Elevate your business through Pinterest. 0-1M impressions guide.

Brands tend to undervalue Pinterest.

What everyone needs to realize is that Pinterest is more than just a platform for finding recipes and DIY crafts; it's a valuable tool for driving traffic and boosting brand recognition.

I chose to pursue Pinterest traffic for my travel-tech startup Ratepunk about four months ago and experienced relatively impressive growth and some conversions with minimal time investment.

Here's what I learned on my way to the 1M total organic impressions in just a few months.

Let's start with why:

Why Pinterest is great, and you should give it a try.

• Visual Appeal: images to showcase your products and brand story effectively and conveniently
• Traffic Boost: Drive free organic traffic to your website or online store through your Pins by adding a link to every Pin
• Expert Positioning: Share valuable insights to build trust and credibility. If you have a unique niche business, this is extremely helpful as you will stand out with your insights and position yourself as an expert with your content.
• SEO-Friendly: Optimize your content with keywords to appear in search results. Pinterest is not only a social media but a search engine, with many SEO tactics working when tagging and uploading your content.
• Community Engagement: Connect with your audience and build brand loyalty. Create interesting boards, reply to comments, and be active in the community to build a web of content that keeps your audience engaged.
• Content Longevity: One of my favorite parts about Pinterest is the fact that your content can rank years and years later if the same keywords start trending again, meaning if your content was good enough, then - it will be good enough again and again. With enough Pins (which is probably like thousands and thousands of Pins), you can get lazy and watch the traffic. Hard work pays off.
• It is a full-funnel marketing tool for e-commerce. While it is not relevant to me, Pinterest can change the game for e-commerce businesses by providing search engine visibility, introducing prospects to products visually, and offering direct selling through the shop feature(which also boosts engagement if you use it).

Consistent content creation will nurture brand loyalty and encourage repeat purchases.

How:

Consistency is Key

The number one rule you have to have in mind, as with most of social media, when creating content for Pinterest, is that Pinterest rewards consistency.

No matter how big you are on Pinterest - maintaining a regular posting schedule is vital. You can choose any number of pins to do during the day, but I've found that five pins/day is the ideal number for me.

You can choose any number of pins you want to do a day, but your growth and numbers will wary in relation to that.

Taking off days is not a big deal. You can regain your traction as soon as you return if you return with good and trending content.

• Pick a niche and stay consistent with it.
• Create boards that are relevant to your audience, and add Pins from your home feed that are relevant to those boards.
• Your Pin boards don't have to be made up entirely of your Pins.

I advise you to browse Pinterest just a bit every day and add relevant Pins to your boards, like and interact with other Pins to maintain a real presence on the platform.

Tags

Start by identifying keywords that are directly related to your content. These keywords should accurately describe what your Pin is about.

Pinterest tag "finder" is very frustrating to use, but with time and patience, you will find the tags that work for almost every piece of content you put out there, and you will rank on your every post if the tags you provided are trending and getting searched right now.

Incorporate your chosen keywords naturally within your Pin descriptions. Describe the Pin in detail, providing valuable information that complements the image. Sprinkle your keywords throughout the description to make it search-engine-friendly.

Pinterest ranks Pins not only based on their content but also on the context provided by the boards they are pinned to. Ensure your Pins are pinned to boards that are thematically relevant.

For example, Suppose I have a piece of content that provides information about traveling to a particular country (my Pinterest is travel content-focused). In that case, I will pin it to my "Travel Tips" board.

Hashtags

What I do with my descriptions is just copy-paste hashtags generated for me by an AI that is relevant to the keywords that I want my content to rank for. This is not necessary, but I've been doing it since I started, and I am afraid to stop doing it. If it isn't broken.. :)

How to know what's trending.

Use the Pinterest Analytics->Trends tool!

For the first few months, I didn't even realize it was there, and it was so hard to get my content to rank as I had no idea what was trending, so I just uploaded whatever I thought was cool.

This is not the way. Every time you want to upload something, go into the trends analytics and look up the keywords and interests that are relevant to your niche of content to see what is ranking or not.

Over time, you will notice some keywords stay popular more consistently than others. Compare these consistent keywords (keywords that stay relatively in high search interest over the year) with new emerging keywords to change or maybe combine the keywords for your content.

For example, in Travel Japan, is relatively very well searched for during the entire year, so much so that other trends, even when spiking in engagement, have lower traction than "Japan", but whenever I see Osaka Japan trending, I will combine the Japan tag and the Osaka tag together to get even more combined traction.

While consistency awards you with your pins getting consistently more and more overall views, nothing affects your engagement more than choosing the right keywords to rank for when uploading your pins.

My numbers absolutely exploded when I started researching these keywords through the analytics part of Pinterest.

When should you upload?

There are many theories and I've tried quite a few methods, but I've found that this table does the job for me quite consistently.

I don't overthink this too much, since I upload five pins/day I just upload one Pin/time suggested in this table

Credit

Link to relevant content.

Now, my primary goal with Pinterest is to have another source of free traffic coming to my website and potentially installing my amazing extension.

So, most often, I would link my website on my Pin, which is not the best decision, to be honest, as it is not always directly related to the niche that the Pin is about.

But I also have a blog post, and if I have a blog post up about a particular destination that the Pin is about, I will link to that blog post on my Pin for increased traffic, as Pinterest checks the links if they're relevant to the content you're uploading, potentially boosting your engagement in the process.

Linking to relevant content = more engagement.

TL:DR

Why Pinterest is Great:

• Visual appeal to showcase your brand effectively.
• Traffic boost to your website or online store.
• Expert positioning to build trust.
• SEO-friendly features for improved visibility.
• Community engagement to foster loyalty.
• Content longevity for lasting impact.
• Full-funnel marketing potential for e-commerce.

How to Make Pinterest Work for You:

• Consistency is key; maintain a regular posting schedule.
• Pick a niche and stay consistent with relevant boards.
• Use relevant keywords and tags strategically.
• Utilize hashtags to broaden your reach.
• Stay informed about trending keywords through Pinterest Analytics.
• Link to relevant content for increased engagement.

Pinterest is severely underrated and can even become your sole platform for marketing, sales - everything...if you do it right.

Feel free to comment any questions and/or tips :)

Cheers, Indiehackers!