 Welcome to the journey. Today we're going to give you the ultimate guide to using Pinterest for your business. Already be a fan of Pinterest in your personal life. I know I am enjoying the pretty photos and getting plenty of DIY inspiration from the platform or fashion tips. But if you're watching this video you probably realize it's power as a visual search engine that can be used to grow your business. And though Pinterest for business is different from Pinterest for personal use, it's still user-friendly. And once you fully learn how to use Pinterest for business and implement all the Pinterest for business tips and tricks, hey, you'll truly understand the power of the platform. So let's start off with why businesses use Pinterest and it got a little statistic here for you. With over 320 million monthly users, Pinterest isn't the largest social site out there. However, it's continuing to grow quickly, increasing its active user base by 26% in the last year alone. Hey, that's impressive. And Pinterest is unique in the way it seems to walk the line between being a social network and a search engine. So naturally. It sees two billion monthly searches. Holy smokes. That's a lot. Well, that's less than Google's a hundred billion monthly searches and bings more than 11 billion. It's pretty significant, right? And unlike users of most other social platforms, those on Pinterest often use a site with a shopper's mentality in mind. And part of the reason that users approach the site with this particular mindset is because it's organized like an online catalog. And the results are staggering. 97% of people say that they use interest to plan their purchases and 87% of pinners purchase something because of Pinterest. But let's talk about how to get started with Pinterest. And that starts with setting up a Pinterest business account. This is the first step to using Pinterest to connect your brand to new and loyal customers. And that's just to set up that business account. And you can do this three different ways, depending on how involved you've been with interest, either adding a business profile to your personal account, converting your personal account, or signing up for a business account. No matter which way you go about it, the steps involved are the same. So let's talk about creating Pinterest boards after signing up for an account. The next step to using Pinterest for your business is to create some boards. And these are where you save, collect, and organize your pins, which is great. And you can do this from your profile. Just enter the name of your board in a short description regarding what it will contain. And don't forget to choose a category for the board and that'll help with your SEO. And to be effective, you're going to want to create 20 to 25 boards from the get go. And the key to success here is relevance. Don't create boards sharing recipes if your brand is nothing to do with food. Your audience will wonder about the connection or lack thereof. And once you have your board set up, it's time to create your first pins. And you can choose from three different ways to add new pins. You can either upload a photo, enter a link to a website, or use the Pinterest pin it button. And if there's a photo you want to use as a pin saved on your computer, it's easy enough to quickly upload it to a board. And once it's uploaded, you can add the photo in the pin editor, then enter a destination link within the given field. This is where people will be directed when they click on the pin. And if you're pinning something from a website, drop in the link and Pinterest will grab the image for you. Ideally use photos that represent the recommended Pinterest image size, which is between 600 and 735 pixels wide with a two to by three aspect ratio. Good to know photos with the landscape orientation don't perform as well on Pinterest. By installing the Pinterest pin it button on your browser, you can make this process super easy. When you click on it, the button will automatically select the images on the page that you want to pin from. Then all you have to do is pick the image that you want, add a title and description if they don't automatically generate and pin it on your selected board. And no matter how you create your pin, you want to optimize the title and description with relevant keywords and related hashtags. You should aim to have at least 25 pins per board from the get go and then keep adding to it on a regular basis. Yeah, and add a custom board cover photo. At this point, you may want to upload a custom board cover photo and Pinterest also offers the option automatically generate board cover photos based on recent pins. And to set a custom board cover photo, note that you can choose from your existing pins or upload a new photo or video, but only business accounts can upload videos to their board covers. Now that we know how to get started, let's discuss some of the best practices for pinning, such as how often should you pin? Now at a bare minimum, you want to pin at least once a day. Pinterest rewards consistency with greater reach. Don't worry about overwhelming your followers than avalanche of pins. Pinterest smart feet, algorithm shuffle things around. Though one pin a day might check the activity box. In reality, you're going to want to aim for pinning or repinning 20 plus pins per day spreading out across your various boards. Yeah, most brands opt for 80% repins and 20% of their own content while others do the opposite. And you'll need to play around with this ratio to figure out what you can keep up with in the way of content generation and what resonates best with your target market. Now I am a fan of tools. If you give me a new tool, I'm going to test it out and try it, but these scheduling tools such as tailwind, viral tag and buffer make it possible to plan out your pins without having to be glued to your computer all the time. So when scheduling posts, don't forget to check out the best times to post on Pinterest, really just to help maximize that engagement. So you might be wondering, how can you get more eyes on your pins? As with SEO for Google, you'll want to be savvy with your use of keyword rich titles and descriptions. And hey, don't forget to add a call to pin or call action as part of your description. Doing so can increase engagement by 80%. Now, how do you maintain your Pinterest boards? Well, your business's Pinterest board should relate to your business in some way. These boards should also be optimized with keyword rich names and descriptions and all the pins should fall within that category and topic. And it's not enough to simply keep piling content onto your Pinterest boards should aim to do an audit of your board at least once a year just to make sure the content there is still relevant. Yeah, that's great advice. And part of maintaining your boards is arranging them. Those that deal with your website's main content should be at the top while boards with content that generates a lot of repinning or click-throughs should come next. And the one major exception to those general rules is seasonal relevant boards. So you'll want to keep them at the top at the right time a year and bury it at the bottom the rest of the time. On the surface, creating and maintaining a Pinterest for business account is a fun exercise in visual creativity. However, you also have to be willing to put in the hard work to optimize your content and really ensure that your audience is growing and interacting with your pins. Of course, if you follow these Pinterest for business tips, you'll reap the rewards of your hard work. Just don't forget that the work doesn't end once you start getting traction. Maintaining your Pinterest account is an ongoing process. And hey, it's not enough to pin. You need to promote your best pins, respond to pinners when they engage with you, maintain and update your boards and measure your performance to fully access the potential of the highly visual platform. All right, that's a wrap. We just took you through the ultimate guide to using Pinterest for your business. Be sure to comment below and don't forget to subscribe to our channel. While you're there, make sure you ring that bell so you get these episodes first. This is the journey. We'll see you next time.