Did you know that the best social media platform to grow your audience for your wellness business is not really social media. It’s Pinterest. If you’re confused and intrigued then keep reading.
Not too long after I had started my nutrition coaching business, I was struggling to find an audience. Everyone told me I needed to be on Facebook and on Instagram. So I would post to these platforms every day.
My Instagram audience did slowly grow and I saw some engagement, but Facebook was next to useless for me. I have never been a big fan of Facebook and had very few friends on my personal page. I really only used the platform for groups.
I would check my Google analytics every day. Most days I had no one on my site, occasionally I had a few visitors. But I noticed that some of these visitors were coming from Pinterest, even when I wasn’t using the platform.
I decided to invest some time and effort and learn how to use the platform. I eventually grew my Pinterest audience so it accounts for most of my site traffic. Here are some of the things I’ve learned along the way.
Pinterest is a search engine
Pinterest is generally considered a social media platform, but it really isn’t. There isn’t much that is social about Pinterest. In fact Pinterest is defined as a search and discovery platform. People use platform to look for things, not to engage with other people.
I’ve heard Pinterest referred to as a dumb Google and in a way it is. It uses keywords in a similar way to Google, but it’s algorithm is nearly as refined as Google’s. Which is a good thing when you are trying to rank for certain key phrases.
With Google if you search for many common health related terms, then the first sites that show up are ones like Healthline, mayoclinic and webbed. It is very hard to rank for health related terms on Google.
With Pinterest, it is much easier to rank for keywords. Your competition is much lower. I was able to have a pin on the first few shown for menopause for a while.
Tips for using Pinterest
Here is a brief explanation to get you started with using Pinterest. Many experts in the wellness industry don’t use Pinterest very much and really don’t have a good handle on how to use it. I don’t claim to be an expert, but I’ve been quite successful with it myself.
Set up your profile
Make sure you set up your profile with a short description of who you help and what you do. Include a picture of yourself or your company logo.
Creating boards
As you start saving pins, you will be prompted to create boards. Your boards should be named to show what type of content is in them. Keep board names precise and don’t use cutesy names. There is more about naming boards in the keyword section.
Creating images
I’m not a graphics designer so I’m not going to go into detail about how images should look, but I will provide a few guidelines. Pinterest images should be long. A 2:3 ratio is what is preferred by Pinterest. If you use Canva, you can use the Canva Pinterest template.
Having a caption on the image helps with Pinterest. People are more likely to click your image if it has a caption that is enticing. Although script fonts look nice, Pinterest has a hard time reading these so your image may not be as easily found.
Video pins
Video pins do well on Pinterest. These can include a short clip from an exercise video, a video of part of a recipe step, or even just an animation. These do take longer to create, so you might want to wait until you are comfortable with your pinning strategy.
Using Templates
In order to keep my pins on brand and to be able to create pins quickly, I use templates. Canva has lots of options for templates. Or you can create your own. For each blog post I create a few pins. I usually use the same template for my blog post image and then include some other options for other images to be added directly to Pinterest.
Linking images
Pinterest is not like Instagram. Your image is useless if it doesn’t link to something. The most common things to link to are blog posts, podcast pages, video pages or opt in pages. You can link to products, but keep in mind that your Pinterest audience will be a cold audience and not likely to buy from the first click.
You can include the long image in your blog posts and pin directly from there or you can create an image on Pinterest and then link it to your blog post.
You don’t have to link to just your website with your images. You could also link to videos in your YouTube channel, opt in pages or sales pages. But make sure your images on not linking just to your home page. Most people are searching for more specific information than what you would provide on your home page.
Fresh content
Pinterest recently changed their algorithm (isn’t that the way with social media) to favour fresh content. For a while content creators were pinning the same pin over and over. Pinterest decided this wasn’t a good user experience and changed the algorithm so new pins will get more views. But you can create multiple pins for each piece of content and even pin the same pin to different boards to get more eyeballs on it, just don’t overdo it.
How often should you pin?
Views on this vary. If you really want Pinterest to be a big part of your traffic generating strategy, then you want to be pinning multiple times a day. This is easy to do if you have lots of content. If you have less content, you’ll have to create more pins for each post. When starting out you can also make your boards useful by pinning content from other people.
Keywords
If you search for a topic in Pinterest, you’ll notice that Pinterest breaks it down further. For instance, if I search for menopause, I’ll also see topics like symptoms, belly, hot flashes, etc. Then when you click on these you’ll likely see things broken down even further. You can use this as keyword research. Use these keywords to decide what your audience would like to hear about and what to name your boards.
Scheduling
If you are trying to post several images for each piece of content and space things out, you may find this to be too time consuming. Pinterest posts can be scheduled in a few different ways. Since you probably want to pin quite often to Pinterest, having some kind of scheduling tool is very useful.
Pinterest has a native scheduler that allows you to schedule pins out for different times or you can use a social media scheduling app like Later or Tailwind to schedule your pins. Tailwind allows you to schedule posts at a set interval to multiple boards so it really helps to save time.
A new feature of Canva, allows you to directly schedule your pins from Canva without downloading them first. I’m just trying this out so I’ll provide more information about how it works in a later blog post.
Be aware of Pinterest guidelines for health misinformation
The last thing I want to make you aware is that Pinterest like other social networks is cracking down on health misinformation. So be careful with how you caption your posts.
Summary
This guide is far from comprehensive, but it is the introduction that I wish I had when starting with Pinterest. If you want help with developing a Pinterest strategy for your wellness business, then book a free strategy call.
References:
https://louisem.com/251174/pinterest-marketing-practices