’s important to remember that while it’s essential to create your own content or pins to share on Pinterest, it’s equally important to share others’ content as well. The more you grow and help others grow, the better experience you’ll have.
3) Share and get creative. Find content related to your niche and add them to your boards. Pinterest loves active users, so the more you pin, the better your profile will perform. You can either pin straight from inside the Pinterest platform or by using a scheduling tool like Tailwind.
Group boards are a big part of this. These are basically boards where a number of users can collaborate and share content related to a similar niche. It’s a great way for like-minded businesses to help each other grow across the Pinterest space.
Pins and video are the only way to share content, so do some searches for similar content to see what your fellow pinners are pinning about and how they design their pins. It’s also a great way to get ideas for how to create pins that’ll work for your business. Even if you don’t have a creative bone in your body, online tools like Canva and PicMonkey make the designing process easy and effective. Just be sure to keep things consistent with colors and fonts.
Designing your pins gives you the freedom to create different designs for the same content over and over again.
So Pinterest is a visual way for your business to be seen. And to create a marketing strategy that works for your business to hit your goals.
If you’re new to Pinterest or have dabbled in it and want to know how to bring more traffic to your site, you’ve come to the right spot.
We’re offering a new service that trains small business owners individually on all things Pinterest. From the whys behind everything, to strategy, analytics, metrics and more. To get started, you must have fifteen blog posts or videos so there’s enough content to share to get the traffic results you want.
If you’re interested, ring me up at 612-789-0304 or send an email to angie@angco.biz
Yours in the adventure,
Angie
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