The Benefits of Using Pinterest in Your Content Marketing

What does Pinterest offer businesses?

Pinterest offers Pinterest Business accounts that you can create for free. You can link your company blog or website to you Pinterest Business account. A Pinterest Business account offers a variety of tools to track and analyze your brand’s progress and performance.

The Best of Pinterest’s Business Tools:

1. Pinterest Analytics

Pinterest Analytics allows you to see what people are pinning from both your profile and your company’s website. Once you’ve created your account and have linked it to your company’s website, you can take a look at exactly what pins your followers are interested in from your website. You can also see how many users click pins from your profile to get to your company’s website.

Image credit: Pinterest

There is also a demographic section that allows you to see exactly who your content is reaching. This is a great way to get to know your audience and where they come from. That way, you can target content directly to people in different demographics.

2. Rich Pins

Rich Pins is definitely one of the more useful tools that Pinterest has for business accounts. It allows you to add more context and relevant information to your pins. There are different types of rich pins that are available: app, product, recipe, and article.

This is an effective way to provide a snippet of information for your blog post articles to attract more readers to your website and get them to click your call-to-actions.

3. Save Button

The save button feature allows people to save your website’s content directly to their Pinterest profile. When you install this feature on your blog, you can link your pictures directly to Pinterest and this allows your audience to share what they like from your website with their own personal followers.

This resource is an effective tool for expanding your company’s reach and attracting new visitors to your website.

4. Widget Builder

Widget Builder allows you to promote your brand’s Pinterest page on your blog or website. The save button is an extension of the Widget Builder. Other widget types that are available are the follow button, pin widget, and profile widget.

The Widget Builder allows you to promote one of your content marketing channels, increase engagement with your current followers, and attract new followers to your Pinterest profile page.

Tips for Effective Pinterest Marketing

1. Post Consistently

Just like any other social media platform, posting consistently is a driving force in creating a successful profile. Pinterest has actually created a guide to posting on their website. Their best practices are based on the knowledge they gained from analyzing thousands of pins. The guide is available for business accounts and it outlines which pins work the best.

Pinterest recommends you post and save pins regularly on a day-to-day basis. Post and save pins at different times throughout the day in order to analyze which time is the most effective to post.

2. Match Your Website's Aesthetic

You have designed your blog to match the theme of your company. Your layout, blog posts, and even the colors of your website are united under your company’s aesthetic. Your Pinterest page is a representation and extension of your company. You should make it so it matches the personality of the rest of your content marketing platforms and efforts.

Like Instagram, Pinterest is mainly a visual platform. You use images and different types of graphics to promote your brand, so make sure the images you use are consistent with your brand.

3. Engage with Your Followers

Make sure you show interest in what your followers like. Follow different accounts and boards that are relevant to your brand as a whole. Engage directly with your followers by liking or re-pinning what they post on their accounts.

Liking and re-pinning will further your connection with your followers by showing support and interest for your followers’ wants and needs.

4. Tell Your Brand's Story

Pinterest is a platform that visually represents your brand. You want your boards and pins to connect with your brand’s story. Your brand’s story embodies your mission and core values. Your story helps create a connection with your target audience, and you want that to carry over to your content marketing platforms.

On Pinterest, you should create boards and pins that directly represent your brand and emphasize what your mission is.

5. Create Unique Pins

Just like any piece of content, your pins should be unique to one another. They should all engage and educate your followers. Make sure you create pins that link to your helpful blog posts. Utilize pin and board descriptions to deliver quick but helpful pieces of content to your followers.

Use keywords from your blog posts within your descriptions in order to optimize results of your content.

6. Host a Contest

Hosting a contest is a great way to engage your followers and get feedback on your company’s products and services. For example, you could ask your followers to create a board that includes what they like the most about your brand and your products. Then, you can ask for your followers to give you the link to their board so you can evaluate it.

Of course, you should offer a prize of some sort for the winner(s) of the contest, and re-post the best boards on to your Pinterest page.

4 Brands that Use Pinterest to their Advantage

1. Whole Foods

Whole Foods has over 350,000 followers on the Pinterest and over 30 boards on their profile page. Each board has sub-boards within it that represent a different aspect of what the overall board represents.

This is an example of one their pins that links directly to an article on their website:

Whole Foods is all about all-natural and organic products. This pin promotes their support of organic food and links to helpful article on “The Benefits of Buying Organic”. This article could be educational for the people curious about organic foods and what their benefits are.

2. L.L. Bean

With almost 5 million followers, L.L. Bean definitely reaches a wide variety of Pinterest users. They use Pinterest to directly link to the products on their website by providing quality images and separating them into different boards based on the type of product or outdoor activity.

This pin from L.L. Bean’s “Catalog Covers” board shows a preview of their Summer 2017 Catalog cover. Each cover provides a link to where people can purchase their different catalogs.

3. The Home Depot

The Home Depot has over 70 boards on their profile page and over 600,000 followers. Each board shares unique types of content. From a Halloween Style Challenge to Patio Accessories to Cleaning Hacks, the Home Depot’s Pinterest has just about everything you can imagine.

One of the Home Depot’s boards is even called “Expert Answers”, which gives out helpful solutions for common household problems that people might come across. This pin includes a video on “How to Fix a Leaky Faucet” that links to their YouTube page.

4. HubSpot

With over 50 boards, HubSpot uses Pinterest to promote their marketing software and educational blog posts. Their boards vary from an Infographics-only board to a board with memes of “Bad Marketing Cats”.

This pin is advertising for a live webinar on Social Media promotion and links directly to a webinar signup page.

Pinterest is a great addition to your content marketing strategy. It will help you engage with your followers and attract them to your company’s blog and website. It’s a great platform to promote your brand and it’s equipped with tools that will help you get the best out of your content marketing efforts. To make the most of your Pinterest strategy, explore our content marketing services and contact us today