Learning how to schedule Pinterest Pins can seriously move the needle for your blog traffic and even make more sales for your business. Pinterest can be a powerful marketing tool but first you need to figure out what to Pin, how often to Pin, and how can you Pin at the best times to reach people. We’ve got you covered and even pulled in some expert, power Pinners to share some tips with you.
From Shopify on a study completed with Pinterest, “The results are in: if you sell online, you should be on Pinterest. Pinterest reins supreme in the kingdom of social commerce.
The numbers don’t lie: Pinterest can be a really powerful driver of traffic and big-ticket sales. The average order value of sales coming from Pinterest is $50 – higher than any other major social platform. Cha-ching.”
In general with all social platforms, it’s poor form to share all your own content and not share from other sources. While Pinterest isn’t a social platform, this sharing economy still applies. In short, don’t only Pin your own blog content.
When planning boards and choosing what to pin, Think beyond what you sell or the service you provide to support the lifestyle of your audience you’re hoping to reach.
Create a balanced Pinterest schedule using holiday pins and seasonal trends to boost the popularity of your active pinning and this will pay off over time as your evergreen Pinterest Pins gain traction over time. Our Pinterest Editorial Calendar can help with your planning.
This video will help with the mechanics of how to schedule Pins like a pro:
Start out with ten Pinterest boards and add ten Pins to each one to make sure you’re covering a variety of topics that relate to your main topic.
I think the amount of pins you pin per day depends on your audience and/or niche. For Social Media Examiner we schedule and pin around 20-25 pins per day because of the amount of content we have in our library. For small businesses I would start at 10 per day and then increase it until you find your ‘sweet spot’. That’s also the number I tend do for my personal account.
Test the amount of Pins that you schedule and easily add more to your Tailwind smart schedule at the optimal times.
From Shopify’s Pinterest study, “The average Pin is repinned 11 times, and 50% of a Pin’s clicks and views happen more than 3 months after inception. That’s why Rich Pins are incredibly important: the critical details about your product travel with it, and stay updated.”
How can you Pin at the best times on Pinterest
Tailwind has a fantastic Smart Schedule based on data that helps you post at the best times, when your audience is most likely to look. Because we’re an official Pinterest partner, we have special access to what helps make Pinterest most effective for Pinners like you and we’ve baked this into the Smart Schedule. Pinterest says, “Content marketing partners have great insight into what kinds of creative work best on Pinterest, so brands that start working with a content marketing partner tend to see a big jump in Pin performance.
Post at the best times with smart calendar recommendations made specifically for your Instagram account.
Automatically refine your schedule over time to ensure more people actually see your content in their feeds.
Stay organized and on track by setting a daily post frequency, and then queueing up your content days or weeks in advance.
Reliable notifications mean you can set your calendar and rest assured that our mobile app will keep you on schedule.
A final note about growing your Pinterest:
Use your other social channels to build your Pinterest
Leverage your established social channels to build your audience. Create a Pinterest call to action on your blog (add a widget to your sidebar), post about it on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, or send an email to your list. Share what type of content they’ll find and the benefit to following you. Give your community a reason to get pinning!
An Instagram feature account is a grass-roots community term used by Instagrammers for accounts that are created by sourcing content using a hashtag.
Successful feature accounts are carefully curated masterpieces honed to perfection by their account owners. Let’s look at what it takes to start and maintain a powerful Instagram feature account.
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What is a feature account?
As I mentioned above, a feature account is gallery created with a laser-focused niche. They are set up like any other Instagram account but the content is found from the Instagram community.
A few of the benefits of creating a feature account are:
Build a passionate community around your blog, brand, or idea
Craft a beautiful Instagram account without designing or taking your own photographs
Have fun sharing your passion with thousands (or more) other people
To get started on an Instagram feature account, you first need to decide on your focus and then pick a hashtag that you’ll use to create your community and find content in the future.
Once you’ve chosen your topic, do some research to see what other accounts are already opened and find a user name that matches your theme. Some accounts have branded hashtags that aren’t the same as their user name.
A branded hashtag is a hashtag that was created for a specific purpose or goal. It could be an event, like #SMMW for Social Media Marketing World or #GoPro used by the company Go Pro to curate and follow their communities posts.
The key to creating a great branded hashtag is to keep it authentic to your community and make it one that they would use on their posts.
Make it easy to spell and re-read it to make sure it doesn’t spell something accidentally.
You’ll want to research your hashtag options to see if other people are using it – you don’t want to compete for attention in a crowded hashtag hub.
You’ll want to have permission to use photos on your Instagram account that you don’t own and there’s several ways to do this. One is to put a call for posts in your Instagram bio like “use #tailwindfamily to be featured” or you could ask people to email you photos to be featured.
You can also send a direct message to them asking to feature their photo on your account. Most Instagrammers are thrilled to be featured but getting permission is still essential to stay on the right side on Instagram’s Terms of Service which state, “You represent and warrant that you own the Content posted by you on or through the Service or otherwise have the right to grant the rights and licenses set forth in these Terms of Use.”
When you post a photo on your feature account, you’ll always share the photo credit in the post and tag the photographer.
Find and schedule the User Generated Content (UGC)
With Tailwind’s in-depth hashtag research tools, you’ll be able to easily find great content to share on your account as well as monitor how well your hashtag is performing.
Looking at the popular hashtag #Flashesofdelight, they’ve had 8,992 posts in the past week with 910,402 engagement.
You can track stats like how many posts, how many unique contributors, engagement, and potential engagement. This is powerful data to take to brands when working on sponsorships and brand ambassador deals.
You can also review the trending posts in the hashtag and select which posts you’d like to share on your feature account. As a best practice, you can save this to drafts and contact the owner for permission to post on your account.
Of course, using the Tailwind Chrome extension, you can add also add posts directly from Instagram into your Tailwind Instagram feed and schedule them out over time using your smart schedule for Instagram. It couldn’t be easier to add gorgeous content to build your Instagram feature account!
Another way to grow your audience as part of a smart Instagram hashtag strategy is to find hashtags where you can be featured on their account. Instagram uses these very ideas for their own Instagram account and builds their community by featuring special content on their Instagram and in blog posts. Many feature accounts have these listed in their bio. Instagram hosts their own hashtag feature account project called Weekend Hashtag Project and the topic changes each week. Instagram’s instructions are “Weekend Hashtag Project is a series featuring designated themes and hashtags. For a chance to be featured, follow @instagramand look for a post every week announcing the latest project.”
Here are a few of our favorite feature accounts:
#PassionPassport started by @PassionPassport with 6,511,103 posts, 2,915 posted on their account
Here’s one of the gorgeous photos that @PassionPassport has featured:
A photo posted by Rescue Pets of Instagram (@rescuepetsofinstagram) on
#FlashesofDelight by 3,715,942 posts hosted by The Glitter Guide who has posted 7,768 posts. They post UGC as well as original content to their Instagram.
A photo posted by Glitter Guide (@glitterguide) on
I hope this guide to Instagram feature accounts has been helpful. What are your favorite feature accounts to follow? Questions or comments? We’d love to discuss them in the comments below.
Do you have a problem keeping your digital assets organized to post on Instagram?
Have you wondered why similar accounts have grown and your posts seem to be lacking similar engagement?
This is why you need hashtag lists for Instagram!
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How to use hashtag lists for Instagram
Many Instagrammers use pre-selected groups of hashtags for their posts which they’ll add/remove on the fly depending on the post. These hashtags are often-times researched and saved on their iPhone Notes section, email, or Evernote on their desktop computer. We’ll call these hashtag lists.
Build out groups of hashtags for different types of content that you’ll post on Instagram. Being organized will help you use hashtags consistently and bring more people to your posts on Instagram.
You can use your branded hashtags to build your community and find their posts in the future.
The hashtags are grouped by topic/niche and are typically researched ahead of time via a couple different methods:
off the top of their head
via Google search for “best hashtags in niche
seeing what other people use in their posts (eg “big brands” in their niche or friends)
Some people vet their hashtags by looking at performance on Instagram. A few things to think about:
overall media count on Instagram – if the count is extremely high then your post will likely not get seen in the mix; if the count is low then not many people are looking at this hashtag. There is no general consensus on what counts define on different ends of that spectrum.
types of media that use that hashtag – to see if the content being posted fits their niche/what they plan to be posting.
Overall, hashtag lists are not updated very often but will be used with pretty much every post made to Instagram.
How hashtags are typically added on Instagram posts
in the post caption itself either straight up at the bottom
with some additional spacing at the bottom so it’s not visible above the “read more” fold
in the first comment after the post is live
Since Instagram is all about the aesthetic, people tend to find the giant list to be ugly which is why they try to hide it via spacing or first comment. Here’s more on how and where to add Instagram hashtags.
There is a maximum of 30 hashtags available total between the post and comments. If you try to add more than 30, Instagram won’t post your caption or comment.
Instagrammers typically have about five groups of hashtags that they use on a regular basis.
Here are some frustrations many people have with hashtags
Don’t know which ones are effective – there isn’t a widely-used/definitive resource on choosing them. Or there wasn’t until Tailwind launched its Instagram Hashtag Finder which suggests related hashtags categorized by “Good”, “Best”, “Niche” and “Competitive”.
The number of hashtags is a personal choice – if you have an account under 1,000 followers, you’ll probably want to max out your hashtags at thirty so you can grow.
91% of posts by top brands have seven or fewer hashtags but they’ve already made a considerable effort into growing an engaged Instagram following.
You might want to start by setting a robust Instagram hashtag strategy <– that post will show you how. Create several different hashtag lists for Instagram and test them to see what number of hashtags gets the most engagement on your account. Testing and experimenting to find your own sweet spot could be the key.
How to find hashtags to add to your lists:
Create your own branded hashtag that isn’t just your own brand name e.g. #welltraveled for Herschel – this allows other people to fit into the hashtag as well
Look at hashtags that your competitors or influential people in your space use
Use more niche-specific hashtags to get more targeted audience reach e.g. #vwvan vs #van
Find hashtags that have a dedicated community around them for your targeted audience
Use localized hashtags e.g. hashtags like #sanfranciscoeats or #sffoodie will draw the attention of local foodies in the area, or those looking for a new restaurant to try
Check out other posts using that hashtag to verify your content will “add to the conversation” and is relevant
Try Hashtag Finder in Tailwind for Instagram. It suggests the best hashtags for your post as you type your caption.
Find hashtags where you can get into the “Top 9 Posts” for the hashtag – these are hashtags that aren’t overly popular but still engaged with people posting on a regular basis. There’s an unknown algorithm to the Top Posts for a hashtag page and it’s a mix of likes, comments, and amount of reach for the post.
Instagram suggests, “After tagging the photo with relevant and specific tags, you may also find that people sharing photos similar to yours are using even more specialized tags that you hadn’t thought of originally. In our photo, we found that photos tagged #vw and #vwvan also use #vwbus.”
Other Caption Best Practices
Tagging at least one other person increase engagement (influential or relevant people)
Geotagging also increases engagement
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How do the pros use Instagram hashtags?
Hashtag suggestions from Jenn Herman of Jenn’s Trends: “For example, I tag my blog post notices with #socialmedia (which produces hundreds of thousands of results), #socialmediamarketing (which produces thousands of results), and #socialmediatips (which produces hundreds of results). By covering all three ranges, my post’s visibility is guaranteed to be higher than if I only used one of the tags.”
Popular Instagrammer Chalene Johnson of IGImpactOfficial says, “When you post your hashtags, post them in a comment after your initial caption. Although you can edit your caption, Instagram may be changing their algorithm soon to decrease the reach/visibility of edited posts in your followers newsfeeds. Post your hashtags in a comment after the initial post is completed.”
1-2 hashtags could be hashtags you’ve created (example: #TailwindTribe, #TailwindVibe)
2-5 should be community-centric hashtags (examples: #PinterestLover #InstagramTool)
Pick one or two popular hashtags
If your post is relevant, try to hit one of the trending hashtags like #motivationmonday or #sundayselfie
Use up to thirty hashtags but make sure they’re all relevant to your post
Be consistent to build solid brand awareness
Don’t forget to mention influential and relevant users in captions to engage new audiences. Keep in mind that you don’t want to come across as spammy.
Another way to grow your audience is to find hashtags where you can be featured on their account. Many feature accounts have these listed in their bio. Instagram hosts their own hashtag feature account project called Weekend Hashtag Project and the topic changes each week. Instagram’s instructions are “Weekend Hashtag Project is a series featuring designated themes and hashtags. For a chance to be featured, follow Instagram and look for a post every week announcing the latest project.”
Tailwind can help with your hashtag lists for Instagram
A big update we’ve added to the Tailwind for Instagram app is hashtag list management. This will allow you to save hashtags in the app and use them right when you’re posting to Instagram. Creating them on desktop makes it easy to be accurate. Set them up once and use on all your Instagram posts for the maximum amount of impact for your content.
We’d like to give you some suggestions for hashtag lists for Instagram that you can add to your Tailwind app for maximizing your Instagram exposure and potential. Take them and customize them to match your Instagram theme and goals.
Remember to be smart with your hashtag choices and you’ll reach people who will be interested in your posts.
How much time do you spend searching for the right hashtags for your Instagram posts and tapping them, one-by-one, into your phone screen?
Smart Instagram marketers already save time by copying and pasting lists of their most used hashtags from notes on their phone.
With Tailwind for Instagram you can now save as many hashtag lists as you’d like right in our app and add them to your Instagram posts with one quick click, either from desktop or your phone. What a time saver!
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No more looking through phone notes or going into a different app to find your hashtags. Tailwind for Instagram is built to work the way you do for Instagram posting right on your phone.
Adding hashtags to Instagram posts has proven to be effective for growing your Instagram account and gaining more followers.
In time trials, Tailwind for Instagram was 60% faster than the scheduling process that many marketers use today, involving emailing images to themselves and downloading them on their phone. For the average Instagram marketer, this will result in 12 hours of time saved each year. Streamlining your hashtag process will shave off more time. And who doesn’t need more time?
After you tag your post with a hashtag, you’ll be able to tap the hashtag to see a page that shows all photos and videos people have uploaded with that hashtag. Is this the right fit for your hashtag strategy? Check in from time to time to make sure you’re targeting the right people with your hashtags.
When people with private profiles tag posts, they won’t appear publicly on hashtag pages.
Numbers are allowed in hashtags. However, spaces and special characters, like $ or %, won’t work.
You can only tag your own posts. You can’t tag other people’s photos/videos.
You can use up to 30 tags on a post. If you include more than 30 tags on a single photo/video, your comment won’t post.
How to Find the Best Hashtags Fast
If you’ve ever wondered how people find a whole bunch of awesome hashtags for their posts, here’s the best shortcut I know. Type a few hashtags into your caption on Tailwind and Hashtag Finder suggests the best hashtags for your post. There’s nothing else like it. You can find spot-on hashtags and add them in moments, plus it color codes the recommendations so you can see at a glance which ones are more likely to get you engagement.
The Tailwind App features Hashtag Finder which recommends the best hashtags to use with your post
Here’s an example of the kind of hashtag list you can generate with Tailwind’s Hashtag Finder. A hashtag list for social media or blog posts:
You can use this hashtag list to test adding hashtags to your Tailwind app.
Step one: add hashtag lists to your Tailwind account
Once you’re logged in, create a draft of a post and tap the # button.
Step two: add your hashtag list
Once you’ve created your draft, click the # and then the + to add a new hashtag list. You can add up to thirty hashtags per list which is the limit of hashtags per posts on Instagram.
Make sure to hit the “save” button on your Hashtag list when you’re happy with it.
Step three: Add your post on your schedule
Step four: Get a notification from Tailwind to post
Step five: Post to Instagram adding your hashtag list
Here’s what it looks like from your phone:
This is a view of a scheduled Instagram post on the calendar in your Tailwind for iOS app. I added the image and text for the caption on desktop and now I want to add hashtags in the app.
Hit the green # button to access your hashtag lists.
You’ll see all the hashtag lists that you’ve created populate below your caption. We show your most recent hashtag lists or you can select “all” to see your complete catalog of hashtag lists.
Select your hashtag list and it populates in your caption. Once you’re happy with your caption, hit the “done” button to publish to Instagram.
If you want to put your hashtags in the first comment, cut them from the caption, hit the “done” button, and then paste them into the first comment.
Voila! That’s all it takes to use your hashtag lists in Tailwind. Once you set them up, you’ll be able to use them for all your Instagram posts.
The quickest way to research hashtags
We have heard from a lot of marketers that hashtag research was taking up too much of their time and they weren’t necessarily finding the best tags for their posts. We solved this problem with Tailwind’s Instagram Hashtag Finder tool which suggests the best hashtags for your post based on the hashtags you’re already using. The intuitive color-coding makes choosing between different hashtags easier than ever before. It’s simple from there to save great hashtags into powerful Instagram hashtag lists.
If you’re already a Tailwind for Instagram member (and we hope you are!), you can access your saved hashtag lists on any draft Instagram post in Tailwind – just find the “#” button. From there, click on the “+” button to create a new saved hashtag list, or click on any existing saved hashtag list to append it right to your post’s caption! Try it here!
Give it a try and let us know if you have any questions.
Boom! Instagram update shocker today as Instagram added the ability to add multiple images and videos into one Instagram post. Wow!
Instagram didn’t give these new posts a name in the Instagram update – they are like carousel posts or slide shows.
This new Instagram update is very much like Facebook Carousel posts and ads which perform very well on Facebook. Facebook says, “The carousel format can be used for link ads or mobile app ads to drive people to websites or apps. And the format is working: on average, it’ s driving 30-50% lower cost-per-conversion than single-image link ads.” Could this be a new way to promote your posts on Instagram? Yes!
As with other updated features, Instagram posts with multiple, carousel images could receive a little boost in the algorithm. That’s a guess – time will tell! But I have a hunch that they’d do really well so give them a shot.
The update is rolling out for iOS Instagram 10.9 in the Apple App Store and for Android on Google Play If you have it, this is how you can post using the new features.
Open your Instagram account and hit the + sign. You’ll see the little box and the open to SELECT MULTIPLE.
Select up to 10 photos and videos from your phone’s library. To adjust how each photo or video is cropped, tap it then touch the screen to adjust how it fits in the frame. Keep in mind that you can only share posts as a square, not as a portrait or landscape. When you’re done, tap Next in the top right.
From here you can add filters that will go on all of the posts.
From Instagram Help Center: To change the order of your photos and videos, tap and hold one then drag it to another spot. To remove a photo or video from your post, tap and hold one, then drag it to at the top of the screen. When you’re done, tap Next in the top right.
Here’s an example from Sue B. Zimmerman on Instagram. You can click through the arrows to see the new photo on the post.
A post shared by INSTAGRAM MARKETING w/ #Sue? (@theinstagramexpert) on
Ways to use carousel posts on Instagram
Tell a story
Instead of posting many images from one event, you can post a series and tell a mini-story with one post.
Create a sequence
Build a little tutorial by showing how to do something with more details in your post caption.
Divide and conquer
Use one long image and chop it into pieces to tell a story.
To create an post in the carousel format that showcases one long image:
Decide how many carousel cards the image is going to cross.
Create an image with the correct dimensions. Its height should be 600 pixels and its width should be 600 pixels multiplied by the number of carousel cards used (ex: a three-card image should be 1800×600 pixels).
Upload this same image for each carousel card, but crop it at equal and sequential intervals (ex: left, right, and middle for a three-card image) to divide it up across the cards.
We hope you’re already using Tailwind for Instagram to make your posting easier. [link for a free Tailwind trial] If so, there’s a quick work around for these new posts. Load your main image into Tailwind and add your caption, then schedule your post. When you receive your notification, open the Instagram app and then select multiple images and add your additional nine images and proceed through the rest of the steps above.
This update is rolling on on IOS – check your Instagram app in the App Store to see if you have it.
What do you think about this cool new way to post? I think it’s going to catch on!
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Hashtags on Instagram? Use them or bag it? That’s the question that Instagrammers face each time they post a photo on Instagram. Maybe you want to use hashtags on Instagram but you’re not sure why or how to use them? This article will help with those questions and give you a solid plan to move forward using hashtags on Instagram.
What’s the deal with hashtags on Instagram?
Hashtags are simple and complicated at the same time. In their simplest expression, a hashtag is a word preceded by the # sign with no spaces like this #hashtag. Using a hashtags ties your Instagram post with hundreds, thousands, or millions of other Instagram posts in the same hashtag group.
When you click on a hashtag on Instagram, it takes you to all the results for that hashtag sometimes called a hashtag page or hub. Instagram also calls them simply tags in the app.
There’s a lot of rich information on the Instagram hashtag results. This example is for #instastat.
In this example two Tailwind Instagram posts with Instagram stats are in the results. One in the Top Posts and one in the recent posts. There are 7,235 posts total in this hashtag at the time of this article which shows that it’s used but not overly popular so it’s perfect for a post that you want to stand out and maybe get some new attention.
Instagram Hashtags Need to Know
Thirty is the maximum amount of hashtags you can use per post. Instagram counts all the hashtags in your caption and your comments from you and allows thirty.
Related hashtags – provides you with closely related hashtags that you can click on to see what’s posted and find new people to follow. This related hashtag information disappears if you click on anything else.
Top Posts – Check out how these posts are created and see how they’re using hashtags since they’ve made it to this Top Posts or Top Nine for the feed. They’re doing something right!
Most recent – Is this a currently used hashtag and how often people are posting.
Number of times the hashtag has been used – This lets you know how big the pool of competition is for your posts.
In this post from #instagramdog, you can see that Instagram is suggesting some related tags to use or find new posts. This lists scrolls to the right in the app.
Instagram says, “At the top of some hashtag pages you may see a section called Top Posts. Top posts appear on trending hashtags to show you some of the popular posts tagged with that hashtag.
In the Most Recent section, photos and videos appear in the order that they were posted. Keep in mind that if you add a hashtag to a photo after it was posted, the photo will still appear on the hashtag page according to the time it was originally posted, not the time the hashtag was added.”
Very popular Instagram hashtag pages have millions of results and your posts can become buried quickly. A good Instagram hashtag strategy is to use a variety of hashtags: one or two very popular (with millions of results), a group of targeted hashtags that are popular with 100,000 or more search results, and some that aren’t as popular. You’ll want to stay on brand for your content with all your hashtags and don’t use unrelated hashtags as this is spammy and won’t help your growth.
We condensed 12 months of research into an Instagram Marketing 101 Webinar. If you’re enjoying this article, you’ll love it.
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How to Find Instagram Hashtags
So you know you need to do some hashtag research, what’s the most effective way? As we’ve already demonstrated, Instagram itself suggests related hashtags as you type hashtags into the search bar. That’s how most marketers go about finding hashtags.
Another option is Tailwind’s Hashtag Finder which suggests the best hashtags for your post as you type your caption. Start with one hashtag and Tailwind will recommend more. With one click you can add the suggested hashtags to your post and more recommendations will appear! Recommendations are even color-coded to help guide you towards using a balance of “Competitive”, “Niche”, “Good” and “Best” hashtags.
Tailwind Hashtag Finder suggests the best hashtags for your posts
TRY HASHTAG FINDER FREE
Where should you add hashtags
There’s some debate on whether adding hashtags in the description of the post or in the first comment are best. There’s no definitive answer from Instagram but I did ask my contact at Instagram if it mattered whether you posted in the first comment or the description and I was told that it didn’t matter which you did.
If you want to add a hashtag to a post you’ve already uploaded, edit the caption or include your hashtag in a comment on your photo. You can only add hashtags to your own posts, not to other people’s posts in the comments.
Here’s the logic behind the two choices:
#1 It’s better to add comments in the description of the post so they’re added to the recent posts and could be included in the Top posts.
#2 It’s better to put hashtags in the comments right after you post. This way the hashtags don’t clutter up the caption or look spammy.
Some people add hashtags with a dots before them so that they are hidden in the comments or not shown in the Instagram feed. You can do this in the captions or in the first comment. Instagram is very much about the aesthetic but it’s a personal choice for you to make.
I recommend testing to see which works best for you on your posts and see what you like best. There’s many ways to add hashtags and no wrong or right way. I like to add one or two in the caption and a larger group in the first comment. In this example, I added five hashtags in the caption and then a group with dots to space the hashtags down with a large group below. You can’t see this hashtag comment when you look at the post on the left.
Use Hashtags to search
Hashtags on Instagram can be your equivalent of a Google search. As of December 2016, Instagram has over a 600 million users. With an average of 55 million images a day, you can be sure to find a any subject matter on Instagram.
As a business, you can also use this option to scope out your competitors or research new ideas in your area of expertise. To build a community, you can follow people in the hashtags that relate to your topic.
Do you have any questions about hashtags on Instagram that you’d like answered? We want this blog to be an amazing resource for you full of answers, technics, tips, and how-to’s. Let us know how we can help you be better on Instagram!
Look for upcoming articles on using Instagram hashtags from our blog.
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Building on Pinterest’s Buyable Pins and visual search “Pinterest developed new experimental technology that, for the first time ever, is capable of seeing the world the way you do. Now there’s a way to discover ideas without having to find the right words to describe them first. Pinterest Lens is a new way to see things in real life and bring them online.
It’s called Pinterest Lens (currently in beta), and it lets you use the camera in your Pinterest app to discover ideas inspired by objects you see out in the real world.” Pinterest Lens is like the app Shazam where you can listen to a song and the app pulls up the title and band for you.
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A Pinterest Lens on the World
Window shopping has never been so easy! With a camera in the Pinterest app, you’ll be able to snap a photo of shoes or a purse and Pinterest will do a visual search on their app for similar and/or related items that you can Pin to your boards or purchase if it’s a Buyable Pin.
Imagine being in the grocery store and finding a cool, in-season squash but having no idea what to do with it. You could snap a photo in Pinterest and get recipe ideas within seconds. Pretty powerful stuff!
Pinterest says, “Lens works best for finding home decor ideas, things to wear and food to eat. As more and more people give it a try, and we continue making improvements to our technology, results will get even better, and the range of objects Lens recognizes will get increasingly wider.”
The Pinterest Lens could be a great new tool for lifestyle bloggers and food bloggers as well as being fantastic for all pinners to find more things they love.
Instant Ideas help personalize your Pinterest feed
When you see something that you like on Pinterest with a large while circle, tap the Pin to reveal related items that populate inline without losing your place in the stream.
“The new ideas appear right inline, so it’s like you’re instantly reshaping your feed around whatever catches your eye, all without losing your spot. Behind the scenes, your feed will get even more personalized, delivering you the very best ideas that people are loving on Pinterest, all in real time.”
In my opinion, Buyable Pins and Shop the Look are even easier than one-click Amazon purchases. With an easy, one-time set up you can shop through your Pinterest Pins with ease.
Buyable Pins are pins that allow users to purchase a product within the Pinterest platform. All they have to do is tap the blue buy it button at the top of the right hand corner and fill in their credit card information, and the product is purchased like any other e-commerce site.
Shop the Look takes Buyable Pins to the next level. When you see a blue circle on a Pinterest Pin, click to find the items and even purchase them. It’s also a great way to see how people have created outfits or designed rooms with the same or similar items.
Instant Ideas and Shop the Look are available now on iOS and Pinterest Lens is rolling out to iOS and Android over the next few months.
Visual marketing has taken the world for a spin and changed marketer’s mindset from all text to a combination of content and visual. The marriage of the message with the image attracts viewers, communicates your message, tells your story, and builds your brand. How do you create this synergy with a brand that isn’t visual, such as financial services or dry cleaning? Let’s dive in and see how visual marketing can help non-visual brands make an impact.
Who is your ideal audience?
The first step is figuring out who your clients are. If you’re a dry cleaner, you know where your clients live, that they care about their wardrobe, and that they don’t necessarily want to talk about dry cleaning.
Create a list based on the data that you have about your clients to determine what will be interesting to them. Make a list of your top twenty clients and then determine what traits they have in common.
What need do you fill for them?
What makes this client great? Why are they in your top twenty?
Are they predominantly mobile customers?
Do they live in urban, suburban, or rural environments?
Are they concerned about the environment?
Why do they choose you? Location? Great service? Price?
If possible, create a survey that you can ask your top twenty to complete. Tell them they’re tops on your list and you want to better meet their needs with social media marketing. If you can give them a gift certificate or small premium to say thank you, it’s a great customer touch point that will help you create your future marketing messages.
Once you come up with an ideal audience persona, you’ll have an idea of what type of visuals would be appealing to them. Sometimes joining the bigger social media conversation can help you connect with your clients and potential clients.
Some Pinterest board ideas:
Community service projects.
Highlight another small business that you partner with such as a wedding planner or boutique.
Holiday boards.
Neighborhood or city hotspots.
Show the personality of your brand by adding a few things that you like that is appropriate to your audience.
Build your brand
Create a brand mood board to discover your visual fingerprint. Pinterest is a great place to create a secret board; you can also collaborate with team members. You probably already have a logo with specific colors that you’ll need to incorporate.
Build your brand’s visual assets by creating a list of:
High-resolution logos for use in social media design work. Your logo isn’t the place to skimp. You need a solid design that translates well and communicates who you are and what you do.
A list of the two or three colors that you use in your corporate branding with the hex codes. You can use the Chrome extension Eye Dropper to grab the codes. The hex codes should be used in all your design work without fail. No guessing on the color wheel to proximate the red.
What is the visual style of your brand going to be? Casual? Formal? Based on your ideal customer persona, create a mood board that will appeal to your audience and use this as a springboard for future visuals.
Tell your story
Use visuals to tell people who you are and what your story is. Stories can spur conversation and build relationships. Take the time to write out the history of your company.
Who started it and why?
Whose idea was it to start the business?
Do you have old photos from when your story began?
What year was it?
What else happened that year?
Tie your story in with your community and the bigger picture so that your clients learn about who you are and what you do. Brands connect on a human level with individuals when they are allowed to see past the register or website and into the people who created the vision for your company.
You can also translate this into a meet the team approach so people can meet the people behind the website, customer service responses, or tweets. Create visuals from meetings, brain storming sessions, and company picnics.
Communicate your message
Now that you’ve got your visual assets ready, know your ideal client, and have a mood board that has your company vibe, you’re ready to start creating visuals.
Jodi Okun is a great example of someone with a challenging non-visual brand. She has a business helping parents figure out the financial services maze to fund their children’s college career. This is not an easy audience to find or reach, but Jodi has spent several years telling people who she is and what she does. She hosts a Twitter chat called College Cash, she writes about financial aid, and always stays on her brand message. Jodi has taken what traditionally would have been a local small business and turned into a nationwide business as she talks to people from all over the U.S. and works with clients locally and virtually.
Jodi uses Pinterest to reach her audience with these boards:
Having this base of boards gives Jodi an idea each time she wants to create a pin or repin other’s content. Using Tailwind, Jodi can find which boards are popular and build on them as well as finding popular pins. She can pin related pins and give her Pinterest audience more of what they already love which in turn helps more people find Jodi, learn what she does, and helps more parent’s get help with college financial aid. See how it all works together?
I hope this gives you an idea of how you can turn your non-visual brand into a Pinterest visual dream for your clients or future clients. Reaching more people with visual marketing is achievable for all types of brand. Setting the foundation for your success with visual marketing makes it easy to build a solid visual brand and reach more people who add to your bottom line.
at the top of the screen. When you’re done, tap Next in the top right.
