This article is going to outline the beginnings of your Pinterest branding strategies so you don’t have to watch from the sidelines anymore. Let’s get you pinning!
Pinterest branding strategies to get your account started!
Beat the name squatters
The very first thing you want to do, even if you get to the end of this and decide you don’t want on be on Pinterest, is reserve your brand name. Domain squatting has been a problem for years, decades at this point. It’s when people who aren’t affiliated with you register you brand name.
You can register your Pinterest business account right now in a few minutes. If you want your placeholder account to look good, grab the exact images you’re already using on Twitter or Facebook right now.
Get your pictures ready
Pinterest is an incredibly image intensive social media platform. If you don’t have great pictures, now is the time to start investing in a good photographer. You don’t want all of your pictures to be blatant product photos, but you do want to look in focus and clear.
Pinterest is well known for allowing brands to upload large pictures, the kind of stuff you can’t get away with on Twitter, or even Facebook. I have a 17inch monitor and I couldn’t get this entire image from Space.com on Pinterest to fit on my screen! This is about 2/3rds of it:
You can’t get away with that on most social media platforms, plan for it accordingly for your Pinterest branding strategies to have the maximum impact.
A final note on images is the legal issues surrounding using other people’s images on your own Pinterest board. You’re a business. Using other people’s images for commercial purposes can cause problems. Look at your legal options, talk to pinners whose images you want to use, and proceed with caution.
Remember the ‘interest’ in Pinterest
People go on Pinterest to pin things that they’re interested in. Either because they have it, or because they want to have it in the future. They do this by creating boards of their interests. They’ll have one for wedding ideas, one for vacation ideas, one for recipes, and so on.
Effective Pinterest branding strategies need to think like this too. Your boards should follow themes, not products. Your products should be participating in your Pinterest pictures as supporting actors in a movie, not the stars. As is the case in all of social media, the minute you start coming at users with a hard marketing angle is the minute they find something else to do.
Take a look at these boards from the successful Nike Women board:
The vast majority are lifestyle boards. The fashion boards that they have, which feature their products a bit more directly, still focus on everyday people doing things that the products are designed for – sweating in. You can start a great Pinterest following with our Pinterest followers service, but it’s going to take board strategies like these to get real followers engaged with you and following your boards.
Use Pinterest Buyable Pins
Buyable Pins are a new feature that allow Pinterest users to purchase directly through Pinterest. This is a really new feature only available to US retailers with Shopify or Demandware. Pinterest users who follow brands know that they are going to see products that are for sale. Giving them a quick buying option to can skyrocket your ROI.
For those who don’t have that, try using Pinterest Rich Pins. These allow you to enter a price for your products, along with stock number details. When someone pins your Rich Pin to one of their boards Pinterest will notify them of any price changes you make. They’ll help you stay on the mind of your customers, especially when you have a sale.
Yo, Home Depot, this Rich Pin tells me you need to get these back in stock! It’s the end of summer picnic season for many of your customers!
Both Rich Pins and Buyable Pins work through your website. While you’re working on this, also work in the “Pin It” button. This is an easy way to create links from Pinterest back to your website. This is because anyone who pins it will have a ‘Learn more at WEBSITE’ message on their pin created from your website.
Bring your hashtag strategy over from Twitter
Everything that your business has learned about hashtags on Twitter can be used on Pinterest. While hashtags are not that popular, every chance you have to connect with users is an opportunity you should take.
What’s more, as Pinterest grows in popularity your hashtags are going to become even more relevant. This will be because they are great for search results, and because as your pins spread to more users your hashtags spread too.
Community engagement is as important here as anywhere else
Social media marketing is social first, media second, and marketing third. I can’t say it enough. You need to engage with your followers by:
- Pinning their content to your boards
- Commenting on their pins
- Responding to them
- Creating pins that ask for engagemnt
Your Pinterest followers are not really followers, they’re your friends and brand ambassadors. Make sure you have someone on your team who will have time to do this engagement work consistently. If you have the time to monitor it, you can even get community members to post to the boards for you. You can’t be much more engaged than allowing your fans onto your page and posting for you!
