6 Clever Ways to Use Pinterest Marketing this Holiday Season
Pinterest is a great way to connect with your audience and drive them to things that you offer that would be helpful to them. And, the holiday season is PRIME time to get started on or ramp up your Pinterest Strategy.
Everyone – including your audience – will be engaging with all kinds of seasonal content now and in the coming months.
So, today is the day to take advantage of all that Pinterest has to offer and I’m going to talk about ways you can do that now! Tap the button above to listen to the episode, or keep scrolling to read below.
Jumping right in, I have 6 tips to help you ring in the marketing season on Pinterest, starting with number 1:
#1. Utilize All the Pin Types
There are five types of pins you can currently post to Pinterest: image pins, video pins, idea pins, product pins and rich pins.
I’ve done image and product pins before. I’ve yet to post an idea or video pin, and I don’t utilize rich pins at the moment. Just in case you unfamiliar, here’s a breakdown of each type and what you could use it for this season:
Image Pin
An image pin is just that: images. This is what I use most, since I post pins that link to my blog and podcast. This season, you could use image pins for a lot of things: podcast, blog, video channel, or even link them to your instagram posts.
Video Pin
A video pin is pretty self-explanatory too: you can post videos as pins to pinterest to capture attention and link to something. I see a lot of people using these to link to their Instagram Reels or YouTube videos, so that’s something you could try out this season with your holiday content.
Idea Pin
An idea pin can include up to 20 of both photos and videos. These pins kind of act like stories that you see on instagram.
You can post these live, or even schedule them out, and they can link to whatever you want. This holiday season, you could use idea pins to teach something, tell a story, show a product line, show behind-the-scenes content, share a recipe or a short tutorial or how-to… you have a lot of options with this one, and because of the nature of the pin, you’ll ultimately gain attention for a longer period of time, which helps your algorithm.
Product Pin
Product pins link directly to physical products you sell online.
This is perfect for showcasing your product, and linking directly to your listing on your website, so that if someone is interested in what they see, they’ll be able to go directly to it without having to click around and find it themselves.
Whether you have seasonal products, or you don’t, utilizing product pins for the holidays could potentially boost sales because more people will get eyes on them just by default of you posting them consistently. It’s a great FREE way to get your product out there without having to pay for ads or hope it comes up in Google search!
Rich Pin
Rich pins sync information from your website and make the pin itself more robust and full of information.
For example, you can use rich pins for articles, recipes or products. If you’ve been on Pinterest any amount of time at all, you’ve probably used it to find a recipe.
And you may have noticed that when you click on the pin, if it’s a rich pin, you can actually read the ingredients and recipe information right there on the pin without having to click to see it on the website.
Since rich pins automatically pull information from your website, they can update automatically when you update that page on your website, too. Rich pins may be a great way to make it easier for your audience to read or skim the information before they click – and get more attention on your pins, for longer, this holiday season.
Alright, that is all of the pin types! Utilizing one or a mix of those is really going to up your Pinterest strategy this season.
#2. Create Holiday Boards
This could be for your seasonal products or services, or purely for inspiration. You could have boards on how to use your non-seasonal products during the holiday season – and make them “holiday” – even if they aren’t necessarily a seasonal item, it’s all about how you frame it.
Like we talked about in the last few episodes about holiday marketing, you don’t need to go creating all these new seasonal things just for the sake of it or try to make your brand fit the holidays – you make the holidays fit your brand and your goals this season.
For instance, you could look back on previous promotions or even Pins that you’ve created, and see if you can spruce them up and add seasonal graphics and keywords so that you can use them again – and then add those pins to your newly created holiday boards. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel or make it complicated!
#3. Use SEO Strategies (search engine optimization)
You know that Holiday Keyword Spinoff trend we talked about a few episodes ago? You can use this on Pinterest too!
Once you make your list of ideal holiday keywords you want to target this season, keep them handy and use them in your pins. (We’re going to talk a little later about a cool tool that you can use on Pinterest for this as well.)
Use one in the title, one in the description, and don’t forget to add alt text and use one there, too. This will make them SO much more likely to come up in search when people are looking for things with your keywords.
#4. Create a Secret Board
You can create secret Pinterest boards JUST for your followers or subscribers.
With secret boards, no one can see them unless they’re invited. So you can invite your audience maybe via email or on an instagram story, and share the link with them. Once you do, they’ll be able to see your content and have exclusive access.
This is a great way to get your audience involved, and make them feel special because they only get access if they’re a subscriber or follower of yours.
You could even change the board up every week or so, and give them a reason to keep coming back to see what new things you have pinned – whether it’s products or services, or freebies or deals or even just inspirational things.
#5. Review Your Analytics
Your analytics are GOLD when it comes to Pinterest.
You’ll be able to tell what pins are working, what ones just aren’t, and what is getting the most attention.
You’ll see what people are MOST interested in that you’re putting out there.
Check your analytics often and use the information you find to update your strategy this season, which will help you hone in on exactly what your audience is after, with the idea being it will lead to more traffic and sales for your business as you make those tweaks.
#6. Use the Pinterest Trends Tool
You can head to trends.pinterest.com to see what is hot and happening right now on Pinterest!
It’s a great way to gain insight and see what you might be able to create especially this holiday season in order to capture the attention of your audience.
Plus, you might even get some fresh ideas and inspiration, which is always great to have in your back pocket.
When you use the Pinterest Trends tool, you can search “halloween crafts” for example and see things like: when it was last searched, how often and how much, you can see things like demographics and popular pins, and even related trends.
When you do this, it’s important that you also look at your holiday planning calendar and search for the keywords that you’ve planned to target based on your campaign plans.
This way, you are pulling up the correct trends for things that you want to go after and you’re also not going down a rabbit trail, or having squirrel syndrome, because you see something that’s maybe a great idea but it’s not what you had planned.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t change your plans if necessary, but just to keep you focused and on track you’ll want to have your holiday campaign calendar handy so that you can stay focused on your goals.
Pinterest is One of the Best Tools for Traffic!
I have found that utilizing Pinterest as a marketing tool has greatly increased my traffic to my website, blog and traffic. I’ve also started implementing some things recently to hopefully help increase traffic to my podcast.
Pinterest has worked way better and way faster for me than trying to keep up with google SEO or trying to rank on the first page.
Not that I’m not trying to or not that I’m not implementing things and best SEO practices, because I am, BUT, Pinterest is certainly the best driver of traffic for me right now AND it’s all free. And it’s also really fun. I get to design pins and it’s way more creative than trying to figure out if I’m doing all the correct things for SEO on google.
If you haven’t given Pinterest a try, I highly recommend it for your marketing strategy this season and beyond!