How to use Pinterest for business

Having a social media presence helps your business grow and reach new audiences, and it helps you build your brand, gain credibility and boost sales. Pinterest can be part of it: to use it for business, set up a free business account, publish eye-catching Pins that link to your website, and use keywords and Pinterest Analytics to improve your results.

Pinterest keeps gaining ground. It may not be as popular as platforms like Facebook, but it has more than 600 million monthly active users, according to Pinterest's own figures. It also has great reach, because visual content has become so important online.

People also come to Pinterest with intent: they go there to find inspiration and plan ideas, including new products to buy. Pinterest itself describes the platform as a visual search and shopping platform.

How does Pinterest work?

People save images and videos they find, on Pinterest or elsewhere online, as Pins on their boards. Saving a Pin is more like bookmarking an idea than liking a post. Each Pin can contain useful information about the image, such as a link to the website it came from and a short, editable description.

To save Pins from other websites, people can add the Pinterest Save Extension to their browser or paste a page's address into Pinterest.

Other people go straight to the platform to find inspiration in what others have saved, which is how those images get discovered by new people. Those who are interested enough click the Pin and land on its website.

Why is this relevant?

Because, for a business, it's an excellent way to be discovered.

As a business owner, you can create a free Pinterest business account, or convert your personal one, to get analytics, audience insights and ads, which personal accounts don't include. Once your account is set up, there are three ways people can discover you:

• You can publish your own Pins that link to your website.
• Other users may find something interesting on your website and save it.
• You can use Pinterest ads to raise your chances of being discovered.

It's important to know that other people can save images from your website to Pinterest even if you don't have a Pinterest account. Claiming your website on Pinterest makes sure your brand name appears on every Pin people create from it.

How to boost your business with Pinterest

Show prices with product Pins

Users go to Pinterest to find inspiration, but they're also willing to buy if something really interests them. If you sell products, use product Pins: they show up-to-date pricing, availability and product information, and they link to the page on your website where people can buy. You can create them by adding rich Pin tags to your product pages or by uploading a product catalogue to Pinterest.

However, keep in mind that a Pinterest board isn't a store. The main goal is to bring traffic to your website so you can turn it into sales.

Add a Save button to your website so people can share your content easily

Not everyone has the Pinterest Save Extension installed, so make saving easy for them. Pinterest's Save button for websites (Pinterest calls it the Save Add-On) can appear when visitors hover over your images, or you can add it to specific images you want to promote.

Keep in mind that if you want users to take an action, you have to be clear and make it easy for them. Pair the button with a call to action and your content is more likely to be shared.

Be consistent

You need to be consistent to build significant reach. Publish fresh Pins regularly, at a rhythm you can keep up.

Pinning consistently keeps your followers engaged and helps you grow your views and followers over time. Remember that followers and views can turn into website visitors, and those visitors are closer to converting. For more ideas, see our social media marketing tips.

Optimise your Pins and boards

Are you familiar with optimising your content for search engines (SEO)? The concept is basically the same: think about the keywords your target customers would use and add them to the titles and descriptions of your Pins and boards.

The good news is that optimising for Pinterest is simpler than optimising for search engines.

You can use Google Keyword Planner to look for keywords, and you can also type your target keywords into Pinterest's search bar to see the related searches it suggests.

Create amazing visual content

You don't have to spend a fortune to create great content, but your images should be high quality, with good lighting and composition.

There are several resources where you can find high-quality photos for free, or access many more for a small price.

Another idea is to take the photos yourself: they'll be original and nobody else will have the same ones. Just keep the points above about quality in mind.

Pinterest's creative best practices recommend making your products the star and showing people using them in realistic settings. They also recommend vertical images in a 2:3 ratio (for example, 1,000 by 1,500 pixels), because most people use Pinterest on their phones.

Use Pinterest Analytics to improve your results

Pinterest Analytics shows you which Pins work best, with metrics such as impressions, saves and outbound clicks (the clicks that take people to your website).

Audience insights also show you who's engaging with your content, including their age, gender, location and device.

This is especially useful if you run Pinterest ads: knowing who responds to your Pins helps you target the right audience and improve your next campaigns.

If you'd like help making Pinterest part of your wider social media strategy, our digital marketing team can help.