Pinterest Playbook

Pinterest is having a moment.

Their monthly active users hit 482 million in Q3 2023, revenue is up 11% YoY, and organic daily traffic has increased from 400M to 600M.

As people ditch Google and substitute search engines with social media, we’re seeing Pinterest emerge as a visual search platform.

And brands are getting results.

The jewelry brand, Mejuri, has 10M+ monthly views on Pinterest. With an average of $7 CPM for the jewelry category on Meta.

That’s $70k worth of organic impressions per month!

Sellers on Etsy have reported that after their listing was featured on Pinterest, they saw sales increase by 20% the week after.

And with direct shopping links, brands can track results much more easily than on TikTok & IG.

Is Pinterest for you?

Pinterest is a visual discovery platform. It’s most suitable for brands that showcase their products through compelling images and videos.

That’s why the most popular categories on Pinterest are:

• Fashion
• Food & Drink
• Beauty
• Home Decor
• Travel

Check out Pinterest success stories to find similar brands to yours before investing time on the platform.

Research Audience & Keywords

Pinterest is not a social media platform.

People come to Pinterest to find inspiration for style, travel, decor, etc.

It’s a visual search engine.

So it’s important to know what people on the platform are searching for and plan your content around it.

Pinterest Trends is your best friend.

Type in what you sell, and you will see the top search keywords on Pinterest.

For example, “charm necklace” as a keyword has more interest than just “necklace”.

Use this tool to find trending keywords based on your target audience’s interests, age, and gender.

The goal is to accumulate a list of SEO keywords to plan your Pinterest content around and incorporate in your posts.

Because seasonality and trends change, repeat this exercise periodically to find your next content idea.

Content Best Practices

Some tips to make your content stand out on Pinterest.

• Make it appealing:

Visual quality is important, use high-resolution assets and a 2:3 aspect ratio as most audiences are on their mobile devices.

• Make it searchable:

Like SEO, incorporating popular keywords in your content is crucial to make your post appear on Pinterest search results. Instead of just saying “ Shop rings”, Mejuri also included relevant keywords like “stackable, statement, responsibly sourced, high-quality, handcrafted”.

Pinterest also recommends adding text overlays to pins to reach more people.

• Make it relevant:

People use Pinterest to plan for life, so link your content with contextual events to optimize for search & resonate more.

Instead of sharing a floral arrangement idea, reframe it around a floral arrangement for a dinner party.

Creative Ways to Use Pinterest

Growth loop with “Pin it for Later”.

Blogger “Lifestyle of a Foodie” included a “Pin Recipe” button to let readers pin it to their Pinterest boards and return to the content at a later time.

This boosts the growth of the “Lifestyle of a Foodie” Pinterest board and drives more traffic to the blog.

CeraVe captures the attention of people searching for “which moisturizer to choose” and drives them to the site to take the quiz.

Sync Your Product Catalog

LL Bean synced its product catalog with Pinterest allowing its product pins to show up as organic Pins across various shopping surfaces on the platform, which directly drives sales

Pinterest said that “Merchants who upload their product feed to Pinterest see up to a 90% increase in product saves and a 30% increase in attributed checkouts.”

Pinterest is often the “forgotten platform”, but with 600M users, if your product is suited for “visual search”, you should take this playbook and give Pinterest a try.