How to Use Pinterest to Market Your Brand

Pinterest is one of the most overlooked social media platforms. However, it’s more than just a place to network and socialize — it’s designed to be a visual discovery engine where users can easily explore and discover new products and brands.

In fact, 46% of weekly Pinners have reported that they discovered a new brand or product through Pinterest. Another survey found that 50% of Pinterest users utilize the platform with the intention to shop.

The Benefits of Using Pinterest for Business

People generally use Pinterest to find inspiration and explore ideas. As a business, this gives you a good opportunity to engage with your audience in new ways. With Pinterest, you can:

• Reach new audiences: While the majority of Pinterest users are females and mostly from an older age group, there’s still a lot of value in including them in your marketing. Using Pinterest can expand your reach, especially to a user base who is actively seeking inspiration as opposed to the usual mindless scrolling on most social media platforms.
• Spark engagement that drives conversions: Since Pinterest users are more intentional when using the platform, there’s a higher chance of converting. Posting eye-catching and compelling content on Pinterest can spark ideas in users and drive them to engage with your brand.
• Drive more traffic to your website: Pinterest allows you to link your Pins to a website of your choice, and it also features Rich Pins, which adds more context to your posts by pulling metadata from your chosen link. With more traffic to your website, Pinterest indirectly helps in boosting your SEO strategy.
• Build your brand reputation: As a visual platform, Pinterest is a ripe area for you to cultivate your brand reputation. By showcasing your content in a creative space, it gives audiences an idea of the “feel” of your brand — if your content is high-quality and captivating to the eye, this creates a positive association that you’re a business that provides quality service/products.

5 Tips for Using Pinterest to Market Your Brand

How do you make the most of your Pinterest marketing strategy? Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Set up a Pinterest Business account

First and foremost, be sure that you’re not just using a regular Pinterest account. A Business account offers so much more, such as the ability to access analytics and run ads and Promoted Pins.

Setting up your Business account is quite straightforward:

• Go to Settings (found under the small Arrow Down icon on the upper right corner).
• Select Account Settings, scroll all the way down, then select Convert to a business account.
• Fill out your Public Profile and be sure to include a link to your website and “claim” it.

2. Create captivating and well-optimized content

As Pinterest is a visual-focused platform, creating high-quality content is crucial. Aside from making sure that your Pins are aesthetically pleasing, consistent with your branding, be also sure to optimize your content for Pinterest:

• Use vertical images: The ideal format for Pinterest are vertical images with 2:3 aspect ratio (1000px x 1500px). Other image sizes are accepted, but they will be automatically truncated.
• Ensure image quality: Since huge images are the preferred format for Pinterest, go for high-resolution images to avoid pixelation. If budget permits, it’s worth investing in professional photography for your imagery.
• Optimize your copy: Much like SEO, keywords play a huge role in Pinterest marketing. Optimize your Pin copy by including keywords in your Pin name and description.
• Optimize your landing page link: Ensure that every Pin your post includes a link and that: (1) The link is working and (2) it’s consistent with the marketing message of your Pin — for example, if it’s about a specific product, your landing page should take the audience directly to that respective product’s page.
• Be mindful of your brand logo’s placement: Make your content recognizable by including your brand logo in all your pins, but keep it subtle to avoid distracting your audience. Avoid placing your logo at the lower-right corner since this will be covered by the Pinterest product icons.

3. Leverage Pinterest boards

As Pinterest functions as a visual search engine, a catalog, and a social networking site, Pinterest Boards hold so much value not only in organizing your Pins but also in increasing the discoverability of your content — especially the older ones.

Pinterest Boards are like folders where you can add relevant Pins depending on the Board’s purpose or theme. The great thing about Pinterest is that users can follow individual Boards even if they don’t follow your account.

As a business some Board ideas you can use are the following:

• Boards for products you sell or services you offer
• Boards showcasing your products/services in action
• Boards with informational Pins about your areas of expertise (e.g., tips, listicles, etc.)
• Boards about topics you’re blogging about

4. Diversify your Pin formats

Another great thing about Pinterest is that aside from the “Regular” Pins, it offers several formats to showcase your content. Mix and match your formats to add variety to your brand profile, such as:

• Video Pins: This is quite straightforward — Pinterest supports short videos up to 15 minutes in length. However, for video ads, the recommended length is between 6 and 15 seconds. Vertical videos with the same aspect ratio (2:3) as Regular Pins are preferred, but other sizes are also accommodated without it being truncated: Taller than 1.91:1 and shorter than 1:2, square (1:1) videos, and widescreen (16:9) videos.
• Idea Pins: Idea Pins are video-centric “collections” where you can showcase multiple Video Pins in one canvas. Its format is reminiscent of posting multiple Instagram Stories where users can forward (or rewind) to the next Video Pin in the collection, but with Pinterest, the content isn’t ephemeral — it stays on your profile as long as you like. This is a good way to tell a story, show a step-by-step guide, or curate a collection of products.
• Collection Pins: Collection Pins are similar to carousels where you can showcase 3 or more products in one collection. Unlike Idea Pins, Collection Pins are geared towards e-commerce in particular and the format is that it has one hero image at the topic and 2 or more smaller-sized supporting images below it. This is a good way to truly leverage Pinterest for marketing.

5. Leverage Rich Pins

As we mentioned before, Rich Pins are a type of Pin that provides more context to your content by pulling metadata from your linked website. This is especially useful for brands, not only to increase your reach and engagement but also to boost SEO — your Pins could also be shown on Google Image Search, which indirectly drives more traffic to your website.

However, before you can get started with Rich Pins, you have to “apply” to it first. The basic steps are:

• Implement metadata/structured data to your website itself, more particularly to pages that you intend to link to your Rich Pins.
• Once that is in order, you can now apply to Rich Pins. All you need to do is enter your chosen URL to their Validator and correct any errors in your metadata, if any. Afterwhich, select “Apply Now” and if validated, your Rich Pin will show up an hour or so after.

Pinterest marketingPinterest may not be as popular or as widely used as social media giants like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, but it offers huge opportunities for businesses to grow their reach, boost their engagement, and even increase conversions and sales.

If you want to learn more about social media marketing, check out our blog at https://www.ilfusion.com/blog.