In my post on 7 reasons to use Pinterest to grow your business, I told you why Pinterest can be a gold mine for your brand. I recommend checking out the full post for all the details (and snagging the Pinterest profile freebie). But in short, Pinterest is an effective way to boost your traffic, grow your email list, and make more money from your business.
Of course, if you want to see these results, you can’t just be on Pinterest. You need to use it effectively. How do you do this? By using these 10 tried-and-true Pinterest tips.
Want more traffic from Pinterest? Boost the number of people who see your pins and profile.
Download my free Pinterest SEO cheat sheet to optimize your visibility on the platform.
1. Make a board just for your content
When you use Pinterest for business, you’ll usually pin a mix of your own content and other people’s content to your boards. However, there’s one exception to this Pinterest tip: you want to create one board that’s just for your content. Make the name of the board your brand’s name or your URL. And if you need to, rearrange your boards so that this board is the first one that appears on your account.
Having a highly visible board that’s just for your content makes it easy for people who visit your profile to learn what your brand is all about. It’ll also give them a simple way to find out what kind of content you produce.
See how the first board on my Pinterest account is a board just for my brand.
2. Create boards related to your brand
In addition to the board you create just for your brand, you want to create 14-19 additional boards that are relevant to your brand. To figure out what these additional boards should be about, identify topics you create content on that your audience would be interested in.
For example, because I help brands create powerful copy and content, I have boards on copywriting, content writing, and blogging.
3. Name your boards strategically
This Pinterest tip is based on the fact that Pinterest is more of a search engine than a social platform. Because people use Pinterest to search for content, you want to name your boards using the types of words people would use in their searches.
You may be tempted to use cutesy names like “$$$ Tips” for your board on accounting tips, for example. However, most people will use “accounting tips” not “$$$ tips” when searching for accounting tips on Pinterest. For this reason, your board and its content will be more visible to people if you use the unoriginal-yet-effective name “accounting tips.”
Notice how the names of all of my boards are simply the topic of the board.
4. Design effective pins
If you want your pins to stand out in the Pinterest feed, you’ll need to design attractive pins to post on your boards. Here are some Pinterest tips to keep in mind for creating attractive pins
- Make them vertical (for example, 800 x 1200)
- Use the same colours, fonts, or designs across pins (to make them recognizable)
- Add text to your pins to tell people what your pins link to
- Make text large and easy to read
- Subtly brand your pins by including your URL at the bottom
To make creating new pins a breeze, make a pin template in Canva and simply change the image and text for each new pin.
Here’s an example of what my pins look like:
5. Use Rich Pins
Here’s a handy Pinterest tip that’s easy to implement. To give your audience more info on what your pin is about, use Rich Pins. Rich Pins showcase more details about the content your pin ultimately links to. As long as you have a Pinterest business account, you’ll have access to four types of Rich Pins:
- Article pins
- App pins
- Recipe pins
- Product pins
When you use an article pin, Pinterest will display the headline, author, and description of the post your pin links to. This info can help to convince your audience that your content is exactly what they’re looking for.
Because all of my own pins link to one of my blog posts, they’re all Rich Pins. Here’s what an article Rich Pin looks like when someone taps it to get a closer look:
6. Implement Pinterest SEO
If you want your Pinterest profile and pins to be visible to people on the platform, there’s something you need to implement: Pinterest SEO. Because Pinterest is a search engine, you need to optimize the content you post on it just like you optimize your blog or website content for Google. Boost your Pinterest SEO by adding keywords in all the right places.
Related: SEO Basics for Blog Posts
Want to learn how to optimize your Pinterest account and pins so that more people see them?
Download my free Pinterest SEO cheat sheet.
7. Schedule pins in advance
The Pinterest algorithm prioritizes accounts that pin consistently. That’s why many businesses who use Pinterest find it helpful to use a scheduler to pin content. With these apps, you can schedule a full week’s or a full month’s worth of content all at once and have it pin to your boards automatically. Which tools should you use to implement this Pinterest tip? Tailwind is one of the most popular schedulers, but there are others out there too.
8. Make it easy for people to pin content from your blog or site
This Pinterest tip is all about increasing the reach of your pins and content by making it easier for other people to share them. When you place a Pinterest sharing button on your blog or website, you reduce the steps people have to complete to share your content on their own Pinterest account. Depending on the features of your Pinterest sharing button, you may even be able to display the number of people who have shared your content before. This is a great way to display social proof.
I use the Social Warfare plugin to display Pinterest and other social share buttons on each blog post.
9. Join group boards
Most of the boards you pin to will be your own boards. However, you can also join and contribute to group boards on Pinterest. Group boards are boards with multiple pinners or contributors. When you post a pin on a group board, everyone who follows that group board has a chance of seeing and repining it to their own boards.
It’s for this reason that group boards are a great way to boost your visibility on Pinterest, especially when you’re first starting out.
Ready to put this Pinterest tip into action? Find group boards relevant to your niche by using PinGroupie or identifying the ones other people in your niche belong to.
10. Stay on top of your analytics
With a Pinterest business account, you’ll have access to Pinterest analytics right on the platform. With just a few clicks, you’ll be able to see how many impressions, saves, and clicks your pins have received during a specified period of time. You’ll also be able to see which pins have performed the best.
You can take this Pinterest tip even further by using Google Analytics to see how much traffic your website or blog is getting from Pinterest and which pins are giving you the best results.
To find out how much traffic Pinterest is sending to your blog or website, go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels > Social > Pinterest in Google Analytics.
To see which pins have generated the most traffic, go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals > Pinterest.com. This will display the URLs of the pins that have directed traffic to your website during the specified time period. Use this data to find out which kinds of pins your audience responds to the best. Make more pins like these going forward.
Use these Pinterest tips to grow your brand
Pinterest can help you take your business to the next level. But to get results, you need to know how to use the platform effectively. Optimize the results you get from Pinterest by using these 10 Pinterest tips to create the right boards, design attractive pins, and boost their visibility.
Want more traffic from Pinterest? Boost the number of people who see your pins and profile.
Download my free Pinterest SEO cheat sheet to optimize your visibility on the platform.
