Pinterest Account Setup
Want to learn how to set up your Pinterest account? Or are you looking to clean it up so that it’s optimized for your business?
If your Pinterest Business account isn’t strategically set up for success, then you are missing out on traffic, ability to reach a global audience with your content, leads, and sales which means you’re leaving money on the table! 💸
P.s. Check out related and latest posts while you read.
P.P.s. If you would like to share this post on Pinterest, there are perfect pinnable images at the bottom of the post.
P.P.P.s. This post may contain Affiliate links. At no extra cost to you, I earn a little commission if you purchase an item through my link. Please Read my full Disclosure.
Now more than ever, your visibility online is very crucial to your business success. So, if you’re not using Pinterest in a strategic way to market your digital content, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Sounds harsh, but it’s true because I’ve seen it first hand.
Right now, so many bloggers and business owners are saying “if only I started a year ago, I would be in a different situation”.
In this post, I show you how to set up your Pinterest Account for success.
If you are just starting out on Pinterest and you don’t yet know how you can benefit from the platform or you are wondering what all the Pinterest terminologies (pin, repin, etc) you’ve been hearing mean, go over and read Pinterest 101: How Pinterest works.
Here’s the exact process I go through to set up my client’s account as a Pinterest Manager – usually completed within a week.
How To Set Up Your Pinterest Account For Success
CREATE THE ACCOUNT
If my client is brand new to Pinterest I’ll set up a business account for them using their email address and password. I’ll also ensure their website is claimed and that rich pins are enabled.
Claiming your website:
is an important step because your URL will become clickable and people will be able to go directly to your website!
You’ll see an icon like this:
You’ll also get access to Analytics from your website. Click here for instructions to claim your website.
Scroll down and choose your platform for specific instructions.
What are rich pins?
A Rich Pin is a type of pin that gives information to Pinterest about your website.
They’re very important to optimize your profile for search results. They make your blog title and your meta description searchable on Pinterest, which also leads to more engagement on the platform.
I’m going to show you a very simple method to enable rich pins on WordPress and Squarespace.
WORDPRESS
In order to get rich pins, you need to have the Yoast SEO plugin: there’s a free version available.
- Go to the backend of your WordPress Site and click on SEO (on the left), then go to ‘social’ and then to ‘Facebook’, make sure that ‘Add Open Graph meta data’ is enabled, and save changes.
- Open your Pinterest account, and in a separate window open the rich pin validator, and enter a page with metadata (a blog post is fine!) and click ‘Validate’.
- A box should appear and say that your pins have been validated. Confirm your URL, choose the HTML tag option and click ‘Apply Now’.
- Now you only have to wait for the confirmation email from Pinterest, it usually arrives before 24 hours!
SQUARESPACE
- Make sure you have connected your Squarespace site with Pinterest: go to the backend of Squarespace, Settings, Connected Accounts and connect Pinterest. Make sure you’ve installed the ‘save’ button on your website. Go to Squarespace, Marketing, Pinterest Save Buttons and enable them.
- Open your Pinterest account, and in a separate window open the rich pin validator, and enter a page with metadata (a blog post is fine!) and click ‘Validate’.
- A box should appear and say that your pins have been validated.
- Confirm your URL and choose the HTML tag option and click ‘Apply Now’.
- Now you only have to wait for the confirmation email from Pinterest, it usually arrives before 24 hours!
Congratulations! Now you have Rich Pins 🙂
Or
SWITCH TO BUSINESS ACCOUNT
If you’re a business, you need to have a Business Account: it will give you access to Analytics, Pinterest Ads and also, it’s required by Pinterest!
If you already have a personal account, simply go to settings > account settings and click on convert account.
Should you use your existing account or create a new one?
It all depends on the content you have. Are your existing boards relevant to your ideal audience? If you have relevant content, simply switch to a business account and make sure to make secret the boards that are not related to your content or are not relevant to your audience.
If your current personal account has nothing or little to do with your business, go and create a business account from scratch
DETERMINE WHO YOU WANT TO TARGET ON PINTEREST
This is such an important step in my onboarding process!
Who do you want to target on Pinterest? What do you want to achieve? Who is your ideal client or audience?
These factors determine the keywords you’ll use, the boards you’ll create and the content you’ll share.
Remember that most people come to Pinterest looking for something specific (a gift for someone or how to be more productive), so you must take into account SEO: search engine optimization, which is all about using the keywords that your ideal client is actually looking for. You don’t need something fancy, only what works.
HOW TO FIND THE BEST KEYWORDS FOR YOUR NICHE
The beauty of Pinterest is that the own platform gives you the answer! Yes, on the search bar on your Pinterest home, you can type in a word and see what appears. So, for example, let’s say you’re a baker or cake blogger and you’re selling online courses about cake decorating for beginners, baking tutorial for beginners.
Just type in ‘cake decorating’ in the search bar and you’ll see what people are looking for! I wouldn’t use only ‘cakes’ because it’s too broad.
The words that appear in the predictive search are those that people are actually typing in! This is great information because now you know which keywords you should use and also it’s so important to take this data into account for content creation!
When you press enter on the search bar, a series of tiles will appear below, just like this:
It’s important to know that the keywords in the tiles appear in order of search results.
Now you can use this information to create long-tail keywords, for example:
- Simple Chocolate cake recipes for beginners
- Easter Cake Ideas
- Piping for beginners
- Cake decorating techniques
- Easy Birthday cake ideas
So now you could create a board called ‘Cake decorating for beginners’, another good one could be ‘Piping for beginners’ and so on.
IMPORTANT NOTE: only choose the keywords that apply to your own content. Boards names are not the only place where you should include your keywords
CREATE A KEYWORD RICH PROFILE NAME
On Pinterest, profile names usually have keywords added to them.
Make sure you’re using relevant keywords in your profile name.
Not enough space? Change it on your mobile (on desktop you can’t enter more than 30 characters).
Here are a few examples:
You get the picture!
CREATE A KEYWORD RICH PROFILE DESCRIPTION
Now you’ll want to add those keywords into your profile description as well while speaking directly to your ideal audience or customers.
An easy formula for creating your profile description is I/We + what you do + for who. Be sure to make it keyword rich!
Bonus points if you add a call to action with a link. For some reason people want to be told what to do, so adding this in your description really reminds viewers what you are offering. Try something like “Grab my Free: link here” or “Find out more here: link here”. This a specific link for a freebie or your services, rather than your homepage.
Here’s an example;
CREATE YOUR BOARDS
I like to start off with 20-50 boards.
Your first board should be specially asigned for your own content (e.g: Best of ….(your blog/business name). This is the first board people see when they land on your Pinterest profile. So it needs to have only your content in it as it makes it easy for people to find your pins.
Then proceed to create other boards based on your blog’s categories or topics you’ve blogged about and have content for: E.g: the baking & cake blog can have: Cake Ideas, Cake decorating for beginners, Cake recipes, Wedding cake ideas, Birthday cake ideas, Pastries, Desserts, Baking tutorials, Cake business tips, Baking hacks etc.
A travel blogger might create other boards that are locations they have blogged about and have content for: a Middleeast Asia board, Africa board, Europe board, and so on.
Obviously keywords are always important – instead of having a board called “Middleeast Asia” you could name it “Middleeast Asia Travel” or even more specific “Budget Middleeast Asia Travel”. We could even create more location-specific boards based on countries.
We’d also think of the content they’re creating – lots of backpacking? Backpacking board! What about luxury travel or traveling with kids? Volunteering around the world? The list is endless.
When you’re pinning your own content to boards, its a general rule that you’ll want each pin to go to five different and relevant boards. So keep this in mind when planning your boards. A product pin of a Brand T-shirt could go to the following boards: The Wholehearted Grind T-shirts, Printed T-shirts, Summer Fashion, Outdoor Wear, The Wholehearted Clothing Outfits.
Once you’ve created these content specific boards you’ll then branch out to topics that your audience might be interested in but you don’t necessarily have any content on your site related to it.
Perhaps the cake blogger could create a: Gift for Bakers, Cake/Food photography tips, Kitchen Organizing, etc. boards even though she doesn’t have posts about these topics yet, but she knows people interested in her content would be interested in these topics too.
Think about how your audience could “accidentally” stumble across your account through another topic or trending keyword.
If your boards are about too many topics, it won’t be clear to the algorithm what your business is about and the people you’re serving.
Don’t delete any boards, otherwise, you’ll lose followers! You can just ‘Archive’ them or make them ‘Secret’
Include keywords in your board name (long-tail keywords work better than short keywords). Don’t use fancy names, remember that clarity beats cleverness! These are some of my boards:
EDIT YOUR BOARD DESCRIPTIONS
First, make sure your board has a category selected. Next write a few well thought out, keyword rich descriptions. Search for the most popular keywords related to the board and then add as many as possible into your description without slamming them in there. Next, add your call to action and a link to your site.
Use a combination of sentences and long-tail keywords: in this way, Pinterest will know very easily what this board is about!
Lastly, go ahead and add some hashtags. I always add the first hashtag as the name of the website or brand or client, mine would be #wholeheartedlygrace. I’ll also add a few other hashtags for searches I’d like to target on Pinterest like #pinteresttips #pinterestmanager #pinterestmarketing #pinterestexpert
FILL YOUR BOARDS
At this point, I “fill” the boards with pins which translates to 50 pins in each board. The reason why we’re creating 20-50 boards and filling them with pins is so when a viewer gets to your profile, it’ll look complete and professional. Usually, I work on creating a good balance between the client’s content and a few repins but for this initial stage I focus on repining content so the account gets built.
This is a good strategy for when you’ve just created an account and don’t have a lot of followers, so you won’t be spamming anyone with all of the pinning you’re doing. However, if you already have a following and are cleaning up you’re account go easy on just pinning a mass amount. Rather space out your manual pinning or schedule it using Tailwind – your followers will thank you!
A note on pin descriptions: If you’re uploading your own content pins or perhaps a pin doesn’t have a description, you’ll be using a similar strategy to when writing board descriptions. Use your keywords in a well thought out sentence, add a call to action with the link followed by your hashtags.
FOLLOWERS
Throughout the week I’ll also research and follow a rough total of 100 influencers in the client’s niche. This doesn’t have to be a direct competitor but rather accounts with similar interests. Their content and content like this will show up in your home feed and tell Pinterest where your interests lie.
Many accounts are being suspended lately so be sure to do your following over a few days, you don’t want to be caught for spam.
And that’s it, folks. Everything I do to set up a Pinterest business account for my clients within a week 🎉 If you have a question or loved this post, let me know in the comment section below 👇
Sound good but want to get it done without the hassle?
Sign up for my Live Workshop and watch me do this live on a client’s account.
Check out my expert Pinterest Services to find out how I can help you – I’d love to hear from you and work on creating a profitable Pinterest presence for your biz!
Check out my Pinterest live course and sign up if you want to learn more about Pinterest and leverage it to grow your blog and business without hiring a third party.
Hey,
Pinterest works best for bloggers or businesses with blogs. Do you have a blog? If you are looking to get started with your blog, I believe the posts below might be of help:
- Why you should start a blog
- The actual cost of starting a blog
- How to choose a niche for your blog
If you need something more personal, sign up for my blogging course for new bloggers and get access to my 1-1 coaching offered for free as part of the course.
Hey, Thank you for reading this post!
Would you mind sharing on Pinterest so others can see it too?
Pin any or all of the images below
Thank you for sharing this post. It means a lot!!
