Pinfluencer Christine Martinez Loya shared Pinterest best practices for brands at the inaugural Brandemonium conference that took place October 11-14 in the branding capital of the world: Cincinnati, OH. Here are her top takeaways so, like Pinterest, you leave inspired with actionable tips to tell your brand’s visual story.
Pinterest is a Powerful Search Engine
Pinterest is “the world’s catalog of ideas” – it’s doesn’t consider itself a social media platform, but rather a search engine with the mission to “help people discover the things they love, and inspire them to go do those things in their daily lives.”
Intention meets action on Pinterest, and it’s an important space for brands to consider leveraging for those pinners actively seeking out ideas to bring to life in their lives. In fact, as of September 2017, Pinterest has 200 million monthly users and over 100 billion pins. It’s more than just saving online content: 87% of pinners have purchased something because of Pinterest, and interestingly, 80% of all pinners use Pinterest on mobile!
Pinterest is where brides-to-be go for wedding inspiration, where moms search for birthday party themes, and where DIY-ers discover design ideas.
Meet Pinterest Influencer Christine Martinez Loya
It’s also where Pinterest influencers help brands tell their visual stories. One “pinfluencer” I recently met is Christine Martinez Loya. She spoke at Brandemonium last week, the new International Brand Conference and Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio, known as the branding capital of the world. Christine was at the forefront of Pinterest as the eighth person to join when the platform launched in 2010. She has over 5 million followers, authored The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Pinterest Marketing, and works as Senior Manager Social Innovation at Walmart Global eCommerce. In fact, Sociality Squared worked with Christine on her first-ever brand activation back in 2011!
Her talk, “Telling Your Brand’s Visual Story on Pinterest,” broke down Pinterest best practices for brands and provided valuable takeaways. Read on to get the full scoop on Pinterest!
How to Tell Your Brand’s Visual Story on Pinterest
1. Think Searching for Inspiration
To tell your brand’s visual story on Pinterest you need to think about Pinterest the right way. The first thing that caught my attention was Christine described Pinterest as a search engine for ideas not a social media platform. Personally, I sometimes lump Pinterest in with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the like. So before you create your brand’s strategy for Pinterest, you need to think about Pinterest as a place where people are actively searching for actionable inspiration.
2. Create Save-worthy and Actionable Content
She also shared that brands need to meet pinners where they want to be met – while they are looking for ideas, inspiration, and are in discovery mode. But how do you actually do that? You need to give them content that is save-worthy and actionable.
3. Stay True to Your Brand
Before you create content, you need to remember that just because something is popular on Pinterest doesn’t mean it fits with your brand. You need to stay true to your core brand values. The need to remain authentic is true across any digital platform.
4. Design Boards around Brand Topics
If you’re struggling to come up with board topics, Christine provided a great exercise to try. At the center of the page is your brand in a circle. From there, break your brand down into as many relevant topics that branch out from the center. Voilà – there are your boards and your Pinterest content pillars.
5. Inspire Action
Christine recommends keeping these two content goals in mind:
- Constantly and consistently tell your brand’s visual narrative.
- Create content with the 3 “S”s in mind: search, save, share.
People go to Pinterest to search and save content. At the end of the day, you need to create content that connects with your audience on a visceral level and inspires them to take action.
Who is actually accomplishing this? Lowe’s. She provided them as an example of a brand who is nailing it on Pinterest. They stay true to their core values by pinning tips for home renovation projects, DIYs and tutorials, and seasonal content to inspire decoration ideas. Their content is both visually appealing and accessible. Check them out for a real-life example of a brand succeeding on Pinterest.
Important Pin-Tips to Follow
At the end of her presentation she shared actionable (and very helpful!) items with the audience. Here are her tips that brands need to keep in mind:
- Bring your best ideas. This means that they are actionable and inspiring.
- Use compelling images. Make sure they are high quality and lifestyle images tend to perform well.
- Use vertical ratio aspect – specifically 600px wide x 900px wide. This takes up more real estate on the platform.
- Optimize for search. All pins should have an image, title, and description that match the keywords you’re targeting.
She ended her speech by saying, “at the end of the day, Pinterest is a fun platform. Have a blast with it!” To me, that may be the most important thing to remember! Do you have any Pinterest questions we can help answer? Let us know in the comments below!
Follow Christine on Pinterest and Instagram.