It has been known that Pinterest is your go-to for inspiration and ideas when thinking of new home renovations or ideas for your business. They would call it the “Inspiration Zone” and have been quoted to say that they are the “Future of your plans” for social media.
According to Pinterest, global analysis, July 2020 – June 2021, 83% of weekly pinners made a purchase based on the content they saw on Pinterest. Yes, Pinners is the word used for the social norm of the person exploring Pinterest. What makes this stat amazing is that 53% of them are Millennial Women.
So, now you can ask yourself, why aren’t I on Pinterest? Well, that is the question that Pinterest decided to ask themselves, why aren’t we the biggest social media platform?
I recently had a chat with one of the new Account Managers for the Australian region, where we explored all the new ideas that Pinterest is doing and also why as a business you need to consider Pinterest in your marketing strategy.
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a social site where you can collect and share images of anything you find interesting. You can also visually discover new interests by browsing the collections of other Pinterest users. Think of Pinterest as a virtual pinboard or bulletin board, but with mapping and structure.
We grab inspiration from images being home décor, food and inspirational quotes. But when Pinterest looked at the most common searches, this is what Pinners are looking for:
It isn’t surprising that although Pinterest is a basic-level of social media platform, there are so many ways to discover what you are looking for, and as a user, you can find basically anything and everything similarly by searching one word.
The basis of Pinterest is that you have three content finders. Home Feeds, Search and then Related Pins. It is basically tailored to your interests only.
No text, no marketing words or sales tools – just images. 433 million people globally use Pinterest every month, and 7.5 million are Australian (Nielsen Digital Content Planning, January).
During this call, I discovered that Pinterest offers advertising campaigns to help put your image at the top or with what they call ‘immersive stories’. These ads are only shown to people who are searching for a particular topic or tag, the conversion rates are higher compared to Facebook and Instagram. Also, there are additional targeting methods that can be based on location, language, gender and age.
Immersive stories are not just another fancy buzzword. It’s a tool that has been used for decades by filmmakers, journalists, artists and producers as a way to fully captivate your audience.
The way that Pinterest use this is to create the strategy “try before you buy” with videos and snippets where the longer version can be shown or purchased from another site. It’s the gateway to something more.
So you are probably asking why is this different to TikTok or Instagram stories, and that discussion goes back to the targeting factor. Pinners are looking for what you are offering, you are not telling them that they need to buy your product, because they already have an invested interest in what you are selling. TikTok and Instagram can only do this with followers. Pinterest has created its viewership purely based on interest from others.
One of the things that I knew, but only by realisation during the call is that Pinterest is about a positive notion of advertising. There are no arguments, no negative posts and no agendas to sway you away from your beliefs and values. Pinterest actually started as a wall for inspirational quotes, so this concept is still the same today.
The way the world changed in the last two years, where negative stories and clickbait have become to way media stories are produced. Pinterest didn’t have to change its strategy and will remain in the social media world of positivity.
How to start?
Firstly, you need to be prepared to have good-quality photos available. It can be taken on your iPhone, but it needs to be with good lighting and clear. Once you have these, content creation is easy. Unlike the other platforms, new content doesn’t need to be created more frequently, it is more about the bank of content you have, and the tags associated with it.
Simply upload all, pins ones to the top, tags the images and that is it!
When it comes to the advertising part, talk to CLS about getting this set up for you, as there are a few additional steps that are needed to get started.
Set up your account, and happy Pinning!
CREDIT: Images have all been provided by Pinterest Australia Team during a recent training session.