The Answers to your Pinterest Questions

I get asked lots of questions about Pinterest as it seems to be my favourite subject and definitely my favourite marketing tool. So I thought I’d chat through some of the questions I get asked most frequently.

The first question is Why is Pinterest so good for business?

Pinterest is good for business because it helps build traffic to your website. You can use it to take your ideal customers from Pinterest over to your website. Pinners go there to shop 87% in a recent survey said that they were actually looking for something to buy. So even if the majority of the people that are pinning your pins are in America and you don’t pin because you’re in the UK, it’s still worthwhile getting on Pinterest.

They more likely to go to your website if they can see you on Pinterest, even though they’re not your main demographic because they are in a different country. Those people that are pinning in America are still going to have an impact on your traffic and that will still have an impact on your SEO reach. This will have then an impact on your customers and who gets to see your website in the long run. Pinterest can be great for selling your product both directly and indirectly, through things like brand awareness. Pinterest is really great marketing tool for business.

Next question is – What businesses work on Pinterest?

Most businesses can work on Pinterest and that’s for a number of reasons. We’ve just talked about how locality isn’t really a factor. You can get some customers from Pinterest that will directly go to your site and buy from you. But what we’re trying to do is part of a bigger strategy, to build the traffic to your website so that your SEO rating goes up and that people who are looking to buy from your locality or within your shipping zones are going to find you.

Service based businesses, Pinterest is perfect for you. You can pin your podcasts, your YouTube videos, your blog posts. You can kind of give free value, by sharing lead magnets encouraging people to sign up to your mailing lists. People go to Pinterest to solve problems, to do DIY, to buy things, so if you’re pinning lead magnets that help people solve a problem, you’re going to be quite popular on Pinterest.

Product based businesses should think about brand awareness, product awareness, people finding your brand and creating traffic to your site. People buying from you via Pinterest can also happen. Both types of business can do really well on Pinterest.

Should I be using it? Is the next question.

Now if you’ve read anything I’ve written you know I don’t believe in should. I don’t think anyone should be thinking that their marketing has to be done like anybody else. I don’t think that people have to have the same strategies, I think every business is unique, I think every individual that runs that business is unique and just because somebody in your niche is on that particular platform doesn’t mean it’s going to be right for you.

You have to decide if it’s right for you. I think Pinterest is an amazing marketing tool and to some extent you don’t really need invest too much in other platforms if you’re trying to grow your traffic and build a brand, Pinterest is for you.

I really do believe that it’s about what you can manage and what time you have. I don’t think that you should be doing everything on every platform, that is unachievable, unless you’ve got a huge team and you’re a massive business. You need to pick the things that work for your business. If you’re not sure if it’s going to work for you, drop me an email and I’ll happily talk to you about whether it would work for your business and whether it could be better, than some of the other things you are using.

So next question. When should I start pinning?

Basically, as soon as you decided to do it pin. Pin all the content you have made before. Blog posts, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, products, anything that you could create a pin for. Pin it immediately, don’t however pin the first things all in one go. Spread out the pinning, spread out your approach, otherwise you’re going to pin lots of stuff and then you’re going to run out of things to pin.

So think about how you want to pin, come up with a strategy, think about how many times a month you’re going to create your content. Macro content like blog posts, podcasts and YouTube videos and think about how many pins you want to make for those pieces of content. Then consider many times a week you’re going to do that and how many times a day you’re going to do that and come up with a basic strategy. That will help you to achieve something that is manageable.

What’s the most important thing when you start pinning?

I think it is to make sure you’ve got a good board structure, that you have an account that is optimised. I have a guide on doing that here if you want to know how to do that. And that you are thinking about what strategy is going to work for you, there’s no point saying I’m going to pin 500 pins a week if you can’t do that. That’s going to make Pinterest think that you’re spammy, because you pin loads and then none. Go with something that you can achieve first and build up.

Next question should you only pin from your niche?

Yes, but there are some examples where you could deviate slightly off. So, for instance if you are a wedding photographer and you pinned lots of wedding photography images, you could also really go wider into the wedding area. You could have boards that would attract brides, grooms, people who are getting married, people who are just looking for inspiration in general to your account through those boards. So, I think pinning for your niche is great and I think that, that is going to help Pinterest to know what kind of pinner and what kind of business you are. It shows what kind of content you’re going to be sharing. It helps them to make sure your content gets seen by the right people, if you have a consistency with your approach.

One thing to note, if that you’re pinning things that are within your niche but also pinning things that are just outside of it, do it on a consistent basis. So, every week or every couple of weeks make sure you’re pinning that outside of your niche content, so that Pinterest sees that this is not a one off pin.

How long does it take to see growth how?

This is the question I get asked all the time. A brand new account will take six to nine months to get any real success. You often get a really quick win success, where you have really good analytics. So you’re reach is good, your engagement levels are good, your monthly unique views are good for a bit and then it will drop. This is the pattern I always see, accounts doing really well initially, they drop off a little bit, and then when you hit that six to nine months of consistent pinning and working on a strategy it will start to steadily grow again.

People will see different results, it’s really not something you can game, it’s an algorithm. But if you are showing up and you are pinning on a consistent basis and sticking to those guidelines we talked about within your niche. If you’re doing what is seen as good pinning by Pinterest you will grow. It might be quicker than six months, it might be longer but it will grow. Pinterest wants people pinning and if you are consistent regular pinner they going to love you

What is my top tip for growth?

It’s really simple and it’s really dull, it’s the same for every platform keep doing it and be consistent. Pinterest more than any of the platform loves consistency. It doesn’t like it if you drop off. Don’t be an all or nothing pinner it will have no impact for you. Make sure that you are doing it in a consistent approach. That is my top, top tip!

Should I be using group boards?

This is another yes and no annswer. I haven’t used group boards personally. I’ve read lots about them. I can see the benefits and I’ve heard from people who have seen good benefits from them. But I’ve also heard the negatives and for me the negatives outweigh the positives.

I’ve heard of accounts getting suspended because someone within that group did something not quite right. I’ve heard of reach being affected because someone in that group board is pinning different stuff.

Group boards can be really good and if you’ve had a good experience then brilliant, don’t change them on this advice. My advice would be think about who you’re doing that board with. Do you know them? Can you trust them not to do spammy pinning? And think about the type of content that’s pinned. Does it really fit in your niche?

How do I measure success of my pins?

This is another top question I get quite a lot. Pinterest has its own analytics in the business end. It’s actually changed a bit recently so it’s actually quite nice easy to use area.

You can look in Google Analytics for referral traffic and find out where your traffic is coming from. If you’re using a scheduler to send your pins to Pinterest then they will have in built analytics within them too.

Are Followers important?

This is another yes or no question. Followers are important to some extent. It’s not like Instagram, where you improve your reach, your engagement with the more followers you have. It is more to do with people repinning your pin. if you have a group of people who are active followers and they always repin your pins then you’ll find that has really good effect on your account.

You might have a lot of people that are dormant and they’re not going to have an impact on your account at all, pretty much like any other platform that you might use. On Pinterest followers only really mean anything when it comes to repins and when it comes to working with other brands. For instance they can see that you have a following and that’s how they measure your reach. For small business and for other people that are using it I think that followers can be really important and they can help but don’t get too caught up on that.

My monthly unique views have dropped what’s going on?

This is the top questions get all the time and you may have noticed that Pinterest has had some surges and drops in engagement and reach recently. I heard only today of pinners that had had their MUV removed from their profile. Pinterest is always changing things.

So, it’s not really a very reliable statistic is all I’m going to say to you. It doesn’t really mean anything, it means how far your pin has been shared. Not how it’s been engaged with, repined, interacted with. It’s just about where it’s gone. It’s one of those figures that’s not too important, it looks good to outsiders but don’t get hung up on it.

Okay and the final question is why do you love Pinterest?

So I actually just think Pinterest is a great place, it’s so positive. There’s no pressure in Pinterest and I think as a business owner we spend so much time marketing our business in areas where we’re trying to grow all the time. It’s competitive, in a friendly way and you try to do all these different features and all these different things that you need to. But with Pinterest is pretty simple, you write a good description you send your pin live and you keep doing that. That’s it, there’s a few other things, obviously that you can get into but if you do those things you will see really good growth.

It’s really nice place to hang out in, also people go there with really positive intentions. They go there to find things they want to do, they go there to find hobbies, they go there to find things they might want to buy, that diy projects. There’s a lot of good that comes into the Pinterest platform and I find that really inspiring.

I think that it’s really wonderful tool for a small business to build traffic to their website. It’s one of the best things you can do, other than paying for links and improving your domain authority. Pinterest is going be right up there for me when it comes to traffic building and improving your website.

So there you have it my frequently asked question on Pinterest. If you have any others send me a message or DM over on Instagram.