Have you been making excuses about why you can’t marketing your business on Pinterest? In this podcast I will give you a super quick, 30 minute process you can follow to get some content up on Pinterest and start driving traffic to your website. We’ll look at setting up your account for your business, how to create awesome graphics in minutes, and how to write descriptions and create boards that will get you seen by your customers.
Should you use Pinterest as a marketing tool?
I did a little poll on my Instagram recently asking people if they thought Pinterest was a good marketing channel, and if they were using it already. 57% reckoned Pinterest was a worthwhile channel but 2 out of 3 weren’t actually using it!
I asked people WHY they weren’t using it if they thought it was worthwhile. Not having enough time was a big one. Not knowing where to start was another. For everyone who voted in my Instagram poll, this episode is for you!
The beauty of Pinterest as a marketing channel is that every single Pin (every post you create) can link back to your website. Unlike other social channels, you don’t get penalised for the links, because they’re a core part of what the platform is for!
Step 1 – What content should you share on Pinterest
Go onto your own website and work out what links you want to share – where do you want to drive traffic? If you write blog posts, create videos or podcasts, or share case studies of your previous clients, these are all great pieces of content to share. If you’re a product-focused business, you want to choose which collection or which pieces you’re going to start with. In this 30 minute process we’ll be putting together just a handful of Pins, so pick your five favourites.
If you don’t share a lot of content on your website, and you don’t sell products, you want to think about maybe a gallery you have, or one or two specific services you offer that have their own pages on your site which you can talk about. It’s got to be something specific, not your homepage, or your enquiries page, or even a list of all your services. Find at least one thing you can talk about specifically.
Step 2 – How to create Pinterest graphics
Once you’ve chosen between 1 and 5 links to your site, go to Canva. Hopefully you’ve used this tool already, but if not, don’t worry, it’s easy to set up and get started. Canva is a free tool which lets you create social media graphics based on templates. It’s the quickest and easiest way to create your Pinterest graphics. Listen to the podcast for more details on how to create your Pinterest image.
Once you’ve created your first image, download it to your computer, make a copy on Canva and change up the content for your next Pin. If you’re linking to different pages, you’ll need to change the image and the text. If you’re pointing several Pins to the same piece of content, you can create two Pins with the same text but a different stock background. Or two with the same background but different headlines. These will work like little experiments to help you figure out what kind of headlines and images are good at attracting your audience.
Go through all your links, make 5 images and get them all saved to your computer.
Step 3 – How to set up a Pinterest business account
Sign into your existing Pinterest account and take a look at what’s there already. You can choose to create a second account for your business that’s connected to the one you have already. Or, convert your existing account into a proper business one. Click on the three dot menu in the right hand corner to either edit your settings or create your separate business account.
If you have boards on your profile already that are just personal ones, you can make these secret and hide them from others. If you have boards you’ve worked on as examples for clients, you can change the titles of those boards, to remove the client’s personal details, and keep them for now. If you don’t have any boards, that’s fine. Take a couple of minutes to put your business’s logo and a quick description onto your Pinterest profile, so everything looks professional and ready to go.
Step 4 – Creating a Pinterest board for your Pins
We’re going to start with one board that encapsulates all the content you’ve prepared. If you create five different boards and put one Pin on each, each board will look empty. One board with five Pins looks way better. Give the board a name which reflects the way your customers search for your content. Maybe it describes the product or service. Maybe it describes the type of content you’ve been creating. Try and guess what your customers exact search terms would be and use those to name your board. You can change things later, so it doesn’t have to be the perfect name!
Step 5 – Choosing the right titles and descriptions for your Pinterest Pins
Once you have your new Pinterest board, you’ll see a plus button. Click the plus and choose create Pin. Then upload one of your images from your computer and paste in the web address for the page you’re wanting to promote. The hardest part of step 5 is figuring out what to put in your title and description. Again, you want to think about what your customers might be searching for and include as many of those keywords as you can. Experiment with different structures, different kinds of titles and so on in each of your Pins to see what works. My only instruction for this is that the first sentence of your Pin should include your business name. Make sure it’s incredibly clear right from the beginning that your Pins are from a business and they can get through to the really useful stuff you’re sharing. That’s why we put your logo or web address on the image, and that’s why you put your business name and a call to action in the first sentence of the description.
Now once you’ve done that for your first Pin, it’ll be much easier for your second. You can copy and paste your description from one Pin to another, but make sure you change it up so that you’re not duplicating things exactly. Try different keywords or a different tone of voice. Put numbers in some Pins and not in others. Adding in little variations will give you an idea of what works best, what gets people to Pin your content and what gets them to click through to your website. That’s what you want to start looking at next.
Get your Pinterest questions answered
Check out my Pinterest boards and please give me a follow! If you have any Pinterest questions drop me an email! I’d love to hear from you if you have any feedback. And of course you can subscribe to Whin Big on Apple Podcasts, and leave us a review.
