Should You Be Pinning? And What To Pin

Hello, welcome to this week’s episode all about my favourite subject Pinterest. I’m going to chat about if you should be Pinning and what to Pin, so get your favourite drink and let’s get into it.

If you’ve read any of my blog posts or listened to any of my other podcasts you’ll know that I think Pinterest is a super marketing tool. The exposure you can get for your brand and the organic traffic it can bring to your website a really powerful for a small business. 

There are loads of ways that you can use Pinterest to enhance your business be it finding inspiration and advice, through using a pinning strategy or the use of adverts To promote your product.

If you’re not already using Pinterest for your business you might be missing out. 

I know it’s another thing that you’re going to have to think about doing along with Instagram and Twitter and LinkedIn and whatever else you do to market your business but sometimes you have to find the methods that work the best and forget about the rest. 

Digital marketing your business for yourself can be completely overwhelming I understand that but using clear direct methods and minimising the time that you spend on these things while maximising the effect is the way forward.

I use a whole plethora of digital marketing tools to market my business but I have streamlined it so it takes up blocks of my time a week instead of the whole week. 

I can tell you that Pinterest is one of the most effective ways I drive traffic to my website and get people to sign up to my mailing list. If I were to choose which digital marketing techniques to use, Pinterest would be at the top of my list.

I’ve had a lot of people say, but my business is a product-based business that serves only a certain location. Now, whilst this is technically true that Pinterest isn’t necessarily going to bring you direct sales. 

It is going to build traffic to your website which is going to have an impact on your SEO ranking. This will make you more searchable to those people that live in your local area. 

The way I like to think of Pinterest is that it gives a massive amount of exposure to your brand but that it also helps Google to see that you are popular, therefore improving your SEO.  

I like to talk about bloggers and influencers thinking about not getting direct sales. A lot of high-profile bloggers and influences are using Pinterest to promote their blog posts and podcasts to get a click through to their website. 

This gives them a higher rate of traffic. Which has an impact on who they can affiliate market with. The big brands are interested in traffic and bounce rate stats. 

The traffic works for them two-fold they get to work with more brands and they get eyes on their site that might buy using an affiliate link. I see all businesses the same way the more traffic you get to your site the better and Pinterest is Golden for this.

OK, so I have talked about why you should be using Pinterest I’m going to talk about what you should be pinning. I’m going to break it down into a service-based business and a product-based business. 

I’m going to talk about the type of content that should be behind your pins and the kind of things that you can use to drive traffic to your website away from Pinterest.

Service-Based Business

A lot of people say that service-based businesses are ideal for Pinterest and I would totally agree. You can base your core content (blog posts, podcasts, youtube videos) on advice around your service then pin links so that people find you and read your post. 

This builds trust and places you as an authority in your field. Several actions can come from this. They might sign up to your mailing list, they might engage you as a customer or they might champion you to others.

Service-based businesses can pin a variety of pins. The most common ones would be…

1. Blog posts about a service you offer
2. Blog posts about a problem you can solve
3. Free downloads which work as a lead magnet for mailing list signups
4. Podcast episodes and
5. Actual products from your shop page

Product Based Business

I can see why product-based businesses would feel that they didn’t have the right content to pin. But having worked with a few I can definitely say that is not the case. 

Product-based businesses still use blog posts to market themselves and have actual products that they can easily make pins about. 

If you’re trying to pin something to get a sale within a local area, pin it at times when UK audiences will be online. Pinterest is quite biased towards American online traffic. You find that a lot of the suggested times are in the middle of the night here in the UK, so bear that in mind. 

I would definitely stick to some of the recommended time slots but I would add a few that is when your audience is online. Use other stats like from Instagram or look at your Google analytics. You can see when people visit your website and use that as a guide.

The most common pins that product-based businesses could use are…

1. blog posts about

1. product’s
2. advice on how to care for the products
3. FAQ or how-to posts
4. inspiration posts  
5. video pins about how you use your product (these are doing so well out if you’re not using video pins get on it)
6. Products from the physical shop that they have online
7. customer testimonials which could be within a blog post but written about an experience that they’d had

The more you think about how you could put your product business onto Pinterest the more ideas that will come. These are just a few so think outside of the box, try to be creative. Pinterest is made for creativity so go mad.

I would highly recommend having designed pins to your brand guidelines, this creates a cohesive look that people will recognise. 

I wrote a blog post about designing your pins last week so if you want to have a look at that I’ll link it in the show notes. It gives some top tips on how to get it right and do it in as little time as possible.

Also this week I am launching a Pinterest course about how to do exactly what I’ve been talking about over the last few weeks. 

Doing it in as little time as possible with maximum reach. So if you want to know more head over to the website there is a box where you can sign up to be the first to know or DM me over on Instagram and we can have a chat.

The takeaway this week is that no matter what type of business you run Pinterest could be a real marketing opportunity for you. That you should consider how you could represent your business on there and grow your traffic to your website. That service-based businesses and product-based businesses can create content that is very pinnable. Pinterest is a creative space so think creatively.

I hope you found that useful, if you want to chat some more get in touch, my details are in the show notes, I’m here to help.