How to create a Pinterest Strategy

Like all the other social media platforms, Pinterest has its specific attributes, goals, metrics and ways to track and measure your brand’s performance and success. 

If not sure where to start, check out our blog post on How to Create a Social Media Strategy, it should give you a good headstart in increasing your brand’s visibility.

Whilst the average user signups on Pinterest to search for leisure activities, fashion trends, travelling, home decor, or just to find some inspiration for their passions, businesses are in the game for entirely different reasons, and let us tell you why. 

Why should your brand be on Pinterest? 

First of all, Pinterest is the first social media platform that people go to when thinking to make a purchase, and this is the reason why up to 27% of marketers are already using it. It’s an extremely efficient tool for increasing your brand awareness, website traffic and sales (8 out of 10 people have bought products due to the vibrant imagery that they’ve found on Pinterest, which is twice more than on Facebook). 

A fact not to miss is the Pin’s longevity on Pinterest, which is one week compared to 24 minutes for Twitter and 90 minutes for Facebook, and each pin can drive up to 2-page visits and 6 page views on your website.

Who is your ideal customer on Pinterest? 

The first rule (oh, how we love saying this always, don’t we), is to know who exactly are you trying to reach on Pinterest, and why? Who are they, what are they interested in, and what motivates them to make a purchase? If you haven’t figured that out yet, take a look at our top tips on How to build your perfect target persona to get you started. 

Now, do you have your target persona figured out? Great! The next step is to get down to action by creating a Pinterest Strategy in line with your brand’s objectives, the customer wants and needs, and the most up to date industry trends.  

How to create a Pinterest Strategy in 11 Easy Steps

Step 1. Refresh Your Pinterest Profile 

Your Profile is the starting point that will either catch your target persona’s interest or not. Make sure your Pinterest Profile is complete, up-to-date and relevant. Showcase precisely who your brand is, what are you offering and why people should come to you instead of your competition. Make sure you cover everything starting from your cover photo, name, about, address and public email. 

Tip: Try to make it a little bit more fun and creative compared to your other social media platforms. After all, most users say that Pinterest is full of positivity, joy and colour, so make sure your brand keeps that in mind. 

Step 2. Keywords Optimization 

Similar to your website SEO, keywords on Pinterest feed the algorithm in categorising your content and making it more visible to people that are not following you, but that might be interested in your content. 

• First, write down the top topics that you want to cover (e.g. if you are an essential oils company you might want to start with ‘essential oils’). After typing these keywords on Pinterest Search, the Pinterest Square Generator will give you multiple ideas on what type of content works well and that people are searching for the most (of course, that are related to your initial search). These results rank in order of their popularity, and they give you a good idea of what kind of content you could start creating to drive more traffic to your website. 

• Secondly, take your topic/keywords/ideas on Google Search and see what tends to have the most Search Traffic Volume.

• Have a look at Pinterest Trends as well to see what is popular and other related searches. 

• After you have your keywords set up, place them in: 

• Your Pinterest Business Name 
• URL
• All Board Names
• All Board Descriptions 

Tip: You could also use contextual keywords to further enhance what people are looking for related to your main keywords.

We recommend that you focus on your keyword strategy on Pinterest, as this seems to be the most efficient way in which people will discover your content, as well as increase the number of your repins and website traffic. 

Step 3. Set Up Your Pinterest Rich Pins

Rich Pins are regular Pins that include extra useful information right on the Pin itself. To note is that there are five different types of Rich Pins on Pinterest: for Products, Recipes, Articles, Places, and Movies, so make sure you choose the ones that align with your overall Pinterest Strategy. 

Check out this Pin on Pinterest Rich Pins in 2020: The Easy Guide for Beginners and get ahead of your competitors! 

Step 4. Create Your Branded Boards 

Boards are ‘buckets’ of categorised content where you can save your pins, organise them into themes, plans and ideas based on your content categories. Remember to add your keyword(s) in each board name and description to increase your reach and visibility.  

You can have Secret Boards for inspiration in planning your strategy, and Group Boards which are great for increasing website traffic. Golden nugget? You can find your ideal group board through PinGroupie.

Do you want to find out more about Group Boards? We did, so head over to Tailwind’s blog on How to Find, Join, and Pin to Group Boards on Pinterest and start exploring. 

Step 5. Create Engaging Pins 

The Standard Pin that you should create includes an Image, Text and Link to a landing page on your website. The core areas to focus on when creating your pin are: 

• Size. Most viewers will see your content on their mobile, so keep your pins as vertical images, make them taller rather than wider. 
• Appealing imagery. Clear, high-resolution images are the most attractive and professional looking. Lighter images get repinned 20 times more than dark pictures, and pictures without a face get 23% more pins, so make sure to keep that in mind when creating your branded pins. Also, include vibrant colours, contextual background, infographics, step by step instructions, etc. (again, all this depends on your audience so check your Pinterest Analytics to make sure you will attract your target persona). Golden nugget? Images that include red, orange and pink tones get twice as many repins than images with blue tones in them.
• Minimal branding and logo. Be tasteful in your pins and add credibility as your followers will love it.  
• Your copy description. You aim to increase your engagement on Pinterest, so write good copy, as 30% of useful pins receive more attention. Make it detailed by giving enough info that your viewer will click on your website, and more enjoyable. Draw on the emotions of the pinner by using sensory-related keywords and positive feelings, and again, keywords in everything!
• Add relevant hashtags at the end of your pin’s description (but always keep your branded hashtag in front as the starting point to get people to notice and discover your content, even if they are not following your account). However, Pinterest changed its algorithm, and since 2020 you can only get valuable hashtag suggestions when creating a new pin in the mobile app, as it’s not available any more on desktop. Search a related # to your content and add a keyword/phrase, and the algorithm will rank the # based on how often is used so far on Pinterest, so aim for tags that are in a medium range of uses. Use a wide range of broad and niche #s, and if following the general rule of thumb, you should not use more than 20 #s per pin, but we suggest that you test it yourself by using between 2 to 8 discoverable and robust #s, and see what works best for your brand. 
• Remember to repin curated content as well, don’t make your boards all about your brand, as 75% of all searches on Pinterest come from 2 to 3 words that are most likely unbranded. Bring in other fellow pinners and showcase your industry knowledge by offering your audience curated and exciting content.
• Posting frequency should be around 11 pins per day, every day of the week (we know, that’s a lot of work!), but it will pay off in terms of your website traffic, brand visibility and awareness. If you are just a starter and you feel overwhelmed, start with 1 to 2 pins per day, every day, but make sure you are consistent. Consistency is key! 
• Posting times are the best after working hours around 8 to 11 PM on the weekdays, whilst weekends are the ideal time for your brand to put out as many pins as possible. Interesting fact? If your target persona consists of mothers, it’s good to know that they tend to use Pinterest in the late evenings the most. We understand how busy mothers are, right? Superheroes! 
• Create a set of templates on Canva, and you will easily be able to edit them whenever a Pin needs to get done. 
• Set up a free trial Tailwind account and you will have access to 100 free scheduling slots before you need to upgrade- so you can trial it to see the results firsthand! By doing so, you will start to strategically schedule your Pinterest posts whilst discovering new content, increasing your engagement and getting more actionable analytics. 

Step 6. Competitor Analysis 

Have a look at your main Pinterest competitors, and see what works well for them. What kind of content are they posting, when and how often? What are the main topics their followers seem to engage with the most? 

Think outside the box and curate your content for your target persona. Offer your audience inspiration, solutions and most importantly, involve them in your conversations and pins! Use user-generated content as well, and be natural. 

What kind of content categories fit your brand the most? People like to be surprised and ‘wowed’, so pay closer attention to your overall content aesthetic, tone of voice and the value that you can bring into their life with each pin, but make sure that everything remains relevant to your brand. 

Step 7. Instal the Social Snap PlugIn on WordPress 

Another efficient way to grow your presence on Pinterest, and in turn, increase your reach and traffic. Once installed on your WordPress platform, try not to be too intrusive and place the social share button at the bottom of your posts. Even better? Add a floating bar along the side to enhance your content promotion efforts.

There is a free version for the plugin, but as always, as a brand we recommend you opt for the membership version (you can pick out of 3 options), so head over to your WordPress and start increasing your reach.  

Step 8. Instal the PinIt PlugIn on WordPress 

Head over to your website and play around with adding an automatic “Pin It” button to all your blog images, as it will pop up anytime someone hovers over the picture, so your reader can pin the image with just a few clicks!

Tip? Make sure you add a button colour that stands out from your images and website colours. By getting those extra pins from your readers, the longevity of your pins will increase even more without you having to do a thing. 

Step 9. Run Pinterest Contests 

Once you get regular re-pins and a lot of engagement on your Pinterest page, you can create a contest that will make you stand out from the crowd. 

Offer a prize to your audience in return for their pins that are relevant to your brand and choose the winner randomly. If the prize is valuable enough, your contest can reach a broad audience, and therefore, increase your following on Pinterest. 

But keep in mind that Pinterest’s algorithm changed, and it doesn’t like contests as much anymore, so stay away from asking people to follow you, re-pin or share your pins for a greater chance of entering the competition. 

Steps in creating your contest: 

• Decide on a simple idea and prize and capture all your contest’s details in a vibrant imagery that will catch people’s eye; 
• Link the image to a page on your website that explains all the rules of the contest; 
• Grow your email list by asking them to add their email addresses on your website landing page containing all the rules (this would be ideal if your brand would consider giving the people that didn’t win a consolation prize, like a discount to promote a sale, especially after the first weeks after you launch a brand new offering); 
• Give potential contestants a specific ‘to-do’ task to gain entry into your contest. You can tell them to take a picture with your products and add your branded hashtag, or to follow you and re-pin a specific pin from one of your top branded boards. 

Step 10. Follow other relevant accounts

Make connections with people by following other accounts that you are interested in and that are relevant to your brand.

Very important to note is that Pinterest’s algorithm has a limit on the number of people you can follow per hour, so don’t go over 300 new follows. If you do, you risk getting your Pinterest page suspended or even banned. We know it might sound like a lot of work, but following 300 people actually takes around 5 to 15 minutes, and in return, your account will get anywhere from 3 to 30 new followers. Be dedicated to this strategy because we assure you that it will pay off well! But don’t use any following automatic tools as if Pinterest’s algorithm catches you, your account will definitely get banned! 

Do you think you don’t have enough time in your day to do this step? Hire a freelancer to do it for you, and simply tell them a number for how many people they should follow per hour, and how many hours you’d need them to put the work in per day. But with comfort, there’s a risk, so you should only do this at the beginning as it can be tricky giving someone else full access to your account. 

Also, why not have a glance at your competitor’s followers (we know it’s another tedious task, but it’s worth a try). 

Step 11. Weekly Pinterest Strategy Review & Analytics 

We recommend you check out your Pinterest Analytics every Monday morning to see how your previous week’s performance went. You can easily track your follower growth, website traffic referrals, which of your pins worked best, the number of unique visitors who are actively repinning your pins, and how many times your pins appear in search results. 

These insights will help you understand your targeted audience better and therefore, assist you in creating more valuable content, which in the long run will achieve your overall Pinterest Strategy goals. 

If you find yourself stuck along the process, or you just want a guiding hand in taking your Pinterest Strategy to the next level, don’t hesitate to Get In Touch today for a free 30 minutes consultation with our friendly team.