PINTEREST MARKETNG TIPS

   Why is Pinterest So Powerful?

 If you’re a marketer and you’re not on Pinterest, then you’re missing out on one of the biggest and the most flexible/powerful platforms out there. Pinterest may not be quite as big as Facebook in terms of pure users but it’s actually not as far behind as you might think. What’s more, it has a ton of unique features that present excellent opportunities for the savvy marketer. 

The main problem that brands seem to have when it comes to Pinterest is that they don’t see how they can get it to relate to them. Pinterest is very visual and creative, it’s made up of images that people pin to their ‘boards’ and that others can then comment on or ‘re-pin’. Thus it clearly lends itself to companies that have an artistic, trendy, stylish or visual side. But how can this possibly be useful for a company that sells life insurance? Or for a blogger who is promoting the ‘work online’ lifestyle?

 And seeing as Facebook and Twitter are so much bigger, does it really matter?

 Well the first thing you should get out of your head is the idea that Pinterest isn’t that big. In fact, Pinterest currently has 100 million users which is really pretty massive – and a subset of the market that you just can’t ignore. Also interesting is that 85% of those 100 million users are female. This is quite unique for any social network and provides you with a great way to reach a female audience – something that a lot of blogs and brands could stand to do a little more effectively. 42% of all adult women in the US use Pinterest which is massive – and actually 13% of males do which is still rather significant.

 And while Pinterest has a ton of users, it also has the advantage of being a platform that visitors can enjoy without signing up. That means that your potential reach is in fact much larger than you might at first have thought.

 Pinterest is also one of the fastest growing platforms and is expected to acquire another 47.5 million users in 2015. 

 Page 4 So you need to be on Pinterest and this is especially true once you realise that there are plenty of ways you can succeed on the platform even if your niche isn’t terribly creative or visual. Over the course of this book we’ll look at some more creative and imaginative approaches that you can take to your Pinterest marketing and we’ll see how many other brands have managed to take the network by storm.

 Better yet, you’ll find that Pinterest is actually one of the easiest social networks to manage and maintain. The amount of time and money you’ll invest here is miniscule, and especially when compared with the amount you stand to gain. This is a very high ROI and it demands your attention!

 With that in mind, this book is going to act as your comprehensive guide to mastering Pinterest. By the end, you’ll know everything you need to know to get set up and to start building a massive audience. What’s more, we’ll go over some advanced strategies and techniques you can employ to get one step ahead of the competition and to accelerate your growth trajectory. You’ll be armed with unrivalled knowledge of the platform and you’ll be poised and ready to become a real force to be reckoned with on the platform. Specifically, you will learn: 

 .How Pinterest works and what makes it different from other platforms  

. How to get started with your own Pinterest boards  

.How the top brands on Pinterest are making use of the platform  

. How to save time using plugins and other tools   

.How to market your Pinterest board through other forms of social media, email and more 

. How to create stunning content that is destined to succeed on Pinterest  

.Growth hack techniques for gaining more users more quickly 

. What to expect from Pinterest moving forward Page

 Pinterest Basics 

Hopefully that’s convinced you that you should start paying more attention to Pinterest. The next question then is… how? How does Pinterest work? What does it offer that’s different from other social networks? And how do you go about getting set up? 

 Essentially, Pinterest works by allowing you to create ‘mood boards’. Anyone who has done an art course will be familiar with this term. For everyone else, a mood board is essentially a collage made up of images and other materials that you’ve found on the web. This lets you collect images and notes from anywhere online and to categorize them in one spot as a ‘board’. These boards can then be shared by other users and brands and you can follow either individual boards or users if you’d like to see more that they’ve created or collected.

 To find images to pin to your boards, you can either browse other boards and then ‘repin’ the content you like, you can save images from the web and use social sharing buttons, or you can create your own content to upload to the site. You can use the inbuilt search tools in Pinterest to search for users, for boards or for specific items. If you want to see images of ‘futuristic fonts’ for instance, then you can search for that string and you’ll be provided with a ton of images that other people and brands have pinned. Images have hashtags on them which describe their content and this then helps you when you’re searching for more content. 

The key difference that Pinterest has when compared to something like Facebook then, is that the social aspect is actually not at the forefront. You can keep the boards you create as ‘private’ if you like and this then means that no one else will see them. This means you can use it simply to collect ideas for your own projects or for your general inspiration – and CEO Ben Silbermann actually describes the tool as a ‘catalogue of ideas’ rather than a social network. His hope is that it can be used to inspire to people to, in his words, ‘go do that thing’.

 Page 6 Once you’re following a number of boards and users, you’ll also be able to see pins that your contacts have pinned or commented on. You’ll also images based on similar pins you have uploaded. This creates a ‘homefeed’ of sorts that you can browse just to find images you might find interesting or inspiring, or to see what your friends are up to.

 Not sure what you want to search for? You can also use a button along the top in order to browse popular pins in specific categories – whether that’s fashion, wedding, sports, art, architecture or pets.

 Like any social network, Pinterest also offers a plethora of social elements. Other than using it to browse different users’ content and edit it, it can also allow you to post comments on the pins you like (or don’t like!), or to re-pin the content you enjoy and thereby share it with your own network. It’s also possible to invite people to edit your boards and to set them up to be informed every time you add a new pin to it. This is a great feature for working on collaborative projects for instance and the boards are known as ‘group boards’. 

There are many more features to Pinterest than this. In fact, even if you have been using Pinterest for a while there’s a very good chance that you won’t have seen everything it has to offer and that you won’t know all the different things you can do with the platform. Further in this book, we’ll be looking at some of those more advanced features in more detail and seeing how you can utilize them for marketing benefits. 

Popular Uses for Pinterest 

So then, what do most people use Pinterest for? 

As mentioned, Pinterest essentially revolves around mood boards which are designed to provide inspiration or to collect ideas. 

One of the most popular types of boards that users will create for this purpose as an example are ‘wedding boards’. When an engaged couple begin planning their wedding, they will often start by creating a Pinterest board and then looking for inspiration. They’ll then look at boards created by other users and search for ideas for wedding dresses, 

for wedding locations, for table decorations, for cakes, for suits etc. (or they may create separate boards for each of those things). 

 Either way, they can then find new ideas and inspiration to guide their decisions and they can put all of these ideas into one spot to serve as a reference. Because you can work on boards collaboratively, the bride and groom can both go about looking for different ideas together at the same time and add them to the board so they can both see them. They can also add their own notes to read later, etc. 

If you have photos on your computer of a wedding you’ve been to and really enjoyed meanwhile, you can upload photos from there. Or you can write notes and draw sketches and upload those as pins. 

You can also show other people those same ideas to see what your maid of honor thinks of your ideas so far for example, or you can let other users see your board and get inspiration from you that way. 

There are many other common ways that Pinterest gets used. Here are just a few:  

.Collecting images that you find appealing/inspiring

 .Collating ideas and inspiration for a new web design/app UI 

 .Getting ideas for interior design 

 .Browsing products and ‘window shopping’ 

 .Putting together inspirational images to get you into the gym (moves, ‘goal physiques’ etc.) 

  .Staying updated with your favorite brand in a more visual manner 

 .Looking at fashion and outfit ideas for clothes 

 .Researching tattoo ideas 

 .And much more

 Of course what we’re really interested in though, using Pinterest as a marketing tool… 

 Marketing With Pinterest 

Now you know the basics of how Pinterest works, it’s time to look at how this can be used by marketers and why Pinterest is such a powerful tool beyond just being a big platform to reach a large audience. 

What features in particular make Pinterest a good choice for your business? How do you go about using it to promote your website or company? 

As mentioned, a lot of people will use Pinterest primarily for researching ideas and getting inspiration. If they enjoy interior design, graphic design, fashion or fitness, they’ll likely have lots of boards relating to that topic.

 What’s more, they’ll probably be following some other boards created by big brands in those areas. As a brand, your objective is to be ‘one of those brands’ that people follow and to use this as a prime opportunity to show off your products, your services and your website so that you get more visitors and more business. 

 This is particularly easy if you should happen to work in one of the industries that is particularly popular on Instagram. If you create wedding decorations for instance, then all you need to do is to create a board dedicated to these and then let people pin the items they find there or just browse your site for ideas. 

The more people you can get to follow you, the more people will see your products, will be exposed to your brand and will likely buy your items. This ultimately means you can get a lot of traffic and engagement from a well thought-out Pinterest board. What will help here is the ability to easily add links to your website and specific articles and blog posts.

 If you choose to ‘Pin From the Web’, you can then type in an URL and select an image from that website to go along with it. Under the pin, it will then say ‘Pinned from’ and you can click that to follow through to the blog post or article where it was originally posted. 

This means that people can follow your boards to stay up-to-date with your new articles and blog posts if they want as well, which they may choose to do if Pinterest is their preferred platform. Page 9 Beyond the basic features, there are also some more advanced options and tools on Pinterest that are going to be especially useful for marketers. One example is ‘Article Rich Pins’. 

These have been around since September 2013 and they basically take the central concept of posting links to blogs and articles and build on it. These allow you to share links as you already could but the additional advantage is that you can add extra information about the article – such as the title, the site name, the description and the author. 

This makes your blog and article links considerably more appealing and it encourages people to sign up automatically. Article rich pins are actually just one of the advance types of ‘rich pins’ available for marketers and we’ll be looking at more in further detail later in this book. Another relatively new and big feature of Pinterest that is particularly interesting for marketers is the ‘buyable pins’ tool. 

This was introduced relatively recently (June 2015) so not every marketer is making full use of it. As the name suggests, buyable pins are pins showing products that are for sale. So if you should be browsing the site and see an item of clothing, a desktop accessory, or maybe a piece of furniture that you like, then you can simply click to buy it. In the iPad and iPhone apps, the ‘Pin It’ button is now accompanied by a ‘Buy It’ button that lets users immediately buy the products they’re interested in.

 By the end of the very first month, there were already 2 million of these pins on the site. Pinterest has long been popular as a tool for ‘window shopping’. When users are looking through other brand boards because they’re looking for ideas for wedding decorations, things to wear or things to decorate their house with, they will often then follow the links to buy the products, or later look up the product.

 But now with buyable pins, they can buy the product straight through Pinterest itself. This turns your Pinterest board into an ecommerce store, essentially meaning that anything on your site can now be easily bought. If you imagine that someone has taken a lot of time amassing a selection of items they find inspiring for their wedding, this means they can now eventually whittle that selection down just to the things they want Page 10 and click ‘buy’. 

This creates the barrier to sale and makes it a much thinner line between ‘discovery’ and sale. It’s very simple and easy and it’s a very tempting new option for businesses. Finally, Pinterest also provides a large amount of analytics data. 

To get access to this you’ll need to convert your personal account to a ‘business account’ and at the same time, you’ll need to verify your account. From there, you’ll then be able to see what pins are getting pinned from your website or blog. This in turn lets you see which content is really performing well and engaging your audience.

 That’s right, if you want to take full advantage of the analytics features on Pinterest, then you need to upgrade to a business account. And there are other advantages of making this switch too. Can you promote your blog or business with a personal account? Of course you can: to an extent. But there are some considerable advantages of making the switch. 

For starters, Pinterest actually requires you to make your Pinterest account a business one if you intend on using it to profit. While it’s unlikely they’ll clamp down on you for posting links to your website, you should switch if you want to tow the official line. Their statement on the matter is: “If you’re using Pinterest as part of how you make a living, whether by driving traffic to a blog that makes you some money or to build your personal brand to find customers for your products or services, you should sign up for a business account and agree to our Business Terms of Service.”

 From here, you’ll then be able to display your company or brand name as the title of your Pinterest profile instead of your first and last name, you’ll be able to get insider tips and strategies from Pinterest (they provide a lot of free educational materials) and you’ll be able to verify your website.

 As mentioned, it’s this latter step that enables you to see which of your photos and images are getting shared on Pinterest, getting repined and getting commented on. Page 11 Verifying your URL also has another benefit – it adds your hyperlink to the top of your profile. This now means that anyone who discovers your Pinterest account will now be able to quickly discover your website as well and that means more traffic, more ad clicks, more sales etc. Business accounts are also allowed to host contests through their Pinterest, which is something we’ll be looking at more further on in this book. The Pinterest Interface When you first log into Pinterest, it can be a little overwhelming and daunting. 

The site looks very different to something like Twitter or Facebook and at first, the navigation might not seem that intuitive. How do you find the boards you like the looks of? How do you find your way around? When you’re first signed up and logged in, you’ll be greeted by your home-feed which will take up the majority of the screen real-estate. This will consist of images and pins from top users, boards and brands. It will also include content from anyone that you might have already started following. 

Underneath the images are tags which work a lot like tags in Twitter or other social media sites. You can also see the comments that were added by whoever initially uploaded the image and you can see the person you know who pinned it (or it might say that it was ‘picked for you’ based on your interests).

 From here, you can simply hover your mouse over any images that you want to find out more about and you’ll see an option to ‘like’, to ‘pin’ or to send. If you click the image itself, it will become full screen and you’ll see the board it came from along the right, as well as more pins from the website that it was found on. 

Underneath, you also have the option to add your own comment, which may be a response to the comment that’s already there and to browse other related pins. That’s already a lot to take on board (no pun intended)! As you can see, Pinterest has a little more of a steep learning curve as compared with other similar social media sites.

 If you want to find pins of a particular subject matter, then your best bet is to head to the ‘search’ bar at the top left of the homepage. In here, you can now search for whatever it is you’re trying to find. There are a lot of pins on here, so don’t be afraid to type something specific. 

You can also click the option on the right in order to see a list of popular tags and categories which will help to filter the items you’re seeing. Likewise, you can also click on the names of boards or users as you’re browsing and this will take you to their collections. 

This is often how you discover the really great stuff – it’s just a matter of trying to find someone with similar interests and tastes to you, in which case you will land upon all the research and browsing they’ve done which you can then use in your own projects. Next to the search bar is a button with your name on it and a red pin. If you click this, you’ll be taken to your collection of boards.

 Your name will be along the top, next to a picture of a pin. Now you can use the tabs along the top to view all your boards, all your pins, all your likes, all your followers or everyone that you are following. When you view your boards, you’ll see that one of the options is a ‘plus’ sign with the option to create a new board. 

Likewise, when looking at your boards, you’ll see the option to ‘Add a Pin’. Creating a board of course allows you to add a new board which will be empty, while adding a pin lets you add new pins to your board. 

You can then enter the URL of an image you like, or a web page with lots of images you like, or you can upload something from your computer. This is one way to populate your boards with relevant pins and will likely be the main method you use if you’re a content creator. It’s hard to build a brand with entirely content that you borrowed and didn’t create. On the other ahnd though, if you want to add pins in the quickest way possible, you’ll find that the best way to do that is to just browse the boards of other users and then just click to repin their items to your own boards.

 Above your collection of boards and pins, you’ll also see a button that gives you the option to edit your profile. Click here and you’ll be given the option to fill in some details about yourself. 

Specifically the options you’re given are:

 .Name  

.Picture 

.Username 

.About  

.Location  

.Website Make sure that you use a picture that will grab the eye and look appealing and that your username matches your company’s branding. Note that this will also become your URL, so if your username is ‘NewTech’ then your page will be pinterest.com/newtech.

 You can also add your website here. Make sure that you do this and at the same time go ahead and confirm your website by adding a small bit of code to your page.

 Spend some time on this page and make sure that you edit your profile to reflect well on your brand. This means that you should have a compelling ‘about’ section that explains what you do and tells people why they should be following you. 

Likewise, you should have a great profile image that will jump out and grab attention and that will match your branding. If you click ‘settings’ meanwhile, you’ll be given a few more extra options for personalizing your account and controlling its behaviour. 

This section allows you to set your gender, to choose whether you want your profile to be searchable through Google (you definitely do), how you want to receive notifications and whether you want to connect with your other social accounts.

Your Strategy 

At this point, you now have a full understanding of how Pinterest works and you’re set up with an account that looks the part and that should help more people to start finding the content you’re creating. Now all that’s left is to actually begin marketing. 

We’ve looked over most of the advantages of marketing on Pinterest already and we’ve seen how it lends itself well to promoting a website, blog or business. But now it’s time to move away from the hypothetical and to start creating a business model that works. Let’s start with the basics. By looking at what makes any type of marketing strategy and any type of business successful.

 And the single answer here is value. If you want to engage your audience, if you want to build customers and fans and if you want to engender loyalty, then you need to be offering high quality value to achieve all those things. 

That means in other words, that you need to give people a concrete reason to want to spend time engaging with your brand.

 The mistake that a lot of companies and marketers make on social media is simply to try and use it as a platform for promoting a product.

 They want to get direct sales, immediately and they’re trying to reach a broader audience by doing this through social media. You’ll see this when you follow a company on Twitter that does nothing but talk about its products or services: 

“Try out our latest products today!” 

“Want to save time in the office? Our productivity tools are just for you!” 

“Hurry while stocks last!” 

The equivalent on Pinterest is simply to post images from articles with no rhyme or reason, or to just post images of the same product over and over hoping someone will notice it.

 This is unfortunately an entirely incorrect approach and social media just doesn’t lend itself to that kind of promotion. Why? Because you need people to want to follow you on social media. And if all you’re doing is posting about your company then you’re really not going to give anyone a chance to do that. Would you follow a social media profile that only ever tried to sell its products to you? Or would you quickly get bored and unsubscribe? 

Instead, you need to think like the top brands on Pinterest and offer the kind of service that people are looking for on the platform: inspiration, ideas and lifehacks. The ideal type of company for Pinterest is a company that sells wedding decorations, or perhaps that prints wedding invitations. 

You can then create a Pinterest board that will share images of wedding decorations – both involving your own products and using other products. Make sure that the ideas are unique and interesting, that they provide style and elegance on a budget and that they offer the kinds of ideas that your followers might not have come up with themselves.

 This way, you give them an actual reason to follow you – because they’re learning! Likewise, you might create a Pinterest board about ‘battlestations’ if you sell computer parts. 

Battlestations are essentially PC set-ups for gamers that are designed to look cool with lots of glowing parts and large dual monitor set-ups. Sell cupboards? Then you could create a board about organizational life hacks. 

Sell cooking ingredients?

 Then share pins of great meals and desserts and discuss the ingredients and the procedure in the comments underneath. In any of these cases, you’re giving people a reason to follow you on Pinterest because you’re offering value in the form of ideas, inspiration or just aesthetic beauty. If you’re selling a physical product and especially something that looks beautiful or that has a ‘chic’ appeal, then you’ll find that Pinterest is the perfect fit for your business.