Are you an Etsy seller looking for a new way to market and sell your handmade products? If so, you should be using Pinterest! Pinterest is a great platform for driving traffic to your Etsy shop - many Etsy sellers have found success and business growth by spending time promoting their products through this channel.
In this blog post, we will discuss how to use Pinterest to best market and sell your Etsy products. We will also provide some tips and tricks that will help you get the most out of this powerful marketing tool.
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What is Pinterest?
If you’re not familiar with Pinterest, it’s basically a virtual pinboard. You can create boards for any topic you like and “pin” images, articles, and other pieces of content to your boards. Other Pinterest users can then browse your boards and “repin” items they like to their own boards.
For handmade sellers, Pinterest can be an invaluable tool for driving traffic to your website or Etsy shop. By creating eye-catching boards filled with images of your products, you can reach a wide audience and encourage potential customers to learn more about your business. Furthermore, if people “repin” your content, their followers will also see it, potentially leading to even more exposure.
Unlike Instagram, Pinterest allows linking back to your website in the image descriptions so it’s a great way to get direct traffic outside of Etsy.
Step 1: Switch your Personal Pinterest to a Business One
If you’ve been using Pinterest for personal purposes but are now interested in using it for business, you should switch to a Pinterest business account.
This process is simple and only takes a few minutes.
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Open the Pinterest app and tap on the menu icon in the top left corner.
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Scroll down and tap on Settings.
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Tap on Convert to Business Account.
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Follow the prompts to enter your business information and verify your account.
After you confirm, your Pinterest account will be switched to a business account and you’ll have access to all of the features that businesses can use, such as creating pins, adding rich descriptions, and analyzing your traffic.
Step 2: Create your Boards
Once you have your Pinterest Business account in place, you should aim to create Boards that reflect your brand and product offerings.
For example, a seller of handmade jewelry might create Boards titled “Handmade Jewelry,” “Silver Jewelry,” and “Statement Pieces.”
You’ll want to create boards that have names you want to rank for, and also represent the likely phrases and words that your target customer will be using to find your products.
You’ll also want to be curating content that your ideal customer would like, even if it isn’t directly related to your products - this will lead to potential customers pinning your board and following you to see what you are going to pin next (which may be one of your products - see?).
The interesting thing about Pinterest is that you don’t need to create this secondary content yourself - you can just find content you like across Pinterest and add it to your boards.
Another great tip is to create boards with overlapping themes - this means you can pin your products across multiple boards, thus extending your reach.
An example of overlapping boards may be:
- Festival need to haves
- Travel essentials
- Organic skincare
- Eco friendly skincare
This is now a perfect structure to start promoting your range of pocket sized, eco friendly moisturizers.
Step 3: Make your board covers and titles amazing
This is a step that many handmade sellers skip, and can make a real difference to your follower counts.
Handmade sellers who want to get the most out of Pinterest should definitely spend some time creating good board covers. Board covers are the first thing that people see when they land on your Pinterest profile, so you want to make sure that they’re eye-catching and represent your brand well. A good Pinterest profile picture should allow a viewer to know exactly what you sell and what values you have.
Step 3: Keywords and SEO
SEO, or search engine optimization, is important for any website that wants to be visible in search engine results. This is especially true for Pinterest, since the site is primarily a visual search engine. By optimizing your pins and boards for Pinterest SEO, you can ensure that your content is more likely to be seen by those who are searching for it.
You’ll want be trying to include relevant keywords into your:
- Pinterest board titles
- Pin descriptions
- Pinterest board descriptions
- Pinterest hashtags
See also: SEO strategies for Etsy sellers »
Step 4: Create Pinterest Templates
Aim to create 3-5 pins for each of your handmade products. You’ll want to set up a couple of reusable templates so that creating new pins is fast, and also so you can provide enough variation for your boards to be visually interesting.
You can use any graphics editor for this purpose, however Canva is a great program that makes creating Pinterest graphics a snap. Simply choose a Pinterest template from their huge library and modify with your words and pictures.
Aim to start with your best selling products and then work through your catalog over weeks - it’s never a good idea to “dump” a huge amount of pins into Pinterest in one go.
Step 5: Make a Habit of It
As a visual platform, Pinterest is a great way to share your brand’s story and connect with potential customers. By posting regular updates, you can keep your followers engaged and build interest in your products or services - try to make a habit of doing some work on pins at least once each week.
In addition, Pinterest provides a number of tools that make it easy to track your progress and measure your success. For example, the “pinsights” feature gives you detailed insights into the performance of your pins, and the “pin it” button lets people quickly add your content to their boards. Make sure you are regularly reviewing your performance and tweaking where necessary.
By making the most of these tools, you can ensure that your brand gets the exposure it deserves on Pinterest.
