This is one of my favorite topics: Pinterest. Love it. I’ve jokingly said if I’m not on Pinterest for 3 days, call the police. So what does Pinterest have to do with the holidays and why does it matter to you and your business? 

 

Pinterest is a Referral Tool

 

Pinterest is one of the best referral tools on the planet. It has amazing traffic. You may think you have good traffic from Facebook or Instagram but I’d bet Pinterest is better. 

 

The Stats

 

Let’s talk stats. Pinterest has over 330 million active monthly viewers. 80% of those viewers are female. 85% of women will use Pinterest to plan life moments such as weddings, building a house, travel, and more. If your industry is involved in those industries this is huge for you. Only around 40% will use Instagram for this planning and around 50% will use Facebook. 

 

58% say it helps them make shopping and purchasing decisions. I can’t tell you how much stuff I’ve bought off Pinterest. Well, I can, but I won’t. 89% of pinners use it for inspiration to actually make a purchase. 47% use it specifically just to shop. It’s 4 times more effective at generating sales than any other social media platform. 87% of pinners have used it to make a purchase. Women who shop on Pinterest spend almost 2 times as much on a purchase. Do you see where I’m going here? 

 

The pushback I get a lot of times is that all the millennials are on Instagram. 53% of millennials use Pinterest every single month. (And that’s from 2019, not this year when we’ve all been trapped inside.) Millennials say Pinterest inspires them to make their dreams a reality. 

 

If You’re Not Selling a Product, Why Be on Pinterest?

 

Say you’re a realtor or an event planner and you don’t sell a product. How can Pinterest work for you? There are several benefits you can get from being active on Pinterest.

It Strengthens Your Brand

 

For one thing, it strengthens your brand. Anytime you post directly from your own material, like your Instagram or blog, it drives traffic to your site and strengthens your brand. If you look at our Instagram page you’re going to see a lot of branded material. Then, if you go to our Pinterest, you’re going to see it again. There are very different audiences there and I’m much more likely to show up on a suggested search on Pinterest than I am on Instagram. 

 

It’s shocking sometimes to see the number spikes around the holidays. We have 5,000 followers on Pinterest and around the holidays we can get up to 80,000 views each month. The thing that really floored me happened when we consistently started blogging and pinning those blogs to our main board, then sharing the pins to our other boards. Our blogs started to be our number 1 thing every month. I was shocked. We kept doing that and we have seen that same result over and over. The top 10 pins for us each month statistically will include 8 that are our own blog. I’ll get 5,000 views on one picture from our blog. It blew my mind. So does it work? Yes! You can get killer traffic from it. 

 

Market Research

 

Pinterest is its own search engine. If I want to search “decorating trends” I’m going to get very different results on Pinterest than if I typed that in on Google. Remember, those women on Pinterest are using it to plan their lives. If I see something with big numbers on Pinterest, chances are it’s a good gamble. It’s great if you’re looking for blog topics. When we want to know what questions people are asking we can search “how to Instagram” and get 20 different suggestions for what users are searching for right now. 

 

It Helps You Gain New Customers

 

It’s almost impossible to come up on the for you page on Instagram unless you’re a celebrity or you’re making reels. It’s not like that on Pinterest. It’s like YouTube. People want to find you based on keywords so Pinterest will suggest you to them based on what’s in the description. They want other people to see it and pin it so they’re going to share that for you. What a great way to get new customers. 

 

It Helps You Establish Your Expertise

 

When people start seeing my name pop us as the author of blog after blog, and all our Instagram information, and there’s her face again, it really establishes your expertise. Side note, faces don’t do as well on Pinterest as they do on Instagram so if you’re pinning your blog images to Pinterest maybe try a little less face than you’d use on Instagram. 

 

It’s Free Marketing from Fans

 

If people like you, they’re going to pin it and share it. Then their followers will pin it and share it. You can’t beat this kind of free marketing. It’s also great because if you have a really great pin it can be shared months and even years later, still bringing you traffic. 

 

On Facebook, the shelf-life of a post is a couple of hours. If it’s really good it could last a whole day and if it’s amazing maybe a week. Compared to Pinterest where the shelf-life of a quality pin is years, there is really no contest. It’s more like YouTube, where a good video will keep coming back like a bad taco. Make sure your material is good because it can keep popping up for a long time. 

It’s Great for Your SEO

 

Anything that sends traffic directly to your website is so good for your SEO. If you’re unfamiliar with the term SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization. When people type search terms into Pinterest, it works just like Google to help people find your content. They can then click on your pins and go directly to your website. It doesn’t get much better than that.

 

It’s a Great Way to Recycle Content

 

You can take the exact same blog, with the exact same title, and use different graphics and pin it and get different results. Just changing the graphic will change how people look at it. 

How to Get Started

 

Do what you can handle. Start with your Instagram or your blog. Pinterest weights the first 5 posts of the day greater than the rest so make sure those are your own pins. I often joke you can knock out all your pinning with one good bathroom trip each day. Don’t let it overwhelm you. You’ve got this. There’s no better season to start!