If you’ve been following along on my Instagram journey, I had recently shared my experience with trying to grab my Pinterest account. In under 30 days I grew my account viewership by over 400% by using the simple tools and tips below! I first want to start off the conversation by saying 400% growth does not happen overnight, and it requires persistence and staying up-to-date and following through with a social media plan! I first began experimenting with Pinterest when I only had 20k unique monthly visitors, right now (April 23, 2019) I have 202k unique monthly visitors!

One thing to keep in mind about Pinterest is that it runs as a visual search engine and should be approached similarly to how one would approach Google’s search engine. Most times people will go on Pinterest when they are in the awareness or consideration stage in the customer buying journey. The customer buying journey is a process talked about in business school that has six different parts! It first begins with awareness, goes down to interest and then consideration. In the middle of the process, you hope that your customer ends up purchasing from you. Then you close out the journey with their post purchase experience and re-purchasing.

During the awareness stage of the customer buying journey, the customer is experiencing symptoms of a problem, need, or an opportunity. They are currently curious and want to know more. After the customer has clearly defined exactly what their problem is and what they’re looking to do about it, they are then committed to finding a solution to their problem and are compiling lists of who or what could help solve their problem.

So now the question becomes how can Pinterest be the segue into solving your customers problem? The biggest way to utilize a Pinterest is by putting your own content to the platform and hoping that eventually it goes viral. The best way to grow your Pinterest as by actively using the platform, sharing 25 to 30 different pieces of content throughout the day and simultaneously including your own (read below to see how to have this on autopilot!). Pinterest has an algorithm that is similar to Google where relevant keywords will pop in the users feed. Keywords are needed for search engine optimization (IE I’ll plug in location-specific keywords like “Atlanta wedding photographer”), and you’ll want to try to do the same for Pinterest.

The key when using Pinterest, it’s important to make sure that your own content includes relevant keywords and phrases that allows for it to be found. However, make sure that you don’t keyword stuff, which is typing short phrases only- hoping for the content to be found. The algorithm is smart; so be sure to have descriptions that include keywords but also tell a story.

Pinterest is full of evergreen content, meaning that it will have a long shelf life on the platform and therefore it’s never a good idea to remove your content from the platform. You never know when something will end up going viral and get re-shared by thousands, maybe even millions of users! When posting your own content onto the platform, be sure to pair your beautiful imagery with links that go back to your website in hopes to convert potential buyers. This is the whole purpose of Pinterest!

One thing to keep in mind when creating your Pinterest profile, is that not only do your pins need to have relevant descriptions and keywords, but it’s also important for your boards to be renamed into simple, easily identifiable board names. I suggest creating a Pinterest account that is specific to your industry and keeping personal pins private. You don’t want to have something like vague and artsy like “a e s t h e t i c.” That’s not going to cut it. Have something like “Wedding bouquets” or “Minimalistic clothing”. Be sure to add a description to all of your boards, as well!

Finally, a common question I get asked is how do I post 25 to 30 times a day on Pinterest? The answer to this is simple: invest in a program called Tailwind! Tailwind is this app is an official partner to Pinterest, and will automatically post content for you. Not only is it super helpful so that you can have your whole Pinterest marketing strategy on auto pilot, but it’s also very affordable at only nine dollars a month – BUT, I have a free month of tailwind to offer you below (or click here) All you need to do is sit down for an hour or two at the beginning of the month and go on a pinning spree and use the system and it will do the rest for you, pinning items at the times that your followers are most active on Pinterest’s platforms! Be sure to go onto your website and start pinning items back as well! There’s plenty of tutorials on how to get started, but I promise you it’s easy!