Tips to Grow your Business: Pinterest for your Small Business

When it comes to doing business online, utilizing social media is an absolute must. Today in our Tips to Grow your Business Series, Katie Genrich of The Social Save is explaining how to use Pinterest for your small business. It’s Pinterest 101, if you will!

Katie Genrich is the founder of The Social Save , a social media management company that is dedicated to helping small business and nonprofits make a lasting and lucrative impact with their online presence. Katie is an expert on all things social media related but especially likes working with Pinterest. She is our own personal social media strategist and we are so excited to share what we have learned from her! 

What Makes Pinterest so Special?

Each social media platform has different aspects that makes it important to your online business. Katie explains all about how to use Pinterest for your small business and why it is essential for your success. From starting (or converting) your Pinterest page to how to make your pins the most effective, Katie covers it all. For starters, here are some interesting stats and facts that she shared with us:

• More than 291 million people are on Pinterest per month
• 83% of those people are women between the ages of 24-54
• Statistics show that more purchases generate from Pinterest than from Facebook
• Pinterest is more than a social media platform, it is also a search engine
• You can schedule your Pintrest pins (along with Facebook and Instagram posts) ahead of time with Tailwind. Katie has a link you can use to get 30 days FREE. That way you can try it out and see how much time and effort it can save you! 

There are lots of reasons to get your business on board (see what we did there!) with Pinterest. It is simple to start and you’ll start to see real results quickly. Katie gives actionable steps that you can take today to help grow your Pinterest presence and your business! 

Tips to Grow your Business: Pinterest for your Small Business

When you own an online business, getting your products seen by potential customers is everything. In this series we have already talked about some of the ways to do that. Katie explains that, with Pinterest’s 291 million monthly users, it is a great tool for getting yourself in front of a large audience. She says that if you play the Pinterest game right, it isn’t hard to be seen by millions. 

Why Pinterest is Important to Your Business

We have already established that Pinterest has a ton of users and that we want them to see our products. But there other things to love about Pinterest too! For one thing, the pins that you create and post are considered evergreen. That means that they don’t go away. Instead they are reappearing in front of people for months. 

Contrast that with Facebook where they average life of a post is only 90 minutes. 90 minutes! That means that your pins are actively being circulated 1,700 times longer than your Facebook posts. And, the better quality your photos and pins are, the longer they stick around! 

Another thing to keep in mind is how important it is to reach Pinterest’s demographic. Like Katie said, 83% of their users are women between 24-54. Many of us fall into this group and we know that we are researchers and shoppers. And shoppers is what we all need! 

How to Set up a Pinterest Business Profile

First thing first, you need to have a business profile to get started. This is very simple to do though! Katie told us that you don’t have to start a completely separate account, you can simply convert your personal profile to a business one. She explains how to do it in the video below but here are some things to keep in mind:

• Be sure to fill in every possible information field on your profile. Everything you add is searchable so you want to be as thorough as possible. This will help you be seen by more people. 
• Your business name should be consistent across all platforms. Ideally, the profile picture you use should be the same too. This helps with brand recognition and building familiarity and trust with your customers. 
• In your bio you want to link to a landing page where people can find your products. It’s ok if you don’t have a website yet, you can send them to whatever platform(s) you sell from. You just want to make it as easy for people to find you as possible!

What Boards to Make and What to Pin

For anyone who isn’t already active on Pinterest, here’s a quick explanation. You create boards for your Pinterest page which are basically categories. Then you use those boards as a way to organize the pins that you post or save. Then in your Smart Feed, Pinterest shows you things they think you will like that have been popular with other users. The goal for us as business owners is to be seen in other people’s Smart Feeds. 

Katie explains that you want to have boards that include the product you are selling and also ones that interest you and will interest your audience. So you want boards like “custom tumblers” and “resin art” where you can add the pins you’ve created of your own products. And you also want to have things like “home decor” and seasonal things. 

Katie goes into a lot more detail about this in the video so be sure to check that out. She also gives great examples of boards titles and how to make your product based boards work with your other categories. Once you have your boards established, look for the best quality pins to add to them. 

Other Things to Keep in Mind

As Katie explained, Pinterest has become more than just a social media platform. It is also a search engine. That is because so many people go there to do research on specific things. Need a recipe for dinner? Pinterest. Looking for an holiday craft to do with kids? Pinterest. Looking for remodel ideas for your bathroom? Chances are you go to Pinterest. 

And the great thing for small business owners is that people are also searching for you! Gift ideas, resin tutorials, and tumbler designs are all things that people are looking for and that can get you seen. Just remember that, since it acts like a search engine, you want to be implementing all of your SEO strategies, especially your keywords. 

How Often to Pin and How Much Original Content to Pin

In the video below Katie explains what to pin and how often. Since this video was made however, the amount of pins you should be doing has changed. You will see Katie talk about doing 20 pins a day but the algorithm has evolved since then.

Now the suggested amount of pins per day is 5-10. You will want to monitor your analytics to see what works for YOU specifically. There isn’t a one size fits all. Katie explained that for some of her clients only 5 pins a day works really well. While others need more daily pins to keep performing well. 

Katie also told us that the more of those pins that you can make your own original content the better. However, if you don’t have 10 new pins per day, shoot for one a day, or at least a handful a week. New pins are the ones that you create. They can be images of your products, videos of you and/or your products, and URLs like blog posts. Katie told us that video pins perform 41% better than images so keep that in mind when you are creating your content!

For example, if you have a blog post with three images you can make an original pin out of each of them, just space them out about 7-13 days apart. You can take care of that all at once by using Tailwind which is a post scheduling program. Tailwind is awesome because you can schedule Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook posts as far in advance as you want. It will free up so much time for you! Katie shared a link with us that lets your try Tailwind FREE for one month. To check it out for yourself, CLICK HERE! We promise you won’t regret it! 

Also, you can post your images as it or use a program like Canva which is a fabulous tool for making professional looking pins. 

Watch the Video Here!

The Wrap Up!

And that’s the basics of Pinterest, y’all! Katie stresses that every person and every business is different. So if your business is already on Pinterest and what you’re doing is working, stick with it! The most important thing is to read your Pinterest analytics and follow that. Your analytics will tell you what pins are working and what your audience wants to see. With a little bit of work (that is actually pretty fun to do!), you will be able to get your business in front of a huge audience! 

If you enjoyed learning from Katie as much as we did, you can follow her on Facebook and Instagram. You can also learn how Katie can help your business by going to thesocialsave.com! 

You can find more awesome video tutorials like this one on our YouTube channel!

Be sure to follow us on Pinterest so you can stay on top of everything that’s new and never miss a blog post!

If you want more inspiration and information we have a Facebook group for that. Join us in Counter Culture DIY Artist Support where we, and other artists, offer ideas, answer questions, and support each other!

Do you have an art project using any of our products that you want to share? Send it to us at support@counterculturediy.com, and we can feature them here!