No matter what advice you get about growing your Pinterest business account, there are truly only 5 pillars of Pinterest marketing – get these things right and you’ll not only grow your account but you’ll reap the benefits of doing so.
What are the benefits of having a strong Pinterest marketing presence?
➝ Increased website traffic.
➝ Grow your email list.
➝ Get more sales of your products.
➝ Connect with potential clients.
➝ Increased business visibility.
➝ Position yourself as an expert in your niche.
➝ Have more people engage in your community.
Sounds good, right?
There will always be variables to your success because your business is unique but these 5 pillars of Pinterest marketing are the foundation that needs to be laid properly in order to drive that success.
Grab our FREE Pinterest marketing strategy guide here.
Pinterest Marketing Pillar #1 – A Well-Optimized Pinterest Business Account
It should come as no surprise that having a well-optimized business account would be pillar 1 of a strong Pinterest marketing strategy.
After all, it’s your foundation on the actual platform. You need to optimize your account so Pinterest can figure out what your content and business are about.
What is included in an optimized Pinterest account?
➝ Use keywords in your account title and description.
➝ Strong board names (hint: use those keywords!).
➝ Boards with strong keyword descriptions (aim for at least 2-3 keywords for every description).
➝ Use keywords in every pin you upload to Pinterest.
➝ A beautiful photo of yourself (yup, it’s true – people like to connect with REAL people, not a logo).
This may lead you to wonder how many boards to create or have to grow your Pinterest account.
The short answer: There is no set amount – it’ll depend on your business and how much content you have.
We recommend setting up 2-3 boards per content category on your website.
So, if you have 3 content categories you should set up about 9 boards to get started. Add boards as needed.
And, no, there is no hard and fast rule about how many boards to have overall as your account grows. Again, you’ll add boards as you need them.
Related Read: Pinterest for Business Traffic Strategy
Pinterest Marketing Pillar #2 – A Solid Content Marketing Strategy
No matter how much traffic you drive to your website, if you don’t have a solid content marketing strategy already in place, the business growth you expect will fall flat.
Why? Because Pinterest users are at the top of your sales funnel (a fancy term for customer journey) and need to be lead through the steps you want them to take. They need to be warmed up. They need to be nurtured.
So what makes up a strong content marketing strategy?
Having content that supports every part of the customer journey.
You want to attract, nurture, and convert.
Of course, this is very simplistic for the sake of this post but that is the ultimate goal of all content marketing.
You need to write content that will get people into your ecosystem and keep them there.
Let’s look at an example – say you’re a wedding planner who targets newly engaged brides-to-be about to start planning their wedding. The bride has no clue where to start or what will ultimately be involved with planning a wedding but that’s okay because you’re the ultimate guide who can show her the way.
Remember, Pinterest users are at the start of the customer journey and have no clue what you offer, so how will you get your business in front of this new bride?
Let’s look at the bride’s journey to purchase.
A free ultimate checklist of must-know things to plan a successful wedding of her dreams ==> she signs up for the freebie and is now on your email list ==> you start nurturing her with useful content that you know will help with wedding planning ==> you also inspire her with content that helps her imagine her own wedding ==> she feels overwhelmed and is looking for tools and resources to alleviate the stress of planning a wedding ==> you offer wedding planning services or other paid tools you have in place that help.
In this example, you will have effectively attracted, nurtured, and converted your ideal client.
Having these content pieces in place before you drive traffic with Pinterest is the most ideal situation.
Yes, you can build content as you go, just know that having a strong content marketing strategy is ultimately your goal for the long term.
I always recommend clients sit down and map out their content. Having a plan of action makes creating the content so much easier. It’ll also stop you from creating content for the sake of creating content.
Pinterest Marketing Pillar #3 – A Strong Image Strategy
Pinterest is a visual search engine which means your image strategy needs to be on point.
Images need to be strong, tell the story of your content, use a text overlay that teases the user to click to find out more.
You need to make sure the user is connected to content relevant to what they saw on your pin. If they click through and don’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll hit the x so fast your head will spin.
So, how do you create a solid image strategy for Pinterest?
➝ Use the recommended 2:3 aspect ratio or 1000 x 15100 pixels – this is the sizing Pinterest prefers.
➝ Use good quality photos in your pin designs.
➝ Use fonts that are easy to read.
➝ Properly aligned fonts.
➝ A clear call to action that makes your ideal person want to click to find out more.
➝ Good use of white space to get the user’s eye to go where you want it to go.
Do you always have to use a text overlay?
No, if you have strong imagery for your business, you don’t have to use a text overlay. Just make sure the image accurately tells the story of what the content on the other side is about.
So, far we’ve outlined a good image strategy for static pins (pins without movement).
But a solid image strategy for Pinterest also means using other pin formats like:
➝ Story pins
➝ Video pins
➝ Carousel pins
Here are some quick definitions so that you understand what these pin formats mean
Idea pins – tells a story of the idea you’re trying to market on Pinterest. These can be how-to posts, recipes, or a list of useful resources in action. At the time of this post, idea pins do not link out to your website and can only be used to grow your engagement and followers. Getting enough engagement and idea pins might help your other pins perform better – this is an idea we’re testing for our clients and isn’t a sure thing but it might be good to keep in mind as your account grows.
Video pins – video is becoming even more popular on Pinterest and might very well represent the future (I think I’ve heard video is the future for my entire 10 years running an online business, haha!) so creating video pins that tell the story of your content is just plain smart to include in your Pinterest image strategy.
Carousel pins – have products? Carousel pins are perfect for showcasing what your product does with images that show it in action. Or if you have a product that has different colors, you can let the Pinterest user see them.
Want help crafting your Pinterest marketing strategy? Click here to get our FREE guide.
Pinterest Marketing Pillar #4 – A Keyword Strategy
Ah, my favorite Pinterest marketing pillar for success. It’s also the one I see most businesses drop the ball on.
Pinterest is a visual search engine where users go and input keywords to find out more about an idea they’re interested in. Once they hit enter, Pinterest will show them their top results. Those results are there because those creators researched and used the right keywords to get their content in front of their target person on Pinterest.
Basically, keywords are the lifeline to your Pinterest marketing strategy. Without them, Pinterest has a harder time understanding what your content is about and therefore what users to show it to.
What words are Pinterest users using to connect with your type of content?
Your goal should be to rank your pins for your chosen search terms. Even if you don’t rank all of your pins, you can still be found in the related pins section under other pins.
Here’s what it looks like:
Pinterest knows those related pins are about the search the user did in the search bar. So, as you can see, using keywords is important for both ranking and showing up in the related pin area.
When I speak to entrepreneurs and business owners, they say keywords can be intimidating and they aren’t sure where to start.
So, here is my best advice for performing keyword research on Pinterest.
Your goal should be to create your business’s keyword bank. What that means is adding important search terms to a spreadsheet so that you can refer to them whenever you need to. Do your research once and then access it when you need it.
This is one of the first steps we do for clients when creating their Pinterest marketing strategy and it makes our workflow SO much easier.
Wondering where to use your keywords? Make sure to include them in:
➝ Your account title
➝ Your account description
➝ Your board titles and descriptions
➝ Your pin descriptions
➝ Your pin text overlays
➝ Your website content and copy
Did you see that last point? Yes, use your keyword bank to sprinkle relevant search terms throughout your content. Pinterest is like Google – they crawl your content so if they find your keywords in everything I mentioned above, you have a good chance of ranking your pins.
Related Read: Pinterest Marketing for Beginners
Pinterest Marketing Pillar #5 – A Consistency Strategy
Pinterest rewards consistency so it’s a smart idea to have something in place to help you pin to the platform daily.
Yes, daily.
A lot of business owners I talk to don’t realize they need to be consistent and when they aren’t, it really hurts their account growth.
So, how can you consistently pin your fresh content and pins to Pinterest?
Use a scheduler like Tailwind – you can then spend an afternoon getting your pins scheduled for the week (or month if you’re really good!).
Pinterest has also rolled out a native scheduler right on the platform. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles Tailwind has but it still gives you other options (and it’s free!).
Your consistency strategy goal is to pin on Pinterest daily to keep your account moving. You can pin only your content and you can also pin third-party content while you build up your own. There is no magical ratio of how much other content to pin compared to your own. It really depends on a few things.
To get started, just make sure to be active on the platform daily.
That wraps up the 5 Pinterest marketing pillars for success on the platform.
Get these pillars in place and working together and you’ll have a solid Pinterest marketing strategy that can send you thousands of page views.
Just remember Pinterest account growth takes time and effort. Do not expect to see results after a month. Pinterest results start building around the 3-month mark and can take up to 6 months to really get moving.
Don’t know where to start with your Pinterest marketing? Grab our FREE Pinterest marketing strategy guide that will help you get started and grow your business account.