Lessons

Lesson Info

Using Pinterest as a Business

So the other shift when you're using pinterest is a marketing tool is that you need to become a power pinar if you're really going to make pinterest worked for your business, you can't be an occasional sometimes when I feel like a pitcher now that said being a power pinar doesn't mean that you have to spend four hours a day on pinterest I don't think I ever spent four hours I don't have four hours a day to spend on pinterest neither do you guys write, so being a power painter doesn't mean that what a power pitcher means is that you're going to pin consistently most days of the week you know, I would say five or six days of the week you're going to pin something usually a couple of some things at least right? I'm not saying you've to put every day if you want to take a day off that's fine if every so often you want take a week off that's fine, but what you're not going to do is pin one day you're going in today because you're watching the class and then like you're not gonna pin for thr...

ee months and then you're like meghan this didn't work we'll write because you have to be a power pitcher you've to pin consistently and pinterest to rewards that and then you need to pin with purpose you need tohave that vision in mind that doesn't mean that you can't still use pinterest for the ooh I like it things we're going to talk about secret boards that's what secret boards are for right hey I'm gonna let you guys see my secret boards and you're gonna laugh because they're so some of them are so off brand and that's okay but the things that I'm pinning publicly have that vision in mind you have to pin great content and what great content means is high quality images that are formatted for pinterest no little tiny horizontal images no low resolution things you want the beautiful eye candy things with great lighting with you know great composition if someone's using like a super ugly font on an image don't pin it that hurts your brand tiffany okay, so I have products right my centuries category from like you know, three, four years yeah they are a little unsavory I think it is but they link back to the product and they've been pinned all over the place everywhere right and so that's still your direct link but looks terrible they're buried deep in my board it's okay? They're very deep in your boards and you don't worry about it they're leaving there you leave him there because it's still links and that's actually a great question as we're going through there's going to be you guys are probably gonna start to feel a little bit of would call like pinterest chaim right there might be some old images you don't love, there might be some boards that you like don't delete things, don't delete board, don't delete old pens you can actually go back and change a lot of things on pinterest you can't change an image but you can rename aboard you can actually change the page something like you can change a link if you want teo on a pin, you could make it link somewhere else, okay? And even if that image links back to something, you can change the content on that page to make it better if you see your getting a lot of traffic from pinterest and it's going tio uh you know a page that you don't love, you can change that you could change that post, you can change that product description and actually, you know, coming up in segment three, we're going to have bridget lions on and that's something she and I were talking about a lot, this idea of remixing and making your old content better for pinterest so it's going to work better for you so you can change the picture to redirect toe like a website instead of an old item that's no longer for sale absolutely know that yes, well, I'll show you guys how to do that yeah, yeah, you can change it's amazing what's editable on pinterest, okay the other thing is that you need to write great descriptions and guess what if you haven't been doing that, you could change that too you could go back and edit an old description for a pin and make it better you would actually do that so that they come up in search so that it's easier for something to find so if you've been using it not like a power pinter you can we can fix it all uh then you're going to pin a variety of content but with a consistent visual style so you're not gonna pin like twenty pins of marilyn monroe in a row I've no idea why I picked that, but you're not going to do that because that's going to drive your followers nuts but you might pin an image of maryland if it makes sense on some kind of style icons board that you have and it's in the context of her and greta garbo and all of these other people right? You might do that so you want to vary the content, but it should all have that consistent visual style. And then the last thing that power penner's dio is that they build a critical mass of pins so they don't have boards with two pins, three pens, even ten or fifteen pens right? If you look at power pitchers, they have boards that have hundreds to thousands of pins and that's really the other key part of this strategy is we don't want to pin a lot toe lots of different boards we want hit a couple of boards a small handful really hard with a lot of content so let's get started all right let's let's take let's do some penance all right yes because people just want to get some clarity susie's asking on this similar questions also from another view is there a rule about how often we should pin per day and also is the way to schedule pinterest post now I know we're going to get to those we're gonna talk about all that does yes so we're gonna talk about how often you should be pinning in segment two and we're going to talk about scheduling pins and segment three and actually there is an entire bonus video on scheduling your pens when you purchased the course there's a whole bonus video where I walk you through a couple different platforms that you can use to do that but thank you awesome all right, so we're gonna work on step one which is establishing your pinterest profile and I know that most of you probably have some kind of pinterest profile so what we're really going to talk about here in terms of setting up your account is what you need to do to shift so that its better serving you with the business as opposed to a personal account for the most part you're probably going to shift your existing account if it feels really, really off if you've been using it as a personal user and you're feeling like this doesn't fit my brand it all and your brand name is different than your personal name you could actually go ahead and create a new account and I'm gonna show you where to do that in a second but I think for most of us were probably shifting you're going to set up that pinterest business account and I'm gonna run through this list quick and I'm gonna show you you're gonna make sure you establish your pinterest name and your girl you're gonna upload your profile picture right? Your pinterest bio link your website to your pinterest account and then we're going to set up a pinter sports so let's actually jump over to my computer so that we can take a look so the first thing that you're gonna dio is that you're actually going teo for most of you you're going to need to switch your pinterest account over to a business account if you haven't already done that it's not one hundred percent essential but you might as well do it because it's free it doesn't look any different on the outside and setting up a pinterest business account then makes you eligible for promoted pins and promoted pins are pinterest advertising platform now everything that we're talking about now or all things that you can do using pinterest for free so promoted pins are not necessary but there are a great addition to your pinterest marking strategy and actually because we don't time to talk about them here there's an entire bonus video on that too, but setting up the business account is what lets you do that so you're going ahead to business stop interest dot com and urine click if you haven't already set up a profile you're going to click join as business and if you are new I mean if you're not know if you have an account you could just hit this convert now button you can see nothing really happens everything looks the same the only thing that's gonna happen is that now pinterest is actually gonna send you an entire series of automated e mails about using it is a bit as a business they're pretty basic have that that means I'm a business that means your business right now so if you're not sure or no any other way you won't no you really won't know any other way so that's our first step is that we want to make sure that we're set up is a business and yet there's no easy way to tell other than that you've probably been getting those pinterest for business emails so goto business that pinterest dot com and set that up then the other things that you have to make sure is you want to choose if you are new or even if you're shifting, you need to go ahead and actually choose your pinterest name and your pinterest earl right? So the challenge with using pinterest is your own name is that because there are so many users if your business is your own name, you might have a hard time claiming your name right? So I jumped on early enough that my name is not common enough that my I'm using it is meghan omine and you can see my girl is pinterest dot com slash meghan omine if you set it up in an auto generates, you might end up with something like kathy mcciane four, five, six, seven too which we don't want right? So I know in the case of cathy, you're set up right now is your name, but your girl is glimmer of gold that's okay? For right now, as long as glimmer of gold stays your business name, right? Yeah, how did that happen? Pinterest does it automatically? They just decided that that was going to be my slash clever of you must have told them that somewhere you told me somewhere you wanted to use that like you probably put in that name, okay? I'm not exactly sure, okay, look, she did put our website and right and if you're looking at your pinterest account what we're gonna find here under the settings button edit profile there we go you can see right there it lets you change that but if it's not available won't you switch it which is why it might auto generate I know like when I helped my mother in law sign up like made up it was like something like d m four to six five eight seven actually I've no idea something like that right it's a car initials on that it made something so you can go in and edit that if you're going through a business name change I know sarah and I have to do you can go ahead and edit that you just have to remember that if you change this you then need to go in and change anywhere on your site that links to pinterest because that link isn't gonna work anymore so you can change this but make sure you realize you're ready to change it before you d'oh you do want to make this consistent if it's different than your name it's confusing I know tiffany I think you are studios and I not alright my tiffany were tiffany whips so you had a reason I'm the only tiffany and studio right should go in and so you should go in and change that absolutely yeah because this is just it's one of those little details that just build a little bit of consistency if someone's looking for you, they're gonna look for you under tiffany and studios, right? That's what you're called? Yeah, so you want to make that match? So now if you google tiffany and studio so my pinterest will come up higher if the girl is tiffany and studios is forever than it does now, I think if you scroll like yes to you, google me maybe, but yes, exactly, right? So that is something that's really important for sure, and I and I, a lot of people will probably look to that as well. So it like I know for I think for me, you know, it's like website shop, maybe something else pinterest think in first for when you do it on my name. So yeah, that's a good point that's really important for us, theo, for sure. So then you want to make sure that those things match and it's one of those where you can choose to use your own name or your business? Same and I've seen success with either one work on pinterest. What studies have found is that people are happy to engage with brands on pinterest so you want to use your brand name? Absolutely go ahead, but if you want to use your personal name, and it relates to your brand that's fine to just keep them consistent so I think in your case, kathy again you want to figure out whether you're going to be cathy mush on or you're going to be glimmer of gold, you're not gonna be both at the same time, right? And again all of these things are changeable so don't feel like you have to create a new profile go in there, you know, hit that edit profile button you know, figure out do I need to change? This is actually the other little tell that tells you if you have a business account for personal when I hit edit profile, it gives me a business name I don't think if it's a personal account it'll say something he'll just say name or profile name or something like that so that's probably your other way to tell if you're already a business account it's just to check that in the edit profile page. So the other things that you want to dio actually let's go back to edit profile is you want to make sure that everything else is setup setup a location you can choose whatever you want here I actually don't know why I use my specific town because my town is like three people one of those is my dog uh so there's probably a better thing that I could be putting here, you know if you live in san francisco say san francisco if you but maybe if you live in a small town you might say something like hey area it's not really that critical it's more so a way for people to feel like they have a connection with your brand and nowhere you're pitting from right so you can put whatever you want there if you really wanted to the more important one is that you want to put your web sit in here and in addition to putting your website and you want to make sure that it's verified so you can see mine says site verified and if you're looking at my profile I get this a little magic checkmark here right? Um sara also has it sarah doesn't know how she did it but you're going to be oh I don't remember things all the time so your setup you're good so you're right I think kathy is not you still need to do that so if you are not verified, what happens when you're in your profile? Is there's actually gonna be a button right there so instead of sight verified it's going to say verify site and that's going to be a button you're going to click on that and then it's going to ask you to copy and paste some code it should be fairly straightforward if it's not that's something that you want teo again go to pinterest tech support about this site verified peace is important for two reasons one is it does give you that little check mark which just shows to people like hey this person they're legit right? We checked them out there there are really saying they're real company the more important reason that we want to do this is when we get into pinterest analytics by verifying your sight it means that in pinter's analytics it's going to read data from your site and it's going to give us so much more information we're gonna come back to pinterest analytics and segment four but know that without that verifying you're going to be missing a really critical point in terms of data then the two other things I want to make sure you've got are a great image on pinterest even if you're using your brand name, I recommend using a picture of yourself people seemed to like to relate to people on pinterest there's just something about it that humanizes you pick a picture you can live with for a while right? Something that you're not going to feel like you want to change in two months because that's how you build consistency if you're when your picture change that changes on all of your pins and you start to lose that if a new image pops up I'm always like who is this person right? You get used to seeing those people so pick something you can live with then the other piece is you need to set your pinterest profile and your pinterest profile is really important because it tells people you know who you are and what they can expect to see, and those couple of sentences can be the difference between whether someone follows you are not right. So what makes a great pinterest profile a little bit about who you are, what you're about and what your followers can expect to see? There should also be some consistency between your profile and you know what they're seeing in your boards? I'm not gonna lie to you guys, I'd change my profile all the time. I'm constantly playing, I'm constantly tweaking, I'll change it, and I'll see if my follower growth slows or gets faster, if it slows, I'll change it back or I'll change it again. So your profile, you can change as many times as you want, so right now, I'd probably say something different, like in three days, but right now it says I'm a designer and metal smith on a mission to help you make a statement every day, and then I'm saying I'm a business owner style blogger, world traveler walter of jewelry I have to do that right after I got back from india, so I was feeling real global, right? So I'm just giving people a little bit about the brand right? And I'm also giving people a little bit of kind of the why the purpose behind my business, right? I'm on a mission to help you make a statement every day and I threw in things like style blogger said they understand you I'm creating a lot of style content on my own blogged want them to see that this is a place where they're not just going to get a lot of product pins for me they're going to get a lot of style, inspiration, that's, something they can come to my board unbind so I want to actually go ahead and take a look at our a couple of our profiles of our studio audience and see how we're looking here so tiffany growing so she gets to go first you are also my first tab, so so, tiffany, you have jewelry that helps you feel perfectly polished without weighing you down in love with the minimalism, fashion, food and good design. So what I have to say is that's actually a pretty good profile here's my issue with it? Yeah, it doesn't feel to me like it matches when I'm seeing what I'm looking at your boards no, I know that, okay, so what you have to decide, I mean, when I look at, like, perfectly polished I know my boards are not clean. I feel like it's that's, that's like my boards are actually a party, right? Listen, fun they're they're also not minimalist. No, honestly, okay. This'll connect between me and my brand. Yes, there's a lot of my personality and my pinterest and there's a lot of what I love versus what's popular in my brand, it actually would really love to tie the two together someday me with my bryce. But right now, sort of what really sells in my brand or those clean, minimal pete, right? So what I would do, at least for now, is probably keep this and we're going to just shift we'll get there in a minute. We're going to shift your top the images of your top boards. Yeah, we might actually shift what the boards are too. Ok, so the other nice thing about pinterest is that people are probably only going to judge you on like the first two rows of your boards, right? Yeah. It's super me, it's radio it's like there's, like a very boho wait. So maybe one of those where this language isn't quite right for you like that boat rock five is so mean, but it were my brand necessary, so you're going to have to make some chefs there for sure this's really what I'm seeing in the chat rooms and on the q jack that this is what most people struggling with how to differentiate theirselves from their brand yeah on dh how to you know, have combined to so you're not alone, right? It's definitely the right way I mean here's the thing if your brand is slightly different from you is a person you have two choices one is that you have to own that and you can go on to pinterest and you can say in the things that I'm putting out there in public I'm going to be more brand focused and I'm going to use my secret boards to have fun for me right? Or the other option is you could decide I'm really tired of having my brand fight my personality and I'm gonna let myself be my brand so you could go either way on that one uh alright so let's take a look at kathy so kathy one of the first things that I notice in yours is that you're a victim of the pinterest shorten the length you could have for your profile and you didn't change your profile oh yeah, yeah yeah so interested that sneaky little thing I think where they cut it down by like forty or fifty characters, so make sure that you actually are ending on a complete sentence you're okay so you have my love for color, family fashion home to court and art has driven me to create glimmer of gold dot com I also love sharing the colorful pieces I create for you that starts to feel a little redundant and in your case you know, we know that you have this idea of a happy child like and magical, so I want to see that in your profile, okay? I didn't even know they change but that in there all right? And then sarah so you have sarah boo designs is a jewelry design and manufacture your company based in oakland, california sarah maccaulich has been making jewelry for thirty seven years and still loves it actually thirty eight no, uh well, we're gonna strike probably most of this anyway because that is a jewelry designer manufacturing company is boring, right? Yeah, way better story than that you have such more interesting things to say, you know, there's nothing in there about you made your first piece when you're sixteen or you said even in japan or your know following your passion you've got a lot more interesting things to say then your profile reflects right now so like this might be ok for linked in it's definitely not okay for pinterest right? That's what it feels like to me so we're gonna have you shift that okay all right, so we talked about pinterest profiles now it's time to talk about that other big piece of establishing your pinterest presence, which are your pinterest boards and your boards are really important in terms of what kinds of content you're going to share, how people are going to follow you they really set the tone for your pinterest account tiffany and looking so guilty right now like I know I'm doing it wrong I'm actually bonds what are you bummed well because because I just sort of had a moment of I would actually like to be more of my I want my brand to have more of me and I think you should it's fine like I really I'm there I'm presenting my brand I'm selling my brand in my studio I want my brand to be focused, so I here's the saying so and we'll come back and look at your boards in a minute because now my boards would be a totally different thing if I was being true to who I am versus who I think my brand should be and and here's the thing pinterest is actually a really powerful tool for helping you figure out who your brand is and who you are daniel crest tells this amazing story about you know she started using pinterest before she started er bog style for a happy home and then using pinterest she realized oh, my gosh, I love color like she was kind of thought of herself is like a great girl. And it was like their pinterest that she was like, I love color and it's, an important part of my brand. So what your gravitating to on pinterest is probably a really good indicator of where you should be visually with your brand.