Pinterest - The Basics

If you're following our insta, you probably know we've been really into Pinterest lately. For a long time, I had no idea how to use Pinterest. I was always super confused and overwhelmed. I didn't really know what Pinterest was or how to use it to benefit us and drive traffic to our Etsy.

I've had many people tell me that the best way to drive traffic to our shop was through Pinterest, and after a while, I decided to give it a second try. Before diving in, I did some research on using Pinterest for Etsy sellers. After a little research, I created an account and started pinning. In just a few weeks, we had a few thousand monthly viewers. Now, we have over 5 thousand!

There is no doubt Pinterest can be confusing, but it can drive amazing results! If you're lost or overwhelmed by Pinterest, keep reading to find out how to set up the foundations of a successful Pinterest account.

First off, you are going to want to create a business account. This gives you access to insights such as monthly viewers, etc.

Once you have an account, the next step is to set up your profile. There are a few things you should be sure to add:

1. Your profile photo. I would recommend this be your logo or a picture of your face. This makes your brand recognizable, so if an Instagram follower stumbles upon your Pinterest, they know it is you.

2. Your name. Add your name or brand name (obviously)

3. Fill in the about your profile section. This is like your instagram bio. Here, tell people who you are, what you sell, and what your brand values are.

Those are the basics! Now you can start pinning!

Your main question probably is, What do I pin?!! It can be super confusing what you are supposed to pin when you are starting out in Pinterest. I'm going to explain the organization of Pinterest before giving you some ideas of what to pin.

As you may have noticed, pins on Pinterest are organized into boards. Boards are basically a collection of pins! When you are starting out, you want to think about your target customer and what kind of boards they are interested in.

For example, if you are a jewelry shop selling hypoallergenic jewelry, your target customers are probably teen girls and women. Some examples for boards you can have are Necklaces, Rings, Charms, Models, etc.

Once you have a few boards set up, you are going to save some pins from other creators to those boards. It's good to have about 80 percent of the pins on your board be from other creators. Now onto making your own pins:

If 80 percent of pins on your boards are from other creators, that leaves 20 percent of your pins to come from you!

If you have an Etsy shop, I would start pinning from there. If you click on one of your product listings and then click share, you can save it straight to Pinterest. Etsy will ask you to choose a board to save it to, and you should choose the board that is most relevant to the product.

I would recommend saving all of your Etsy listings to Pinterest. Once you do that, there's a wide variety of there pins you can make!

Here are a few ideas:

1. Pin your instagram posts! You can pin both feed posts and reels! We have a board dedicated to our reels.

2. Pin product photos. You probably have tons of product photos that never made it to Instagram, Etsy, or your website. Pin them on Pinterest and link the pin to wherever the product is sold!

3. Pin helpful content. Use Canva to create a poster where you share something valuable, then pin it!

Once you've set up your Pinterest with a good number of pins, you can sit back and watch you monthly views go up and up! You'll also see more traffic coming to your shop from Pinterest!

As I mentioned before, these are just the basics. We'll have more posts in the future about how you can really make Pinterest work for you, like using group boards and understanding your analytics.

Stay tuned!!