Are you looking to make Pinterest a part of your marketing strategy for your creative small business this year? The number one question I’m asked is how to start a Pinterest account that’s optimized for traffic! In this blog post, I’ll be sharing my top Pinterest tips for a fresh start for your business.

 

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5 Tips to Get Started with Pinterest Marketing for 2019

If you are anything like me, you love the new year! Fresh starts, fresh outlooks, and making decisions about what worked (and what didn’t) from the previous year.

I’ve had a lot of fun sifting through my analytics and my experiences, jotting down what worked for me, especially when it comes to Pinterest marketing.

If you are new to Pinterest, let me tell you about my favorite platform. Pinterest is not about connecting socially (I’ll leave Instagram for that!), it’s about purpose and planning. Pinterest allows me to drive more traffic and inquiries to my website on auto-pilot, while on vacation, while tending to a sick child, or while I am sleeping.

My email list has grown to over a 1,000 subscribers because of Pinterest. Weekly, I receive client inquiries because of Pinterest. Regularly, I receive affiliate income from products and platforms I love to share with others who find me on Pinterest.

Whatever your reasoning, Pinterest is a powerful traffic-generating tool. Let’s get started with the tips!

Tip 1: Convert to a business profile

This is a gimme. You cannot operate a business on Pinterest without a business account. It’s in the TOS (terms of service). It’s easy to do— head to settings (currently in the top right corner) and switch out to a business account.

Tip 2: Confirm your domain

Why do this? By confirming your domain, you are giving Pinterest access to meta-data and domain authority (a fancy word for how your site ranks overall on the internet). Meta-data is powerful! Here’s an example— the title of your blog post should have relevant keywords for the post, not just for the purposes of Pinterest, but also, search engine optimization. A keyworded title gives Pinterest MORE context what your content is about and how to rank it in the search feed.

How do we confirm your website? Once you convert to a business profile, head to settings and ‘claim’ your URL. Pinterest details this step-by-step for you here! 

Tip 3: Confirm your Etsy, YouTube, and Instagram account

This is newer to the Pinterest platform, but I’m really enjoying it! You can now claim other accounts with your Pinterest login. You can read more HOW to here. 

Why would we want to do this? By connecting those accounts, you can attribute (fancy word for assigning a piece of content to your Pinterest account) products (Etsy), posts (Instagram), or videos (YouTube) to your account.

This is great when people are saving content from those OTHER platforms to Pinterest. It’s also a great way to cross-pollinate your content and turn a cold audience into a warm audience by sharing more of your brand.

Tip 4: Learn to create pins

I know a lot of you struggle with where to start on creating pins. First things first: Create pins that are 2:3 ratio or around 1000 x 1500px (the size de jour for Pinterest right now), but then what?

Pin creative is important, but it evolves over time. You will learn what your audience likes and what makes them click. I suggest heading over to Canva and picking out some of their pre-made templates and work with some of their ideas. People use Canva successfully everyday (I use a combination of Canva and Photoshop). Use brand colors, drop in your logo, and make sure the text is easy to read. You can read my other posts about creating pins here:

• 4 Tips for Making Great Pins on Pinterest
• Get more Clicks and Traffic on Pinterest
• 3 Steps to Create Pinterest Images

Tip 5: Create content and automate it!

No matter how perfect you curate and optimize your profile on Pinterest, if you don’t create content, you won’t get clicks. Logically, you have to create something that will entice a pinner to your site.

Do you have to create TONS of content? In my experience, once you get started or are new to Pinterest, you have to create content more consistently to get people back to your blog, but with time, you’ll start to see 80% of your traffic comes from 20% of your blog posts (The Pareto Principle wins again).

With Tailwind—a Pinterest and Instagram scheduler I use everyday for my business—I can blog, create some pins, and automate the whole process. I wouldn’t have a thriving Pinterest strategy without it! You can try Tailwind for free with my affiliate account link:

With Tailwind’s new SmartLoop feature, you can repurpose older pins and content by ‘looping’ content through boards. I am IN LOVE with this time-saving traffic generating feature. You can read more about SmartLoop here!

If you want 2019 to be the year of automated traffic to your site to grow your business, I’m here to help! Grab my Free Pinterest Start-Up Guide below:

Want more tips to get started? See my introductory post Getting Started on Pinterest and don’t forget to sign up for my email newsletter below. Ready to automate your Pinterest marketing strategy? Learn from my How to Use Tailwind course!

Like this blog post? I’d love for you to follow me on Pinterest and pin it for later!