When I first started my business, I was under the impression that the best and most effective way to grow my business was through social media, specifically Instagram. As I spent all my time and energy on growing my Instagram account, I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of visibility I was getting—I was spending hours and hours writing captions and trying to come up with content and hardly seeing any results! Have you been here before? 🙋🏼♀️
In the midst of my frustration, I decided to pin a few examples of my work on Pinterest. To my surprise, these began getting a lot of traction. Because of this, I decided to focus my efforts on Pinterest, and WOW, I am sure glad I did!
I can truly say that my business wouldn’t be anywhere close to where it’s at now if not for Pinterest. Now, don’t get me wrong—Instagram is still a wonderful platform and can truly be a great tool for growing a business. However, I believe that Pinterest is an underrated and underused platform by a lot of industries and businesses.
Keep on reading to learn about why you should start using Pinterest for your business right now!
01. It’s a Search Engine, Not a Social Media Channel.
Pinterest was designed to be a search engine for people to find solutions or inspiration—it was not designed to be a social media channel. This is the most important thing to understand as it will help you create an effective Pinterest strategy.
Because Pinterest is a search engine, your audience will be exposed to your content because they are actively and intentionally looking for it. This results in much stronger leads and people who are primed and ready to invest in your services or purchase your products.
02. Your Pins are Long-Lasting.
Other social media platforms are feed-based, so your posts will be visible at the longest for about 24 hours. After that, they get buried in your feed never to truly be seen again unless someone goes looking. That’s why Instagram is so time-consuming and frustrating—you constantly have to create new content to keep your account fresh and top of mind for your followers.
That’s the magic of Pinterest: your pins basically never go away! I’ve had pins that I added months ago randomly go viral and bring all kinds of new traffic to my website. If you create a blog post and promote it on Pinterest, that pin can bring new viewers to your website for the years to come!
This means that Pinterest truly has the greatest return for your time, money, and energy spent creating content for the platform!
03. You Can Create Multiple Pins for a Single Piece of Content
If you write a new blog post, you can post about it once, maybe twice on Instagram? Maybe on your story and in your feed? Then you have to start over and think of something new and fresh to post.
This is not so with Pinterest! I usually create anywhere from 5-10 graphics for every blog post. Since Pinterest doesn’t function like a feed, you can create as many graphics for the same piece of content as you’d like. In fact, it is actually good to do this—it increases the chances of it getting seen by your target audience.
You have so many more opportunities for engagement and bringing traffic to your website from one piece of content you created than you do on any other social media platform!
04. You Get a Far Greater Return for Your Time Spent
As business owners, our time is so valuable! It is important that we invest our time in things that yield big results for our business.
Compared to other social media platforms, Pinterest yields big results with minimal time invested. It takes far less time to plan pins for the month than it does Instagram posts. For Instagram, I spend so much time thinking through my caption and for unique ways to relate to my audience.
However, with Pinterest, I can plan my pins for the month in about 30 minutes. It’s as simple as popping the graphics into a scheduler, adding quick descriptions, and I’m done!
TIP: Use a platform like Tailwind to plan out your pins for the month in advance.
The question is: Should you use Pinterest for marketing for your business?
The amazing thing about Pinterest is that it puts your content in front of people all over the world. Because of Pinterest, I have had the opportunity to work with people all over the United Stated and even in other countries like Egypt, Switzerland, and England!
If your business is confined to a geographical area (like a coffeeshop/restaurant or local photographer), then Pinterest may not be the best option for you. You would definitely benefit a little bit from marketing on Pinterest, but your resources would be better spent on social media platforms like Facebook (especially groups) or Instagram where you can focus your marketing to your local area.
However, if your business isn’t confined to a geographical area, I would argue that Pinterest is a non-negotiable when it comes to marketing. If your services/products can benefit people who aren’t in your local area, then Pinterest is your best friend! Here is a list of businesses that would do well on Pinterest:
- Businesses that sell their products online and ship nationwide or worldwide (boutiques, shops, etc.)
- Businesses that sell digital goods (courses/education, music, e-books, etc.)
- Businesses who’s services can be offered virtually (brand designers, health coaches, etc.)
- Businesses that are looking to grow their email list (Pinterest is great for offering downloadable goods in exchange for an email address)
Have I convinced you yet!? I hope this post made you realize the power and potential Pinterest has to help your business grow and succeed. If you haven’t already, take the time to implement a Pinterest strategy into your business—you will be amazed at the results!
If you want to make Pinterest a part of your marketing strategy, check out these posts for more ideas to get started:
