First, Pinterest is not a social media tool. It is more like Google with pretty images. It’s a visual search engine. When people are searching Pinterest, they are looking for how to do something or to get an idea.
How it is helpful for business owners
If you want to reach an audience of over 300 million people, Pinterest is a great choice. And the users browsing Pinterest are ready to purchase! This is why it is so vital for businesses to use this platform.
You can use Pinterest to build your email list, direct people to your podcast, get client leads, direct people to your blog, and more. It’s all about what action you want people to take. What is most important to you? Building your email list or getting people to read your blog?
How Pinterest works
Pinterest users can and do search for anything and everything. Let’s say they are interested in self-improvement. They may search ‘self-improvement,’ and they will get a ton of results. So the image and title are the most important ways to stand out.
On your end, you need to have the image linking to your freebie or blog post. (You can also have it linked to a product, but we won’t be getting into that here). You also need a title and a description filled with keywords so you will show up in the search results. In that way, it is just like Google!
Pinterest is ideal for people with some type of content. It’s perfect for bloggers and podcasters. A minimum of one new blog/piece of evergreen content a month is helpful if you want consistent results. If you are serious and want Pinterest to be your main lead generator, I recommend creating 4 new pieces of content a month.
What do I mean by evergreen? Something people will find useful three months to a year from now. It can’t be a blog on the August 18th New Moon, for example. That’s time-specific and not evergreen. Content like that does poorly on Pinterest, and I would recommend not even sharing it on the platform because it will mess up your standing Pinterest.
Now, holiday content is fine. For example, people start searching for Christmas stuff in August, so that has a longer shelf life, which makes it fine to post. If you are posting holiday content, you just want to be aware of when to post it.
How Pinterest really works is a user searches the platform for what you created, they find your pin, and they click it and get on your website or landing page. That’s the simple version. There’s a lot of strategies that go into getting people to see your content, but this is the gist.
Let me break it down even more straightforward:
- You create content.
- You create a pin for the content
- You post the pin to Pinterest
- Your ideal client finds your pin and clicks on it.
And that’s it! Of course, it is not that easy. Your pins need to be visually pleasing and relevant. It takes about six months to get CONSISTENT traffic to your website or landing page.
This is just an introduction to Pinterest. We will delve further into the platform in future blog posts. See you soon!
