Pinterest is not just about cute birthday cakes, healthy recipes, wedding plans, travel inspiration and innovative gift ideas. Though the platform is amazingly good for all of the above. Its rapid increase in the number of active users and its popularity especially with higher income individuals has rendered it one of the best places to promote your products and services.
Pinterest is essentially a search and discovery tool. Users rarely discover content from viewing their smart feed on the home page. Instead, they are using the platform to search whatever they are interested in.
People surfing Pinterest are either planning for a future purchase or looking for a current one. This ‘action-mode’ is what you want for your potential customers so naturally you would want them to discover your business.
Is Pinterest for your business? Yes!
A recurring piece of information about Pinterest is that it relates closely to life moments and events. At this point you might be wondering how that could be helpful to someone looking to promote an online course.
Well, bettering oneself, developing a new skill or simply improving an existing one do count as rather life-changing moments. To make things even better, most searches on Pinterest are not branded so even if you are new on the market, you get the chance to show up on people’s radars. Also, Pinterest may be the only place on the internet where people actually want ads.
Read more: Promoting your online course through online ads: What are your options?
As a visual tool in a very visual world, Pinterest is the ideal platform for a creative small business. You get the opportunity to display what you are selling and share with your target audience, allowing for exponential growth through re-pins.
How do you get discovered on Pinterest?
If you have had even the least contact with online marketing, you are well aware of the importance of hashtags. These weren’t initially part of the platforms modus operandi but customer pressure made them necessary so today you may use your favorite tags while promoting your business.
Apart from these, the platform functions by means of keywords that should be used in your profile, in the pin descriptions, on board descriptions and (you might be surprised by this) on other people’s images — yes, you can take other pins, re-pin them and add to the description so that it promotes your products in turn. It’s win-win really since your re-pinning will draw attention to the initial post as well.
Of course, apart from the right words, the image quality is equally important.
How do you go about setting up a business Pinterest account?
One of the best things about the platform is that it has a rather casual feel to it. If it makes you feel more comfortable, you can start by setting up a personal account and playing a little bit with it to figure out how it works.
Then, you can take that and convert it to a business account. It’s free and it provides you with loads of helpful analytics to help you reach your target market.
These alone are worth doing the switch, but you can also promote pins and connect your landing page using rich pins. Rich pins can provide data about your course options and detail the price to the user on Pinterest.
It’s very important to use the same profile image on all your social accounts to generate brand recognition—either a good quality picture of yourself or your business logo will do.
Read more: Social media platforms to consider when marketing your online course
What are the makings of a successful profile?
The answer to the question above lies in the skillful wording. A powerful profile is one crafted with carefully chosen keywords. Your profile description communicates who you are, what you stand for and what visitors can expect to find on your site. Use relevant keywords and make sure to include your website as well as links to other social accounts where you are active (especially Instagram works great with Pinterest).
If you are not sure about what keywords you should include, ask yourself what terms would best describe your brand. Run a search to see if they connect to pins that are related to your business (or to your competition). Pinterest uses a smart feed and, much like a search engine, ranks pin results based on pins that best match what the user is searching for.
What are the don’ts of Pinterest marketing?
It’s easy to get very excited if you have a really great image or interesting infographic (by the way, the latter thrive on Pinterest) and forget that the description is at least as important if you want them to actually show up in the searches. Make sure you spend some time on the descriptions before posting.
Read more: How to write the best description for your online course
Also, it’s good if you are creative but don’t overdo it. Use the keywords are searched and proved to work instead of coining your own. Being overly original might lead to being overlooked. Moderation is advised as well so use just enough keywords to get noticed but not so many that you come off as spammy.
Is Pinterest a part of your course marketing strategy already?
With the right tools, you can create highly engaging visual content that puts your online courses in front of some of the most dedicated shoppers. So what are you waiting for?
