With most small business brands starting to realize the importance of incorporating Pinterest into their social media marketing, I figured we’d skip the why and focus on the how! HOW can your content be exposed and WHAT do you have to do to make sure it has every possible option of being seen by people? Today I’m sharing 5 Tips to Up Your Pinterest Game. Let’s jump right into it, shall we?!
Switch to a Business Account
Being a business means you should have a business account. If you don’t have one already, make this adjustment in your settings. Doing so will allow you to claim your website which in turn allows you to view analytics and utilize rich pins. If you aren’t sure what rich pins are, this article explains it perfectly!
Utilize Relevant Boards
This may involve some time initially (— especially if you’re converting from a personal account or using your account for personal use to using it for strictly business), but will help you out greatly! Since I work with mainly small businesses in the wedding industry I’ll share a few different examples. If you’re a wedding planning business, you’re going to want a variety of wedding boards such as wedding reception decor, wedding dresses, wedding bouquets, wedding centerpieces, wedding stationery, wedding hair, etc. All of those boards are relevant to what you do.
However, If you’re a wedding stationery designer, those boards may not all be as relevant to you. Instead you’ll want to focus on what your business is about and the services that you offer. In this case you’ll utilize boards such as wedding escort cards, wedding table numbers, wedding calligraphy, and instead of having a general wedding invitations board, you can break it down by design by utilizing boards such as red wedding invitations, blue wedding invitations, modern wedding invitations, etc.
Another example is if you’re a wedding hair stylist. Instead of having a wedding hair board, you can break it even further into wedding updo for long hair, short hair wedding updo, curly hair wedding updo, etc. A dress store can utilize relevant boards such as red bridesmaid dresses, blue bridesmaid dresses, etc. Get the idea?
Sub-boards can also be used when deemed necessary, but the downfall is you can’t schedule to these boards in Tailwind (which if you don’t know about this tool — keep reading!)
If you have other boards that you’d like to keep, but don’t have any use for your business (for example, home decor, dream kitchen, the boards we love to dream about LOL) just keep them as a secret board. That way you can still save pins for personal use, but they don’t distract your target audience.
Keywords & Hashtags
If you’ve noticed the way I named the example boards above, I got pretty descriptive. Why? Because nowadays people use Pinterest as a search engine more than anything else. So an easy and great way to go about naming your boards and pins is to be direct.
For example, if you have a board named Pretty Flowers — name this board into something more specific like wedding flowers or wedding bouquets or wedding centerpieces. People are more likely to search for wedding bouquets or wedding centerpieces than they are pretty flowers.
As for the descriptions, this is where you can elaborate even further using basic keywords. Pinterest also utilizes hashtags in which you can utilize hashtags that are only specific to that photo. Let’s compare!
Board name: Pretty Flowers
Keyword friendly board name: Wedding Bouquet
Description: Dream wedding flowers!
Keyword friendly description: Pink and white roses wedding bouquet
Hashtag examples: #weddingbouquet #weddingflowers #bridalbouquet #pinkandwhiteweddingbouquet
See the difference?! Obviously add your own flair, but this covers the basics!
Images
If you don’t already know — vertical, detailed oriented photos are going to be your best friend. If you’re in the wedding industry people LOVE a good detail shot! Shoes, dresses, reception decor — anything you can think of! And the bigger, the better — which is why a vertical presentation is always best! If you’re in group boards or Tailwind Tribes, these images are bigger and easier to catch the eyes of others if they can see the content clearly.
Tailwind
If you haven’t heard of Tailwind, then this may be a huge game-changer! While it’s possible to use the app for both Pinterest and Instagram, I’ve only ever utilized it for Pinterest and have had such success through using it. (I’ve seen 90% growth in just three months with some accounts I’ve worked on and I really believe it’s because of I have combined the above four tips and the utilization of this app!)
It allows you to pin as you publish content to your blog and schedule content out so you don’t have to go in every day. It’s great if you can post manually every day (and I always recommend doing so here and there), but with everything we have to do nowadays as a small business, if we can be a little more hands free with certain tasks, then why wouldn’t we?!
Not only can you schedule out content, but you see which pins are performing the best and which boards are getting the most traffic. I’d rather spend an hour or so a week planning out content then having to go onto Pinterest every. single. day. and aimlessly pin.
(**Also, always remember that even though you’re scheduling out your own content be sure to always share the love with repins of others work!)
There are obviously other things that help make Pinterest a success, but these 5 Tips to Up Your Pinterest Game are GREAT starting points! Feel free to share if you’ve found this information helpful and/or what has helped make your account a success!
For more information on the services I offer, feel free to reach out! And don’t forget to stay up to date with the latest on Instagram!