Pin It! – The 3 Most Important Tips to Optimize Your Pinterest

By Travis LeJune, Account Intern

Do you have a Pinterest yet? If you are a shopper, you should definitely get one. If you are a seller, you MUST have one! Sure, it is still a fairly young social media platform, but it has been churning up some extremely surprising statistics we think you should know about.

For starters, it is one of the fastest growing social media platforms, with a 57% growth rate and now over 100 million active users. While this is important, Pinterest isn’t typically used for growing awareness or supporters of your business; it is about showing off your products. Average Pinterest referrals spend $80, compared to Facebook’s $40 referral. But even more importantly, 88% of users purchase a product they pinned! Get your product pinned, and you’re making sales!

Now, before you get too excited, please take note that this is all more important to sellers of women’s products, since over 85% of its users are female. So if you are selling men’s products, work hard at targeting your specific audience, or you better hope your product makes great gifts!

Pinterest’s fairly new advertising campaign makes it extremely easy for users to keep track of their clicks, purchases, and engagement rates, which is one of the highest in its industry, at 2-5% on average. By using a Shopify account, you can make direct-sells on your business’ account with the “buy-it” button, directly next to the “pin-it” button. The “promoted pins” preform so well, sometimes even better than organic pins. Advertisers’ Promoted Pins were repinned an average of 11 times per advertisement, and they continue to perform after campaigns end.

Enough statistics – let’s go over three important tips to start optimizing your Pinterest for marketing purposes, keeping in mind the relevant statistics you just learned:

1. For your promoted pins, bid high!
You are paying only when people click through to your website, so take advantage and put high maximum CPC Bids

2. Find Popular Group Boards to promote your presence
Stay active on these popular group boards and build your recognition

3. Use other social media platforms and blogs to link and promote your Pinterest
Pinterest is the most important social media platform for selling. So use other platforms to filter followers onto your Pinterest and keep your content updated and relevant – post the price tags with pins and make sure the pictures and content are high quality.