How To Use Pinterest For Small Businesses-The Beginners Guide!

Table of Contents

 
Introduction to Pinterest
What’s in this User Guide for Small Businesses?
Setting up a Pinterest Account
Setting up a Pinterest Account for Business
Method 1: Make a new Business account from scratch.
Method 2: Convert your existing Pinterest user ID to a business account
Setting up boards related to Business
How to create your first board?
Using Pinterest Search Bar
Pinterest Winning strategy
Pinterest Tools

Introduction to Pinterest

Pinterest is one the fastest growing social media platforms. It is like Google images, but a million times better. Unlike Google images that help you find relevant images based on keywords, Pinterest is a social media platform that you can use to track your favorite images as well as find similar images that you might find helpful.

Images on Pinterest are not only present to help you but also serve the purpose of offering you valuable knowledge in the form of pins. Unlike in the case of Instagram or Facebook, Pinterest shows you relevant images without the need of following a particular page. All you need to do is follow a particular genre, for example, comics. This will now lead you to all the relevant images about comics and comic characters.

Not many people realize this but, Pinterest is a great platform that can be used to promote your own small business on an international level. Let’s say you have a bakery and craft beautiful cakes. If you can take the pictures, add relevant tags, and upload the pictures on Pinterest, you can have a huge fan following.

You cannot only find relevant entertainment images here but can also find and save recipes for your favorite dishes, follow your liked genres such as sports, Hollywood, cars, etc. Pinterest is a nice platform to showcase your DIY skills too.

What’s in this User Guide for Small Businesses?

This user guide helps you explore your small business with the use of Pinterest – a social media platform that has the capability to drive thousands of niche specific users to your business. The all you need is carefully read this user guide, apply the solutions and strategies given here, and you will see your business taking a high pitch.
In this user guide, we will start from the basic step of creating an account at Pinterest and move forward to use it for the success of a small business.

Setting up a Pinterest Account

Making a new Pinterest account is fairly simple. Let us guide you through the basics of Pinterest to use it as a powerful marketing tool to expand your business.
Perform the below steps to make your Pinterest account.

Step 1 – Go to https://pinterest.com/. You will see a registration form.
Step 2 – Enter your email id in the Email ID field.
Step 3 – Create a password in the password field.
Step 4 – Click the Continue button. An email will be sent to the provided email address.

Pinterest guide how to use pinterest

Note:
You can also use your Facebook or Twitter account to register an account. Click the related button, and follow onscreen instructions to use your Facebook or Twitter account. In this section, we are following the traditional way of creating an account i.e. by clicking the Signup button.

Step 5 – Enter your full name and age in their respected fields.
Step 6 – Select your gender.
Step 7 – Click the Signup button. Your account has been created. You can now start using Pinterest as an individual. You will also receive a confirmation email from Pinterest so that you can confirm the authenticity of this account.
Step 8 – Now, login to your mailbox and look for the email that Pinterest has sent you.

Step 9 – Open the email. You will see a confirmation link in the email body, click that link. Your Pinterest account is not confirmed and created. You can start using it.

Note:
• If you do not find the email, refresh your mailbox after a few minutes, and you will see an email.
• If you still do not see any email, we request you to please look into the Spam/Junk folder. If it is there, open the email, and mark it as “Not Spam,” so that the next time you receive an email from Pinterest, it lands into your mailbox only.

ways to market your business on pinterest

Setting up a Pinterest Account for Business

Pinterest allows creating accounts for businesses as well. These accounts have a few advantages over the normal accounts.

For example,

• You can display your company name and logo in the Pinterest profile
• You get access to Pinterest business and marketing content,
• You are requested to verify your website as an owner, and when you do that, Pinterest displays your website URL as a hyperlink making your profile visitors to click it and go to your website
• You can hold contests to increased engagement among your target audience
• You can highlight only your products and content
• You can make use of the Pinterest business analytics feature to get an insight of who has visited your profile, what pins are explored, and so on

So, with these many benefits, a Pinterest business account has a lot of benefits that you can enjoy by setting a new business account for Pinterest.

Let’s see how to create a business account for Pinterest.

There are mainly two different ways in which you can set up a Business Account on Pinterest.
Method 1: Make a new Business account from scratch.
Method 2: Convert your existing Pinterest user ID to a business account
Unless until you are a Pinterest expert user, it is advisable to make and use a personal account for a few days and move on to convert your profile into a business account. If you wish to use Pinterest for personal purposes too, it is advisable to make a new business profile on which you can strictly stick to the business stuff.
Method 1: Make a new Business account from scratch.
Step 1 – Go to https://pinterest.com/ and log out from your personal profile in case you are already logged in.
Step 2 – Go to https://business.pinterest.com/en and click the Join as Business button.
Step 3 – Fill in the relevant details as prompted by the website. The following details are asked for here,
• Email
• Password
• Business name
• Business Type
• Website (Optional)
Step 4 – Click the Create Account button. A confirmation email will be sent to you.
Step 5 – Now, login to your mailbox and look for the email that Pinterest has sent you.
Step 6 – Open the email. You will see a confirmation link in the email body, click that link. Your Pinterest account is now confirmed and created. You can start

pinterest for beginners

Method 2: Convert your existing Pinterest user ID to a business account

If you already have a lot of followers on Pinterest and want to carry forward those followers to the new account, business account, you can convert your existing profile to a business profile type.

Step 1 – Login to your Pinterest profile at https://pinterest.com/.
Step 2 – Visit the ‘Pinterest for business’ section on the top right corner of your profile.
Step 3 – Click the red button named Convert Now that allows you to convert your personal profile into a Pinterest business profile.
Step 4 – Fill in the required information as prompted and click the Convert to convert your account.

Setting up boards related to Business

After you have set up a business Pinterest profile, it is the time for you to use the profile to advertise your business. The number one thing that you need to do after you have created your profile is to create relevant boards.

Boards are essentially a way in which you organize the content on your Pinterest account. For example, if you have a cake shop, you might want to have the following boards,

• The Cake Shop
• Chocolate Cakes
• Vanilla Cakes
• Types of Frosting on Cakes
• Featured Cakes
• Miscellaneous Cakes

How to create your first board?

To create your first board, you need to follow the given steps.

Step 1 – Go to your profile and you will see three different gray buttons on the left-hand side column. You need to click the Boards button out of Pins, Boards and Monthly Views buttons to initiate building your first board.
Step 2 – Click the Create Board button.
Step 3 – You will be prompted to put the name of the board. Put in a relevant name for the board here.

pinterest beginners guide

TIP

Make sure you do NOT turn on the secret feature. The secret feature will not allow anyone else to see your board and the pins on it unless until you invite them. As your business in blooming, you want your pins to be seen by everyone and hence, you should not turn on the secret feature.
Step 4 – Click the Create button, and your board will be created.
Step 5 – After creation of the board, you will see a gray pencil shaped button on the board page.

Click this button, and you will be asked to fill in the description, category, and collaborations of the board.

TIP

Adding collaborations will help the people to put in their pins. So if you have ten employees in your cake shop, you need to make sure that you add them as collaborations so that they can make valuable contributions to your pins.

Note:

You can create more than one board to categorize your posts. Now you are ready to add the relevant pins to your board. For example, if your board is named ‘Cakes’ you can add all the relevant images of the cakes that you sell in your shop.

Step 6 – To add new pins to your board, you can click the red + button on the top right-hand side of your profile. You can either upload your image or upload it from a website.

Pinterest user guide

Step 7 – If you wish to add images from a website, add the link to the website when prompted. This will show you all the images present on the link. Now you can simply choose the relevant images that you want to be displayed on your board.

Using Pinterest Search Bar

The Pinterest search bar is a powerful tool that you can use to browse the top pins from all around the world. You can use the search bar as a tool to browse through the most popular images and recreate similar images to attract attention from Pinterest users.

Pinterest marketing social media

Let us see how to use the Pinterest search bar.

Step 1 – Type in the relevant keyword in the search bar. For example, if you want to search for cakes that look funny, you can type in “Funny Cakes.”

Step 2 – Browse through the images and make a note of the images that you like as well as the images that people have liked a lot.

Step 3 – You can also find related keywords just below the search bar after you have finished typing your keyword. You can click on these keywords to further browse through the pins.Step 4 – You will find the following buttons on your page after typing a keyword:

• All Pins
• Your Pins
• Buyable Pins
• People
• Boards

Pinterest tips and tricks

You can browse through these options to enhance your search and find a particular type of image that you are looking for.

Pinterest Winning strategy

Pinterest is a huge platform; hence, whatever is your business, you will face some competition here. To have the edge over the competition that you face, you can adopt some subtle tips and tricks. These tips and tricks will help your pins appear first on the homepage of your followers and help you gain a substantial number of followers.

Let us have a look at these nifty tips and tricks:

1. Try to get invite from larger boards with a hug number of followers so that you can post your content on their boards.

Pinterest marketing

2. Always search for the keywords on Pinterest so that you have a fair idea of what is popular with the Pinterest users.

Pinterest marketing tool

3. It might take a while, but adding a good description filled with keywords will help you boosting your board a lot. These words will help in directing people towards your boards while they search for it.

Pinterest strategy

4. Use at least five images per post. It helps the users to browse through several images on a single click. You can use up to 10 different images to give a good variety.

5. Canva is a powerful tool on Pinterest that you can use to create great pins for your post. It offers you a wide variety of color and background selection options.

canva for pinterest

6. Always ensure that you share the popular, relevant images on your boards. This will not only help other pages, but you will also have plenty of content for your board. An optimum 4:1 ratio for other pins to your pins can be kept to attract more audience.

7. You should always organize your boards to keep the best images on the top.

8. Never forget to give the credits to a deserving page/user/board when you share the image from it. This creates a healthy environment on Pinterest making the other person grateful to you.

Pinterest Tools

People around the world have recognized Pinterest as a growing marketing platform; hence, have given a lot of thought into making compatible marketing tools and websites for it. By the use of these tools (paid and free), you will be able to take your Pinterest account to the next level. These tools will help you in attracting more audience and followers to your Pinterest profile, essentially booming your business.

Let us have a look at some of the great tools that can be used with Pinterest.

BoardBooster

BoardBooster is one of the most popular Pinterest tools that will help you in business expansion. Some of the features of BoardBooster include:

boardbooster pinterest marketing tool

• Scheduling pins: Now you do not need to take out valuable time from your busy schedule to post on Pinterest. Just set the posting time to a time when the traffic on Pinterest is highest, and this feature will allow you to pin a new image in advance.

• Streamlining board group contribution: One of the best ways to gather attention from Pinterest users is to streamline your products/business pins with the talk-of-the-town.

• Improving pin quality: This feature will allow you to search your pin for duplicates and broken links so that you do not face copyright issues in the future.

• Board Cleaner: Maintaining a clean and organized board is the key to success on Pinterest. You can do this with a single click by using BoardBooster.

• Optimizing your strategy: With this feature, you will be able to keep track of the essentials on Pinterest like best performing boards in similar genre, best time to post a new pin, etc.

We personally love working with BoardBooster and we Recommend using it : Give it a Try HERE 

ViralTag

When you combine the power of ViralTag with BoardBooster, you can get an ultimate Pinterest tool for marketing and advertising. ViralTag has several features like optimizing strategy and schedule pins similar to that of BoardBooster, however some of its special features include,

pinterest marketing tools

• Connection to various platforms: It is connected to Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.

• Creating a mass schedule: You can schedule the post, and by clicking a single button, it is possible for you to post on various platforms at a single go and at the same time.

• Image Editor: You can edit, crop and highlight the image in the tool itself. This way you do not have to use any other special tool for editing.

With these tools powering your Pinterest account, you are ready to rule the world of Pinterest and advertise your business to its best.