Pinterest Marketing Strategy
In the past 10 years, social media has changed our lives in how we communicate with others and how we engage with brands. Now, everyone has a voice and we can reach more people than ever with our ideas. Because there is so much out there, digital and social media marketing can be overwhelming. When I work with clients, I emphasize that you need to focus on marketing strategies that work for you and your brand. This is a philosophy that I stick with for any brand, but we do need to know about different platforms to assess it is right for our brands. One social platform that may not be on your radar is Pinterest. Generally, Facebook’s users are largely an audience ages 50 and older. Where Instagram is mostly 45 and younger. In contrast, Pinterest users are all ages. Here is a marketing strategy for Pinterest you can swipe for your jewelry business.
Why Pinterest is a Smart Marketing Strategy
As users of social media, we have begun to gravitate towards different social platforms for different reasons and you may be thinking, “I didn’t even know Pinterest was a thing anymore.” It is still very a thing. As a matter of fact, Pinterest went public this year. People use Pinterest to search for content like they would on Google. Things like recipes, DIY crafts, and wedding day ideas. I have a friend that when she got engaged the first things she said to me was, “now I can make my Pinterest wedding board!” It’s a search engine more than a social platform.
Pinterest Strategies for Your Jewelry Business
I know what you are thinking, “how do I make Pinterest work me and my business? I don’t have time to add another thing to the list!” I hear ya! I have few simple strategies to help but, like with any project, if you want to add Pinterest to your mix you need to take the time to do it or hire someone to do it for you. Here are some ideas to get you pinning like a pro.
Make it easy
We tend to overcomplicate things so let’s make it easy for you to incorporate a Pinterest Marketing Strategy. If you are anything like me, if it’s not easy, I won’t do it. With this simple strategy, Pinterest has become the 3rd highest traffic driver to my day jobs website and we have increased our impressions by 119%. Are you ready for this? When I post a piece of content (in our case a blog post), I hit the Pinterest share button and share it to a board. That’s it! The moral of this story? Just show up.
Amazing Photos
I preach this all the time and will keep hammering this one home. You must have great photos. All social platforms are so visual that you can NOT get away with dark and yellow phone images. They are not going to cut it on Pinterest (or Instagram, or Facebook anymore). Remember Pinterest was built as a digital vision board. You won’t put bad photos on your vision board, would you? And neither do your customers. Jewelry is hard to photograph, but you have to upgrade your photos pronto. It will be the best investment you make in your business. You’ll thank me later.
Get a Business Account
You may already have this done. Is so, skip this point. The first step, if you don’t have one, go sign up for a Pinterest account. Then, switch your account to a business account. You want a business account for the analytics and the ability to maybe one day run an ad. Word of caution, if you have a personal account and want to switch, you may want to clean up your personal boards and hide your crazy. You can make boards secret so if you want to keep everything all in one account maybe use secret boards. You want to stay consistent with your brand and all the random stuff you save to boards might not fit with your brand image.
Create Boards and Pins
When first starting an account I like to create a few boards that I know I want like, ‘Bold Statement Jewelry’ or ‘Styling Jewelry Like a Pro’. I like to name my boards’ fun names (on my personal Pinterest I have a board called ‘I might be the crazy cat lady’) but you do you boo. Mostly, I only start with a few because I like to create boards on the fly as I’m pinning things.
Then, I start pinning away straight from my website. Honestly, I don’t do anything fancy. You totally can. But that’s another post for another day.
Chasing the Pinterest Algorithm
We are chasing the algorithm on every digital platform these days - Google, Facebook, Instagram, and even Pinterest. Like on Google, keywords in your titles and descriptions help people find you. One of the best ways to figure out good keywords is to go jewelry shopping on Pinterest. What would you search for? Make a note of those terms you search for because you’re going to want to incorporate them into your pin titles and descriptions when you are pinning from your website. People use Pinterest like they use Google so many of the same SEO rules apply. If you want to dive deeper into Pinterest SEO this article and video on Tailwind gets into some nerdy strategies that can really help.
Promoted Pins
Like Facebook, Pinterest does have an ads platform where you can promote your pins. Obviously, when you put money behind a promoted pins you get more impressions and it is shown in people’s feed more. When you switch to a business account, the ad platform is accessible and pretty easy to navigate. As a business account, Pinterest is very helpful in helping you with your ads for free. I have a Pinterest Ad Rep that I talk to every couple of months that helps me set up ads and give me pointers on ads that do well on Pinterest.
We are keeping it simple with these strategies but there is a lot more you can do with Pinterest. But if you are short on time these simple strategies can put a little boost in driving traffic to your website. To help you out, I’ve put these tips into a Cheat Sheet so you can swipe my strategies and try it for yourself.