How To Use Pinterest Effectively For Your Business

Oh the joys of Pinterest! It’s a hive of creativity and inspiration, and the perfect place to discover ideas for almost everything under the sun. But it’s also a fantastic tool for your business, that’s so often underused and underestimated.

Pinterest is a fantastic platform to increase your exposure, especially if you sell a product. Pins help people to find your business and locate more information on you and/or your product or service. It’s a user-friendly platform that is perfectly used for finding the right people (AKA your dream customers or clients).

It’s a visual focused platformed, aimed at categorising ideas and images (curated into pins) into selected boards. Simply put, it’s similar to a categorised, digital vision board for a whole list of topics and projects.

But how should you use it effectively and efficiently? Let’s take a deep dive into the platform and figure out how to use it best for you and your business.

• Create visually appealing pins:
  This will help to attract users to click on them and hopefully click through to your website or socials. Similar to Instagram, Pinterest is a visual platform and therefore content should be aesthetically pleasing and eye-catching. Create graphics, infographics, or just add text to a high-quality, on brand image through sites like Canva.

• Set up a business profile:
  Set up a business profile that is separate from your personal account. This way your profile is completely centred around your business, and can therefore be utilised best for your businesses goals e.g. to increase brand awareness, increase sales…

• Optimise your profile:
  Once your business profile has been set up, make sure to optimise it! When users click on your profile, they should be greeted with an aesthetically pleasing profile that informs them about who you are and what your business is about. Use a clear logo, add your websites URL, add a high-quality cover photo and share what you’re about in an effective manner.

• Post content consistently:
  The key to staying consistent across any of your social media platforms is preparation. Make sure to plan ahead, create high quality content, and consider using a scheduling app such as Planoly or Loomly. Keeping a consistent presence gives the right impression for your business, keeps your content current and allows you to remain active across the platform.

• Use Pinterest yourself:
  Why not get using the platform yourself, too? Get saving other peoples pins, create boards, and get engaging and using. This will benefit you in two ways, one being that you will become familiar with the platform if you’re not already which will enhance your use of it as a business, and secondly that you will be remaining active, interacting with other peoples pins and creating a larger profile for yourself (and hopefully gain more followers and reach more people in doing so!). It’s a win-win if you ask me.

• Check your analytics:
  I repeat, check your analytics! I recommend for you to be doing this across all of your socials. It’s data-driven and gives you a great idea of what’s working and what’s not. This way you can move forward with creating content that is being well received across the platform, so no more wasting your time on what doesn’t work. The analytics section of the Pinterest site is split up into: Overview, Audience insights, Conversation insights, Video and Trends - so get familiar with each and use them to your advantage.

• Post at the best time:
  Each platform has better and worse times for posting. See my recent post on when to post across your socials here. Get to know which times are working best for you, and check your insights. As a general rule, Saturday is the best day to post on Pinterest, as for times, the later on in the day (9-11p.m.) are said to be the best times to post, but this differs between person to person and who your audience is.
  
  
  Enjoy pinning like a boss!