If you’re not using Pinterest for business already, it’s time to reconsider.

Pinterest has made a name as a visual search engine, housing tons of photos, graphics, links and inspiration for nearly anything you might want to find.

This means it’s a goldmine social media platform for businesses with a visual aspect to their business, whether it’s photography or original graphics. In fact, 55% of users are specifically on the platform to find photos of new products and the platform is extremely powerful when it comes to driving website traffic.

While many brands were busy focusing their marketing efforts on Instagram and Facebook, Pinterest has grown into a powerful platform that you can leverage to set yourself apart from the competition.

Here are a few facts to prove just that:

• 300 million Global Monthly Active Users (MAUs) (Pinterest, Global analysis, Q2 2019)
• 83% of weekly Pinners have made a purchase based on content they saw from brands on Pinterest. (Pinterest internal data, US, Feb 2017)
• Reach 26% of U.S men (comScore, US, March 2019)
• 8M+ Pinners are actively engaging with auto content on Pinterest. (Pinterest Ads Manager, US, Aug 2018)

These stats suggest that you can tap into the platform’s massive and engaged user base and influence their purchase decisions.

But the question is–how exactly do you do that?

Here’s a quick guide to help you understand the Pinterest best practices you should follow to effectively leverage the platform with our easy 5-step Pinterest marketing strategy – lets dive in.

1. Brand your profile

The first step to having a presence on any social media network is to brand your profile. You first want to make sure you create a business Pinterest account so that you have access to analytics, rich pins and more.

Then you need to take the measures to brand your Pinterest profile so that it’s easily recognizable as belonging to your company. Each social media platform has its own customisation features to allow you to add your own touch onto it.

Let’s talk about how you can make your Pinterest profile your own.

Pinterest Boards 101

What are your Pinterest followers wanting? It’s not just about you, but what else your target customer might be interested in. So think a outside the square, look at what your competitors and make a note of what they are doing well.

1. Ensure your boards have branded cover pins (see below)
2. Don't Forget Your Board Titles
3. Add Board Descriptions, remember think to optimise for searchability
4. Add backlinks pointing in the right direction (your website)
5. Do some boards need sub-boards – ie: A Facebook board could be split in into strategy, guides, how-to, training etc

Choose a cover board

Pinterest allows users to choose a cover board that shows pins from that board at the very top of their profile. The individual pins aren’t clickable, but there is a link to that board at the corner of the cover design.

This is the perfect place to add a branded board that has blog posts, graphics, product shots and other designs from your company. Ensure that they match your brand to give your profile a branded look.

You should always have at least one Pinterest board that focuses exclusively on content from your website or business.

Select up to five showcase boards

The next part of your profile that you can customize is your showcase boards. These appear directly underneath your name and bio.

You can choose up to five boards to showcase at the top of your profile and they’ll slide from one board to the next. This is a great place to feature your product, service or blog boards.

Upload a profile photo

Next you’ll want to upload a profile photo that best represents your business. This is likely just your logo set into a square 165 x 165 pixel image.

If you are the face of your business, however, this might instead be a professional headshot of you.

Write your bio

Your social media bios should be pretty much the same across all platforms. Most have a similar character limit (Pinterest’s is 160), making it easy to write one bio and use it across the board.

There are many different ways that you can go about writing your social media bio. The best practices for a Pinterest bio are similar to those on other networks, so you can take inspiration from your Instagram or Twitter bio. Hashtags aren’t as essential for your Pinterest bio, but you do want to make sure you clearly and succinctly communicate your brand’s mission statement and offerings.

Brand your board covers

You’re able to choose specific covers for your boards, which means you can make them match your branding and the rest of your Pinterest profile.

There are a couple of different ways that you can do this. First, you can create and upload separate board covers to each board and link them to your website.

You can also simply choose a pin from each of your boards that matches your brand colour so that there’s an obvious colour theme emitting from your profile.

Verify your website

Last but not least, you’ll want to verify your website. This is how you get access to analytics for your website on Pinterest and turn on the rich pins feature that shares more information about your link, whether it’s an article, a product, a recipe and more.

To verify your website, Pinterest will provide you with a code snippet that you’ll need to place on your site.

2. Determine your content strategy

What types of content will you be sharing on Pinterest? There are many different types of content that perform well on the platform like product pins, infographics or blog posts.

Let’s cover a few of the most popular types of pins.

Product pins

If your business is a retailer or an online store, you should absolutely be taking stunning product photos and turning them into pins. People love to browse the platform to find new products, whether it’s home decor, clothing, gifts for the family and more.

Pinterest is a major discovery engine for shopping, with 72% of Pinners saying they get inspire to shop even when they weren’t originally looking for anything. Beautiful product photos will help catch audience attention and drive this kind of impromptu inspiration for retail brands.

Blog post graphics

Another great pin type is blog post graphics that promote the articles you publish on your website. Make sure these are well-designed vertical graphics that will stand out in someone’s feed, like the above pin promoting our blog post on Instagram accounts to follow.

These should have appealing photos or graphic designs accompanied by bold text that Pinners can easily read as they scroll through their feed.

Infographic pins

Another great way to promote your business is through sharing valuable information via infographics. These house data visualizations, graphic organizers and more in order to visually convey data and other content.

Because most infographics tend to be vertical and longform by nature, Pinterest is the perfect platform to promote these.

Lead magnet pins

Creating beautiful vertical graphics to promote your lead magnets is another solid content strategy on Pinterest. Make sure the design of your lead magnet stands out and entices users to save the pin or click and download your content.

3. Join community boards and build your followers

Another great Pinterest marketing strategy to help get your content out there is joining and creating community or group boards. Pinterest allows users to invite others to contribute to a board, and it’s the perfect way to get your content in front of brand new audiences.

Search for prominent Pinners in your niche and check to see if they have group boards relevant to your industry.

Many users will include rules or a link to apply to join within that board’s description, so take a look and see what you can find. Usually, you just have to email the owner or fill out a contact form and give their account a follow for them to add you.

Once you join, you’ll want to remain active within those boards, pinning some of your own content, but also curating other content so you’re not only promoting your own business.

Alongside the community boards head out into Pinterest world and get followers. Your followers are always the first to see your Pins. The more they engage with your content, the more we show it in other places on Pinterest (including search results, feeds and recommendations).

1. Follow businesses in your sector
2. Follow key influencers in your sector
3. Follow your clients

4. Focus on Pinterest SEO

Pinterest is essentially a visual search engine, which means it has its own algorithm and its own search engine optimisation rules. You need to focus on your Pinterest SEO and implement these rules on your own profile to see your ranking increase.

There are three different places that you need to be focusing on your keyword usage throughout your Pinterest marketing strategy.

Your profile

Use keywords bio so that you appear in search results even when people are just looking up “social media” or “digital marketing,” for example

You have 65 characters to fill out your Pinterest name and 160 characters to write your bio, and we suggest that you use up as many as you can to naturally include the most popular keywords in your industry.

Your pins

Be sure to include relevant keywords about your pin within both the title and description.

Just like with any type of search engine optimisation, you don’t want to simply “keyword stuff,” or fill the description with tons of keywords that aren’t naturally used as part of a sentence or paragraph.

Instead, you want to ensure that your pin title focuses on its main keyword, and that you include that keyword and a couple of other secondary keywords within your pin description so that users and the Pinterest algorithm immediately know what it’s about.

This will help your pin to show up in search results as well as related pins.

Your boards

Finally, you want to be sure that your pin boards have focus keywords in the name instead of cute, fun titles. Although you might love the idea of having some fun with your pin board titles, SEO is important here.

Stick with just “Pinterest Strategies” instead of “Pin, Pin, Pin!” for your next board title.

You also want to add board descriptions that tell users what they can find on the board while also including your main and secondary keywords.

5. Get Pinning!

The last part of your 5-step Pinterest marketing strategy is to continuously share fresh content on Pinterest. This is how you improve the quality of your profile, furthering the likelihood that Pinterest will share your content in search results.

While you certainly could jump on Pinterest throughout the day every day to share new content, who has time for that? To begin with try to pin once a week to keep traffic flowing through to your website, that’s the aim of the Pinterest game!

Refine your strategy

Pinterest isn’t just for lifestyle bloggers and home chefs. Implementing a Pinterest marketing strategy for your business may increase sales and brand awareness. 50% of people made a purchase after seeing a promoted pin and 67% say they’ve discovered a new brand or product from content on the network. This isn’t a full-blown strategy, make some notes on what are you going to pin, what are your channel goals, what are your competitors doing, how are you going to market Pinterest to get more people seeing your fabulous new boards?

Review 

Do a quick review of your Pinterest page – if it wasn’t your business, would it be an account you would follow. If not, time to change up the strategy and make it an account that inspires and engages with followers.

Still don't believe the power of Pinterest? Check out these 11 Pinterest facts (and 30 stats) from our friends at Sprout Social.