Out of all the social media platforms you can use to get the word out about your business and build connections, Pinterest is one that is easily overlooked.
Many entrepreneurs focus on Facebook and then sometimes look into LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. Not many are taking advantage of all that Pinterest has to offer as a free marketing tool and an arena to network with other business owners.
During the last few months, we’ve taken the time to work on our own Pinterest boards and the results have shocked us. Like others in small business, we underestimated how much attention we could easily gain by creating and sharing pins.
Since we want to share this success with you, we’re going to dive into why you should use Pinterest for your business and a few of the strategies that are most effective.
Pinterest has 200 million monthly users
Although Pinterest isn’t as monstrous as Facebook, this social media platform still attracts a variety of audiences. Currently, it’s the most popular with millennials and US moms, and also 80% of pinners are using the app.
Deciding not to tap into Pinterest means potentially missing out on the millions of people who not only use this platform — they engage on it. Turns out that 70% of pinners actively engage through saving photos and clicking on stuff, which other social media networks would die for.
Find out your users’ interests
Yes, Google Analytics is helpful for discovering the demographics of people visiting your website and what they’re clicking on the most, but Pinterest offers more perspective as you try to understand your target audience.
By simply looking at which pins are being saved and what links are being clicked, you can easily determine the kind of information that’s most popular with your users. As you add to your boards and separate by category, Pinterest will gather data for your business, and you will start to notice trends.
To see your insights and trends, click Google Analytics in the top left hand corner and it will open a page with three boxes titled “Your Pinterest profile,” “People you reach,” and “Activity from [URL]” like this:
From here, you can click “More” on any of the three categories and see more statistics about engagements, daily viewers, and more.
Below these boxes, you can see which pins are receiving the most impressions, saves, and clicks. This can be helpful as you decide which pins to create and save in the future.
Pins allow inbound linking
One of the most valuable aspects of Pinterest is that each pin can be linked back to your website.
As shown in the screenshot above, after you’ve uploaded a graphic, you can insert a URL to wherever you’d like to link. For example, we share many of our blog posts on our Pinterest boards and link to each specific blog.
Whether you get a designer to make something or simply use Canva, images for Pinterest posts should be modern and eye-catching. Be sure to also add a description below the website link to help specify what your post is about.
Build local connections with businesses
Just like Instagram and other social media platforms, Pinterest is a perfect place to connect with not only potential customers but also other local businesses. Although pinners aren’t concerned about getting followers usually, they are focused on inspiring users to save pins and click into their websites.
By saving other local businesses pins or shouting them out in posts, you can build connections on Pinterest that you might not otherwise. These new resources may prove invaluable when it comes to word-of-mouth recommendations and visibility.
Drive more traffic quickly
By using these strategies to get started, our Pinterest boards gained so much more engagement simply because we took the time to add pins to them. During the first few weeks alone, our average daily impressions went up about 205%, our average daily viewers increased by 435%, and our average daily impressions skyrocketed 367%.
In just a month and a half, our average monthly viewers went from about 600 to almost 14,000. That’s about 13,400 more people who now have access to information about our services and can click into our website from pins.
We hope these reasons shed light on how Pinterest can benefit your business! If you have any questions or would like help setting up your business profile on Pinterest, please reach out to us today!
