As an e-commerce business owner, Pinterest can be one of your most powerful tools to drive traffic to your store and generate leads and sales.
If you are struggling to make sense of all that Pinterest has to offer you, here are a few best practices you can implement today, to help you succeed on Pinterest with your e-commerce business.
This post has been sponsored by Tailwind and includes affiliate links. If you click one of my links and choose to make a purchase, I will receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you.
Optimize your images
The first thing you need to do is make sure your images are gorgeous. But a pretty image isn’t enough, it also needs to be the right size and shape. Vertical images do best on Pinterest, and the current best size is 600×900. This will ensure your pins are displaying perfectly and not getting chopped off at the end for being too long.
If your product speaks for itself, you may not need to edit your photo much at all, however sometimes it can be helpful to add some text to the image to make it more eye catching. The key here is that you don’t want your followers on Pinterest to have to wonder what is in the image. Explain what it is, or how they might use the product to their advantage right on the image. You can see some great examples of this on Pinterest here.
Tip: I use Picmonkey to create my images, it’s a great place to start for photo editing.
Use good keywords
Pinterest works a lot like a search engine, so keywords are essential. It’s easy to overlook this piece because we all think of Pinterest as a visual search engine, but the words are important too. When people type words into the search bar up top you want them to find YOU and your content. Make sure that you are taking full advantage of the pin description space, and describing your product in a way that people might search for it. Be very practical, this isn’t the space to put “wow! This is so cool!” because no one uses those words instead try typing out the function of your product or a little bit about the problem your product solves for your customers. Thinking through these things can help you find good keywords for your e-commerce business on Pinterest.
Intent to buy
When thinking about keywords on Pinterest or google, it’s important to consider the intent of the keyword. If you are selling a ready-made product, you won’t want to try to rank for things like “diy”. Choose keywords that have an intent to buy such as “where to get (your product)” or “Where to find (product)” and avoid things like “How to make (product)”.
While the keyword phrases that show intent to purchase may be smaller in number of searches, those search terms are going to be much more valuable to you, because the people using them are already looking to buy a product just like yours! Then it’s just up to your photography and sales page to complete the sale!
Hashtags
Hashtags are a relatively new feature on Pinterest, and they are something you do not want to avoid. Pinterest says you can use 20 or so hashtags for best results, so don’t be afraid to jump right in and start using them as part of your pin description. This is another way you signal to Pinterest where you should be showing up in search and it can help get your products in front of more potential buyers. Ps – see more tips directly from a conversation I had with the Pinterest Community Manager.
Be a resource
If you know your target buyer, try to think through problems they are having in their life, and pin accordingly. Instead of only pinning things from your e-commerce site or store, create useful boards that cover everything your buyer would like to know on a topic. This way you position yourself as a resource and your buyer will be more likely to purchase from you because you’ve been able to help them so much on their journey.
Pinning other quality content in addition to your own, also signals to Pinterest that you are an active user and providing real value for your followers. This means your pins will be seen more in the feed than if you were only ever posting links to your own store.
Schedule your pins
If you are looking at all of these tips and wondering when you will ever have time to pin, after implementing all of these ideas, don’t worry! This is where Tailwind comes in. I’ve personally used Tailwind for years, and as an approved api partner of Pinterest, it’s (in my opinion) the very best option when it comes to scheduling your pins.
Tailwind allows you to schedule one pin to multiple boards and also gives you the capability to spread those pins out over multiple days or even months so you don’t clog up your feed with the same pin over and over again.
I created a video walking you through how to use tailwind tribes, you can see how I use them here:
How are you using Pinterest and Tailwind to grow your e-commerce business? You can get more tips from my friends at MiloTree here!
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