These are some of the best practises for using Pinterest to promote your business, make money and sell your art and crafts online.
Read The Pinterest Startup guide
We recommend that you go to the help section of Pinterest and read their ‘how to get started’ guide. This will clarify and explain the basic beginner steps. You can start with a personal account and when you are more comfortable with using the site, you can sign up for a different account of the purpose of promoting your business.
Open A Business Pinterest Account
For example, when opening an account on Pinterest for the first time you will have the option of signing up for an individual account or a business Pinterest account. You will probably want to choose the latter.
You can still create multiple boards for a business Pinterest account. You can make some of them private for purposes like online research, personal reading, inspiration, brainstorming, collaboration etc.
Get ‘Rich Pins’
As far as I am aware, at the time of writing this, you get that extra option of choosing ‘rich pins’ for your content if you have a business Pinterest account.
Rich pins are different from normal pins in a few important ways.
- They have a couple of lines of additional information added above the pin description.
- This additional space displays the business logo as well as the business name, title etc, in bold.
- These rich pins are great for branding as they let the user know immediately where the pin is coming from.
How To Get ‘Rich Pins’
One applies to WordPress users and the other to people who have a blog or a website outside the WordPress platform. Once again, the best place to learn about getting rich pins for your Pinterest business account is the help and knowledge base section of Pinterest itself. You need to fill out a small form and wait for approval that can take up to 30 days.
Pin Blog Posts And Products On Your Business Board
Any online page you want to promote on Pinterest will need to have an image that can be pinned. The image can be placed anywhere on the page. If you are linking a product page this will not be a problem as that page is likely to contain the image of the art or the craft already. (And if you have been following our advice so far, a great image at that!)
However, if you are linking other content like a blog post you will have to create and add an image to the post. Once you have done this you have various options of how to pin it to your board. You can sign in to your Pinterest account and paste the URL of the web page you want to promote. (You can also upload an image directly from your computer without including it in your post.)
Pinterest will automatically detect the images on the page you are trying to pin and show them to you. You can click on the right image, add a description and you are done.
A second method is to download an extension/applet for your browser. This extension allows you to pin any available image on any webpage to your board. It does this by showing you a ‘pin it’ option when you will hold the mouse arrow over the image. We highly recommend that you download and install this extension. These extensions are available from the Pinterest website and they make the job of pinning a lot more easier. Just do a search engine search for Pinterest extension for whatever browser you are using.
After installing this extension you can easily pin your own online images to your business board as well as any other image to any other board from any other website.
A third method of pinning images is by adding the social media sharing functionality on your blog. If you are on blogging platform like WordPress you can easily manage this by installing a plug-in like ‘Jetpack’. If you are not on WordPress you can download the code for sharing button from the Pinterest website.
Make Your Images Pinterest Friendly
Not only can you use these share buttons to post website images to your Pinterest board, other visitors can share your content in a similar fashion. It is highly recommended that you make your pages and images pin friendly. You will generate a lot of extra traffic when people start sharing your content on their reports.
Get Philanthropic
Add a cause to your Pinterest campaigns and your craft business. Let people know that a part of proceeds go towards your charity of choice. This can help get you more sales as people feel even better about buying your stuff.
Pin Videos
Video garner a lot attention and views. This is not something that you HAVE to do as many marketers might tell you. But if you can do it, its great. Videos get indexed and ranked quiet well with search engines, specially videos with good quality and content. Therefore, you can also create and pin some do-it-yourself or instructional videos.
Make Your Old Content Pin Friendly
I am working on creating pinnable images for my blog posts that were written before Pinterest happened in a big way. If you have been writing for sometime or have posts that are not pin friendly you should do the same. It is very likely to be worth all the time and extra effort.
Promote Your Pins On Other Social Media Websites
Once you have created great images for your pins, definitely share them on other networks like Facebook and Twitter if you are already promoting your business there. Cross-platform sharing can increase exposure for your work. And the reason it works is that images are the most popular content on Facebook and Twitter as well.
Put Your Pinterest Board On Your Blog
You can get the code from the Pinterest website that allows you to embed your board on your blog in a post or in the sidebar. Doing this will give a greater visibility to your board and get more followers.
Create Seasonal Content.
It’s the fact that certain searches soar during certain times of the year. It’s a no-brainer that searches of Christmas decorations will soar in the month of November and December. Similarly the same can happen for Easter crafts, winter crafts, wedding crafts etc. Get an idea of what trends when not only for the purpose of your Pinterest board but also as ideas for seasonal art and crafts to make.
Decide The Best Time To Pin
The time you post your pins may have an impact on the exposure it gets. You can determine the best time for pinning as follows. Take a few images and experiment with them one by one. Post the same image 5 to 6 times in a day. Leave it on for two hours and delete it. Try this with 3 to 5pins, preferably 7, for each day of the week. This process will give you a good idea about the best time to post as well as the best day of the week when your pins get the maximum exposure.
Be Aware Of Image Copyright Issues At All Times
Read the terms and conditions of Pinterest. Be very careful when using images that do not belong to you. Pinning blog posts and linking to them for personal boards is usually all right. But make sure that the image is not copyrighted work of art. The best way to ensure that you have permission to pin images is to find the Pinterest sharing button on the page. If the sharing button is there, the website is obviously encouraging you to pin their content.
Using images that do not belong to you for your own content is a big no, unless there are copyright free for commercial use. Look for free images to use, create your own or invest in stock photography.
Always Check Links For Images You Pin or Re-pin
When linking a blog post make sure you give the link to that specific article and not the homepage of the website. You want interested readers who click to land on the promoted content and not on the homepage.
You may want to “re-pin” other content on your business board because you feel it adds value, attracts more followers and does not damage your business prospects. Whenever you “re-pin” other content, click through to the link to make sure it is not broken. Broken links happen on Pinterest. It is a good idea to add your own description when re-pinning as well. Usually short and informal descriptions work well for all kinds of pins.
Select Only The Best Content To Pin
Not everything you have written is worthy of being posted on Pinterest. Don’t take it personally but not all content will do well. Remove non-performing pins from your boards.
