Why use Pinterest you ask? A simple reason is that Pinterest is an extremely overlooked marketing tool, especially for female entrepreneurs. Let’s take a look at why easy Pinterest marketing is an amazing opportunity.
Here are some simple stats. There are over 175 million people actively using Pinterest every month and about 85% of them are women. That is huge news for any business that has products and services geared toward the female customer. That is the entire population of France, Italy & the U.K. combined, ready and waiting to see your products. In another study completed by Millward Brown Digital, 87% 0f users reported that Pinterest engagement has helped them decide what to purchase. These percentages are truly outstanding and Pinterest shouldn’t be ignored.
Why is this amazing opportunity to market to these women being passed by?
The answer lies in the fact that people are not using the tool right and do not understand how to work such a visual media into their marketing campaigns. Pinterest is unique and so is the strategy you have to use to master it. Thus, most large agencies are just passing it by. That’s great news for you because you’re now in on the secret that Pinterest is amazing for marketing. Your business is still getting in on the ground floor and big business’ are not pushing you out of the market share.
Now that we know the facts, how can marketing on Pinterest be easy when I barely have time to run my business as it is?
I felt the same way when I recently decided to get serious about Pinterest. I don’t have time to pin every day and most women running a business from home while taking care of a family do not either. This is when an amazing app called Tailwind steps in to make your life a whole lot easier. With Tailwind, easy Pinterest marketing actually exists. Tailwind is at its heart a smart scheduling tool for Pinterest. It also helps you to optimize your pins, connect with other Pinterest marketers, and shows you detailed analytics far more advanced than what you get through the native Pinterest app. Here are some steps to show how I use Tailwind to schedule all my pins in 30 minutes once per week.
- Sign up for Tailwind (they have a free trial) and make sure the Tailwind Publisher browser extension is installed. This will make a schedule button appear on images throughout the web and on Pinterest when you hover on them.
- Next, visit Pinterest and choose a topic to browse. As an example, I’ll choose “owl illustration” for my “delightful Illustrations” board.
- Hover over your chosen pin and click the tailwind button. Fill in the board you would like to use and click schedule now. This will send the pin to your smart schedule and start building out a calendar that will auto post your pins to Pinterest for you. I usually repeat this step until I’ve scheduled out a week’s worth of pins. The second best part about using the smart schedule is that it gets to know your Pinterest profile and sets pinning times based on when you are likely to get the most engagement. Now that’s nifty!
- Lastly, check in on your pin analytics through the Tailwind app and see how your profile and pins are doing. This step takes less than 5 minutes and you can do it as little or as often as you like.
Now that you’ve automated your pins, you probably want to go further right? Let’s talk about gaining more followers and repins on Pinterest.
The main way Artisan Website Company gained more followers and repins quickly was getting introduced to group boards. I did my research and decided to start a group board specializing in great Etsy products. It’s called Favorite Etsy Finds. Group boards were created by Pinterest to allow users to collaborate on pins of a specific topic. To learn more about group boards on Pinterest check out this Pinterest article.
How do group boards help me gain a following, you ask? There are a few ways. Pinterest has made it mandatory for users that want to collaborate with your group board to follow the board owner. This will give you, the board owner, an instant boost. Get started by creating a group board and announcing it to groups on Facebook or through other social media like Twitter. You can ask these potential collaborators to follow your profile then send you an email request to join the board. In our case, the requests came flooding in and we gained 200 followers overnight.
These collaborators will be pinning to your board, putting pins out into the world that are connected to your account and promoting your profile indirectly. It’s a win-win for both the collaborators who want more eyes on their pins and you who wants a larger following and more automation on your boards (less work for you!). The only downside I have found is you have to be strict on your pin posting rules and you must moderate your board with an iron fist or people will take advantage of your leniency. If you would like to find some group boards to join check out www.pingroupie.com. It’s a great idea to join a few so that your pins can be seen by a greater number of followers not already connected with your profile.
Now for the best part! Tailwind has created a system a lot like group boards but without all the hassle. They are called Tribes and your business can thrive by joining them.
What are tribes? They are groups of marketers on the Tailwind app that collaborate to repin each other’s content. Another win-win situation for easy Pinterest marketing! The app keeps track of pins you have posted from a pool of pins collaborators submit and lets you submit your own pins to the pool. You can’t submit more than you pin from others and vice-versa. It’s genius. The only catch, it’s still in Beta so you need an invite link to join a tribe. I’m going to make it easy for you to get started with a list of 5 tribes you can join right now.
We hope you found this article helpful in advancing your easy Pinterest marketing goals. We are always looking for more ideas and Tribes to add to our list. Have anything to add? Please let us know in the comments.