If you’ve been around this blog for a while, you know I talk a lot about Pinterest strategy and sales funnels. And that’s mostly because the 2 go hand in hand. The basis of any good Pinterest strategy is to connect your overall desired outcome, or goal, with a funnel that is suitable for your business.
Pinterest is the perfect traffic generator to increase sales in your business, but you can’t always expect the user to land on your site and make a purchase. I’ve mentioned before that the audience coming from Pinterest is a cold audience. And the best way to warm them up is through a funnel whether it be product based or email then sequence based.
There are many pieces that go into it; it’s more than just the “connection”. In this post, I’m sharing specific areas of focus when it comes to your Pinterest strategy.
Your Pinterest Strategy Goal
Your entire Pinterest strategy hinges on this key element – your ultimate end goal. Without knowing your goal, you won’t know what content to pin, what metrics to track and ultimately, you won’t know what actions you need to take on Pinterest!
Some examples of end goals could be: increasing website traffic, growing your email list, increasing sales or increasing affiliate income.
It all starts with a goal.
Pinterest Keywords and SEO
The core element of an optimized profile is understanding Pinterest as a search engine and using targeted keywords appropriately. Using keywords effectively means that your pins will show up in future search results.
Using targeted keywords in your profile, unique to your business and products, is how people will find you. This is truly the foundation of being found on Pinterest.
Pin Design
Once someone finds you on Pinterest, it will ultimately be your pin design that determines whether or not someone clicks. Create pins that will drive traffic into your funnel (i.e. pins that target the appropriate keywords), using the varying types, that will ultimately help you achieve your goal.
Gone are the days of ONLY creating standard image pins. Pinterest wants you to use the new pin types listed above and when doing so, they reward you by increasing your distribution.
The pin types you can use currently are:
- Standard pins
- Video pins
- Carousel pins
- Shop the look pins
- Idea Pins
Profile Optimization
An optimized profile is one of the biggest pieces to the Pinterest strategy puzzle. Because if you aren’t optimized, you aren’t found. And if you aren’t found, then your future customers can’t click on your pin, visit your site or purchase you products.
You must be using your keywords effectively throughout your profile. The following profile areas are searchable when it comes to keywords and SEO on your profile:
- Your profile name
- Your profile description
- Board Titles
- Board Descriptions
- Pin Titles
- Pin Descriptions
Pinning and Scheduling
One of the keys to success on Pinterest is consistency. Pinning and saving content consistently helps the Pinterest algorithm learn more about 1) who you are 2) what kind of content/products you create and 3) who is most likely to interact with your content/products. Essentially, you are building what’s called domain authority with Pinterest. The more consistent you are, the more you will earn their trust and the more they will distribute your pins across the platform.
When it comes to scheduling your pins, Pinterest has given the following guidelines:
- You should not pin your content more than 25 times per day (Pro-Tip: I see greatest success on accounts who pin between 10-20 times per day)
- Do not schedule and pin the same pin to more than 10 boards.
- New pins vs. Fresh pins: New pins are a new URL and new image. Fresh pins are an old URL and new image. Pinterest found that users interact with new pins more than they interact with old pins. Since Pinterest knows that business owners can’t create 15 new pieces of content/products per day, they recommend creating fresh pin images for older URL’s (i.e. a URL that has been pinned to Pinterest before). You can still repin old pins, but there are some stipulations 1) it should remain relevant to the time of year and 2) try not to repin to the same board more than once per year.
- Pin to the MOST relevant board(s) for each pin. For example, if you have 5 very relevant boards and 5 somewhat relevant, pin to the 5 most relevant for the highest success.
- Wait a minimum of 2 days before repinning to a different relevant board
- Do not repin the same pin to the same board more than once per year
Analytics analysis to boost your Pinterest Strategy
Pinterest analytics helps you understand your overall success on Pinterest. It is a snapshot of what is resonating with your audience and can ultimately help you refine your overall Pinterest strategy in the future.
The following metrics are the main areas to track:
- Impressions – The total number of times your pins where seen across Pinterest
- Saves – The total number of times your pins were saved by another pinner. This is an important metric because pinners are planners. They are saving now what they plan to buy or revisit in the future. Saves can indicate future purchases.
- Outbound clicks – The total number of times someone clicked on your pins and visited your website.
- Top Pins by Outbound clicks – This shows you what pins got the most individual clicks in a given timeframe. This can help you refine future content plans, sales, products, pin designs, etc.
Things to consider as you develop your Pinterest Strategy:
- Identify the best performing boards and focus your attention on sharing content to those boards
- Identify the worst performing boards and refine the keywords associated with those boards.
- Identify the content topics/ pins that received the highest engagement during certain months and adjust your schedule for next year to match what your audience LOVED during that month.
- Identify the top performing pins and create new fresh pin designs for those pieces of content and add them into the pinning schedule
- Identify the topics/content/ pins that had the highest engagement on Pinterest and identify how you can use that to create more of the same on your website
Still need help with your Pinterest Strategy?
Strategy creation is the basis of my monthly Pinterest management packages! I work with each of my clients to 1) determine their overall goal for Pinterest and 2) develop a strategy that is appropriate for achieving that goal. We work together to ensure the customer journey from Pinterest is smooth sailing and an “easy yes” once a user lands on their site.
If you’re looking for help with a Pinterest strategy for your business, reach out and let’s talk about what that would look like for you!