2023 Pinterest Strategy
Pinterest is one of the biggest platforms out there for web traffic and conversions, so why aren’t you taking it seriously? Popular opinion seems to be that Pinterestis a soft and fluffy social media site made exclusively for craft almond moms and Bridzillas…let me tell you this is 100% not the case. Pinterest seriously flied under the radar as a practical marketing tool and today I'm going to convince you to add it to your marketing strategy.
Well…I’ve already told a lie here, but Pinterest is not a social media platform, it’s a visual search engine. But whatever you call it, Pinterest is significantly easier to aster than the likes of Facebook and Instagram. Pinterest has almost unrestricted organic reach and an easy learning curve, and thanks to that the major updates are fewer and far between.
Although you might be tempted to label Pinterest as small, the numbers would beg to differ. The visual search engine attracts 200 million monthly active users, over 2 billion monthly searches, and over 100 billion monthly pins.
Still not convinced that Pinterest is where you need to be? How about this—the visual nature of the site gets people in a shopping mood, driving much more legitimate purchase intent decisions than any other social network. Check it out:
87% of pinners have purchased something they’ve seen on the site and 93% have used Pinterest to plan future purchases
Pinterest drives 17% of traffic to ecommerce sites
⅔ of Pins showcase a brand or product
The best thing about Pinterest is that it has staying power. If you’re more interested in spending time creating long-lasting evergreen content versus creating ephemeral content (a la Stories on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat), then Pinterest might just be your perfect fit business social network.
Evergreen content on Pinterest has the longest half-life of all social sites—151,200 minutes (That’s 105 days!). Compare this to 90 minutes for a Facebook post and 24 minutes for a Tweet and your time spent on Pinterest marketing can already prove a better return.
Don’t forget to read our related post on the topic: Visual Content Strategy: How to Use Visuals to Get More Traffic.
But before you jump on the Pinterest bandwagon, take a second to work out if it’s right for your brand.
How to use Pinterest on your Blog
As far as referral traffic goes, Pinterest has the potential to be your new best friend. This alone makes it worth trialing for your social media strategy.
Content on Pinterest is displayed very differently compared to other social media platforms. Showing content as “pins”, these visual tiles are a much [prettier than your typical Google results page.
The approach makes it easier for your audience to find you’re content when they’re interested in what you’re offering. Taking people past the awareness stage and focusing specifically on people looking to be converted
There are several ways to incorporate Pinterest with your website, and three areas in which to optimize Pinterest:
Profile
Boards
Pins
Best practices on Pinterest
There are several ways you can increase the visibility of your Pinterest images, like making them more aesthetically pleasing, using images that accurately reflect your content, and implementing an SEO-like strategy to your descriptions.
Using the right image size
Images that are posted to the platform are scaled. An image’s width scales to 236 pixels, so when. you click to expand a given Pins image, the image will scale to a width of about 564 pixels and the height will scale accordingly.
According to Pinterest, the best image aspect ratios are between a 2:3 and 1:3.5 (width to height), with a minimum width of 600 pixels.
Using the right Pinterest keywords
Pinterest is one of the biggest search engines on the internet, so treat it as such with regards to you keywords research and usage. Although a full explainer on Pinterest SEO is outside the scope of this article (let me know if you’re interested in a free downloadable of this), the principals are largely the same as SEO for Google.
My quick tips:
Use your favourite keyword research tool and compare results with the more niche Pinterest Keyword tool.
Make sure you optimise your Pins, boards, and your profile.
Using your keywords, build up to 20+ boards with 100+ Pins each.
Pinterest features and tools you need to know about
Pinterest has really stepped up from being a simple online [pinning board, to providing features that support its business and marketing functions.
Pinterest business accounts
Pinterest rolled out its business accounts feature back in 2012 - making it easy for those looking to convert their personal account into a business account for free. If you’re a business thats now just getting started with Pinterest, you can directly sign up for a business account.
Creating a Pinterest Business account means access to additional features and capabilities that include:
Educational content for better using the platform, like case studies and Pinterest best practices
Exclusive Business account features, such as Rich Pins, Promoted Pins (Pinterest Ads) and Buyable Pins
Analytics, which like other social media analytics suites, help you understand how people are engaging with your company: on Pinterest and beyond.
Pinterest Analytics
The Pinterest Analytics suite analyzes data in three categories:
Your Pinterest Profile: Shows data broken down into four sections: impressions, saves (repins), clicks, and All-Time.
People you Reach: Details about people who see your Pins, follow your boards, or interacted with your content in some way. This also shows which countries and cities most of your audience comes from, gender, language, and more.
Activity From Your Website: To access this feature, Pinterest will require you to verify your site and once you do, you will be able to see what content people are engaging with most from your website. You’ll also be able to see impressions, saves (Re-Pins), and clicks for Pins linking back to your site as a daily average.
Rich Pins
When you sign up for a Pinterest business account, you’ll get access to Rich Pins. Rich Pins are Pins that provide additional context about a Pin—a concept similar to rich snippets if you’re familiar with SEO.
There are four types of Rich Pins:
App: Shows the Install button to encourage a download; only compatible with iOS apps as of this writing.
Article: Helps Pinners save stories that matter to them by displaying a headline, author, and blurb about the article.
Product: Makes shopping easier. Includes pricing, availability, and where you can buy the product.
Recipe: Includes information such as ingredients, prep time, and cooking instructions to Pins featuring a recipe.
Are you ready to add in Pinterest?
Seriously I can not say it enough, Pinterest NEEDS to be apart of your digital marketing and social media strategy if it isn’t already. I know bringing on a new platform can feel scary., but Pinterest has been around for years, it’s reliable, and most importantly, it brings results.
Want to hire an expert to help you learn Pinterest? I provide freelance Pinterest Management and Consultancy to help businesses hit the ground running. Just send me your details here and I’ll be in touch.