How to use Pinterest for better branding
Are you using Pinterest as a part of your social media mix?
Struggling to see your website traffic grow as a result of your efforts on the platform?
With 100 million active monthly users, Pinterest is still being utilized often. The majority of users are women; in fact, 40% of women in the United States are on the platform.
Just with any social media channel, when it comes to marketing on Pinterest, having a strategy is key.
You need a plan in place that clearly states your goal for using Pinterest, whether it’s to drive website traffic or build brand awareness.
Having a goal for why your business is using Pinterest will drive how often you pin, what you pin and how you craft descriptions for your pins; it also will determine whether you should invest in promoted pins.
There are four features on Pinterest that, regardless of your goal, can help you achieve better branding:
- Interest Categories: There has been a big shift towards following interest categories on Pinterest. To find interests, you can click the three bars located next to the search bar. You can also find an interest category by searching on Pinterest directly. For example, if you want to follow the interest category for design, visit pinterest.com/explore/design. (If you want to follow the interest category for dogs, just swap the word “design” for “dogs” and follow that same URL.) You’ll know that you arrived at an interest category when there’s a follow button at the top of the screen.
- Content Categories: When creating imagery to pin, you want to think of categories to divide your content into. Brainstorm ways to be authentic, relevant to your audience, relational and/or rare. It’s known that when it comes to content categories, DIY content performs best. Showing step-by-step tutorials, teaching users how to do something, increases the value of your imagery. Whether it’s design or recipe DIY, when you make something simple, you empower and motivate your audience to take action.
- Imagery: Quality imagery is critical. This goes for your pins and board images. Lighter, and longer, images are known to perform better than darker, shorter ones. Similarly, red and yellow imagery seems to get more re-pins than blues and blacks. Quote graphics and blog graphics (photos with text overlays) are always great for driving traffic to your blog posts. Lastly, infographics are known to dominate on this platform. When creating imagery for new pins or board graphics, be sure to create them with your brand standards and style guide in mind. It’s also a good idea, when pinning products, to show people how your product can be incorporated into their daily lifestyle.
- Keywords: Use of keywords is critical; experts recommend including 25 keywords in the descriptions of your pins so that you can capture more eyeballs through search. You want to use your descriptions wisely by adding desired, searchable keywords to them. Testing different keywords, and different lengths for pin descriptions, will help you see what performs best and resonates most with your audience. It’s recommended that your description be no longer than 350 words.
Just like with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, posting consistently on Pinterest is critical. Creating content on a regular basis is the key to growth on Pinterest.
Experts recommend that you pin daily at different times during the day; spacing out your pins throughout the day will help maximize their reach.
Last but not least, be sure to engage with others.
Search for keywords that you’ll pin about as a way to see what others are doing in your industry. Engaging with those pinners on the platform will help you create more of a community feel for your profile.
While tons of brands are using Pinterest as a way to drive more traffic to their website, Pinterest is incredibly powerful as a brand building platform.
Don’t be afraid to think outside of the box about imagery that you can create to showcase your culture and products.