What is Pinterest and how does it work? How does a single pin on Pinterest help you drive traffic to your website? What makes Pinterest unique from other social media platforms? If you are asking these questions, it means you are genuinely new to this platform.
So in this post, I will explain everything you need to know about Pinterest in a really simple way, easy to understand even for beginners.
Contents
Getting Started: What Is Pinterest Used For?
Pinterest is like Google in the sense that it is a search engine but instead of text results, you will be given image results. And as the majority knows, Pinterest users go on the platform for saving images and inspirations for their home decor, DIYs, recipes, and more.
Yes, Pinterest is a social network but you also have to think of Pinterest as a visual search engine if you are using it for your business.
At the same time, Pinterest marketers, like me for example, are trying to get more eyeballs on their content or products on Pinterest.
As Pinterest creators, we are trying to always outsmart the platform, and the algorithm, and to get ahead of the competition.
How Does Pinterest Work?
One of Pinterest’s goals is to “connect everyone in the world through the things they find interesting.”
Through this, Pinterest allows users to express their knowledge, creativity, and craft through the form of visual content such as images and now videos, too!
Pinterest currently has over 445 million monthly active users so this platform is definitely great if you want to redirect people to visit your online website or online business. Even more effective than Facebook and Twitter or Instagram I may add.
Pinterest is also a great place to create a community and meet like-minded people or business owners like yourself. You can engage with pins from people that have the same niche as you. You can send them direct messages, follow them, and the like.
You can also brand your Pinterest page. You just need to upload a profile photo, add your business name, add a profile bio, create a Pinterest board or several boards, and more!
But just like any other social media account, you will have to create your own Pinterest account on the platform.
To Create A Personal Account:
- Go to Pinterest
- Enter your Email, Create a password, and enter your Age
- Click Continue
- Click Next
- Select how you identify
- Select your language and country/region from the dropdown menus
- Select 5 or more topics
- Click Done
The good thing about this is that you can easily create your account and navigate through the platform on either their desktop website or Pinterest app!
What Is Pinterest Used For?
Pinterest is mainly used for searching and accessing information through visual content. So if you learn more visually, then the content on Pinterest will greatly help you find what you need!
People who use Pinterest are either regular users who are looking for inspiration or business owners who are looking to grow their business even further – for free!
But aside from that, you can easily store and save these images or information to one of your board on Pinterest. Pinterest created boards in order to collect and organize items and results they found on their feed.
For business owners, it is a way for them to organize their pins so that their community and followers can navigate through their accounts easily.
But to be able to get the most out of Pinterest as a business owner or content creator, you will have to make a Pinterest business account.
How To Make A Pinterest Business Account
There are definitely more perks and advantages to having a Business Account than a Personal account. But most importantly, as a business owner, the most important factor is that you will have access to Pinterest Analytics and Promoted Pins or ads.
If you are a business owner, you would want to know if your pins are doing well, right? You would want to know how many people are visiting your site from your pins. And if you are a marketer, you would also want access to Pinterest ads to further grow the account.
By having access to Pinterest Analytics, you will be able to see what you need to change or improve in your Pinterest Marketing Strategy.
You will also be able to see which strategies work best for your account.
To get you started, here’s how you can create a business account. Note that you can also do it on the Pinterest mobile app, too.
To Create A Business Account:
- In the top right-hand corner of your screen, click Sign up
- Click Create a business account
- Enter your email address, create a password and enter your age
- Click Create account
- Fill in the fields to Build your profile, then click Next
- Fill in the fields to Describe your business, then click Next
- Select whether you want to run ads, then click Next
- Select where you’d like to start or click the x icon to go to your new Pinterest business account
Why Use Pinterest For Business?
When it comes to a business or marketing mindset, the Pinterest platform is different from other social media sites or social channels. First and foremost, you can easily reach your target audience within a few hours – for free!
And if you want to know is Pinterest still relevant for growing your business, check this post.
So really, there’s no need to use ads unless you really want to boost your marketing strategy and reach more users worldwide.
Pinterest also gives businesses a more creative approach to engaging their potential customers through pin images, colorful infographics, and other visual media in the form of a Pinterest pin.
Other than promoting your online business or blog, you can also sell products or do affiliate marketing on Pinterest by linking your pins directly to the products. You can identify these as “product pins”.
You can even sell your services on Pinterest by linking pins to the page where you are selling any kind of service. And now that you know how to create a Business account, how does a Pinterest business profile look?
Setting Up Your Pinterest Account For Business
A Pinterest profile contains your username, in my case, it’s anastasiablogger – same as my blog domain name.
I recommend you to keep this username short, easy to type in and remember, and also close to your brand name if you have one.
Just in case you were wondering if this username can be ever changed if you pick something now and then change your mind, don’t worry. For now, Pinterest doesn’t have any limitations to changing your username and you can do it more than once.
And it doesn’t affect your pins that were published before the change because the pin URL doesn’t contain the username.
What Is A Pinterest Board?
Make Pinterest Work For Your Business: Pinterest Best Practices
Sure, you can spend hours on Pinterest uploading pins and following people and hoping for the best for your account and business, but if you do not know how to use effective Pinterest Marketing strategies, then I am afraid your growth will take a bit of time than necessary.
With that said, I have here some tips and best practices on how to make Pinterest become effective for your business:
Branding your Account
Like other social media accounts, you will have to brand your account or profile according to your business or.. branding. This means that you have to use a profile photo of your brand, write a bio about your business, add some keywords to your profile name, and build boards in order of your brand – with cohesive cover photos.
Through this, Pinterest will know, along with people who follow you, what your account and pins are about.
Optimize for keywords
Optimizing keywords or using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies is a HUGE help on Pinterest. By using relevant keywords to your pins, you will let Pinterest know what the pin is about and they will help you reach your target audience who are actually interested in that topic.
Say you have a picture or a pin that you have made effort in, but just random people who have no interest are the only ones who see it – your pins will most likely not get any clicks or maybe just very few clicks at all when you could be getting hundreds with the right audience!
With this, I recommend adding relevant keywords to your pin title, pin description, board title, board descriptions, profile bio, profile name, and any available field you can write on.
High-Quality Content
As a content creator, I am sure you already know the value of putting out high-quality content.
It’s as simple as this: if you do not put out catching and high-quality pins, why would users click on the pin, visit your account, and follow you?
Remember that the Pinterest home feed is a collection of various images so if you want to stay on top of the competition, you will really have to put out amazing content that people want to see.
For high-quality pins, I always recommend creating pins that are vertical with 1:2 ratio. You also want to pin using bright images in your pins and bold text overlays so you can easily grab the attention of potential users.
Activate Rich Pins
If you want an extra boost of engagement and reach for your recipe pins, product pins, article pins, and more, then activating Rich pins will help you in growing your account.
To put it simply, Rich Pins are a type of organic pin that just pass extra information from the website the image was saved from.
These types of pins will show information about your product, a list of ingredients to recipes, and other title or meta description without needing to click the pin directly. These pins will get important information directly from your blog post from your site and will also boost your SEO strategy.
I have a FREE Pinterest Masterclass which will show you how you can use Pinterest platform for growing your online business and getting more traffic to your website.
Did you find this post useful? Save THIS PIN below to your Social Media Marketing or Pinterest Marketing board on Pinterest!
I’m Anastasia and I’m a full-time blogger, online entrepreneur, and Pinterest marketing strategist. I help digital entrepreneurs and bloggers drive targeted traffic from Pinterest either through my online courses or through Pinterest consultancy.