Facebook & Twitter? I’m not Pinterested!

Pinterest is my favourite go-to place when I’ve read my weight in books and newspapers and to me it signifies some time for some feel-good inspiration. It’s easy to use, it’s not full of negative comments or shameless brags, and it adds value to my life in a creative, inspiring and positive way.

At a recent networking event with Red Magazine, Jo Malone told us that she was debating the future of using Facebook for her new brand Jo Loves, and potentially focusing significantly more time and effort on Pinterest because of the value it has for luxury brands. This inspired us to question whether Pinterest was in fact the only platform needed for luxury brands? You can read the blog post in full here.

With that in mind, we thought we’d give you some simple tips to help you use the Pinterest to its full potential, and answer the common questions we get asked many times from our trainees. If you are not familiar with Pinterest, head to our earlier blog post here first which gives you a quick introduction and some interesting stats.

Pinterest for Business

Businesses can use Pinterest to inspire customers and increase brand awareness. The innovative platform allows brands to strengthen the personality and ethos behind the brand through inspirational pins alongside product or service pins. Pinterest is best used to create the character behind the brand with, for example, lifestyle pins that show users the inspiration behind products. These types of pins greatly increase reach and in turn, changing consumers to passionate brand advocates.

The Key Features…

Profile

As with Facebook & Twitter, you will have a profile which includes a small place for a bio piece and link to your website. Your profile also displays your follower/following count, your likes and all of your Pinterest Boards containing your pins and repins (see below!). From your profile you can search for pins, and other boards you would like to follow. It’s a good idea to make your profile picture your brand logo, and ensure you have a compelling bio with searchable keywords.

Boards

Acting as an online pin board, your boards are where you categorise your pins. Users can follow all of your boards, or individual ones, so make sure you have a purpose for each of your boards, and keep them simple, defined and regularly updated with lots of creative, inspiring images. Don't forget to set your board cover image to one of the most engaging, eye-catching pins within that board to attract more users to view it. You can also move your boards around to have them in the order of your choice so if you have a particular board which you'd like to promote at any one time, move it to the top row of your Pinterest profile.

Original Pins

Brands can upload original pins that are unique to the business. Pinning products will be the easiest way to start, however remember high quality photography is the key here, the aim is to attract potential customers to repin your product pins or in fact buy on the spot so make sure your imagery shows off the features of your products – a significant 69% of Pinterest users have found at least one item that they’ve bought or wanted to buy. If you can, include a price banner as 36% of all pins with prices get more likes. Don’t forget you can pin videos too!

 Repins

As we discussed above, you can use your boards to reflect your brand through original pins but you can also repin other users pins that relate to your brand and boards. For example, if your business is an online surf shop, along with product pins, your lifestyle boards could include the best surfing spots around the world, life on the beach, the surfing bucket list and so on. By using boards in this way on Pinterest, the lifestyle represented will start to become synonymous with the brand, keeping consumers interested. However, remember to stay true to your brand and stay in your lane, make sure any repins represent your brand ethos.

Rich Pins

Rich pins are valuable for brands with consumer products, as they present your product pins with automatically updated details including pricing, availability and importantly where to buy at that exact moment. To start the process, you’ll need to ensure your business website is 'rich pin ready' with meta tags – it’s a good idea to have a chat with your web developer as they will need to help you here if you are not familiar with the term. Find out more information on rich pins here.

Creating a Successful Pinterest Presence...

Engage, Engage, Engage!

As with every social media platform it’s so important to make sure you regularly engage with users and not just expect consumers to find you. The more you put into it, the more you will get out. Pinterest gives you the opportunity to like and comment on other pins, so use these native features to build relationships.

Launch Innovative Competitions

Competitions are great to increase reach, engagement and your follower numbers. Like any social competition, make sure it adheres to Pinterest guidelines and includes clear entry mechanics, and before you run a lazy Pin to Win competition, embrace the opportunity with creativity – Pinterest likes this! Read the guidelines in full here.

Know Your Audience

As with any marketing activity, it’s so important to research and understand your audience. Keep in mind that one of the goals here is to attract your audience to repin and share your products with their friends, so clear knowledge of what your audience also likes (apart from your products) will enhance engagement. Remember to stay on trend too, try to keep within your business niche but pin what people are talking about, and factor in national awareness days (download our helpful calendar here), holidays and seasonal celebrations too. Take a look at our recent Pinterest blog post here to discover more about the demographics of 'pinners'.

Increase Traffic to your Pinterest Boards

Don't forget you can increase traffic from outside Pinterest too using your other online networks to reach more people. Here are a few key things to do:

• Optimise your website with the 'pin it' button – this allows users to directly pin from your website onto their Pinterest boards
• Direct existing customers from other social platforms to your Pinterest boards
• Include Pinterest on your marketing activity as you would with Facebook or Twitter – but remember when promoting it, make sure you give a reason for Pinners to follow you!

To find out how we are using Pinterest, head over and be inspired by our boards here.

If you are in need of some help & advice why not register for our latest online e-course with Skillshare, How to Create An Effective Facebook Strategy for just $23 (£14) here. 

To find out more about us head to www.bykatieandjane.com or sign up to our monthly newsletter here for regular social media tips, advice and news of our latest App release! 

Katie x