Making The Most Of Pinterest [Day 11: 30 DBWB]
[This post is an excerpt from the 30 Days To A Better Wedding Business Workbook]
Pinterest is huge for the wedding industry and can drive a ton of traffic to your website. My friends over at Book More Brides put together an excellent infographic about Pinterest.
As you can see, Pinterest can really impact your business so here are 6 tips for making the most of it:
Make it about your customer
All of your marketing needs to be focused on what your customer is interested in. Think about what else your ideal customer purchases that doesn’t compete with your product. You may want to create Pinterest boards that focus on this. Do all of your customers love a particular brand of clothing? Create a board of great clothing that goes with your jewelry. The point here is that it isn’t all about you and your product.
Oreck does a surprisingly good job of this on Pinterest. Their pins are related to the home and include cleaning tips, home decor, cooking. They also create pins about their products but it isn’t the main focus.
Use Pinterest for market research
It’s easy to find out what people are pinning from your website. To do this, simply visit http://pinterest.com/source/insertyourwebsitehere.com/ Just insert your website where I’ve put “insertyourwebsitehere.com”.
Are people pinning your images to boards that contain complimentary brands or products? This will help you get to know your customers better and it may give you ideas about potential partnership opportunities with other businesses that you share an audience with.
For more detailed stats, you can sign up for a service like Pinreach. This will help you to figure out which of your pins are most popular and who is interacting with you on Pinterest.
Pin your blog posts
Pinterest isn’t just about pretty pictures. It is now the 4th largest traffic driver worldwide. To get your share of that traffic, make sure all of your pins link back to the page on your site where people can find the image. You can actually pin your blog posts by creating a simple graphic to go along with them. Shenee Howard of heyshenee.com does a great job of this and you can see how I do this here.
Add a Pinterest plugin to your site
There are countless plugins that can accomplish this, but I love this one for WordPress. This plugin automatically includes the name of your site and the link when someone pins an image and is very easy to use. When people pin your photos, this creates even more opportunities for people to find out about your work.
Use popular search terms in your pin descriptions
Many people search within Pinterest to find items so it’s important to use popular keywords in your pin description. Instead of including just the name of your products, use words that describe what it is.
I came across these earrings on Pinterest and the description was “Leafy Love – #earrings by Erin Prais-Hintz with hand embossed and patinated brass leaves and Picasso-finish Czech glass beads” This makes sense, but it is full of a lot of industry terms. What words would your customers use to find your products? I’d be willing to bet that “Nature-inspired leaf #earrings by Erin Prais-Hintz with brass leaves and green beads” would perform a lot better than the current description. Some people may be searching Erin’s work specifically, but others might be looking for something to go with their green, nature-inspired dress.
If you need help figuring out which words to use in your description, look at your Google Analytics to see what words people are searching to find your website.
Add a price banner to your products
Adding a “$” or a “£” to the pin description and a price banner will automatically added to the photo. The Pin will then appear in the Gifts category and on your board. In the description, remember to link to the website where people can purchase the item.
If you implement these tips, you’ll be well on your way to getting more out of Pinterest!
Here’s my question. I’m on Pinterest, and I’m all for attracting brides. You say make it about them by making boards about products that differ from mine (DJ). I’m fearful that making boards about shoes and dresses make me look…creepy! Thoughts???
Hi Gary,
Good question and thanks for asking. I would suggest starting with things closer to what you do. For example, you could have a board of fun first dance videos (you can pin videos!), a board of album covers that showcase the top song requests, a board of the most unusual songs that you’ve been asked to play, musicians weddings, etc.
I would also think about your ideal client (here’s a link to the post about that: https://evolveyourweddingbusiness.com/do-you-know-who-youre-targeting-day-2-dbwb/) and what they are into. Do they all share a particular style? You could create a board around that style of weddings. You could also create a board of photos from your client’s weddings (ask permission first!). Think about what they as a person would like to see and how you can make that fun. Does that help?