How to Use Pinterest to Market Your Small Business
Have you ever heard of Pinterest for small business marketing?
Well, it is most certainly a thing, and we think every entrepreneur across all industries should take advantage of this incredible tool.
Trust us. Pinterest is useful for so much more than just pinning to your vision boards. And it’s one social media platform that small business owners often forget about, which means there’s plenty of opportunity and room for you to go ahead and tap in!
Using Pinterest for business is an excellent way to show off your products and services to the nearly 450 million (!) monthly active users who are on the platform searching for inspiration and resources that your business could supply them with.
So, are you ready to show the people what you’ve got and connect potential customers to your brand? In this blog post, we’re going to cover all the Pinterest marketing basics to get your Pinterest strategy for your business up and running, including:
What is Pinterest marketing for business?
How to set up a Pinterest Business account.
How to use Pinterest for marketing and Pinterest Business best practices.
Let’s get right to it!
What is Pinterest Marketing for Business?
If you’re wondering if there’s a different platform where Pinterest Pins for businesses live, there’s not. Pinterest marketing for businesses takes place on the same platform where you pull all your favorite dinner recipes and outfit inspirations from!
The popular vision board tool isn’t just that, but it’s a visual search engine and one of the biggest ones out there. We think Pinterest itself explains it best on their Pinterest Business page:
“People are here to find new ideas and take action, rather than simply liking other people’s posts or scrolling through the latest news. That means they’re actively seeking content from brands, merchants and creators.”
And that could be you! 80% of weekly Pinterest users have discovered a new brand or product on Pinterest, and getting your content in front of those people is what Pinterest marketing is all about.
When you combine strategy and content to your pinning activity on Pinterest to reach new audiences and build awareness for your products or services, that’s Pinterest marketing. And now that you know what it is, let’s move on to setting up your business account on Pinterest!
How to Create Your Pinterest Business Account
If you have a personal account on Pinterest already, that’s great. You can easily convert it into a business account (here’s a guide), or you can keep them separate and create a new account.
To get started creating your Pinterest Business account, head to business.pinterest.com.
Step One:
Click the Sign Up Button.
Step Two:
Enter in your information: email, password, and age.
Step Three:
Tap Create Account.
Step Four:
Enter your business details! It’ll ask for your brand’s name, website, country, and language.
And here’s a pro tip for you: Instead of just leaving your business name as it is, add some descriptive keywords at the end that could help users find you. For example, say you are a wedding planner, and your business name is “Taylor’s Events.”
You could make your username on Pinterest something that works best for Pinterest SEO like, “Taylor’s Events | Texas Wedding Planner | Event Marketing Ideas.”
Pinterest allows a maximum of 65 characters, so use them all to your advantage!
Step Five:
Determine your brand’s focus from the drop-down menu, and then select your business type from the “Describe Your Brand” page.
Step Six:
It’s time to build that profile! Add a high-quality profile picture and your descriptive bio for your Pinterest Business profile, and remember to keep your keywords in mind when writing your bio, too.
You only get 160 characters, but that’s more than enough to answer the following questions:
Who are you?
What do you do?
Who do you do it for?
Where do you do it?
Now that you’ve created your business profile, let’s move on to what exactly you should do with it.
How to Use Pinterest Marketing for Your Business
When it comes down to it, your main objectives for Pinterest as a small business owner are to:
Distribute your engaging content.
Optimize your Pins for SEO.
Drive website traffic and boost sales.
Let’s break this down more in-depth with some helpful strategies along the way!
1. Distribute engaging content.
Pinterest is a visual search engine like we said before, so of course, you’re going to need some high-quality content to participate and stand out!
Website content can easily be distributed on Pinterest by saving images or videos as Pins and then linking your Pins back to desired pages on your website. Users can discover your Pins, click-through, and bam! They’ve landed right on your latest blog or even a product page.
It’s best practice to organize your Pins using Pinterest boards, so followers and users can easily find the type of content they’re searching for. In addition, joining in on group boards, which are community boards that different contributors can add Pins to, are a great way to increase engagement and get your content in front of more eyeballs!
2. Optimize Pins for SEO.
You want your Pins to be easy to find in a search, so include keywords in your Pins’ descriptions and in your description for your boards, too. But, as always with SEO keywords, avoid stuffing them in unnaturally.
The most straightforward way to find your keywords is to type in a related phrase to your Pin’s topic or brand into the search bar on Pinterest, and then use the related auto-fill search phrases as your keywords!
3. Drive website traffic and boost sales.
We touched on this in the first objective, but what sets Pinterest apart from other social media platforms is that it allows users to actually click-through the visual content to another website.
And guess what? This works the opposite way around, too! You can integrate Pinterest on your website, which would allow visitors to Pin images on your website and reveal your Pinterest Business profile where they could follow you and engage with you there!
So, not only does Pinterest help you lead people to your website where they’ll hopefully be interested in learning more about your brand and eventually making a purchase, but Pinterest marketing is a powerful way to build community!
Start marketing your small business on Pinterest today!
Pinterest is one online platform that is largely untapped by businesses and brands, so take advantage of this powerful tool now! Marketing on Pinterest helps you organically increase your brand awareness, boost conversions, and create connections with your target audiences that you might not have otherwise.
Why not give it a shot, and report back to us to let us know how it’s going!
If you liked this post, Pin it to Pinterest! 👇🏽