Pinterest Marketing: Are You Pinning With Purpose?

Let’s say you’re a tour guide. For the sake of this example, you’re in Rome. You take the excited group of participants on a walk and end up in a random piazza. Everyone looks around, squinting at the buildings and studying their surroundings. “Maybe this is where Michelangelo studied,” quips one. “Is this architecturally significant?” wonders another. You proudly ask the group, “So, what do you think? I think we did it!” People uncomfortably look around, unsure of what to say. Finally someone half-whispers, “Did what?”

Since you didn’t decide what you were trying to see ahead of time, no one knows whether or not the group has successfully arrived at the destination. Is this the destination? There’s simply no way of knowing whether you’ve accomplished your goal if you don’t set goals first. Deciding upon arrival whether or not your destination is suitable is a waste of time and effort.

The same goes for social media. You can’t measure analytics before you set objectives. You risk wasting time doing things that aren’t helping you achieve your goals, and we wouldn’t want you to waste any of your precious time. It really is precious, we know.

Before you start pinning and repining and counting your followers, decide what you want to get out of Pinterest marketing.

To get you started, here are some ideas:

Drive Traffic

If you have products on your website that can be pinned, it might be a good idea to aim for increasing website traffic via Pinterest. Whenever you or anyone else pins from your website, it creates a link on Pinterest. If people click through to your website to see this product, you will be able to tell based on referral traffic. Make sure that your blog or website is ready for pinners before you aim to drive traffic with Pinterest.

Tools: Google Analytics, Reachli, Pinfluencer

Measure by: number of referrals, increase in referral traffic visits

Increase Brand Awareness

Even if you don’t sell products to pin you can still use Pinterest for brand awareness by sharing your content, office, employees and more. When people follow you it might be the first time they’ve heard of your company, but if they see it or hear it again, they might remember who you are and recognize your brand more easily. If you're using Pinterest to build brand awareness, make sure you are consistent across social channels.

Tools: Pinreach, Pinerly, Pinpuff, Curalate, Octopin, Pinfluencer

Measure by: number of followers, number of repins, number of likes, a Pinterest Analytics score value, or by an increase of any of these numbers

Engage Brand Loyalists

Social Media is a powerful tool for word of mouth marketing (WOMM) and when people who are influential become champions for your brand, it gets promoted even when you’re not there. Engaging your brand loyalists can take time, but can be very valuable for your brand.

Measure by: This one is a little bit more qualitative than quantitative. You can monitor for brand loyalists by just checking in with who’s following your boards and repinning your content. When you notice a user is repinning a good amount of your pins, liking your pins, and sharing your content across Pinterest, that’s a good sign that you’re developing a brand loyalists.