How to Use Pinterest: The Ultimate Beginners Guide 2020

What is Pinterest?

Head back to the ’90s for a moment. Remember when you used to make vision boards with cut-outs from your favorite magazines onto a corkboard or taped up on your wall? Think of Pinterest as a digital vision board of all that inspires you and all that you’d like to share with the world. And instead of tearing through all of your old magazines, Pinterest embodies itself as a ‘visual search engine,’ allowing you to search for anything and everything.

People use Pinterest as a creative outlet to Pin ideas for their everyday lives. Parents may use Pinterest to save fun projects for them and their children to do, teachers may save educational content to help them expand on their teachings in creative ways, a creative agency may save work they’ve done for clients, or brands might create mood boards to plan a project. There is no shortage of DIY projects, home decor inspiration, recipes, hairstyle ideas, wellness tips, inspiring quotes…the list goes on.

Pins are the images you save. And instead of having all of your Pins in one place, users have the option to organize their interests into multiple separate Boards – making it much easier for them and their audience to search for specific content.

Why Should You Use Pinterest for Your Brand/Business

Pinterest reaches 335 million active users per month! That statistic alone is already a sign that you should take advantage of this traffic-generating platform. Even though growing your audience is probably one of the most significant benefits to using Pinterest, it goes beyond that. Pinterest allows you to make your content forever discoverable, gives a peek into your target audience’s interests, and helps you grow your brand. Below are key reasons to start building your Pinterest account today:

Share Your Vision – Pinterest gives you the platform to visually express to your customers who you are and what you’re about. You can create Boards filled with Pins that reflect your brand identity and, in turn, builds and reinforces your brand image.

Get More Eyes on Your Content – Pins make you and your products discoverable, and will regularly appear on your followers’ homepages. Plus, since you can link your Pins directly back to your website, the potential for driving traffic is huge!

Turn Your Profile Into a Storefront – If you are a retailer, update to a Business Profile to gain access to the shop tab. This new Pinterest feature displays your in-stock products organized by category and featured product groups. This way you can sell your products directly on Pinterest as well as create more opportunities for users to discover your brand.

Measure Your Success – As a business, it’s essential to have a goal in mind when embarking on any social platform. Pinterest makes it easy. When you upgrade your account to a Business Account (this is totally free), you can measure the success of your Pins by Impressions, Saves, and Clicks. Impressions are the number of times it shows up in a feed, Saves are the number of times people have saved your content, and Clicks are the number of times people have clicked through your content. View our blog post dedicated to Pinterest Analytics for more of a deep dive!

Get to Know Your Customers – You can gain insight into your potential and current customers’ interests by looking at the current trends on Pinterest. Pinterest also offers a variety of ways to engage and create a community – such as the ability to create Group Boards, allowing people to comment on Pins, and their most recent feature video pin reactions.

Pinterest Content Lasts Longer – The content you Pin sometimes takes a while to gain momentum, and that’s because Pinterest content doesn’t disappear as it does on other social media platforms. Pins are searched for, discovered, and re-Pinned over time, so you don’t need to worry about it getting lost in the algorithm.

Endless Inspiration – Sharing and discovering inspiration is what Pinterest is all about. This leads to high potential for people to find a new brand, ideas, or products – which is what makes Pinterest so powerful for businesses.

How You Can Use Pinterest For Your Brand or Business

The good news is that Pinterest is easy to use, plus it’s free! It is fit for brands and businesses of all kinds: photographers, creative agencies, big corporations, aspiring artists, marketing experts…the list goes on. Here are five examples from an array of different Pinterest users to get you inspired:

Beauty Brand: Glossier

No matter what kind of brand you are, collaborating with clients, coworkers, or your community is important when it comes to Pinterest. You can do this simply by creating a group board! Glossier’s BEAUTYCHAT Board illustrates how Pinterest users can effortlessly share their ideas and beauty tips – establishing a stronger digital community.

Lifestyle Brand: Camille Styles

There is no limit to how many different topics and categories you can tap into with the Pinterest Boards you create. Camille Styles’ profile is a perfect example of how you can divide your content under different Boards – accommodating various heavily-searched topics, increasing discoverability, and overall content engagement.

Fashion Brand: Sézane

If you are an online shop, apply for Pinterest’s verified merchant program! This confirms to your audience that you are a vetted brand. If you’re accepted into the program, your Pins may appear organically to people who are searching for products and shopping on Pinterest.

Food Brand: Love and Lemons

Pinterest has this lovely feature that a lot of people overlook called ‘Featured Boards.’ You can feature up to five Boards! This will be the first thing people will see once they visit your profile, so make sure you feature your best Boards. We love this example from Love and Lemon’s because even though they chose just one Board to feature, it’s still the most important to the brand. To find this feature go to Edit Settings > Scroll down the ‘Edit Profile Page’ > Featured Boards.

DIY Brand: Sugar & Cloth

Sprinkling in design Pins is a great way to inspire and catch people’s attention. It doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, keeping your designs simple and easy to read are the two most important things when designing your Pins. We love the simple and straight-to-the-point design Pins from Sugar & Cloth. For effortless Pin designing, download our StoriesEdit design and template app! There are a variety of different templates to choose from, even collections dedicated just for Pinterest.

Aesthetics

Last but not least, there has been a noticeable trend on Pinterest lately where people have been creating Boards dedicated to creating a certain aesthetic. The look and feel of these Boards are definitely reminiscent of mood boards. This is an excellent way for a brand or business to showcase their creativity and vision. If you are an influencer or blogger, you can use this as a tool to plan a new look-and-feel for your Instagram feed or just share the overall sense of style you aspire to. You also have the option to make this Board secret if you would rather keep your ideas personal to you.

Pinterest Best Practices Using the Pin Planner

The most important thing a brand or business must consider when embarking on the Pinterest path is to have a plan. This may seem overwhelming, but we have the tools to help you. Whether you’re new to the platform or an avid Pinterest user, PLANOLY’s Pin Planner is your best friend when it comes to planning months worth of content. The Pin Planner allows you to schedule your Pins ahead of time and keeps you informed on the progress of your Pins. Let’s break it down in more detail:

Plan on Desktop or Mobile – Whether you live at your desktop, or are constantly on the go; the Pin Planner is available for both web and mobile! If you have a lot to plan out, you may find it easier to lay everything out on the web app, and do any further editing (if needed) on mobile when you are away from your desk.

Schedule Ahead and Auto-Post Pins – If you have a lot of content to Pin, schedule your content ahead of time with the Pin Planner. It gives you the ability to auto-post your content, giving you more time away from the screen. As a bonus, you can now upload your videos through the Pin Planner as well!

Pull Content Effortlessly Off-site – You can pull content from anywhere using our PLANOLY browser button. The content you pull can be scheduled right then and there, or you can save it to your library to schedule at a later time.

Keep Up with Insights – With the Pin Planners ‘Analyze’ feature collecting insights and data from Pins has never been easier. With ‘Analyze,’ you can dive deeper into the important Pinterest metrics: Impressions, saves, clicks, and close-ups. It gives you an overall view of your Pins and your Boards performance. You can also toggle the dates in which you want to measure these analytics.

Create Visually Appealing Campaigns – If you have a promotion going on, the ‘Campaigns’ feature is the perfect way to advertise it on Pinterest. ‘Campaigns’ lets you upload your images in bulk, while also applying the same description and URL for each. You can essentially create many weeks’ worth of Pins using the same description for different images and content!

Keep Up with Seasonal Holidays – Keep up with important holidays and celebrations with the Pin Planner Holiday Calendar! With Pinterest, it is essential to start pinning holiday-oriented content three months ahead, so this tool will definitely come in handy for you. And that’s not all, PLANOLY’s new Notes feature is perfect if you manage a team and need to sprinkle in some reminders.

Whether you’re in it to create inspiring mood boards or to share your vision, products, or concepts, Pinterest is a powerful tool for brands and businesses alike. Plus, taking advantage of our Pin Planner can help make the journey less bumpy and efficient. For more of a deep dive into the back-to-basics of Pinterest, check out Our Definitive Guide to Pinterest Best Practices. For more information about the Pin Planner, check out these helpful walkthroughs: Mobile Pin Planner Guide / Desktop Dashboard Guide.