Rethinking Marketing Search and Promotion with Pinterest

How is your business using Pinterest? Surprised I’m asking?

It’s time to give Pinterest a second look. Over 450 million active users is no small number. Plus, it’s not just for women anymore. Male users increased 40% year-over-year. These are just a few statistics to get you to start considering this channel for your social media content calendar.

Let’s take a look at the advantages and changes that are making pinning a thing that social media savvy organizations should be doing regularly.

I was a session panelist for the Agorapulse Agency Summit: Pinterest Edition, where I had the pleasure of learning from a who’s who of marketing pros. This gave me a great opportunity to reimagine how marketers can re-position Pinterest for optimal promotional success.

Why Pinterest?

When you pin, it’s a best practice to include a link back to the source. Pinterest does not penalize you for going off channel, as is the case with all of the other social media channels, so you are encouraging the audience to go to your website. Pinterest is the easiest platform for showing up as a referrer to websites, and Pinterest conversion rates are typically much higher than other sites.

Many consider it to be a search engine instead of a social media channel. The search aspect is the most important for most users, which is why the social platform’s about section calls it is a visual discovery engine.

Doing research on your target audience? Consider starting with Pinterest to find keywords. Then, compare it to what you find in SEO tools, and include both in your next content piece.

“Doing research on your target audience? Consider starting with Pinterest to find keywords. Then, compare it to what you find in SEO tools, and include both in your next content piece.” — Debbie Friez @dfriez
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Pins Have a Long Lifespan

When reviewing and comparing to other social platforms, Instagram and LinkedIn posts typically may have a maximum life of 48 hours. X/Twitter is only 15-20 minutes, and Facebook is 5-6 hours. Pinterest posts however typically have a lifespan of 6 months!

Have some older, but still relevant pins? Go update them with new visuals and post text content. Tip: previously it was a best practice to add hashtags on Pinterest, however doing so is no longer needed.

Helping to extend the life of a pin, Pinterest users save pins. So while they may not convert immediately, if your content is interesting, users will often save it and come back to your pin.

“Helping to extend the life of a pin, Pinterest users save pins. So while they may not convert immediately, if your content is interesting, users will often save it and come back to your pin.” — Debbie Friez @dfriez
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