A Deep Dive into Pinterest

If Pinterest isn’t already part of your social media marketing strategy, you could be missing out on great opportunities to connect with your audience, boost brand awareness and drive sales.

Pinterest is more than a haven for recipe lovers and DIY enthusiasts, it’s also a powerful tool for businesses. With its visual-centric platform, Pinterest allows brands to creatively showcase their products, share inspiring content and engage with users in fresh and impactful ways. Ready to unlock the full potential of Pinterest? Let’s dive into the platform, its latest features and explore actionable tips that will help your brand thrive!

Why Should Businesses Use Pinterest? 💼

With over 522 million monthly active users globally (Mericool), Pinterest provides businesses with a great opportunity to boost online visibility. However, while you can find everything from art to technology on the platform, it's most renowned as a place for fashion, home and creative inspiration. The key benefits of Pinterest for businesses are:

Brand Discovery

With more than 2 billion monthly searches, Pinterest can help brands reach new audiences and expand their online presence. Research suggests that 80% of Pinners have discovered a new brand on the platform (SproutSocial).

Searchable Content

Pinterest functions like a search engine, making it easy for users to actively search for products and ideas. Pins are saved, shared and indexed, meaning your content can continue to reach users over time.

engaged users

Pinterest users typically seek inspiration or solutions, which makes them more likely to interact with content, follow brands and, ultimately, make purchases. This intent-driven behaviour presents a golden opportunity for businesses to connect with highly engaged audiences.

Sales Opportunities

With features like Pinterest Shopping and Rich Pins, the platform helps drive traffic to your website and convert browsing into sales, making it ideal for e-commerce businesses.

The Pinterest Dictionary 📚

Before we take a deep dive into Pinterest’s features, it’s important to familiarise ourselves with some important terminology.

Pins - The core content on Pinterest. When you click on a pin, it links to a website, often leading users directly to your product pages.

Pinners - Pinterest users who discover and share pins.

Boards - Think Visual bookmarks or digital bulletin boards where users organise and save their pins. You can also collaborate with others by creating Group Boards.

Pincodes - Similar to QR codes, Pincodes allow users to enter a code to be taken directly to your business’ curated boards, unlocking tailored content.

Lens - A feature that uses your smartphone’s camera to suggest pins based on pictures you take. Simply snap a picture of a product, and Pinterest will recommend similar items that might interest you.

Pinterest Business Accounts 👔

Before diving into the exciting features Pinterest has to offer, it’s essential to set up a business account for your brand. A Pinterest business account unlocks many benefits, from in-depth analytics on your Pins to the ability to run targeted ads.

You can either set up a new business account or convert your personal account to a business account. Follow this step-by-step guide to get your business account up and running.

Once you're all set, it's time to explore Pinterest’s diverse range of features...

Key Features:

📍 Rich Pins

Rich Pins are a game-changer for businesses looking to boost their Pinterest presence. These enhanced pins automatically pull additional information from your linked website, providing valuable context and making your posts more engaging. Ultimately, they give users more information at their fingertips, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

There are several types of Rich Pins, each offering unique benefits:

• Product Pins: These display real-time pricing, availability and a direct link to the product page, making it easier for users to purchase directly from Pinterest. Perfect for e-commerce businesses looking to drive sales.

  
  

• Recipe Pins: Ideal for food-related content, these pins show ingredients, cooking time and serving sizes—helping users get all the details they need at a glance.

  
  

• Article Pins: These include the headline, a short description and the author's name. Perfect for driving traffic to your blog or other written content.

For many businesses, Product and Article Pins are the most useful, as they directly encourage sales and drive website traffic. Click here to learn more about setting up Rich Pins.

📍 Pinterest Shopping

Pinterest Shopping allows businesses to seamlessly showcase their products within their Pins, providing users with a smooth shopping experience without having to leave the platform. By uploading your product catalog, you can link each product image directly to its corresponding store page, so users can make a purchase at the touch of a button.

Top Tip: Don’t forget to toggle on Performance+ creative optimisations. This scales your product Pins into multiple formats, boosting their reach and performance for maximum impact.

Pinterest also offers integration with major e-commerce platforms like Shopify, Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud and WooCommerce. This means businesses can easily connect their online store to Pinterest, and the platform will automatically generate Pins for their existing product listings.

No product feed? No problem! You can still manually tag products using the Add Products option in the Pin creation tool.

Learn more about Pinterest Shopping and how to get started here.

📍 Pinterest Ads

Whether you're aiming to increase brand awareness, drive traffic or convert visitors into customers, Pinterest Ads offer a wide range of options to help your business succeed. The main ad formats available are:

• Promoted Pins: Think regular Pins, but supercharged. By paying to promote them, they appear in user feeds and search results, blending seamlessly with organic content for a non-intrusive customer experience. A simple yet powerful way to expand your reach.

  
  

• Video Pins: Capture attention with compelling video content! Whether you’re telling your brand story or showcasing how your product works, these help you engage users on a deeper level.

  
  

• Showcase: This interactive ad format lets you display multiple cards and links. Perfect for shoppers who want to explore more before making a purchase.

  
  

• Carousel Ads: Tell your story through multiple images or highlight a series of products in one ad. This format is perfect for showcasing different product features or related items.

  
  

• Collections: Combine images and video in one dynamic ad to give people a rich, immersive shopping experience. Perfect for displaying a range of products or creating a lifestyle-focused campaign.

  
  

• Premier Spotlight: For maximum impact, reserve premium video placements in Pinterest’s highest-traffic areas.

Click here to learn more in Pinterest's Help Centre.

📍 Pinterest Analytics

Pinterest offers comprehensive analytics for business accounts, giving you insight into how your content is performing. By tracking key metrics like impressions, clicks, saves and engagements, you’ll be able to pinpoint what’s working and what needs fine-tuning. Armed with this information, you can tailor your content strategy in future to ensure you’re creating content that consistently resonates with your audience. You can track:

Overall Presence

A comprehensive view of your engagement across all your organic and paid campaigns. See exactly how your content is performing and what’s driving results.

Interactions

Explore how Pinterest users interact with content they save from your accounts. This helps you understand how your content is spreading and being shared.

Audience Insights

Dive into the demographics and interests of your audience. Get to know who your followers are, what they care about and how to connect with them on a deeper level.

Performance

Identify your top-performing Pins and ads, and use these insights to optimise your future campaigns. Knowing what’s working will help you strategise more effectively and drive long-term success.

📍 Trend Tracking

Want to stay ahead of the curve? Pinterest Trends is a go-to tool for discovering the latest and emerging trends. By tapping into trending topics and keywords, businesses can craft timely, relevant content that aligns with what users are actively searching for in real-time.

Keep an eye on Pinterest’s blog for updated trend reports, or head over to Pinterest Trends to see what’s trending right now. Also, don’t miss Pinterest Predicts, the platform’s annual report that identifies future trends across a range of categories. It’s always an exciting day in the OCOCO office when it first gets published!

Ultimately, whether you're looking for personal inspiration or planning your digital strategy, Pinterest Trends has the insights you need to stay on top of what's popular and what's likely to be next!

Top Tips & Best Practices

Now that you’re familiar with Pinterest’s key features, it's time to explore some actionable strategies that will help your brand thrive. Here’s our top tips for getting the most out of the platform:

Quality > Everything

Visual content is at the very heart of Pinterest, so making sure your Pins are eye-catching and high-quality is crucial. Be sure to:

• Use vertical images - Pinterest favours vertical pins with a 2:3 ratio (for example, 1000 x 1500 pixels) for optimal display.

• Maintain consistent branding - Keep your style, colour scheme and fonts consistent across all your Pins to build a strong visual identity for your brand.

Don’t Forget Your Keywords

Remember, Pinterest works like a search engine, so it’s essential to optimise your Pins for search. To boost visibility and ensure your content is easily discoverable, use relevant keywords in your Pin descriptions, Board titles, profile information and hashtags.

Create Pinterest Boards

Boards are a great way to organise your content by themes, products and campaigns. You could create boards around your core products or services, relevant trends or even seasonal events. This will keep your profile neat and user-friendly, enabling users to easily browse your content and discover new products.

Be Consistent

Posting consistently is key to growing your presence on Pinterest. Aim to pin 5-15 times per day, mixing original content with repins and curated material from others.

Engage with Your Audience

While Pinterest is primarily a discovery platform, boosting engagement can help build lasting relationships with your audience. Respond to comments on your pins, follow other brands, repin relevant user-generated content and collaborate on Group Boards.

Analytics are your best friend

Regularly review your analytics to track your content’s performance and identify which Pins and Boards are generating the most engagement. By understanding which content works best, you can optimise your strategy over time and achieve consistent improvement and success.

By harnessing Pinterest’s tools, ad features and content optimisation strategies, you can pin your way to success, supercharging your brand’s growth and attracting new customers. At OCOCO Media, we specialise in right-message, right-time, right-targeting social media ads. Contact us to today to discover how we can help you get the most out of your social media campaigns.

Additional Resources

Pinterest for Business Help Centre: https://business.pinterest.com/en-gb/

Pinterest Business case studies: https://business.pinterest.com/en-gb/success-stories/

Pinterest Business Help Centre for set-up instructions and troubleshooting tips: https://help.pinterest.com/en

Pinterest Academy (a collection of courses, live webinars and a certification exams): https://www.pinterestacademy.com/student/catalog

OCOCO Media's Essentials for Creating Social Media Video blog: https://www.ococomedia.co.uk/post/lights-camera-action-essentials-for-creating-social-media-video