How to Use Pinterest to Boost Your Small Business: A Step-by-Step Guide

Pinterest isn’t just for craft enthusiasts and home decor addicts. It’s often overlooked in many digital marketing strategies (confession: I’ve neglected it for far too long) but it is a powerful platform that can supercharge your small business’s online presence, help you reach a broader audience and grow your revenues. And best of all, it’s free! Whether you’re selling handmade crafts, offering services, or running a local or ecomm shop, Pinterest can be your secret weapon for growth. In this guide, I’ll walk you through the steps to make Pinterest work for your small business.

Step 1: Understanding Pinterest for Business

What kinds of businesses benefit from Pinterest?

Pinterest can be a goldmine for businesses in these niches:

• Retail (fashion, home decor, accessories)
• Food and recipes
• Travel and hospitality
• DIY and crafting
• Health and wellness
• Event planning
• Personal branding (consultants, coaches, influencers)

Why Pinterest? The Benefits.

Pinterest offers:

• An audience of 465 million monthly users (over 12 million are Canadian).
• High-quality, visual content sharing.
• Free traffic to your website or ecomm store (including Etsy and Amazon).
• Ability to showcase your products or services.
• Opportunities for branding and storytelling.
• A positive environment (a rarity online).

Step 2: Setting Up Your Business Account

Setting up your business account is the first step to Pinterest success. Here’s a quick overview:

1. Creating a Pinterest business account: If you don’t have one, sign up or convert your personal account into a business account. This allows you access to valuable marketing features like Pinterest analytics, access to ads, or the ability to upload your product catalog.
2. Claiming your website: Verify your website with Pinterest. This builds trust with your audience and unlocks website analytics.
3. Profile optimization: Use a professional profile picture or logo, write a keyword-rich description, and include your website link. Apply the same SEO principles to your profile as you do to your website.
4. Become a verified merchant: This step is optional as it requires some time and connecting your online product catalog directly to Pinterest, but it does unlock certain pin features, like up-to-date pricing and product availability.

Step 3: Winning Pinterest Pins

Not all pins are created equal. Make sure your pins stand out:

Types of pins that work best: Idea Pins are great for how-tos, showcasing a collection of products, or telling a story. They include up to 10 tagged topics improving the discoverability of your pin. Rich Pins pull relevant information straight from your site making them quick and easy to post. Product Pins are great for verified merchants as they provide up-to-date pricing and product availability.

Crafting compelling pin descriptions: Use keywords, add value (what’s in it for the user), and include a call to action.

Embrace variety: Test different visuals, calls to actions, pin type, content type, descriptions to see what resonates best with the Pinterest community and apply the learnings to your future pins. Just make sure to stay within your brand guidelines to ensure consistantcy.

Pinning frequency: Aim for a consistent pinning schedule. A good rule of thumb is one to two posts per week. I would recommend 5-7 posts per-week as you are ramping up your Pinterest presence and slowly reduce the frequency.

Multiple pins per product: Create different pins for the same product, blog post, or service. Make sure to vary the visual, the title and description and even pin type. Just make to schedule the pins a few months apart to avoid spamming the platform and getting penalized.

More pins = more traffic: Older pins will continue to gain traction over time. This will assure long term traffic to your brand (the long-tail approach). Make sure to include evergreen content in your pinning strategy, and update any links to seasonal pins. That said, Pinterest is a highly visual platform, don’t let the quality of your pins slip and impact your brand image. When in doubt, always choose quality over quantity.

Include valid URLs: The main purpose of Pinterest is to drive traffic to your environment. This of it as a visual search engine. Make sure all your pins include links back to your site or online store, and that those links work! This means having a strategy on your website that if a product is out of stock or discontinued, redirect the page to a similar product or to a page that will help the user find what they are looking for.

Pro Tip: Tell a story with your pins. Show your products or services in action or offer helpful tips and tutorials.

Pin visuals

Visual appeal is everything on Pinterest. To make sure your pins shine and reflect your brand image:

Design tips for impactful pins: Use high-quality images, videos or graphics that align with your brand and make your product or service the focal point. Choose eye-catching colours and readable fonts. Simplicity often wins.

Ideal pin dimensions: Pinterest recommends a 2:3 aspect ratio, with 1000×1500 pixels being a popular choice. Below are the best practices for high quality Pinterest pins.

Tools for creating pins: I love Canva for Pinterest. It’s a user-friendly tool to design stunning pins even if you’re not a graphic designer.

Mobile first: Over 80% of Pinterest’s traffic is viewed on a mobile device. Keep fonts large enough to be visible on your phone, avoid background images that are too busy and opt for a vertical design as much as possible.

Brand consistency: Apply your brand guidelines to the pins to ensure, using as similar approach you would to your Instagram posts and feed. It will make your brand more recognizable and help you build trust.

Pro Tip: Include your logo (subtly) in every pin, and avoid the bottom right corner as it gets covered by icons.

Step 5: Create Pinterest Boards

Pinterest boards are where you organize and categorize your pins and will help your business appear in more searches.

Create Targeted Boards: Develop boards that align with your business niche. For instance, if you sell handmade jewelry, create boards for different jewelry styles, materials, and care tips. The same pin can appear in multiple boards.

Use trending keywords to inspire boards: Pinterest is a destination used to inspire shopping. Use seasonal shopping trends to generate board ideas, like: Halloween costume ideas, including your earrings or nail art, Teacher gift ideas featuring some of your products. Pro tip: When creating seasonal boards, publish them 4-5 months before the season starts. This will allow plenty of time to get referenced and catch all the early shoppers.

Keyword-Optimize Board Titles and Descriptions: Craft board titles and descriptions that include relevant keywords. This helps your boards appear in search results and attracts your target audience.

Pin Variety: Mix up your pins within boards. Include your own content, repins from others, and a healthy balance of different pin types. This diversity keeps your boards engaging and authentic.

Step 6: Pinterest SEO and Keywords

Pinterest is a search engine, like Google or Bing, so keywords are your best friends:

Identify your primary keywords: Identify a 4-5 keywords you want to be most known for and ensure they appear across all your pins, boards and profile.

Researching relevant keywords: Use tools like Pinterest’s own keyword tool or external ones like Answer the public or Google Keyword Planner to find trending keywords in your niche.

Incorporating keywords into your pins and boards: Naturally weave keywords into your pin descriptions, board names, and board descriptions.

Use SEO best practices: Apply the same SEO principles that you do for your keywords and meta information on your website to your pins.

Add Tagged Topics: Make sure to use Tagged Topics in all your idea pins. You have up to 10 per pin, they won’t appear in the description or anywhere on the pin but will help your content get discovered. You can skip the #hashtags, as of 2021 they are not very useful on Pinterest.

Check out the competition: Research what keywords your main competitors are using and incorporate them into your strategy.

Step 7: Leveraging Pinterest Analytics

Pinterest provides invaluable data to refine your strategy:

Setting goals and KPIs: Decide what you want Pinterest to help you achieve, whether it’s more website traffic, sales, or brand exposure, and build your content strategy around that.

Tracking pin performance: Monitor the engagement, clicks, and saves of your pins to understand what resonates with your audience. Regularly check Pinterest Analytics to spot trends and capitalize on what’s working.

Understanding audience insights: Learn about your followers’ demographics and interests to tailor your content.

Pinterest traffic to your website: Monitor how traffic coming from Pinterest performs on your website or online store and how it’s evolving overtime.

Making data-driven decisions: Use analytics to see how you are performing against your objectives and refine your content strategy over time. Don’t be afraid to pivot and try new tactics based on your findings.

Pro Tip: Because it’s a search engine, Pinterest can help drive traffic to your site and online store even you have very few followers. You can still have a very successful and lucrative Pinterest strategy with a handful of followers.

Step 8: Engagement and Community Building

Engagement can help you see even more success on Pinterest as it will help you appear in more searches and add credibility to your brand. Here’s how to foster it:

Engaging with followers and other pinners: Respond to comments, messages, and engage with other pinners’ content.

Collaborating with influencers: Partner with influencers in your niche to reach a broader audience.

Joining group boards: Participate in group boards related to your niche to expand your reach.

Repin and Curate: Regularly curate content from other users that aligns with your brand and audience’s interests. This can boost your credibility and encourage others to reciprocate.

Spotlight your clients: Dedicate a board to user generated content, showcasing your followers using your products in their everyday lives.

Pro Tip: When engaging with others, be genuine and authentic. Build relationships, not just followers.

Now you have an arsenal of tools to help you pin your way to small business success. One final reminder, Pinterest is a long-term game. Consistency, creativity, and patience will be your allies. If you need more personalized guidance on your Pinterest journey, or are interested in more advanced strategies, don’t hesitate to reach out. I can help you maximize your Pinterest potential.

Happy pinning!