Pin for the Win: How to Market Your Brand on Pinterest

No notes for slide

Intro each of us- its our first webinar actually, so bear with us as we go.
Explain ShareRoot’s origin and love of Pinterest.
Sources throughout the presentation (to provide clarity and prevent any confusion), are not provided by Pinterest, and instead are a collection of info from different sources. Each source is listed on each slide where its relevant, and feel free to email us directly following the presentation for addition resources.

This is the one interactive slide, to give us a good idea of who the listeners are.
Are you a…

Basic terms that most folks know
Pinterest basic formatting- people have profiles, profiles are a collection of boards, with each board being themed differently.
Page followers are different than board followers and its important for a brand to know this one, best way to figure out your number of page followers, is to create a new board and see how many followers you have…

Quick overview of the different section we are going to tackle in this webinar:

Why Pinterest?

Why not?!?!?!? It’s a marketers dream of a social platform.
Fits for all industries, active userbase, in a buying state of mind.

Great stats highlighting Pinterest’s value to brands in comparison to the other social platforms.
Two personal favorites: Pinterest users buy more items any time they make a purchase, and they make purchases more often than users on any of the other top 5 social platforms.
Average referral spend of a Pinterest user Is double that of a FB user.

Another graphic to drive home Pinterest’s dominance over FB when it comes to brand engagement.
In this csase and with this stat, 66% for Pinterest compared to FB’s 17%.

Building your Pinterest audience.

Follow active Pinners who follow you.
Repin, and reciprocate, Pinterest is all about sharing, over 80% of pins within the platform are repins, so get involved in the sharing.

Find related Pinners to follow- look based on their interests, their brand message, their quirks. Also, don’t hesitate to search for Pinners based on related topics, or even look into your competitors followers.

Now we are moving to the strategy for driving engagement to your Pinterest page from outside channels.
We have a handful of tips for doing so, so get excited!
First off leverage your website and blog. Embed the pin it button just like you would the post to Facebook or Tweet button, it is simple to do, and a great way to get site and blog visitors to share your content on Pinterest.
Use great imagery on your site and blog to increase the chance of Pinners pinning!

This is an example of a Pinterest tab for Facebook. They are very easy to get and install, and it’s a great way to turn your Facebook fans into Pinterest followers.

Cross promotional sharing is also super useful. Don’t hesitate to post your pins to Facebook and tweet your pins. As you can see in the graphic it is really easy to do, and a great way to catch a viewers attention and drive them to your Pinterest profile.
You’ve already worked so hard to build your follower and fan bases across your social platforms, why not make your life a little easier and leverage those existing brand advocates.

At ShareRoot, we love this tool! It’s the Top Pins API, and essentially what it allows you to do, is showcase your most popular pins on your website or blog. One of the numerous awesome features of this tool is that the top pins are updated in real time without you needing to even lift a finger on your end.

Creating content on Pinterest

Although each Pinner and each brand on Pinterest has their own unique spin on how to create content, there are a couple of underlying guidelines:
Educate and entertain. When we say educate, this doesn’t mean always focus on your products and what to do with them, instead feel free to do so once in a while, but also mix in how to’s and resources that will be useful for your target audience. For entertaining, don’t be shy about your brand’s personality. Pinterest is about exploring and discovering, and a lot of what Pinners discover are things, items, or places that work with their individual personality. DO the same.

Group boards are a unique feature that if used well, are great at empowering your followers, and turning them into brand ambassadors. In creating a group board, you can invite…. Don’t forget that you get access to all of their followers.

There are a handful of contest types your brand can execute on Pinterest, and contests are very effective at generating deeper user engagements, and potentially getting user generated content about your brand.

There are two most common types of Pinterest contests, the first one is a Pin to Win contest. In a Pin to Win contest, the barrier to entry is slightly higher for a Pinner because they have to actually go out and source their own content, and license it to your brand through an entry form, but the benefit…

The second most common contest type is a board creation contest. With this contest type it is easier to enter, which means you are bound to get more entries, but you have less control over the content, and you are not licensed to use the content a user pins.
You can provide suggested pins, users do use them quite a bit, but you can’t make a selection mandatory.

A couple of additional tips on content and what to Pin. As you can see from this Nordstroms example, it is essential to demonstrate your brand’s image and personality, especially when the images have nothing to do with your brand. You want Pinners who are following your brand to see your brand in the same light that they see other Pinners that they follow so that they continue to pay attention to your pins.
Create that emotional attachment, humanize your brand, and let Pinners connect on a personal level.

How’d that get there?

Even if your brand isn’t a visual brand, you will not have a hard time finding visual forward content that represents your brand. Definitely check out GE for inspiration.

We love rich pins, they could be our favorite Pinterest product/feature in all actuality.
Rich pins are like regular pins, but they provide additional relevant and actionable information to Pinners interacting with them, by linking to content on a site or blog, and grabbing the data from the website or blog.
There are five types of rich pins

The first type of rich pin, is place pin- place pins provide a map that enables your brand to place each pin on that board on the geographic map by giving the pin a location. For instance- this product can be found at this store located on this street, or this outdoor activity caught in this pin can be found in this city.
The next type of rich pin Is an article pin: you can link pins directly to news articles which will include the article title, headline, author name, and story abstract.

The third rich pin is a product pin- not only does this rich pin display pricing, availability, and places to buy the product, it also will notify the Pinner of a price change if the Pinner has opted in for this feature.
The fourth rich pin type is a movie pin- im a big movie fan, so naturally I like this feature. Pin a movie to your board, and enable ratings, cast members, and reviews to be included.

Recipe pins are the last and final Pinterest pin detailed. If you have been on Pinterest before, you know that there is no shortage of pins with beautiful culinary masterpieces. The problem before recipe rich pins came out, was that you never actually knew how to create the beautiful food you were staring at and salivating over. Well, now with recipe pins, the ingredients, and instructions are listed there for you.

As discussed earlier in the presentation, we know that Pinterest drives purchase intent for brands like none of the other social platforms.
A cool thing about rich pins is that they allow you to tie Pinterest and pins to revenue. Because pins are tied to info on your site, when a user clicks on a specific rich pin, they are directed specifically to the content the rich pin is pulling.

Pinterest offers a useful and robust analytics tool called web analytics. Think of web analytics as a super charged google analytics that provides your brand with all of the info you need to track engagement to and from your site and Pinterest.

This slide drives home the idea that building a strong engaged user base on Pinterest is extremely valuable when it comes to sales even if you are not seeing immediate results. With loyalty developed and a relationship built, you keep your brand top of mind for users on the platform that drives sales like none of its predecessors before it.

In conclusion- all of you are awesome, and we love you.
Next, don’t forget to engage, engage, engage.
Have fun with your brand personality and expression. There us no exact blueprint, have fun with it and express your brand.
Be a resource, and help Pinners discover your brand and your company.
Check out the ebook below for additional information
Alright- now its time for questions!