Sell More on Pinterest with These Two Important Steps to Improve Your Pinterest Marketing
Businesses and brands use Pinterest as an important part of their online marketing strategy Pinterest is great for raising brand awareness, demonstrating products, sharing do-it-yourself tutorials, and helping you sell online. The social media channel is a natural fit for health and beauty brands, lifestyle products, home decor items, and recipes. But really, any business can use Pinterest as part of their marketing strategy and can add to a robust email, SEO, PPC, and social media marketing strategy. However, there are a few important account features that you will need to work on to help you get your account noticed.
There are two important things you should do to improve your Pinterest account. The first is switch from a personal account to a business account. A Pinterest business account gives you access to more options including free analytics. The best part is that a business account is totally free and packed with useful features. If you have not yet changed to a business account, then, read my post on how to convert. It only takes a few minutes.
All Pinterest Pins Have Metrics
Pinterest business accounts give you access to free metrics so you can see who your audience is, what interests them, and what your most popular Pins are. It also gives you the ability to run advertisements on Pinterest called Promoted Pins. One of the best features of a Pinterest business account is that you can upload videos Pins. Business accounts are able to upload videos as organic (free) pins and also as Promoted (paid) Pins. If you only have a personal account, the only kind of video you can upload is a comment on someone else’s Pin. That’s known as a “tried it” comment. So personal accounts can upload a video of how they tried a recipe or an outfit as a comment on another user’s Pin, but that’s it.
Business accounts can upload videos as organic (free) Pins and also as Promoted (paid) Pins.
With a business account you can use Promoted Pin campaigns and pay by the click or impression depending on the campaign. All Promoted Pins are single tap meaning you don’t need to tap for a close-up and then have to tap again to go to the landing page. Just one tap brings shoppers to your website or app. There are three types of Pins, and all of them give business users a wealth of data to help them grow their following and sell more online. All Pins utilize one or more images or a video. All have a title, description, and an optional URL Standard Pins (the original version) use one image and are available as organic and Promoted Pins. Video Pins and carousel Pins are also available as Promoted Pins and organic pins.
Video Pin Metrics
Pinterest video Pins have unique metrics of their own, but you will need a business account to see the metrics for video Pins as well as standard Pins. You’ll be able to quickly see your video viewership stats including average watch time, number of people who saw your video, number of close-up views, and number of saves to other Pinterest boards.
Another useful metric for video Pins is the 7-day, 30-day, and 24 hour number of views. This gives you a good idea of how your video pin is resonating with your audience right away. Video pins are an incredibly effective way to engage your audience, demonstrate a product, show a do-it-yourself or tutorial Pin, bring traffic to your website, and raise brand awareness. Lifestyle video Pins are some of the most effective for raising brand awareness. My video or me landing a plane has almost 8,000 times and it’s not even optimized for search or messaging.
Use Clear Images and Videos
The other critical factor to a successful Pinterest strategy is to use clear images including photos, videos, and graphics. Like Instagram, Pinterest requires a visual creative with each Pin. There is no concept of saving a text only Pin the way you can with Facebook and Twitter. Use a clear image that shows someone interacting with your product and encourage viewers to click on the Pin and tap to learn more and ultimately buy from you.
Pinterest has several visual search features including visual search, Shop the Look, and the Lens. Pins are shown in Google search results pages too as images and links. Remember taller Pins earn more engagement so try to use the optimum image and thumbnail sizes. It is critical to your account’s success to use clear photos, videos, and graphics. That way you’ll be able to optimize your account and take advantage of all Pinterest visual search features. This social channel is not just about searching for text as it is packed with images centric search tools.
When using a video can you have the option to use a thumbnail image. Unlike other video channels like YouTube or Facebook, Pinterest thumbnail images (optionally) use a vertical aspect ratio – portrait orientation rather than landscape. You should create an appropriate thumbnail for any video used on Pinterest.
Carousel Pins are similar to standard Pins but use anywhere from two to five images. The image that appears first is the one that viewers will see most often. That top image is critical to getting people to swipe to see your other images . The first carousel image should convey your message and grab attention. A quality, clear image is essential. Carousel Pins are also available as Promoted Pins.