In today’s social media-driven world, previously untapped platforms such as Pinterest are beginning to grow as valuable eCommerce tools. In fact, nearly every business can benefit from operating a well-kept Pinterest account, making it important that all businesses begin using the platform, if they haven’t started already.
Because of Pinterest’s relatively new popularity, many social media marketers are still learning the ins and outs of the platform. For the uninitiated, Pinterest is an inspiration-driven social media platform that encourages users to find and collect ideas and organize them into categories known as “boards.” What makes Pinterest such an excellent eCommerce marketing tool is the longevity of posts on the site; unlike other image sharing social media platforms such as Instagram, posts on Pinterest do not have an “expiration date” at which they are no longer relevant. Instead, posts can continue to grow over months’ time, giving them continual momentum.
Another great feature of Pinterest is the platform’s ad system, which very uniquely and subtlety places paid pins at the top of search results. Users are unaware that the pins are paid from their appearance, which helps to keep them relevant, instead of passed off as ads. This increseases both brand awareness and engagement, making it an excellent tool.
Try Pinterest’s paid ad feature by promoting one of your most popular blog posts or images to get an idea of how well it will perform. Take this information and use it as a basis for deciding how to continue with your Pinterest strategy. Pins with excellent images tend to perform very well on Pinterest, making it important that eye-catching, unique, long-form images be posted on the site in order to see the most engagement.
Those with Pinterest experience may want to include “rich pins” as part of their Pinterest marketing strategy. Rich pins will require some custom coding knowldge, but can be used to create pins with real-time pricing, availability, and purchase locations. This process is somewhat advanced, and should only be attempted by more advanced Pinterest users.
Much like other general SEO and social media marketing tips, keywords will play a significant role in determining your pins ranking in Pinterest’s search results. As with search engines such as Google, the higher a pin shows in relevant search results, the more traffic it will garner. Keywords on Pinterest can be treated much like keywords for SEO, and long-tail, descriptive keywords are very useful on the Pinterest platform.
Finding potential keywords on Pinterest is as easy as using the search bar, as it offers a large list of recommended autofills suggestions in order to improve the user experience. These autofill suggestions show what people are searching for, and can be used to create keywords that are sure to perform well.
Keywords can be placed in a number of spots on Pinterest. Some of the best areas to include Pinterest keywords include:
- Board Names
- Pinterest Profile
- Image Tags
- Pin Descriptions
By including keywords every possible, Pinterest users can work to boost their Pinterest search engine ranking, which can lead to a significant increase in user engagement.
Pinterest as a company is very aware of their growing place in eCommerce, and the platform has been developing new tools to benefit eCommerce business as a result. Pinterest has begun to add more and more interest options for posters to choose from, which can help to target the right audience very specifically. Instead of targeting broad audiences like “men” or “women,” interests can be used to target a very specific set of users, making them extremely useful to eCommerce businesses.
In addition, the platform has also developed an email targeting system; Pinterest users can now import a minimum of 1000 customer email addresses to begin email targeting with Pinterest. This can be very useful for small and medium sized businesses looking for customer outreach opportunities.
Finally, one of Pinterest’s newest developments also happens to be one of the most useful: while the platform used to be solely for pictures and images, Pinterest has recently begun to allow video pins, which are an excellent step up from the basic picture pin. These can be used for product highlights, DIYs, or to show products in action. The options are limitless, making video pins a very integral part of Pinterest marketing.
