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Social media productivity coach Penney Fox explains that she’s here to teach us how to be more effective with our time online, not to teach us how to make a post or any of that. She’s also a sci-fi nerd, which is cool with me.
Pinterest is not a social media site. It’s a visual search engine.
Pinterest is more like Google than Facebook. You have to optimize your pins. Think about why you’re using Pinterest. Is it really about the followers, or is it because you want people to subscribe to your email list or by your product?
List Building on Pinterest
Research shows that 2% of people on our email lists are going to buy from us. The goal is to provide valuable content to your list to help improve people’s businesses and lives. Most people think that more people on your list means more sales, but it’s not a numbers game.
Think of a content upgrade as a valuable extension of your blog post or page on your site. It’s about 1:1 relationship building.
Content Upgrade Image Tips
Include the words FREE or describe the content upgrade on your Pinterest pin. Pin descriptions no longer appear until someone clicks on your pin, so you want to use clean, clear images with a large, readable font. Longer pins are getting cut off on mobile. Keep the text on your pin at the top. Penney uses 900 width because of the way pins are shrunk and displayed.
Never connect a pin to a form. Always bring people to a landing page on your website. You have control over your website, but you don’t have control over any other platform.
Identify your customers’ pain points and tailor your pins to them as specifically as possible so that you don’t end up with people on your list who aren’t going to buy from you. It’s better to have 2,000 people on your list and have 1,700 people buy from you than to have 10,000 people on your list and only 200 people buy from you. Have your potential customers qualify themselves so that you will see results.
Content of Your Content Upgrades
What is your customer struggling with? What’s keeping them up at night? What’s taking up the most time in their day? Can you provide a solution for those struggles? What solutions can you provide that makes you a unique resource? Reverse engineer from a solution to a problem so you know how to target who can benefit from the information you have.
Connect with Customers
How do we get our pins, profiles, and boards found by all of those millions of people on Pinterest? We use the same SEO steps to optimize our content like we do for our blog for Google.
Look at guided search on Pinterest to see what people are actually searching for. Use these suggested terms to use as keywords in our pin descriptions. If you must use hashtags, stick to one.
If people can’t find you, they can’t buy from you.
Pinterest Pin Description Tips
Pin descriptions with 200-300 characters are the ones that get the most repins. Your pin description is not the place to add in all the points you’re making your blog post or every little detail about your product.
Sales Funnel Set Up
You must use an email program. You need to have auto-responders.
Think about the customer journey:
- Introduce yourself. Find a blog post with a pain point you can solve for them. This is a “no commitment” way to introduce yourself.
- Small commitment. Share with them free content like a workbook or guide to help continue learning from you.
- Bigger commitment. Their time! Ask them to join a webinar or a FB Live while you continue to share with them how you can solve their pain point.
- Get to know each other. Continue to connect with emails that provide content, more freebies, more opportunities to connect with you in person.
- Totally digging each other now. You have moved through your funnel and they’re ready to commit!
- You pop the big question. “Are you ready to work together and buy my product or service?”
If you’re struggling to make more sales from social media, Penney is starting a 6-week challenge on October 9, and the first two weeks are free: http://bit.ly/connectchallenge
That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.
