10 Pinterest Board Critiques and Best Practice Examples to Help your Business Succeed

Top 10 Pinterest Board Strategies

Sephora Stays Current with 'Trending Now' Boards

6

Etsy Stays Fresh with Guest Pinners

ELLE Creates Boards During Live Events

ArchDaily Uses Boards to Mine Customer Insights

Whole Foods uses How-to Boards to Become a Trusted Brand

Groupon Uses Boards to Inspire their Followers

Jetsetter Uses Competitions Boards to Engage their Fans

Lush Promotes their Persona with Theme Boards

London Drugs Uses Great Images to Focus on Families

Home Depot Makes it Easy to Navigate

7

10

8

9

5

3

2

1

4

ELLE Creates Boards During Live Events

1

ELLE Creates Boards During Live Events

ELLE’s strategy, of posting pictures live at their events, saw a fantastic increase on their Pinterest pages, but, perhaps more importantly, cross-platform referral traffic to their website.

How to make it work for you:Take live shots of a new product being delivered and revealed, a 5-course dinner as it comes out of your restaurant’s kitchen, or how about live pictures of your office softball game?

What I like:

• Boosting referral traffic: ELLE’s live pinning approach created a significant boost in number of pins as well as traffic to and from their website.

• Keeping Followers in their seats: Using Pinterest as, essentially, a video, kept Followers engaged as they waited to see what would come out next.

ArchDaily Uses Boards to Mine Customer Insights

2

ArchDaily Uses Boards to Mine Customer Insights

Boards can be used for so much more than pretty pictures. AchDaily used them to get an insight into their customer base: what they liked, why they liked it, and how they thought about architecture.

How to make it work for you:Take a selection of your most active Pinterest followers and spend some time following them. See what else they like or care about to give you development, product, and campaign ideas.

What I like:

• Following their Followers: ArchDaily followed many of their readers on Pinterest and began to understand what was most important to them.

• Following themselves: ArchDaily pays close attention to the pins and shares of their your own boards and changes their profile based on what's popular.

Sephora Stays Current with 'Trending Now' Boards

3

Sephora Stays Current with 'Trending Now' Boards

Sephora uses ‘Trending Now’ and ‘Most Popular Pins’ boards to keep their customers informed about their most recent, exciting, and successful products. This helps Fans know where to go for what’s hot coming out of Sephora.

How to Make it Work for You:Find those products you sell that are your hottest buys and update weekly. A ‘New-Arrivals’ board is as straightforward as they come. For non-retailers, do you have a new item on your menu, a new campaign, or a newly designed home? Include it in your ‘New Arrivals’ board.

What I like:

• Keeping Consistent: Sephora updates their boards consistently, as updating often keeps their content read, and updating in one chunk keeps it buried.

• Keeping Current: Given that 67% of Pinterest users are there to keep up with the latest trends, keeping boards current is vital on Pinterest

Top Tip #1

Pinterest’s rich product pins are a new development great for retailers. They allow you to show real-time pricing and availability information on each pin. You can also attach a link back to your company’s website - basically all the information a customer needs before they buy. Also remember, Pinterest pins with prices get 36% more likes than those without!

1

Etsy Stays Fresh with Guest Pinners

4

Etsy Stays Fresh with Guest Pinners

Etsy uses guest pinners to bring fresh perspective to their boards. This is a great way to avoid a boring Pinterest account. Bringing in guest pinners also makes the Etsy brand appear more approachable and focused on its customers.

How to make it work for you:Ask your followers to take inspired or creative pictures of your products (based on a theme, perhaps): a sexy high-heel against a grungy downtown club, a romantic dinner for two on your restaurant’s terrace. Reward your favorites with a coupon and use the runners-up as great content.

What I like:

• Switching it up: Etsy’s Guest Pinner program brings in different points of view and engages their community in content-sharing.

• Keeping it Updated: Guest Pinners also bring fresh perspectives to Etsy’s boards and keep them updated consistently, taking the load off their social media executives.

Whole Foods uses How-to Boards to Become a Trusted Brand

55

Whole Foods uses How-to Boards to Become a Trusted Brand

Whole Foods has done a great job of becoming one of the go-to companies on Pinterest for Food Tips and Tricks. This strategy not only provides great content on Pinterest, it also creates all-important brand trust.

How to make it work for you:Whether it’s fashion tips, healthy recipes or weekly coupons, your business has something to offer. Establish yourself through Pinterest as a go-to source for advice and something beneficial and see your sales go up as well.

What I like:

• The Stats: Whole Foods' 'Food Tips and Tricks’ board has almost 4000 pins and 13,600 followers, making it their most successful.

• Ensuring their Reputation: WholeFoods knows that the next time Pinterest users think of making dinner for friends or how to keep apples from going brown in the fridge, they’ll think WholeFoods by association.

Groupon Uses Boards to Inspire their Followers

6

Groupon Uses Boards to Inspire their Followers

It’s tempting on Pinterest to post only your own products on your business’ boards. Groupon’s found success another way: posting photos of things that inspire people to buy their products.

How to make it work for you:Remember your Pinterest pictures don’t have to necessarily be your own products. Inspire them with the coolest 10 million dollar hot tub in the world, and they’ll be more likely to buy a 2000 dollar hot tub from you.

What I like:

• Knowing the Stats: Groupon has read the statistic that 70% of people use Pinterest to get inspiration for what to buy.

• Great pictures: Instead of their actual products, you’ll find beautiful pictures of exotic beaches and a woman in a spacesuit in downtown LA. Not because Groupon sells these deals, but because they inspire their customers to engage in those deals Groupon does sell.

Jetsetter Uses Competitions Boards to Engage their Fans

7

Jetsetter Uses Competitions Boards to Engage their Fans

Pinterest is a great place to run a photo contest or competition - it’s built for it! Jetsetter asked their Fans to submit theme-based photos, brought in a celebrity judge, and watched the engagement roll in.

How to make it work for you:Perhaps I’m a little biased here, but Wishpond’s Pinterest Contest App is a great way to up your company’s engagement: beautiful and customizable layouts, mobile-compatibility and a great analytic system to make sure you’re getting the most out of your contest.

What I like:

• Engaging with their Followers: Jetsetter created their ‘Jetsetter Curator’ promotion in order to engage with their online community.

• Going Big: They invited over a million of their members to create and submit boards reflecting travel destinations based on four categories: escape, adventure, style and cosmopolitan

Top Tip #2

2

Updating Pinterest consistently and often is key in captivating existing followers and generating new ones. It keeps your products and brand name at the top of your follower’s minds and feeds. This makes it more likely that when they are ready to complete a purchase, they will think of you first.

Lush Promotes their Persona with Theme Boards

8

Lush Promotes their Persona with Theme Boards

Lush's CSR work is well known, and they haven’t neglected that facet of their business on Pinterest. In fact, they’ve used it to set their company apart from other cosmetic companies. Find something in your own organization that makes you a little different, and pin it!

How to make it work for you:Pick your pinterest boards and photos with your brand persona in mind. Offering a gluten-free option at your restaurant or cafe? Be sure to hype it with a recipe and a picture. Sponsoring a t-ball team this season? Why not include some photos of the sponsored uniforms or a team photo?

What I like:

• Promoting their corporate social responsibility campaigns: Sharing images of charity work they’re doing can only increase their reputation as an ethical and responsible corporation.

• Promoting their brand persona: Boards like ‘Vegan Recipes’ engage with their followers on an individual basis, which social media users love.

London Drugs Uses Great Images to Focus on Families

9

London Drugs Uses Great Images to Focus on Families

London Drugs uses Pinterest to emphasize their family-friendly brand. (And goodness knows pictures of adorable kids never hurt in marketing).

How to make it work for you:The board pictures you choose say a lot about your business. Use them toaccentuate the most appealing characteristics of your business. Organize your boards based on the season and your most exciting new products or by different departments, projects and campaigns.

What I like:

• Pictures of Food and Kids: Pictures of food and pictures of kids are the most shared images on social media sites.

• Knowing the Stats: London Drugs knows that 80% of Pinterest followers are women, and more than 50% have children. They’ll cater to this demographic more on Pinterest than they would on, say, LinkedIn, which has a 70% male demographic.

Top Tip #3

3

Make sure all your Pinterest business profiles are optimized for search engines. Having a great set of boards and content doesn’t mean a whole lot if no one can ever find them. Go to your Pinterest account settings. In the ‘Search Privacy’ tab you will notice that you can hide your business profile from search engines like Google. If this is on, you’re going to need to turn it off.

Home Depot Makes it Easy to Navigate

10

Home Depot Makes it Easy to Navigate

Home Depot organizes their Pinterest profile like they do their stores. Their board titles are straight-forward and Fans know exactly where to find the product, or idea, they’re interested in.

How to make it work for you:7 Top Board Theme Ideas: Holidays, Back-to-school, About Us/The Team, Corporate Social Responsibility, Picnics, Extra-curricular activities, For the kids

What I like:

• Making it Easy: Home Depot keeps each of their boards focused on a single theme.

• Directing Traffic: Keeping their boards simple and to the point directs traffic towards the board that best targets Follower’s needs.

• More Boards: Theme-based boards are great as they allow you to create a new board whenever you come up with a new theme.

I hope you found this article useful, and you have a little more confidence using Pinterest for business. Remember to pay close

attention to which of your pins (and also which pins like yours) are liked and which are re-pinned to inform your content strategy. If it’s hot on

Pinterest it will probably resonate with your business community.

Thank you for viewing!

Check out blog.wishpond.com for more!

Wishpond makes it easy to run social media

marketing campaigns.Learn more at Wishpond.com