Create Your Profile

Lesson 3 Section 2

Personal Or Business

Using the right profile type is the first step to a proper foundation for your Pinterest account. Defining your position and what you are trying to get across makes it a much easier decision whether to share or not share information. It either fits into your image or it doesn't. The people that benefit the most (lovers of your blog, list members, buyers of your products, clients) will be able to find your profile.

Pinterest traffic is high-quality traffic because those pinners aren’t just browsing, they’re researching and looking for all the pins they can find on whatever subject they’re interested in. Setting up your profile to appeal to your ideal audience helps to ensure they will find you, pin your content, and click through to your website.

Lesson 2 Video 1

Lesson 2 Video 2

Lesson 2 Video 3

PRO TIP: A personal Pinterest profile will leave you at a disadvantage as a brand. You must have a business account to access vital aspects of Pinterest marketing, such as Analytics, Promoted Pins, and Rich Pins. You can keep your personal profile or get a separate business one, or you can modify your personal account into a business one.

Create A Business Profile

Having one gives you the additional ability to:

Sign up with your business name
Extensive analytics
Access To Rich & Promoted Pins (next modules)
It assigns you as the content creator to all Pins that you save from your site.
It adds your icon from your account on every one of your Pins.

Setting up a business account

If you have a personal account, log out of it
Go to Pinterest for Business and click Join as a Business
Fill out details about your business and the person who'll manage the account
Read and accept their Business Terms of Service and click Create Account

Converting your personal account to a business account

Log into your account
Go to Pinterest for Business
Click Convert now
Fill out your information and click Convert

Make sure your Pinterest username matches the rest of your social media

It's important that your usernames match across all of your social media accounts because this makes it easier for you to tell people where to find you and easier for your audience to seek you out. On Pinterest I am @ecommerce-optimizer, you can find me everywhere else at that name too. Choosing something that is similar to your URL, easy to remember, and easy to say will work well, just make sure you consistently use it across the different sites and platforms.

You can also add a short tagline to the end of your business name to help users understand what you’re all about. Make good use of a high-value KW phrase

PRO TIP: Pinterest is a text-based, visual search engine that’s used as social media. The search capability is unlike any other social media platform.

Long-tailed keywords are a vital part of setting up and maintaining your account to its' fullest potential. Use them in your profile, board descriptions, pin descriptions, and Promoted Pins.

In your specific Pin descriptions, use a combination of broad and narrow targeted keyword phrases. This will appeal to a larger relevant audience.

Claim Your Website

To verify your website’s authenticity you can claim the website. When you do so, your profile picture will show up next to any Pins that come from your site, and a small globe icon will appear to the left of your website’s URL on your profile. You’ll also get access to website analytics for insight into what content your audience saves the most. Claiming Your Website Instructions

You can claim websites you own. To claim your website, you’ll need to add a meta tag or upload an HTML file to your website’s HTML code.

2018 Update

Recently, Pinterest made a concession to content creators without a website. Now you can also claim your account and tie it to an Instagram, Etsy, or YouTube account. So if you are one of those sellers with no website this is your chance to get a Pinterest business account which will raise your status and authority on Pinterest. Connect your Instagram, Etsy or YouTube account here.

Pay attention to these modules though because you still need to produce valuable content.

Learn more about claimed account analytics.

Enable Rich Pins

Rich Pins allows you to add extra information to your post, including price and seller information. Shopify is automatically set up to be able to use Rich Pins.This means you only have to enable them on Pinterest. To do this, follow these steps:

Copy and paste a specific product URL into Pinterest’s Rich Pin Validator.
Add .oembed to the end of the URL.
Click validate and then click apply.
Rich Pins will be enabled within 24 hours.

Pinterest Tool: Rich Pin Validator

Always Use Keywords And Proper SEO

Any site that allows you to have a profile and/or bio is giving you a gift. These large sites are considered Authoritative by Google. Therefore, any link to your site or product pages is seen as a high-quality backlink.

Always start your profile off with the URL that you want to benefit the most from the link, followed by a well thought out position statement utilizing your best kw phrases when appropriate. Populate your profile, tell people what you pin about and how your information will benefit them.

Include keywords relevant to your niche because this will show up in search results. If you are not sure what keywords to include, use the search feature on Pinterest, which will pull up the most popular search terms for your niche. Using long-tailed keyword phrases on Pinterest is very helpful as their system clearly utilizes long-tail and recognizes it.

Make use of tools such as the Pinterest Keyword Finder Tool which is a free chrome plugin to assist your keyword research.

Pinterest Tool:Keyword Finder Tool

If there’s space, you might also include the link to a Lead Magnet/Opt-in Form (a landing page with worksheets, a workbook, or a free course), taking advantage of the opportunity to build your list.

PRO TIP: What does the smart marketer do with a site like Pinterest to benefit everything else you do online? Consider Pinterest your newest tool in Keyword research. These are searches performed by people interested in your product searching you out. That would be your exact target buyer.

Proper monitoring of your category could alert you to new trends. Lets say you wanted to do a holiday sale so choose the holiday as the board topic. Just keep in mind that it takes a little time to gain traction, meaning dont post something on Wednesday for a Saturday sale. Give it at least a week.

Build Trust

Build trust with your audience by adding add a photo of your face instead of your logo as your profile image. Why your face and not your logo? Because people will connect more with YOU than they will with a blog or brand. There are tons of people and brands that blog, but there’s only one YOU, and that will help you be more memorable and stand out.

Think about all of your favorite people to follow online, the ones that make you really excited to see an update from - you know what they look like, right? I am my brand. I've built my brand and business around the trust and reputation that my results have established. Users see your logo everywhere else. Give them the opportunity to connect with you and tie the brand to you here.

PRO TIP: Pinterest for business has some rules that are specific and somewhat different than other platforms. The Acceptable Use Policy and Pin Etiquette Policy have not changed, but there are specific guidelines for commercial use:

Don’t promote spam, “asking participants to comment repeatedly.”
Don’t “run a sweepstakes where each pin, repin, or like represents an entry. [or] ask pinners to vote with a repin.”
Don’t run contests, sweepstakes or promotions “too often.”
Don’t “suggest that Pinterest sponsors or endorses” your business.

Make Your Personal Boards Secret

Pinning to lots of unrelated boards will leave your profile looking cluttered, confusing, and can lead to people following only a couple boards instead of everything in your profile.

If you are turning a personal account into a business or blog account, you may want to make some of your boards secrets. (Click Edit on your boards.)

If it isn't relevant to the message and goals established earlier, it doesn't really belong in the public. Unless you are trying to add some personality to your exposure. You can, of course, keep a handful of non-biz/blog-related boards to help show off your personality and style, but make sure they align with your overall brand message (aka what do you want to be known for?).

Optimizing For Brand Exposure

The majority of engagement takes place in the discovery areas of Pinterest. Board covers are nice but spend more attention on optimizing your Pins. However, as part of your initial setup, it is smart to theme your products and profile. We suggest picking a theme color that compliments your business colors and creating a quick standard template to use as boards covers

Pinterest doesn’t really have any design features, but you can integrate your brand into your boards by adjusting the covers. This ensures that your brand is tied to interactions whether you are online or not. You can adjust covers by going into your profile, clicking Edit on a board, and then click Change next to Cover.

Theming Your Boards

Choose a set of board covers that all use the same colors. If your brand is loaded with a specific color, use images that include this as a dominant color. Here Better Homes and Gardens chose to go with fall colors in the top row. While the second row uses branded images although they did not size them correctly

You can create board covers with the board title on them (then just link the pin to that board). Forever 21 does a fine job of this in the third row. The final row is a great example of using images that are too dense and make it look cluttered.

Pinterest Business Accounts Also Get Analytics Access

Pinterest analytics will tell you about your follower count and whether it is growing. Also reveals which pins get the most pins and clicks, search engine ranking of pins, and the best performing boards. If you already have a business account, you can see your stats at

Monthly viewers are all people who see your Pin. Engaged viewers are those who closeup, save, or click. The sum of all unique users who take one of those actions.

Recap:

Before moving on to the next Lesson, take some time while reviewing this module to set up your Pinterest Business account. Claim your website and get the base structure of your profile set-up. Use the completed worksheet from the first lesson as a guide. Don't write out your description, board titles or any of that yet. We will cover that in another lesson.

The worksheet for Lesson 3 is attached. The purpose of the workshops are for you to walk away with actionable direction. Make use of all worksheets using your categories as your example. Lesson 3 covers all of the different components that make up Pinterest.

The worksheet instructs you to find the best of each component among your competitors. We have not reviewed what makes each component the best it can be. Utilize this worksheet over the next few lessons as you learn how to make best use of each part. The goal being that as you finish you have a clear goal of exactly what you need to do, how, and at what level to dominate your niche on Pintertest and drive Free traffic.