Pinterest for business – It’s time well spent

I originally wrote this ‘Pinterest for Business’ post back at the beginning of 2016 – I wrote it because I was so impressed with how much traffic Pinterest was driving to my business.

Fast forward to 2018 and Pinterest has gone from strength to strength for me, so, I wanted to come back and update this post to make sure the advice is still the best it can be and share the strategy I’m using to continue to grow my blog – Oh yes, I’m now a full-time blogger.

*DISCLAIMER Please not I have shared affiliate links in this post.  I have only made recommendations for services/products I actually use and trust.

Who is Pinterest for?

I’m going to say a blanket answer here – Pinterest is for EVERYONE.

Now, I’m going to do a little love your business note – I do believe from a love your business point of view that you must choose the platforms that you actually enjoy.  For example, at this time, I rarely use Instagram for my business.  I like it for my personal use but not from a business point of view, yet there are other people who love it and are really successful using Instagram for business.

I obviously love Pinterest and I do believe it can work for anyone.

When I chat with business friends a lot of people still don’t understand how Pinterest can help in business.  I hope to give you some really useful ideas today and of course, if you want to ask me anything more, please go ahead and leave me a comment below.

I’ve made no secret about the fact that Pinterest has been driving considerably more traffic to my site over the past few months and as you now know, that has grown over the past 2 years.

Toward the end of 2015, I noticed more and more traffic coming from Pinterest and as we’ve moved into 2016, it’s driving around 3 times more traffic to my site each day compared to any other social media platform.

2018 update

My Pinterest account receives 963.8k monthly unique viewers. Average monthly viewers 955,629 – Average monthly engaged 40,372

Those figures definitely outperform any of the social media sites I use by far.

Oh and by the way, I don’t take photographs myself.  I use free (creative commons) photo’s – Mostly from Pixabay and then add some text on Canva.com.

You can view my quick and simple Canva Tutorial to create Pinnable images. This will really help you to make a simple yet effective Pinterest image. NOTE: Vertical images are a must for Pinterest success.

PIN and SHARE – Thanks

Pinterest is for any business, not just for the arts and craft, recipe business

Pinterest can be used by any business successfully.  Real estate companies are using it successfully.  Social media businesses are using it successfully. Writer’s are using it successfully.  There are all kinds of businesses all over the world using Pinterest successfully.

All you need to do is have a little imagination and be prepared to put a little time into…

• Learning how to create pinnable images – See the Pinterest image tutorial.
• Sharing images on a regular basis
• Sharing other people’s pins on a regular basis.

I use Tailwind to Schedule my own posts and posts by other people (more about this in a minute.

Revisit old content and create pinnable images

Your images are key to Pinterest success.  Vertical images are a must.  You will see exceptions to this rule but please take my advice and go for vertical images.

Revisit every page and every post on your site and make sure they all have at least 1 quality pinnable image.  I also recommend adding a smaller image suitable for other social media such as Facebook/twitter as Pinterest images don’t work well on those sites and yes, I do still think it’s good to have a presence on these sites too.

If you’ve already got a Pinnable image on an old post, can you create a better one?

Make it easy for people to pin your images from your site

Make sure it’s easy for people to pin images from your site.  I use the SumoMe and Pin it plugins for easy sharing.  And make sure people can easily find your sharing icons.  People won’t go looking.

Also, it’s fine to ask people to share your image.  I tend to put a little text above each pin saying PIN and SHARE – Thanks.

Sharing images on a regular basis

The thing I’ve learned about Pinterest is you do need to spend time on the site.  If your goal is driving traffic back to your blog or website then it’s important first to be creating regular content and adding pinnable images.

I currently post to my blog 3 times a week and for most posts, I try to add 2 or more pinnable images.

2018 UPDATE:

I no longer have a schedule for adding blog posts.  Instead, I focus on creating longer content that will stand the test of time and I am constantly checking and updating older posts (just like I’m doing with this one).

I find that trying to force myself to churn out loads of blog posts, I am better making the most of the content I already have.

The only thing I will add to this point is, if you are a new blogger, you will definitely benefit from adding more regular and more frequent posts to your blog.

Repin other people’s pins regularly

Definitely, repin other people’s pins.  If you find something helpful, repin it.  Find people who post similar things to you and build your Pinterest community.  People searching for information on Pinterest love boards with a good amount of pins in.

If you’re only pinning your own pins, you need to get super, super busy focusing on other people too. This also really helps you to keep your own boards active and this is another big thing with Pinterest.

I’ve seen posts which recommend pinning around 80 pins a day, I’m certainly not doing that.  More realistically other people recommend 8-10 pins daily.  80% other people’s (Repins) and 20% your own.

2018 UPDATE:

If I had to put a percentage to my pinning quota these days, I’d probably say it’s around 50/50.  Although some days I will pin way more of other people’s pins than my own and other days hardly any.  As long as you have a good mix, you’re doing fine.

I schedule between 15-20 pins daily on Tailwind and try to spend some time manually adding other people’s pins and following my Pinterest Strategy (more on this in a minute) most days.

PIN and SHARE – Thanks

The lifespan of a PIN

Pins have a much longers lifespan compared to any other sharing site that I know of. I have pins that I added years ago still driving a good amount of traffic to my blog. For example, this Pin that I added in 2016 Law of attraction for visual people is still driving a really good amount of traffic – In the last 7 days (30 September 2018 – 6 October 2018) it’s been seen on Pinterest 1.6k times – I do reshare this pin occasionally but mostly it keeps driving me traffic because Pinterest is set up to work long-term.

Also, when I look at other people’s Pinterest boards I don’t just look at the first few pins.  I usually scroll all the way to the end and pick out pins I want to look at more. I don’t do the same on Facebook or twitter.

This is one of my older Pins that constantly drives traffic to my site Law of attraction tips for non-believers (you’ll see it was one of my earlier attempts at creating images.  It’s not great, yet it still brings me a good amount of traffic.  I very rarely reshare this image as it’s not a vertical image and not that great but it’s still doing it’s magic well over 3 years later.

I’m definitely not getting traffic from Facebook posts or tweets that I put out last week, never mind over a year ago. If you’re not either and you’re not yet using Pinterest, I really hope this post will inspire you to get started.

I still consider myself to be a relative newbie on Pinterest and I’m excited to see what the next 12 months bring.  All I can tell you is the time I spend creating my images and the time I spend on Pinterest is paying off much more than time spent on any other social media site (for me).

2018 UPDATE:

Well, I still don’t consider myself to be a Pinterest expert but I certainly know a fair bit about what works and keep trying out new things as Pinterest changes.

Now I’m not for one minute suggesting dropping other social media sites.  I’m not a fan of putting all your eggs in one basket. But, I do believe in spending your time where it pays off the most.  Think about your time ROI.

Pinterest group boards

Pinterest boards are well worth joining and getting involved in.  My advice is that if you’re going to join them, make sure you’re supporting others on that board too.  This all comes down to building a community.

A group board can do wonders for getting you in front of a bigger audience who might otherwise never find your posts.

I’m hearing that Pinterest has not been showing group boards as much recently, but I still think it’s well worth getting involved in the right boards.

A general rule of thumb (my own) is that if you are going to add a pin to a group board, repin another pin by another member. It’s good Pinterest karma.

2018 UPDATE

Pinterest boards have definitely become less popular recently.  My advice is to find a few niche group boards and make sure it’s active.  Pin to it and from it often but do keep an eye on how well it’s working for you.  Tailwind has a special feature called Board Insights where you can find out information on how well group boards are performing. If it’s not working for you, get rid of it.  But if you are going to pin to a group board, go with good karma and pin a few images from the board from other people every time you add anything of your own.

2018 Pinterest strategy + Blog strategy

I had a point early on in the tear where I was starting to get overwhelmed by Pinterest – More specifically about finding a schedule for repinning my own content.  It was at that time very random to say the least.  I couldn’t find a good, manageable way to keep track of when I was repinning and where to.

I trawled the internet for ideas and eventually just came up with my own system that seems to be working very well.

If you go to my Pinterest boards you’ll see that I have a Best From The Blog – Morning Business Chat board.  This is my PRIORITY board and I only pin my own content to this board.

My 2018 Pinterest strategy

• Every business day (that’s most days) I go to the Best from the blog board and scroll right down to the bottom – Please note that there are NO DUPLICATE PINS on this board.
• Repin the last image back onto the best of… board – In my super techie (NOT) notebook, I write down the pins name and the stats for that pin (Impressions, shares and clicks)
• I then delete that image so that I haven’t got a duplicate.
• Go back to the board and click on the image.  It will now be at the top.
• Edit the description focusing on keywords for SEO and add a few relevant hashtags.  Hashtags never used to be a thing on Pinterest but they seem to be now and they seem to be helping get niche traffic.
• Click refresh to make sure when I share, I’m getting the new description
• Schedule to relevant boards and tribes using Tailwind.  I find tribes more useful.
• I also click on the post and record how many shares it has had at that point.
• In my notebook I write the numbers 1, 2 and 3 on consecutive lines (I told you it was techie) – I’ll explain why in a minute.
• I edit the post and make sure the content is a good as it can be – Aiming for 1000+ words ideally but a minimum of 500.  Make sure it has at least 1 pinnable image and add a social media (smaller image) as the featured image.  Check the meta description and keyword and just generally do anything I can to improve the post.  I can tell you that some of my older posts need a total revamp.
• Share on other social media sites.

Recording your Pins performance

Now, I mentioned that in my high tech notebook I record the stats for the pin and then add the numbers 1-3 below on sperate lines.  Here’s why…

Now I have a lot of pins on my best of… board and I aim to do at least 1 -3 repins a day following all the steps I’ve just shared with you.  Although some days I don’t get to do any.  You know, if I’m behaving like a normal human being and not working 7 days a week.

Even if I was doing 3 posts a day, I would not repeat a pin for at least a month – I think anything sooner than this gets a bit too much.

But I do eventually get back to a post I’ve been tracking and repinning within the best of… board.   I have the original stats for the pin and I can now record the new stats (line number 1) – I repeat this for lines 2 and 3 as I repeat the cycle and I can clearly see how well the post is performing using this strategy over time.  If I get to line 3 and the pin is not performing well I’ll remove that pin from my Best of… board and from the blog post, create a new image and start recording that new pin.

I know this strategy is a bit old school but it’s what works for me.  It means I’m consistently repinning in a logical order, always improving existing content and replacing pins that are not performing well with new pins.

It’s a winning strategy for me and you are more than welcome to give it a try if, like me, you’re a little bit non-techie.

Recap time – How to use Pinterest for business/blog success

• Pinterest is for ANYONE who’s willing to invest some time
• Create Pinnable images – Try Canva and Pixabay – See my Pinterest Image Tutorial 
• Revisit old content and make sure they have good vertical images
• Make it easy for people to pin your images
• Reshare your own content regularly
• Pin other peoples content as much, if not more than your own
• Have a go at my Pinterest strategy

That’s it.  I hope you’ve found this information super helpful.  Please do ask me if you have any questions.  As I said, I don’t consider myself an expert on Pinterest but I do know what’s working for me.

PIN and SHARE – Thanks