Using Pinterest to Grow Your Small Business’ Email List

We spend so much time talking about the marketing potential of Facebook and Instagram that we sometimes forget about a very popular social media service: Pinterest!

Although Pinterest doesn’t necessarily have the same reach as Facebook (although that might change in the future), it does have over 200 million dedicated users who do one billion searches on it each month. That’s an incredible amount of activity and engagement. The big difference between Facebook and Pinterest is in their purpose. While Facebook is designed to bring people together, making is a fantastic way to connect with clients and customers, Pinterest is a fabulous way to share things. People on Pinterest are looking for new ideas and inspiration. It’s more of a visual search engine than a social media networking service. And this makes it an excellent method of growing your small business’ email list!

[Tweet “Is your small business on all of the big social media networks? What about Pinterest? You can’t ignore its potential to grow your email list!”]

First Things First, You Need Opt-Ins
As Pinterest is an excellent way to share content and ideas, you’re going to need some great content to post before you can get started connecting with your customers.

Content marketing is one of the most effective methods small businesses have to draw people in. Content like a weekly blog is great, but not necessarily what will be the most effective when posted on Pinterest. You want content with a heavy visual element. This could be an infographic (fantastic for all forms of social media, actually), general graphics or memes, a PDF with an eye-catching cover, or a useful checklist. These are your opt-ins, and they are how you will get people to sign up for your email list.

You have many options when it comes to creating great content for Pinterest. You could partner with a virtual assistant with graphic design skills to get started. Your virtual assistant can create rich pins from your weekly blog content. They can help curate pins that will help to build a robust collection of pins on each of your boards. Make sure you have all of your opt-ins pinned to relevant boards to get people to sign up! Look around Pinterest boards of other organizations in your industry to see what they are posting on a daily basis!

Optimize Your Pinterest Profile
Like all of your social media channels, you need your Pinterest profile to be properly branded with your company’s logo/colors. You will want to use a fantastic headshot of yourself (if you are the face of your company) or a high-quality image of your logo.

Make sure that your account is set up as a business account rather than a personal one. This is an easy mistake to make, but one that is easily rectified through the options menu if you already have a Pinterest account and wish to convert it to your business account.

Make sure that you have a substantial amount of content on your Pinterest boards. Yes, everyone needs to start somewhere, but a few borderline empty Pinterest boards will not reflect well on your company. It could be a good idea to go through all of your past content and select the best to post on your Pinterest boards.

It’s important that you keep your pins (content) at an optimal size for Pinterest. This is generally 600x900px or 600x1100px. If you aren’t quite sure how to do this, I can get on it right away and optimize your content to this size.

Just like using proper SEO practices will help people find your website, you’ll want to use relevant keywords and links that will help Pinterest’s search engine find your content. Once you have your content posted and linked to your landing pages, you can just sit back and wait for your email list to grow, right? Well, hold on for a second…

[Tweet “Pinterest users are highly engaged and passionate about their platform. So why aren’t you on there? Create a business profile and start expanding your email list with Pinterest!“]

You Need to Post on a Regular Basis
Like with any other social media service, you need to post to it regularly to keep it active. Few things look worse for a business than a neglected (or even worse, abandoned) social media profile. You constantly need to be posting new content to keep your followers engaged and your email list growing.

This can, unfortunately, take up a ton of time, as can posting to every social media site. Instead of taking up an hour or more of your day updating Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, you can hire a virtual assistant to do it for you. We will create all of your posts way ahead of time and schedule them to be posted at times of highest engagement. This way, your followers will constantly be getting a new stream of content, you will be getting more followers, and everyone will be happy!

If you want to give Pinterest a try on your own, grab my free Pinterest infographic. It shares some of the best tips, tactics, topics and the times to pin! I hope you enjoy it!

Some marketers ignore Pinterest when developing a social media strategy for clients. Personally, I think this is a massive mistake. Pinterest fans are highly engaged and love the platform. If you have a substantial presence on it, you will be connected to people who are specifically searching for your type of content, creating connections and growing your audience.

If you’d like some help with getting started on Pinterest or revamping an already existing account, I would be happy to help! Just contact me for a free consultation, and we can get started setting up your first Pinterest board!