The B2B SaaS Marketing Blog

4 Steps to a Successful Pinterest Marketing Strategy

by 

Marcela DeVivo

Last updated: April 25th, 2013

Pinterest is still an untapped resource for most online marketers, one that offers tremendous potential.

There are companies that are using it, there are boards that are ranking, and there is a very valuable audience to tend to. Women between the ages of 20 and 40 are spending a great deal of time daily on this site, and they eat up every recipe, workout routine, DIY tutorial, and pretty picture they see. The volume of pins that show up everyday is astronomical. So why aren’t more businesses taking advantage of this marketing goldmine? The simple answer is: they don’t know how.

The following is your very own DIY Tutorial on how to manage your Pinterest properly for social media marketing. Get ready because you’re about to become an expert in the art of pinning.

1. Creating Boards Using Keywords

Keyword research is an important aspect of getting your Pinterest boards to rank. You want to find terms that have medium to low competition, but lower is always better especially because you’ll be using a high authority domain. Subjects on Pinterest are varied although they may not seem to be right off the bat.

The key point to remember about boards when doing your research is that they need to be geared toward niches. You don’t want to have a board called “Art” because you will never rank for that, and the subject matter is so broad that more often than not people will choose not to “follow” you because the overall contents of the board may be too scattered. Instead you want a board dedicated to Gustav Klimt and you want your board cover to be “The Kiss.”

This type of board is more likely to draw the attention of a specific group of people that are more likely to follow your board because they are interested in the entirety of it’s contents as well as future pins. This same concept applies to anything. Don’t create a board titled “Dinner Time”, create several boards:

• Vegetable Side Dishes for the Summer
• Fish Grill Recipes
• Light and Fruity Cocktails

Each of these have a very specific direction and are more likely to instill a desire for pinners to follow than a broader concept.

2. Pinning Images is Everything

The types of images you use are just as important as the subject matter of the images.  Pinterest users are highly visual and will more often than not be attracted to images that are high quality, make them laugh, depict something incredibly cute, or have something unique about them. What this means is that stock photo’s don’t make a splash, snapshots won’t draw anyone’s attention unless there’s something heartwarming going on, and the only cartoons allowed are ecards.

If you really don’t have the camera, time, or talent to create your own images then make sure you spend a good amount of time hunting down beautiful images that are available for your use. If they aren’t then please give credit to whomever deserves it. Another thing about pinners is that they don’t like frauds. Whether you’re passing something off as your own, or simply just spamming Pinterest with a link to an irrelevant product they will not follow you or repin you.

Another option after images, which not enough people have taken advantage of yet, is to create video content. When you pin a video it plays right there within the pin, users are not rerouted to YouTube where you could potentially lose the engagement. Videos, whether you’re creating them yourself or recycling the content of others just to draw attention to your brand, are a great way of increasing interaction because it’s something that people naturally want to share. If your a music streaming site for example, a great option for marketing on Pinterest would be to pin the videos of the artists on your site.

3. Best Times to Pin?

There are two things you want to focus on when deciding when to pin:

• What is the peak time for your demographic on Pinterest?
• Do not pinbomb

Peak times are between the hours of 8 pm and 11 pm. This is the time that middle class women are slowing down from the day’s excursions, putting the kids to sleep, and getting in bed to watch their favorite reality t.v. show.

The only thing you really need to keep in mind as far as peak times are concerned is the day of the week and the time zone. Are you trying to reach women between the ages of 20-30 that are single? Friday between the hours of 8 pm and 11 pm they are most likely out on the town. Looking to reach the New York scene from LA? Don’t start pinning at 11 pm PST because over in New York they’ve been asleep for a couple of hours at least.

Something very important about Pinterest is avoiding the pinbomb. This is when you are on Pinterest and you get excited by all the awesome pins you see and start repinning EVERYTHING.

You don’t want to do this either when you are surfing the web and you accidentally overuse your “pin it” bookmarklet or extension. What you do want to do is space out your pins in a timely manner, small clusters are okay, but with the data being refreshed so often because of the multitude of users, spacing your pins out is going to give you optimum exposure.

Pingraphy is an inexpensive tool to schedule pins on Pinterest.  This way you can continuously add to your Pinterest boards without having to log in to and upload pins every day.

Hello Insights for example provides you with your Pinterest analytics as well as pin scheduling which is a fantastic tool because then you can always have your hand in the cookie jar so to speak. They can also offer you tailored packages to suit your branding and industry.

Curalate is another great option because it not only helps you out with Pinterest but with Instagram as well which is another social media monster you’ll need to learn to tackle. Something really great about Curalate is that they take your analytics from Pinterest and apply them to your website, so if there’s a handful of pins that are doing really well, they’ll aim to showcase those things on your website to increase the amount of traffic and time people are spending.

4. Sharing pins on other social media

One more great option about opting for a program like Hello Insights or Curalate is that they will share your pins with your other social media sites, as well as stimulate engagement.

Creating social signals with your pins says to Google that people really like your content and want to interact with it and want to share it. This means that your content has quality and it’s worth user’s time. This also is a great way of increasing traffic. It’s a simple as this:

Someone see’s one of your pins on you Facebook page and decides to share it. Three of their friends decide to share that shared pin, and all of these are linking back to your page.

These shares are going to add to your traffic, add followers of Facebook, and add followers on Pinterest. Each connection you make via social media could ultimately lead to five more connections which is really going to extend your reach.

The Benefits of Being Social

Reach is your ultimate goal because it means you’re gaining traffic to your site and customers. Your social media efforts just turned into sales.

Now that you are an expert pinner, spend some time today on Pinterest making connections. Follow people whose pins interest you. Re-pin anything you feel warrants the attention, and don’t forget to comment on some pins to get a conversation started.

Once you’ve spent some time interacting, figure out what you can do to spruce up your own profile. Get started with your keyword research and put everything you’ve learned to the test. You’ll start to see results in no time.