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Nov 2, 2022

BEAM - How to use Pinterest for Business

Updated: Oct 10, 2023

As well as being a social media platform, Pinterest describes itself as a ‘visual discovery engine' making it the perfect place for browsing for inspiration and ideas on themes as wide-ranging as interior home projects to fitness and recipes!


Even if you are already a pinner, using Pinterest for your business can have huge gains, from raising brand awareness to selling your products. In this post, we’ll tell you everything you need to know from set up to important details that can maximise the potential of your lampshade making business.


How big is Pinterest?

Pinterest has 459 million active users and is unique in the sense that Pinterest users are already in ‘search mode’, collating images, ideas and inspiration around their passions, hobbies or projects.


More recently, Pinterest has become a giant player in online shopping and data now suggests that 47% of users are visiting to shop rather than search for ideas, emphasising the benefits of having a Pinterest business profile.


What are the benefits of using Pinterest for business?

As well as being free Pinterest is essentially a HUGE visual search engine. Making it easy to link your external site to your pins, it’s very easy to drive traffic to your website and as pinners pin your pins to their boards, this creates a more significant brand exposure, that is naturally organic.


Although not as large as Instagram or Facebook, Pinterest is still incredibly viable for both extending the reach of your lampshade products with 85% of pinners saying that Pinterest is their go-to platform when starting a new project* and with the majority of Pinterest users say they’ve used the platform to find inspiration for home projects over other hobbies and interests**. As a lampshade maker, these facts are hard to ignore and make Pinterest a viable platform to showcase your lampshades.

* Pinterest Audience, ** Global Web Index

How easy is it to set up?

There are three options for setting up a business account on Pinterest:

  • Converting your existing personal account to a Business Account

  • Setting up a Business Account from scratch

  • Adding a Business account to your personal account

Each is free and fairly easy to set up with guidance supplied by Pinterest. It’s worth noting that if you are converting from a personal account to a Business account, you can still pin personally, but may want to consider using ‘private boards’ so as not to dilute your brand.


What do I need to know about getting started on Pinterest?

Pinterest is all about creating engaging pins that users can add to their boards. A pin is the equivalent of a post, on say Facebook and Instagram, but heavily relies on the visual element and needs good SEO-enabled copy (more about this later).


Here are a few Pinterest need to know when setting up your profile :

  • Reflecting your branding is key, across any social media platform, so lead with your branding in the given image slots.

  • Write your profile description ensuring it says what you do and what your lampshade making specialisms are. The copy will ideally be SEO optimised, including your website address and contact email in case of any queries.

  • Most users access Pinterest on their phones so vertical imagery is good, ideally in a 2:3 aspect ratio

  • Include a link when creating a pin, either to your website, product page or blog post, making sure users can find you.

  • Write a list of the boards that relate to your products and services and then work out what existing images you can use from your website and other social media platforms.

  • Aim for 6-10 boards and focus on populating these with pins, before adding anymore which makes it more manageable.

  • Remember that you don’t have to use the same copy from other social media posts, and you can refresh this to fit your board themes.


What else do I need to think about when creating Pinterest boards?

As a lampshade maker, and in any business for that matter, you’ll need to focus on your business’s niche, which means creating specific boards to add your pins. There are two types of boards with your profile; ‘Created’ and ‘Saved’.

  • ‘Created’ boards will show your created content, for example, any pins that come directly from your website, other social media platforms or blog.

  • ‘Saved’ boards are inspirational boards that you build using pins from other accounts. Having a strategy for saved boards, is worth it, as these will inspire potential customers and invite them to buy.

A mix of product and inspirational 'Saved' boards can help to reflect your niche. Product boards need to be titled in line with your products, so for example you could create a board called 'Double-sided Drum Lampshades' or 'Handmade Disney Character Drum Lampshades'. Inspirational boards such as ‘Drum Lampshade Styling’ could picture a drum lampshade pictured in situ, in either styled shots or customer's homes, which will help buyers visualise how a lampshade could look in their home. Once your happy, there is nothing to stop you from resaving a few pins between the boards for cross-pollination.


Pinning other people's pins to your board should say something about your own brand, so for example if you specialise in tropical fabric lampshades, pin interiors that include tropical vibes, a range of green colours, natural furniture and accessories. The same could be said if you make lampshades for nurseries – you could include inspirational pins for DIY nursery projects or cute bedding, that will compliment your lampshade. Remember Pinterest is all about ideas and inspiration and is the key to putting together buyer-friendly ‘Saved’ boards.


How does SEO work for Pinterest?

Pinterest, like Google, needs detectable keywords to be written in the copy, in your pin and board titles and hashtags, in order to match a pin or board to the user's search terms.


Understanding what users search for is a fairly simple exercise on Pinterest and by transferring the tips for Google in our BEAM blog post on How to use SEO Keywords for your Online Shop, but instead using the Pinterest Search bar, should give you a list that you can incorporate into your copy.


How can I measure success?

Pinterest Analytics is a bespoke tool for measuring engagement across your boards and pins, with metrics such as:

  • Impressions - how many times your pins appear on a user’s screen),

  • Engagements - the total number of times someone has clicked or saved your pin

  • Pin clicks - total number of clicks of your pin

Where can I get inspiration?

We're always learning too, so recently we've reorganised and refined our own Pinterest profile, to reflect our niche ‘lampshade making kits and supplies’, by retitling our Pinterest boards, rewriting the descriptions, checking the quality of our content and adding extra pins. Please take a look at our Dannells Pinterest profile here.


Insider information

Rich Pins, specifically the 'Product Rich Pins' for lampshade makers allow Pinterest to pull extra information using the meta tags on your website. This results in increased searchability for your products and you can read more about how to use Rich Pins in this article from Sprout Social - https://sproutsocial.com/glossary/rich-pin/


Idea pins are Pinterest’s version of Stories which have gained huge popularity on Ingram and allow users to import or build videos from scratch using video and photo content, with a range of editing tools and options. If you already use reels LINK then the Idea Pin allows you to reuse this content for Pinterest, furthering your engagement opportunities.


Looking for Business Social Media Inspiration?

Our Business Expertise and Advice for Makers (BEAM) posts are tailored to support and help lampshade makers to improve their businesses. From using keywords to reels and selling your products through social media platforms, you can find a huge range of business-focused posts on our blog!

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