Pinterest: A Gold Mine for Social Media Marketers

 

Launched in 2010, Pinterest is largely misunderstood as a Social Media Platform, though it is not. With more than 335 million active users per month,  Pinterest is the world’s largest visual search engine.

As of 2020, there are over 200 billion Pins on 4 billion boards on Pinterest.

According to Shareaholic’s report, Pinterest now tops Twitter to be the 2nd largest driver of traffic from social media sites (next only to Facebook).

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a catalogue of ideas, where every pin is an idea or an answer to a question. Each pin directs to a web page which fulfils the search intent of the searcher.

That webpage can be anything from a blog post to an e-commerce store checkout page to an online course sales funnel. It can be an affiliate link as well. Pinterest allows affiliate links if the proper affiliate disclosure has been made in description and hashtags.

People use Pinterest to plan their social events, to get the ideas about living the life they wanted, follow brands and make their shopping decisions by reading and saving their favourite pins to their boards.

A board is a collection of pins related to the board topic. A collection of boards look like this.

Pinterest search acts in a certain way. For example, if I search for “Monthly Budgeting for Beginners”, this is what my search results look like.

 

Each rectangular image is called a Pin. It has a title which when clicked will take me to an article or blog post which will discuss the PIN title in detail. 

 

Unlike other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, Pinterest does not try to keep its visitor within Pinterest all the time, in fact, it directs its visitors to more valuable web pages through its pins. 

According to Pinterest, out of 335 million users per month, 25% are businesses promoting their products and services and driving massive amounts of traffic to their websites. The 25% make a good 80 million users.

With millions of active businesses on Pinterest, the channel which apparently looks mysterious and odd to a first-timer is a hidden gold mine for all social media marketing agencies who are fumbling to find potential clients.

A survey by Statista shows that 28% of Global Marketers Use Pinterest for Promotion of their products, services etc. 

What Businesses are Present on Pinterest?

To thrive on Pinterest you need to have a website. So most of the businesses on Pinterest are,

• Bloggers (Travel, Food, DIY, personal development and lifestyle, make money online, home décor, personal finance, frugal living)
• Ecommerce stores (physical or digital products) delivering worldwide.
• Online course creators.
• Event planners
• Life coaches, business coaches, brand strategists etc.

As a social media marketer, your target is those 80 million businesses out there at Pinterest. 

You will see most of these businesses have a very established Pinterest presence with thousands of followers and millions of monthly unique viewers. Such businesses have Pinterest as the single largest driver of traffic to their blogs.

The question which comes to mind is if someone is so good at managing Pinterest and are already driving traffic to their webpages, Why do they even need a Social Media Marketer???

The answer is managing websites and Pinterest is a huge task. From creating content, updating websites, managing their clients and services, courses etc other platforms get neglected which are usually Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

These platforms can quadruple their web traffic if used in the right way. Here is where a social media marketer is needed.

However, due to its mysterious and odd looks, social media marketing agency owners are often confused by how it works and lack the patience to invest the time to understand it and get the results.

Should You Give Pinterest a Try as Social Media Marketers?

The answer is YES.

To reach out to clients on Pinterest, first, learn if you as an individual marketer or your agency is a good candidate to look for this or not.

Pinterest is for you if:

• You have a proper agency/brand website where you can lead your clients to through Pinterest.
• You must provide social media marketing services for most of the world. Pinterest is the best way to reach an international audience.
• If you have a free service or a freebie to promote e.g. course, ebook, a free social media audit service or a free trial of your agency services for some weeks/days.
• Your website has a minimum of 5 blog posts or articles. Articles can be educational, case studies etc. Before you expect a client to buy your service you should provide value first. Articles and blog posts are the best way to provide knowledge upfront and then persuade readers to buy your services.

Pinterest is not for you if:

• If your agency is location-specific for example if your agency is providing services to the businesses of New York only or San Francisco only.

• You target brick and mortar stores which do not have their operations for the most part of the world. Pinterest is excellent for e-commerce stores but not for location-specific stores.

• You don’t have a website or a funnel page. I agree social media marketing agencies do not always need a website for their services. But as for Pinterest, every pin needs to be linked to the URL. A dedicated web page or a landing page is necessary for every pin.

Getting Started on Pinterest As A Social Media Marketing Agency

Like every new task, getting your feet into Pinterest will require some real WORK beforehand. Nothing in life is easy. You get what you work for.

Remember what Charlie Munger said,

    “To Get What You Want; You Have to Deserve What You Want”

Out of 335 million active users every month at Pinterest, 25% are businesses, that makes 80 million businesses at Pinterest alone. These businesses are bloggers, event planners, e-commerce stores owners, life coaches etc.

These businesses (small and big) need you. They have a lot of things on their plate. They need someone who can manage their social media on their behalfs.

As your Services will be out in front of 80 million businesses with one click, you have to get prepared for it.

I have mentioned earlier that every Pin is linked to a website URL, so you will be needing a basic 5 to 10 pages website if you don’t already have one, where you can direct your pins to.

Those businesses at Pinterest have websites and by that, I mean pretty good websites. They might judge your agency services by the quality of your website.

You can outsource this to a virtual assistant or if you want to do it yourself, it will take a few days to design a website and you will be good to go. Below I have mentioned the minimum cost and requirements to set up your agency’s website.

Setting Up A Website:

1- COST: It should not cost much. Buy domain and WordPress managed web hosting (either from Siteground or Bluehost). 

The domain will cost you around $10 per year. Hosting will be around $50 to $ 60 per year. 

So your first-year website expenses are fairly under $70. Less than the cost of your monthly coffee bill at StarBucks.

2- THEME: Get started with a free theme like Hestia.

3- WEBSITE BUILDER: Elementor is an excellent Drag and Drop website builder. The free version is more than enough.

4- PAGES: Setup a few important pages, like 

• Home page
• About me
• Contact us
• Resources
• Privacy policy and 
• Terms and conditions

5- YOUR CASE STUDIES PAGE: Discuss your achievements on these pages. Add testimonials and reviews of your previous clients to add authority.

Don’t worry if you don’t have any success yet. In such cases, focus on providing value through your blog posts then.

6- BLOG POSTS: You should pick what businesses you would be targeting at Pinterest, whether bloggers, event planners, online course creators, e-commerce store owners etc. so that you can craft your blog posts according to them.

Write at least 4 to 5 up to 2500-word blog posts about social media marketing tips focusing each platform i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. 

Once you launch your website with these posts, make a dedicated service page for each social media platform. For example

Name your page “Facebook Management Services”. On this page mention all services you can provide to a client to manage their Facebook, from writing daily posts to paid ads. Discuss your clients’ reviews and testimonials to add authority. 

Discuss what businesses can achieve if they hire you as their facebook manager or Social Media Manager.

Multiple times on the page give a call to action like “Book a Free Consultation Call” or “Fill This Contact Form To Learn More”. Or leave your email address, where people can contact you.

Give space and chance for businesses to learn more about your services. They might not buy your services instantly. Offer freebies to collect their email addresses so you can contact them later on.

Setting Up A Pinterest Business Account

You need to have a solid presence at Pinterest before starting reaching out to clients. There are few milestones to achieve before any cold email, call or message.

1- Setup Pinterest business account: It gives you free access to Pinterest analytics to measure your performance. Pinterest has a detailed article on setting up a business account.

2- Setup Boards: Here are some names which I suggest, you should have designated blog posts for each board, multiple will help more. Try to come up with names. Having around 25 boards will help more.

• Facebook marketing services
• Twitter marketing services
• LinkedIn marketing services
• Instagram marketing services
• Paid advertisement services
• Social media marketing tips

3- Design Pins at least 25 pins for each board. Multiple pins can be designed for a single post. Simply tweak the pin title and Pin graphics.

Canva is a tool I recommend for Pin designing.

4- Use scheduling tools like Tailwind or Smarter Queue. And schedule your Pins to be pinned at the right time. Tailwind costs under $120/year and has a free trial of first 100 pins.

5- Join related group boards to increase your reach.

6-Start following people who you think can be your potential clients.

Reaching Out to Potential Clients

As a social media marketer, you already know how to talk to potential clients. I will guide you on how to filter them out.  

Search on Google or Pinterest “Top bloggers at Pinterest”. You can narrow down the search by writing “Top travel bloggers at Pinterest” OR “Top life Coaches”

For example, I searched about “Top Event Planners Blogs” this is what I get,

 

 

The search results will direct you to blog posts which will have details and links of famous event planners and their blogs.

• Now individually look into each blog.
• Check their websites.
• Check their social media pages.
• Find out where they are lacking in their social media. Which one is their most neglected platform? What they can achieve if they start using that social media platform more efficiently?
• Scrape their emails using tools like Hunter.io, 
• Send emails.

For cold emailing, I recommend taking The Cold Email Masterclass at Mailshake by Sujan Patel. It is a very comprehensive resource out there. In less than 60 minutes Sujan has covered all tidbits of cold emailing with email templates, email scraping, LinkedIn outreach, how to find out the decision-maker, follow up etc. 

• If your agency performs a complimentary audit, here is the resource by Hootsuite about “How to conduct a social media audit “. They will provide you with a free template as well.

Tell those business owners what they are missing by not having a solid presence at the right social media channels. Tell them what they can achieve if they work on it. Show them your case studies, your client’s reviews and testimonials and Pitch them. 

You know How to do it. 

What Services Can You Offer?

1-Management of Social Media accounts i.e. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. 

2-Pinterest Management Services as well. As you have set up a Pinterest account for your social media marketing agency. You can set up and improve for others as well.

There are many bloggers, digital marketers, software companies who have well-established websites with absent or neglected profiles at Pinterest. Pinterest is a search engine. It should not be ignored by any business owner whose niche is supported by this platform. 

Filter them out and Pitch.

Let’s Wrap it Up

As a social media marketer, I never knew that Pinterest has such an immense potential until I had to dip my feet into it for my blog. The more I learned about it the more it has amazed me.

Long story short the purpose of writing this article is to unveil a potential source of clients to my fellow social media marketers. We are taught to focus on dentists, restaurant owners, car rentals, construction companies and so on for our marketing agencies. That’s fine. But why not Bloggers. These bloggers at Pinterest easily make around $10,000 to many $100,000 a month. 

They are ruling at Pinterest but their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn sucks. 

And as a marketer, you know the value of these channels. Prove your abilities and expertise to these bloggers and they will be happy to pay you.

Image Sources: All images are either screenshots of author’s Pinterest account or have been created using Canva PRO.