#found on my pinterest feed. the algorithm is working overtime

[sirgawin]

evil and pretty 💙

[topicprinter]

Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com.Bringing you a slightly different type of post today - I think Pinterest is an interesting channel.It's a bit misunderstood, but I know of some brands that are using it to drive decent traffic.I did an interview with Brittany Finkle from Happily Ever Borrowed here on reddit a few months ago.I asked Brittany to sit down and write more about Pinterest and how she grew her account:My name is Brittany Finkle and I’m the Founder of Happily Ever Borrowed. Happily Ever Borrowed is the premiere, luxury, e-boutique that rents bridal accessories to brides for their wedding day.I started the business 7 years ago after I watched my 3 older sisters shop for their wedding and was horrified by the high price point of these one-time wear items.We rent bridal accessories for 80-90% off the retail price and are helping brides not only save money, but also are doing our part to help reduce waste in the wedding industry.Pinterest has become the #1 social traffic driver to our site, driving over 50% of our total social traffic & 50% of our conversions! We have 2.1M monthly viewers of our pinterest page and with all of our pinterest success, I wanted to share what we’ve done to help other marketers find success in this channel.So what is Pinterest?Pinterest is a visual board where you can "pin" images of whatever you like from the internet. The photos are almost always linked back to a specific site where they came from so you can easily have a reminder of where you found the image and what it relates to.Pinterest is perfect for weddings as brides can search for specific images of venues, flowers, dresses, accessories etc. and create multiple board to help plan their wedding. It’s also great for recipes, home decor, really anything where you want a visual moodboard of a project, passion or hobby!Pinterest StrategiesThere are a few different strategies we employ on Pinterest.1. Personalized Wedding BoardsIt’s our job as a bridal brand to keep ahead of bridal trends in the industry. While we only offer rental accessories, we want brides to see that we’re knowledgeable about trends in the industry overall.You can see the names of some of our boards, "Borrow-able Baubles" which features our own accessories, but the majority of our boards is other people's content. “Mantras and Inspiration”, “Wedding Hair-spiration”, “I Do Decor” - all examples of boards where we pin wedding content for our brides to peruse.It’s important to CONTINUE TO PIN to keep fresh and relevant. Although we don’t know much about the Pinterest Algorithm, we believe that engagement on the platform plays a part.Our team re-pins our social media content once a day and you can simply upload the image or link it back to your instagram or facebook page if you’re looking to drive traffic to your other social media channels as well.There are different apps that can automate this for you (BoardBooster is the one we used but it is shutting down soon! We need to find a new tool!)It takes your already pinned content and re-pins it to the top of your board to help show engagement on your feed. It’s a great way to automate the process without going in yourself each day if you feel you don’t have the time.It truly should only take you a few minutes a day to pin a few inspirational photos, and remember, it doesn’t need to be your OWN content!2. Create ContentWe always try to create pins for our blog posts as brides are always interested in content. While pinterest is definitely image focused, people often find helpful tips and tricks through blog content on Pinterest.We’ll talk more about specific content below, but this is a strategy we use to drive interest to our blog and therefore our site.3. Customer AnalysisYou can, of course, use Pinterest data to see how many customers are pinning which pictures. If you’re a product based company and notice that people are pinning one item more than another, it most likely has a great opportunity to sell perhaps more than your other items.One of our best strategies was actually creating a quiz through Typeform and then creating a pinterest ad to drive brides to take the quiz. With this information, we were able to better understand what styles of accessories brides were looking for and also capture their email and craft specific content for their bridal styles.4. Pay for Pinterest AdsNobody likes to hear this, but it is truly the key, and the spend is much less than facebook or instagram.That being said, we find that pinterest is better for driving TRAFFIC than driving sales. Pinterest is the #1 traffic driver to our site, but from there, it is our job to educate the client through different channels and help them to convert.Don’t pay for simple images or pins that don’t mean anything to your brand. Help create engaging titles to your content which can easily be done on Canva. Everything you see below in our examples was created there!You can target your audience just like FB/Insta ads and really get direct on how people are searching and help your items show up.Think of Pinterest like a search engine; like Google. It’s just a visual search engine so the better the image, the better the results!Board OrganizationWe set up some fun and different names for our boards because we felt by just naming them simple things, it was a bit too boring. There’s no specific reason we have boards in any order, but we do keep our "Borrow-able Baubles" up top since these are our actual bridal products that we rent to brides.Make sure that your boards are relevant to your brand and really reflect the brand image you’re trying to get across. . We really want to keep the idea of weddings light and fun, hence our less serious names!Our boardGood Pin DesignPart of what makes a good pin is the size. While this might change over time, right now, pinterest currently says that 600x900px is the best size right now, or any 2x3 ratio. We believe adding text to your pin directly helps convey the image’s purpose.For our example below, if we just showed images of bridal accessories, brides might not know they can rent them. Our pin combines education with beautiful imagery to capture the right audience.Example 1Also, we always include our logo somewhere so that brides can refer to our brand name and site without even clicking through.Example 2Optimize for interactionOur quiz pin was by far the most successful, but it wasn’t just the pin, it was the activation around it.Paying for a pinterest ad helped the quiz get traction. But from there, we created 6 separate email flows for the 6 different styles with 3 different emails each.All of that work led to the customers feeling like they had a custom journey with us rather than just sending them to a page to checkout. It was this nurturing that led to conversion, not necessarily the quiz itself.Re-pin often!We honestly don’t post NEW pins that often. But as we mentioned earlier, having an app that helps re-pin your pins over for you keeps you activity looking fresh.At the start, try going in once a week and just adding inspiration to each of your pin boards. You can even do it from your mobile, on the subway, sitting on the couch...it’s a really easy a mindless way to increase engagement!Focus on your followingI wouldn’t focus so much on your following. Overtime, naturally this happens. Pinterest should be more about the pins themselves and not your board.It is very different from Facebook & Instagram in this way. By building your boards, you’ll start to create a presence, but I don’t think your follower number gives you any more credibility on Pinterest.Advice for others looking to get startedStart with just building your boards. Create themes around each board that are relevant to your brand or company and just start pinning.When you’re ready, start creating some interesting content that can help drive people to your site or blog and create a canva pinterest image to entice customers. If you’d like to test some ads, you can really spend $10-50 just to test what you’re doing and see if it helps drives traffic or sales.Remember to think about pinterest like a search engine and good luck!It will be your #1 traffic driver in no time!