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If you're looking for new strategies to market your business, you should give Pinterest some serious consideration.

Pinterest is still often thought of as a recipe or fashion social media platform, but in reality there are many savvy marketers who use Pinterest for a variety of niches.

Like all social media platforms, success on Pinterest takes time, effort, and measuring what works and what does not.

Here are 15 tips on how to make the best of your Pinterest marketing efforts.

Research your target audience

It's important to know if your target market is on Pinterest. Women are the dominant users on Pinterest, however the male audience is quickly growing.

According to Pinterest, half of new sign-ups are men. Other interesting data from Pinterest: 40% more people are on Pinterest now than in 2017, 93% of Pinners use Pinterest to plan purchases, and 67% of Pinners say they discovered a new brand or product from Pinterest.

Create a complete profile

Under the About You section of your profile, you should be specific about what you do and most importantly, how you help your target audience.

Use keywords that describe your niche so that Pinterest knows what your brand is all about. This is important not just for optimizing your Pinterest profile, but also for any visitor who looks at your profile.

Use your picture

Upload a clear recent picture of yourself. Pinterest users prefer to see a headshot of a real person rather that a logo or corporate image. If you have a picture of yourself, this comes across as more personable and you're likely to have more engagement and credibility.

Name your boards with keywords

Name your board with keywords that are related to your board topic. This is where you can use long tail keywords. For example, if you're a digital marketing expert, one of your boards could be named YouTube Marketing Tips.

Think about what the user's search intent is, rather than trying to be cute with your board names.

The Pinterest search bar works similar to Google, in that it will provide search suggestions as you begin to search. Since this is based on popular keyword terms, you should consider using these search terms to name your boards.

Boost your board description

When you add Pins to your boards, you can add a Pin description. Here, you want to communicate what your pin is all about, and it's another opportunity to use your keywords. You can use a few different keywords -broad and long tail keywords- this will help your pins to be found easier.

Make your description natural and don't be spammy by stuffing keywords.

Pro Tip: You can set your board to "secret" in Pinterest. This is a good idea to keep it a secret until you have at least 30 Pins saved to your boards. When logged into Pinterest, click on boards, go the board you want to hide and simply click on the pencil icon and move the dial to secret.

You can learn a lot about how to setup your boards by looking at other successful Pinterest Marketers. See how many boards they have, how many Pins are in each of their boards, the concentration of their Pins to other user's Pins, the wording of their board descriptions, and see how they're using keywords within their boards.

Design your Pins for success

Pin Design: It's vital that your Pins are attractive. Use vibrant colors that capture the viewer's attention. Vertical Pins that have 2:3 ratios perform best on Pinterest.

Curulate did a study of over 500,000 Pins and here are a few notable conclusions:

• Images with multiple dominant colors are pinned 3 times more than Pins with just one dominant color
• Images without human faces are repined 23 % more
• Red, orange and brown outperform other colors
• Pins with 50 % saturation perform the best
• Very light or dark Pins don't perform well

Use text overlay

Adding text overlay is a great way to add more detail to your Pins. It helps to describe what your Pin is about, and why someone should click on your Pin. Use bold text with contrasting colors for more appealing and attractive looking Pins. Text overlay should only be used if it makes sense for your brand.

Link your Pins

You should add a link to your Pin. This will help drive more traffic to your site.

Call to action

Add a call to action on your Pin so you give someone a reason to click on your Pin and take a desired action. You can use words such as: learn more, find out how, see why, read more, or discover.

Curate content

Sharing other Pinner's Pins is a must on Pinterest. Why? This will help establish your account as a valuable resource and someone who shares great curated content.

Pinterest uses an algorithm, and if you're sharing other's high quality content, this can help your profile to get more traction- impressions and clicks on your own Pins.

Tailwind scheduling

Tailwind is a 3rd party application that will help you be more efficient and consistent on Pinterest by scheduling your Pins in advance.

It also has a smart scheduler feature that automatically schedules Pins you add based on your time zone and target audience so your Pins get the best exposure at the right time of day.

Looping

Looping is a new feature in Tailwind where you can automate your Pin scheduling to recycle your Pins over a time period of your choice. You can schedule Pins to your boards, and set date intervals over days, weeks, or months.

Create infographics

Infographics get a lot of engagement and are highly repinned on Pinterest. If you create nicely designed infographics, you will likely get many repins. This can help your Pinterest engagement and therefore improve your overall rankings and visibility on Pinterest.

Consistency

Like any other form of social media, it's important that you're consistent on Pinterest. You should Pin at consistent times throughout the day.

Most Pinterest experts say to Pin at least 30 Pins per day with a mixture of your Pins and other Pins.

Dig into analytics

Digging into your Pinterest Analytics will provide you awesome data about your Pinning strategy, and whether it's working or not.

Analytics will tell you which Pins are performing, how many Pins are being saved by users, how many clicks you're getting to your website, age of users, and device used. Further data includes age, gender, location, and the most popular categories people are searching.

Pinterest can be a great source of traffic to your website. With the right strategy, you can see some serious marketing benefits.

Helping freelancers and solopreneurs. I help freelancers, remote workers and solopreneurs find income opportunities, marketing tips and resources.