Why use Pinterest in your digital strategy?

Why is Pinterest a social platform worth using for your business? While many businesses are constantly trying to break through on social and media networks, Pinterest is often overlooked in terms of interest or priorities. However, Pinterest, a social sharing and networking app, has over 450 million monthly users worldwide and generates more leads than all other social networks - making it a platform that brands really don't want to underestimate.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a unique social network that allows users to share, discover, and collect images, animated GIFs, and short videos in the form of bulletin boards and trend boards.

Pinterest is primarily used by its users to share and/or find inspiration and ideas based on content that matches their interests and hobbies. When users save an image, it is represented by a pin and known as a "Repin" rather than a repost/share or retweet.

Similarly, each "post" on Pinterest is called a "Pin". Each pin can link to a website, whether it is a blog article where a brand wants more traffic or an online store to increase sales. Users can then combine and organize different Repins or Pins into a folder, called a "Board".

Why should you use Pinterest for your business?

With well-established social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and even TikTok, why should brands focus on Pinterest? A social platform that seems less dynamic and less "trendy". Specifically, the relevance of Pinterest for businesses can be explained by the following statistics:

• Pinterest generates 3.8 times more sales than other networks
• 87% of Pinterest users have purchased a product through Pinterest.
• 93% of Pinterest users use the platform to plan their purchases.
• 97% of popular searches on Pinterest do not contain a brand name
• Pinterest is 2.3 times cheaper to convert users
• Over 25% of usage time is spent shopping on Pinterest

This shows that there is a huge market for businesses on Pinterest, as many users are willing and looking to spend on what they discover. Pinterest can be used not only to develop your online presence and audience but also to generate more traffic to your online store and website.

How to integrate Pinterest into a social media strategy?

Now that the importance and impact of using Pinterest for your brand have been established, let's see how to integrate Pinterest into a relevant social media strategy. Here's how you can start succeeding on a social network that's resolutely focused on images.

1- Create a Pinterest business account

Create a professional profile from scratch when you sign up for the platform, or convert your existing Pinterest account by updating the information. To do this, click on the three dots symbol located in the upper right corner of the page, then click on "Update your account."

With a Pinterest business profile, you will now have access to tools such as Pinterest Ads and Pinterest Analytics. We will have the opportunity to see the interest of these two features.

2- Optimize your profile

Include your brand logo in your profile picture and create a very brief profile description that describes your brand and what your followers can expect from your account. Be sure to include your company's website link to generate more traffic!

3- Monitor competitors

As a general rule, it's always important to look at what competitors and other players in your industry are doing on social platforms. Additionally, Pinterest is about drawing inspiration from the content you see, and a brand is no different. Researching what others are doing and what works well will help your brand generate content ideas for this platform... and maybe take a different approach.

4- Produce captivating content that's worthy of being repinned

Just like on Instagram, Pinterest content is all about aesthetics. Create and import only high-definition pins. Additionally, 82% of Pinterest users browse the platform via their mobile devices, so aim for images with a 2:3 ratio to avoid having your content cropped.

Finally, publish images of products/services with context, for example, in their proper use or in a lifestyle setting rather than a standard product image. Pinterest aims to inspire others, and you want to inspire users to integrate your product/service into their lifestyle through your visuals.

5- Optimizing Your Pins for SEO

A large part of Pinterest's success in generating traffic for brands can be attributed to the various platform opportunities for optimizing SEO. Using keywords in pin descriptions, boards, and hashtags is crucial to ensure that your brand's pins can be easily searched by Pinterest users.

6- Increase Your Visibility Through Cross-Promotion

With similarities in the type of content published on Instagram and Pinterest (mainly high-quality images), Pinterest is an excellent social platform to use for cross-promoting your Instagram account (or even Facebook). Posting the same content from your other social media platforms and linking the pins to these other social media pages can result not only in traffic to your Pinterest page but also to where the image was originally posted.

This is an excellent method for increasing your overall reach on different platforms, but still with the goal of driving traffic to a specific site/publication.

7- Organizing Content Through Boards

As a brand, create a collection of different boards to organize and categorize pins with a common theme/interest. This will help your followers and Pinterest users easily search, browse, and follow the content/boards that interest them.

8- Experimenting with Pinterest Ads

Like other platforms, on Pinterest, you can target ads to a specific audience based on interests, age, location, keywords, etc. Through the detailed targeting of an audience, a brand can even target very specific Pinterest users, such as those who have pinned or engaged with similar content and those who have already visited your website by uploading your customer list.

There are many advertising formats that brands can experiment with on this platform, such as standard illustrated or video ads, shopping ads, carousel, and collection ads. You can decide on your daily budget, the duration of the ad, and track performance over time to optimize your ads.

The most effective Pinterest Ads are those that blend in with the feed rather than being obvious sales tactics. You want to increase traffic by making users click organically on your ad when it appears on more users' radars rather than making users instantly recognize it as an ad.

Although Pinterest is often an underestimated social network, all indications tend to prove that it can generate traffic and sales with quality content