Can you use Pinterest for your business?
Have you ever asked yourself can I use Pinterest for my Business?
If so, I can almost guarantee that you can use it for your business whether you are selling a service, a product or you are an online business.
Did you know that Pinterest is a search engine and NOT a social media site?
Just like all the major search engines Pinterest is a search engine in its own right. It is actually a very successful and useful tool for small businesses to market their goods and services. There are over 250 million active users to showcase your business too, and according to Pinterest that number is increasing all the time.
As it is a search engine it has its own set of algorithms. Before you have success on Pinterest you need to understand how the platform views and ranks your pins.
How the Pinterest Algorithm works.
In 2014 Pinterest introduced Smart Feed. To enhance the users feed, it shows pins based on what they have previously searched for or pinned. Users will no longer see random pins on their feeds. Meaning there is less chance users will see a pin from your business that they may have found interesting.
Smart Feed ranks the best pins for a specific search. So, it will not rank the newest pins first, only those it thinks are the best.
It does this in a number of ways;
- it determines the quality of the pin,
- it will rate the pin,
- then assign interests, this is based on how your followers react with the pin,
- and finally place the content in front of people who are searching for it.
How has Smart Feed impacted users?
Some businesses are now finding a drop in their page views coming from Pinterest. Some have even found that older content has been repined more than their newer content!
The great thing about Pinterest is that pins that you have posted years ago can still have active repins today. If you feel that those pins are no longer relevant you could delete them. But remember any traffic to your site could lead to a possible client or purchase.
So How Do We Make Sure Our Pins Rank High?
The important things to keep in mind are good quality images, descriptions that will draw the reader to the post and consistent pinning.
Images
For great tips on having a good quality design, head to Pinterest Academy using the following link. It is free to join too!
The Academy explain what size of images, type of images and typography work best. There also lots of other tutorials on there worth looking through.
There are also lots of tutorials online that give you great hints and tips for pin design. When you are starting out it is a good idea to experiment with different designs to see which ones get the most interaction.
Descriptions
It is important to know what your ideal customer or client will be searching for. when you know what that is you can look for keywords to include in your Pinterest account.
I have a handy blog post you can follow to begin to put together a list of your Pinterest keywords. Head over to my blog page after you have read this article and see how it is done.
Consistent pinning
The recommendations at the moment are to pin between 10-30 daily. This is not for businesses just starting out, this may feel quite overwhelming to begin with!
Do not pin just pins that you have designed yourself. Pinterest may block your account if they feel that you are only pinning your own pins and not sharing others content.
I use Tailwind to schedule my pins and repins. It is a great platform and is super easy to use. It allows you to schedule pins for a whole month and beyond. There is also and option to join Tailwind Tribes where you can pin to tribe boards and repin your tribe members pins. It’s a great way to improve your reach and help others.
They have a 30 day trial that you can sign up for too. Here is a link to their page:
I also recommend manually pinning to your boards to show Pinterest that you are actively looking at Pinterest and not just scheduling everything.
80% of content on Pinterest are re-pins, you do not have to create more than 1 or 2 new pins every day. Each time you create a blog you can create a pin and add it to one of your boards, you can then share it to a different board on another day. I usually re-pin my pin to another board with a 5 day interval.
I also make sure that I use ‘fresh pins’. Pinterest likes ‘fresh pins’, which is new images that have not been on Pinterest before. When I create content on my website I will produce a number of different pins with the same URL but with a new image and different text.
Do you want a helping hand?
If you feel that this is something that could benefit your business. You may prefer to have your account set up by someone else who can ensure that your boards and profile include your keywords. Let me know and we can discuss how to make this a reality.
