How To Use Pinterest For Business: 5 Marketing Ideas You’ll Enjoy

Like other social networks, Pinterest gives you incredible opportunities to promote your online business with no extra costs. Here are the 5 simple steps to make it work.

It’s fantastic if you know how to promote your store on Instagram.

It’s awesome if you understand how to use Facebook for the same purposes.

But these are not the only social networks that can be efficiently used to boost your store traffic!

Today, let’s talk about Pinterest: a specific social network that can also serve as a powerful promotional tool for your business. Browsing Pinterest, users go through countless pictures, GIFs, and videos brought together from all across the internet and organized in a convenient way. People go here to look for interesting ideas of craft, fashion, design, cooking, and may more. Enjoying the countless visuals, visitors get inspired to try out these ideas, too – and hopefully, do it with the use of your products! So, how can you make Pinterest work for your business? And most importantly, how can you do it with the lowest expenses possible – or, preferably, for a zero cost? Let’s discuss the options!

And to begin with, we’ll take a look at some Pinterest statistics to see why it’s crucial for your online business to have a strong presence on this social network.

Why it is a good idea to promote business on Pinterest

Here are some numbers for you to consider:

There are 335 million active Pinterest users (as of the end of 2019)

Just imagine what a huge audience you can reach through thoughtful promotion.

Over 65% of Pinterest users are female

It means you have an opportunity to reach a specific segment of your target audience, so it’s a good place to start.

85% of Pinterest users access it from mobile

You see? You have a chance to directly interact with progressive and open-minded audience that actively uses the newest technologies.

On average, people search something on Pinterest over 2 billion times every month

In other words, this social network is actually popular, and Internet users think that this is a nice source of information.

Pinterest became the third-biggest social media platform in the US by the end of 2019

It’s your moment to shine!

48% of Pinterest audience uses it for shopping

After viewing photos (57%), shopping (48%) is the second most popular activity for Pinterest users. Interestingly, for Facebook users, shopping is only 7^th most popular activity, while Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter also show lower shopping engagement rate. Doesn’t that make Pinterest just the perfect spot to carry out your promo campaigns?

Pins showing a product in action are 67% more likely to trigger sales

Well, there’s nothing even to comment on 🙂 If you want your audience to fall in love with your offers and try them out ASAP, be as visual as possible! Luckily, Pinterest has everything it takes to put your products in the spotlight.

So, now, when you see how important it is to promote your store on Pinterest, let’s talk about the mechanics. There is nothing super difficult, and you can safely use these basic steps to include Pinterest into your marketing strategy and increase the efficiency of your marketing efforts.

Setting up an business account on Pinterest

Basically, similar to other social networks, Pinterest gives you an opportunity to run either a personal or a business account.

For a number of reasons, a business Pinterest account is better than a personal one. Even though it has some specific terms of service preventing you from posting spammy or misleading content, at the same time, it offers you numerous extended benefits:

Extra educational resources

From technical pins specifications to content planning, from board organization tips to creative practices, Pinterest authors share helpful materials to assist new users.

Advertising opportunities

Even though these are not the subject of this article, there are ways to launch paid promotions on Pinterest and generate money-making content on the platform. For online store owners willing to scale their businesses, this is an exciting offer!

Data tracking

To measure the efficiency of your activity on the platform, you can explore Pinterest stats and analytics. This is how you get a clear idea of your account performance and possible areas of improvement.

Let’s concentrate on the basic rules of running any type of Pinterest account! We’ll talk about a general Pinterest strategy you can follow WITHOUT ANY EXTRA COSTS, promoted pins, etc.

The first thing you need to consider when you create your Pinterest account is its name. The best idea is to simply use the name of your business because:

It’s the first thing people see when they visit this page
It’s perfect for your brand recognition
It is good for SEO

Of course, it’s wise to also pay attention to the profile picture: ideally, the best solution is to take your store logo.

And finally, setting up your Pinterest profile, don’t forget to write a catchy ‘About’ section! You have 160 characters to introduce yourself, describe your business, and motivate people to look through your boards and pins. Quite a tempting challenge, right?

TIP: include your online store address in your profile description. It will be really helpful for people who got interested in your posts and decided to check out the store offer as well.

How to use Pinterest for business: connection and integration

After you’ve mentioned your store address in your Pinterest account, make sure that your website, in turn, is also integrated with this social media.

It’s really easy, and you can do it in a number of ways.

Go to the Widget Builder page on Pinterest – here you can choose any of the possible options to connect your store to the social network:

‘Follow’ button – by clicking it, a person automatically follows your account on Pinterest
‘Save’ button that lets people save any picture from your website
Pin widget that shows one of your pins on your website
Board widget that shows one of your boards on your website
Profile widget that shows a miniature of your profile on your website

That’s it! Now, you can be sure it’s much easier for your audience to navigate your content, keep notes of the ideas they like, and come back to your outstanding offers. Customer satisfaction is key to your successful business management, and you’re now one step closer to providing it at its fullest.

TIP: connect your personal account in Pinterest to all the other social networks’ accounts your store has. Such integration will help you get more followers because your profile viewers will be able to easily go from one account to another.

Website optimization for Pinterest

As soon as your store gets fully integrated with your Pinterest account, it’s time to look at the website and check if it is Pinterest-friendly.

What do we mean?

People won’t be able to pin and save pictures from your store if it doesn’t have any!

When you write articles for your store blog, make sure that every post has at least one picture in it.

Of course, if you are interested in sharing content and want readers to click Pin it button, the pictures should be bright, clear, and of high quality. A good-looking picture is likely to be shared on Pinterest more often, so take your time to choose the nicest ones.

TIP: edit the images you post in your articles, and add watermarks to them. This is exceptionally important for your products’ photos, and not for generic stock images you take from the Internet. Make sure that the watermark is clearly visible, but not too big and bright. It shouldn’t distract viewers from the image itself, and it shouldn’t overlay important details of the image.

How to use Pinterest for business: content strategy

Now, it’s time to discuss what exactly you need to post in your Pinterest feed.

Here are the core rules to follow when you run your Pinterest account:

Use visually appealing images that motivate your followers to make further action (repin the image, click on the provided link, visit your website, and eventually make a purchase).
When you post the pictures showing the items you sell, try to demonstrate the product from different angles, and show all of its variations. If you carefully select your products on AliExpress, it won’t be a problem for you to take multiple good photos from the original seller’s description.
Pin images that are related to your business and to your store niche. It should be interesting and entertaining for people to look through your account, so mix promotional posts with more generic images.
Take your images from different sources: if all of the pictures are obviously taken from 2-3 websites, it soon gets boring. People come on Pinterest for inspiration and clever ideas, which is why you need to give them what they want.
Become an enlightener and teacher for your followers! Tell them useful tips and tricks, educate them, share own stories and experience, and they will gladly wait for the newest Pinterest pin to learn something more about your products and niches. The more useful is your content, the more often your posts will be repinned.
Be really careful about the descriptions under your pins! Don’t forget to include your store links when necessary, and add a clear call-to-action. When your post gets repinned, its description is shared, too. Therefore, the whole Pinterest community gets the chance to learn more about your wonderful business. And of course, you want people to find these posts easily, so mind the relevant hashtags and keywords.

TIP: don’t forget about technical requirements. Pinterest is mostly viewed from mobile devices, and the platform has some recommendations about the pictures’ aspect ratio. The best one is 1:3,5 (it means, for example, 100×350 pixels, or 200×700… well, you got the idea). Such narrow vertically oriented pins stand out from other pictures, and also, they look great when a person scrolls down the page. Don’t miss out such an easy chance to grab their attention!

Managing Pinterest boards for business

To structure and organize your posts in a clear and nice-looking way, you need to create boards. A board is a thematic selection of your pins dedicated to a specific narrow topic. For example, if your account is dedicated to the jewelry pieces you’re selling, you can create separate boards for every product category, let’s say, Earrings, Bracelets, Finger Rings, Pendants, Necklaces and New Arrivals.

The more Pinterest boards you have, the more subjects you can cover. Therefore, you have more opportunities to reshare pins between boards (when appropriate). Stick to one topic per board, and don’t get carried away with posting irrelevant images.

Pay attention to the board names – they should be short, recognizable, and catchy because they also get shared when you pin something. The same goes for board descriptions: fill them with relevant keywords so that people could easily find this type of content and quickly understand what’s the topic of the board.

Remember that you can rearrange the boards and place the most important 5 of them on the top of your page. You can change their position as often as you like if you want to promote specific products and item sets from your store. And of course, it’s a good idea to highlight the most popular boards to instantly grab your new visitors’ attention! Take note of your boards performance so that you could identify the ones with the highest engagement, and make sure to put them on top.

Also, it’s a great idea to create a separate board solely dedicated to your in-store blog posts. You might want to keep it pinned at the top of your page, too. This way, your guests will see it instantly and visit your store more regularly, providing it with a steady source of traffic.

TIP: Don’t forget about seasonal boards when you prepare your store for a holiday. Setting a special mood and creating a lovely source of inspiration will work like a charm!

That’s it! Explore Pinterest, include it into your social media marketing strategy and use it wisely to efficiently promote your dropshipping store!