4 Ways to Turbo Charge Your Pinterest Marketing

Pinterest is a visual social network that showcases “pins,” or saved images and video, that link to the sources rather than emphasizing the interactions between people. Pinterest users, over 60% of whom are female, can search and find products, tips, how-to videos and instruction, and content they can use for everything from planning a meal, a vacation, or even a wedding.

Keep in mind the audience you might potentially reach – women – and Pinterest’s strengths – product discovery, traffic driving, and lead generation. Leveraging Pinterest involves crafting attractive and shareable content specifically designed for the Pinterest platform.

Here are 4 ways to get more out of your Pinterest account to market your business.

1. Go for Custom Visuals

Each social network recommends the ideal image dimensions and other specifications to optimize your visuals, and Pinterest is no different. Pinterest for Business suggests that you use a 2:3 aspect ratio for your graphics or 1,000 pixels wide by x 1,500 pixels long. The minimum size for Pinterest graphics should be 600 pixels wide by 900 pixels.

These taller images stand out in the Pinterest feed and give you plenty of space to customize them with images and content. Pinterest images tend to be bold, bright and visually appealing, such as a collage of a stylish outfit for sale or a delicious meal with an accompanying recipe or a DIY craft step-by-step.

Do you sell scarves, hats, and other fashion accessories? Don’t just show your product. Create a tall graphic - or a video - with tips on how to wear each one, ideas for mixing and matching them, or demonstrating how accessories can be combined to create different looks. Find ways to use visuals to educate and inspire others.

2. Tell a Story with Story Pins

If you have a business account on Pinterest (and you should), you can access the newer Story Pins feature. Similar to the Story features on Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook, Stories give you more creative freedom to combine up to 20 images and videos to “tell a story.”  You can embellish your Story Pin with text and select your font, font size, alignment, color or font highlight to create a particular look.

Add a title to your Story Pin, choose a Board where it will be archived, use relevant topic tags, and publish it like you would a regular Pin you’ve created.

3. Showcase your brand

Pinterest for Business encourages you to promote your brand in your pins including adding your logo to them. Find ways to weave in your logo, or other significant brand colors, symbols, or imagery, into your pins to create an overall cohesive and recognizable look.

One wine company masterfully carries their brand look and feel throughout all of their social networks, including Pinterest. They start with showcasing not only their wine label, but the light blue and yellow highlights in their logo. Their product photography often includes props featuring the logo colors, such as a set up by a pool where the water is light blue with a yellow tray in the foreground under a bottle of wine.

If they are marketing their rosé wine, the accent color scheme in the pin is pink. If they’re mixing their chardonnay with peach juice to make a wine cocktail, the color scheme is peach. When they place bold headlines on their images, they are either blue text with a yellow background or the reverse. Every image is crafted to complement the product they’re featuring and to reference their logo. A little creativity goes a long way.

4. Make your website Pinterest friendly

The first step to making your website ready for Pinterest is to “claim it” or verify it. As you set up a business account on Pinterest, a key step is adding a small piece of code that Pinterest provides to you to your website code. Pinterest provides instructions on how to verify your site, and once you do, they’ll furnish you with additional analytics.

Add the “Pin It” button to your website to make it even easier for your site visitors to pin your images. Each time they do, the pins will link back to your website. Consider adding a Pinterest “widget” to your website’s home page, a small piece of code that Pinterest provides that displays some of your boards and pins directly on your site, pulled from your account.

As you publish articles or blog posts on your website, don’t forget about Pinterest users. While the tendency is to create images in standard sizes for websites such as a “hero” image at the top of the page and a few square or rectangular images within the body of the page, make one more image to Pinterest specs and place it at the bottom of the page. Also make sure that the other images you create to illustrate your articles and posts are at least the minimum width that works well on Pinterest – 600px. The more visual your website, the more “pinable” it is for Pinterest users.

Rethinking your social media imagery with Pinterest in mind may seem like additional work, however, the payoff could mean more attention for your company amongst avid users who often have shopping on their mind and more traffic to your website. Look for ways to make even small adjustments to your website and the images you use so they are more compatible with Pinterest.