How to Use Pinterest for Ecommerce

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There’s a lot of talk about Facebook and Twitter and quite a couple of other social media networks out there, but rarely we talk about Pinterest for ecommerce in the same sentence. And yet, if you think about it, a social platform filled to the brim with beautiful, eye-catching, good quality images might actually do the trick. There are more and more reasons that should convince you this one is a winner. You can see them with your own eyes. Below, I just want to share some useful info, and dispose of tips I came across recently. They should help you improve (or set up) a Pinterest marketing strategy:

1. Contests

It's a fact already that stirring the interest of the audience leads to increased engagement. A contest, for instance, can drive sales and traffic for your store. There are inspiring stories like this one, about a website that boosted its traffic by 150% due to Pinterest. But this particular “pin it to win it” contest is not an isolated case.  Next? I'd suggest that you read the Pinterest's contest guidelines first, so you don't cross that spam border.

 2. Rich Pins

These pins contain extra information inside the pin from your store's website. Worry not, these details will update if the website is updated. Also, there are different categories. Right now, there are five types of Rich Pins: movie, recipe, article, product and place. For instance, “Product Pins” includes information such as pricing, stock availability, where a user can purchase, even a click through to the product page on the store's website, price alert emails, and more. “Recipe Pins” include details like ingredients and cooking and prep times to recipes added from your website. And “Movie Pins” include from ratings, cast, reviews and other details, to images shared from Netflix, Flixster, and Rotten Tomatoes. Also, companies of all sizes, with stores on Shopify, e Bay and Etsy, can use Rich Pins.
Must do: Apply for Rich Pins. It's a simple process: decide what kind of Rich Pin you want, add the appropriate metatags to your site, validate your Rich Pins and apply to get them on Pinterest. More details here

 3. Use quality photos

It should go without saying, but actually poor quality photos will hardly get repinned on Pinterest. Images with multiple dominant colours are more likely to get repinned than those dominated by one single colour. The fewer faces, the better, because it looks like “faces” are repinned less than the rest. The size of the images matters big time (I mean at least 600 px wide).

4. Pin at the right time

And last, but not least, the time period when you post it, is also important. Pinterest says the best hours are 2-4 pm and 8-11 pm, but it varies from one area to another, so dig deeper.

Looking forward to hearing more about your own experiences and discoveries in the Pinterest-ecomm relationship. In the meantime, to strengthen your social media muscles, we suggest you go back and read again this piece on social media tools for ecommerce.

Comments 1 Response

  1. Geoff says:

    Hi Catalin, I think you’re right there isn’t as much talked about ecommerce on Pinterest. Which is pretty amazing ! I read that it’s the 3rd most popular social networking website in the world. It’s surprising as the average order value for Pinterest buyers is 126% more than Facebook. If you want more information on using Pinterst Rich Pins and some examples of how people are using them, check out my post https://selz.com/blog/guide-selling-pinterest-rich-pins/

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