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A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO PINTEREST MARKETING

You’ve heard that Pinterest is one of THE BEST tools you can use to drive traffic to your blog and website.

But, how do you set it all up? What are group boards? And what does a Pinterest strategy look like?

What if you could drive targeted traffic to your website every single day? And turn that traffic into reliable, consistent income for your business?

Well, good news! I’ve written a 4-part series right here on my blog, which outlines all the steps you need to take, so start getting targeted website traffic from Pinterest.

I’ve also got a FREE Facebook group – The Pinterest Playground.

I run regular webinars and workshops to help you get the most out of Pinterest for long-term business growth.

CHAPTER 1: YOUR PINTEREST BUSINESS ACCOUNT

Setting Up a Pinterest Business Account

If you’ve already been mucking around on Pinterest, you might have a personal account already. The good news is that you don’t need to set up a new account (unless you want to). You can convert your personal account into a business account.

Why do you need a Business Account?

A Pinterest business account is different from your personal account in 3 key ways:

• Rich pins: they pull through the meta-descriptions from your blog posts, your branding and have call to action buttons.

• Promoted pins: you can pay to advertise on Pinterest, but it’s not something I’ll be going into, in this challenge. I want to help you focus on getting results for free!

• Pinterest analytics: this is where you can get all the good information you need about who’s interacting with your pins and boards, which pins are most popular, and get information about your audience

These features are what transforms your Pinterest account into a tool to help drive traffic to your website.

What I need you to start doing right now is to think of Pinterest as a search engine, rather than a social media platform.

More like Google, than Facebook or Twitter.

And by setting up your account as a business account, you’re enabling these features that are SEO rich. And if your pins are using good keywords, are set up correctly for SEO – you get rewarded by having your pins appear more regularly in feeds and searches.

How to Set up Your Business Account

Step 1: Click on this link, and then follow the instructions to either

• Create your new account

• Convert your existing personal account to a business account

Step 2: Verify your website

• Click your logo in the top-right corner

• Click on settings

• Scroll down to your website, and hit “Confirm website”

From the pop-up that appears, copy the code:

Paste the code into the header of your website. You can easily do that using this plugin.

Step 3: Apply for Rich Pins

• Install the plugin Yoast

• After Yoast is activated, go to the “Features” tab and make sure the “Advanced settings pages” is “Enabled”

• Go to Pinterest’s Rich Pin Validator

• Put in any page on your website (just not your homepage), and click “validate.”

• After validating, you should see a message that says “your pin’s been validated!”

• Click “apply now.”, and after a pop-up appears with your website details, click “apply now” again.

• And you’re done!

The Perfect Pinterest Profile

You probably know this already, but key to your online presence, is keeping all of your branding consistent across different channels.

And Pinterest is no different.

There are 4 keys parts of your Pinterest profile that we’re going to dig into today.

To access your profile area, click on your image top-right, and then click Settings > Profile.

And fill out the following information:

1. Profile picture

It’s a really good idea to make sure you use the same photograph of yourself across all your social media platforms. Ideally, it should be the same image you use on your website.

If you’re a “solopreneurs”, you really should use a photograph of yourself. I know its tempting to hide behind a logo, but unless you really are a big company with multiple staff members, showing your face is THE best way to fast-track the know, like and trust factor.

2. Username

You want your username to be something recognisable, and relatable to your business.

This is your online home on Pinterest, so make it easy to remember.

My Pinterest account is www.pinterest.com/yourwebtoolkit – as that’s the name of my website and business.

3. Business name

If you’re a solopreneur, it’s a good idea to put your name AND your business name in this section, because people might search for you under either of them.

Also use this space to briefly outline what you do, and use keyword-rich descriptions for this.

My business name is Cathy Topping | Your Web Toolkit | Web building + marketing courses for online entrepreneurs.

4. About You

This is another opportunity for you to add in relevant keywords to your business and niche. Remember, the name of the game here is to get ranked through Pinterest’s SEO algorithm.

What you put in here appears at the top of your Pinterest account, so it’s a great place to talk about what you do, and also to add in a link to one of your lead magnets.

My About You section is I help online entrepreneurs how to build, brand + market their websites. Get access to my FREE course >>

CHAPTER 2: PINTEREST BOARDS – THE SECRET TO YOUR PINTEREST GROWTH

Setting up boards around your topics and niche.

Remember how I talked about Pinterest being more of a search engine, than a social media platform?

As with any search engine, the mysterious algorithm is a closely guarded secret! But what is known is that in order to have your content appear in other people’s feeds, you need to have a strategy in place where you’re pinning the content others are producing.

But it’s not only about pleasing the algorithm. It’s about being helpful, showing authority and curating for your audience.

So, here’s what you need to do.

1. Create 1 board for your website

The very first board on your account is the one that you’ll be pinning your own pins. This is a place for your content only.

The board name can be the same as your website, to make it really obvious what it is that you’re pinning in there (links back to YOUR content only).

Setting up this 1 board to house all your content makes it super-easy for people to find that content, and head back over to your website to read your blog posts (and opt-in) to your emai list.

2. Create about 10 boards for different topics in your industry

All the rest of the pins in your account are going to be spread across a whole heap of different boards. About 10 of them to be exact.

That sound- like a lot, right? And…it kind of is. But it actually doesn’t take that long to set up.

Think of these boards as places where you curate pins around the topics that are of interest to your audience. It’s an easy-to-go place for them to find useful and relevant content.

In my account, here are some examples of boards that I’ve created:

• WordPress Tutorials

• Graphic Design Tutorials

• List Building Tips

• Facebook ads

• etc

These are all topics that I blog about, and that are relevant to my audience. They’re also relevant to me – so I often go back to pins I’ve saved when looking for information.

So, brainstorm some topics that are useful for your audience, and create a board for each one. Keep your SEO brain engaged as well, and make the board titles keyword-rich.

3. Update the board descriptions.

I’ll admit, this one is a little bit tedious. But totally necessary.

In each of your boards, there’s a spot to add in a description of what the board is about.

You have 2 options here:

• Write a description of what content you’ll be pinning to the board, making sure you use keywords in there

• Write a big old list of keywords that are relevant to that board and its content

4. Pin relevant content to the boards

I’ll be going into this in a bit more detail in chapter 4 (and sharing a tool that makes this process WAY easier!), but for now it won’t hurt for you to start searching for pins to add to your boards.

It will give you a better understanding of how Pinterest works, and you can start filling up your boards. Aim for about 30 pins per board.

Group boards

Joining group boards is a key part of your Pinterest strategy, as it’s a way to collaborate with other pinners who share your audience.

You pin to the group board, and the other members share your pins to their audiences and onto their boards.

This is how you get more traction on your pins, as well as being a great way to find relevant content to share on your personal boards.

You can find group boards by:

• Using the website Pingroupie, and searching through the database

• Seeing which boards your industry leaders are on, and see if you can join those boards

• Running your keyword searches, and see which group boards come up

• You might need to reach out to about 10 boards, to find 3-4 to be accepted on. So, don’t give up easily, keep reaching out, and eventually you’ll find group boards to join.

CHAPTER 3: CREATE THE PERFECT PIN

Creating pins that go viral

Pinterest is a visual medium, and so you need to create branded pins, that are going to stand out in people’s feeds.

You need them to be consistent, so that over time, your brand will become recognisable.

Here’s a brief overview of what your pins should look like, and contain:

• Vertical format – so longer than wide. If you use Canva, they have a Pinterest template that’s set up with the right proportions. Around 1200 x 700 pixels is good

• Brand colours – follow your brand guidelines (if you have any), or set some up so that you’re always using the same colour palette

• Logo and URL – include your logo and/or website URL somewhere on the pin

• Easy to read title – ideally this will match the title of your blog post. Use a font that’s easy to read, and stands out from the background. As with all headlines in your marketing, you need to come up with something that’s enticing, and makes the reader want to click through and read your blog post

• Keyword rich description – this will be pulled through from your website. If you set up Rich Pins (back in day 1), this should happen automatically

• Call to action – add a call to action in the description telling people what to do (click through to read the post, click to sign up for my free course etc)

• If you have a freebie – say so! If you’re creating content upgrades for your blog posts (which you should be doing) – make it obvious. Get them to notice your pin, click on it, and then sign up to get your freebie.

Set up a template

The best way to make creating pins an exercise that doesn’t take up all your time, is to create templates.

Canva is a great tool for this. You can make the big design decisions once, and then just copy the layout, swap out images and text, and you’ve got your new pin in a matter of minutes.

Watch this video for some inspiration on creating your pins.

<< CLICK THIS LINK TO ACCESS THE VIDEO >>

CHAPTER 4: PINNING ON AUTOPILOT

Pinning on autopilot

There are a couple of verydecent tools out there, which help you to automate a lot of the hard work.

So, instead of spending a few hours a day pinning to all those boards you set up, you can slim that down to about 1 hour a week for the same result.

Boardbooster

Boardbooster is the first tool I started using. You set up private boards, load them up in one go, and then schedule it to pin to your live boards throughout the day.

It also has a functionality to allow you to loop pins from the bottom back up to the top of boards (great for keeping those pins that link back to your website in circulation).

It’s got a few other features, but what I found was, it gets expensive quickly.

You start off at $5/month, but once you start trying to pin a significant number of pins every day (I’m currently pinning 75 per day), you quickly need to start paying more and more.

I still use Boardbooster for looping pins, but not much else.

Tailwind

Tailwind on the other hand, is GREAT value for money!

Their plans start at $15/month, and for that you can schedule up to 400 pins a month. So, that gives you about 15 pins a day.

If you sign up for their annual plan, you save on a couple of months subscription price, AND can schedule unlimited pins. So, this is how I’m pinning 75 pins a day across my boards.

There’s a browser extension that lets you quickly select multiple pins and then add them to one (or more) boards in one quick hit.

I’m not exaggerating when I say it takes only 1 hour a week, to pin around 500 pins for that week.

There are loads of other cool features too, so I highly recommend you check it out.

Manual pinning

If you don’t want to invest any money in either of these tools, then you’ll need to spend time to achieve a similar result.

Just spread your pinning out across the day, adding content across all of your boards, and you’ll still see some traction. It’s just a slower process than if you automate with these tools.

NEXT STEP! Do you need more support in getting your Pinterest strategy up and running?

Jump on my 24 hour limited time offer to grab your copy of The Pinterest Jumpstart foronly $27 (that’s 50% off the regular price)

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