For those of you who have been on the internet in the past 15 years, you’ve probably heard of Pinterest. It is a great place to discover new websites, innovative ideas and helpful products that can make your life better! Users look to Pinterest as a source of inspiration for an upcoming vacation, home decor or improvement projects, or recipe ideas for your family. But what about Pinterest for dealerships? Have you ever wondered if it would be possible to get your dealership or outdoor business discovered by users browsing for ideas on Pinterest? That’s what the social media marketing experts at NetSource Media can help you do! We’ve compiled some tips for you on how to use Pinterest for dealerships and other outdoor businesses.
Pinterest for Dealerships Can Boost Traffic
Pinterest is a valuable platform for RV, trailer, powersport or marine dealerships or outdoor businesses. But how do you know if it’s a strategically beneficial platform for your business? It’s a low-pressure way to communicate with consumers, that also provides direct links to your website to drive traffic to. Unlike Instagram, where links are not supported well, Pinterest encourages users to click through to the webpage where the pin originated from. Pinterest isn’t as focused on keeping you on their platform as they are providing valuable content. Quality-filled content on Pinterest for dealerships will keep users coming back to the platform, and that’s just what Pinterest wants!
Pinterest operates more like a visual search engine than a social network, which is fantstic for dealers and outdoor businesses! Much like Google searchers, users searching on Pinterest are typically warm leads who are looking for the exact thing your dealership or business offers. The key is making sure they find you in the algorithm, and your content entices them to click through and explore your website.
Getting Started on Pinterest
While each social media platform is different, they all have one thing in common. Creating and managing a business account must be consistent. It’s also highly recommended that you follow the best practices recommended by the platform, combined with real-time recommendations from those who are very familiar with it and your industry. Running a successful Pinterest for dealerships or outdoor businesses requires some initial education. To learn how to get started, check out these tips for setting up your business’ profile on Pinterest.
Create a Business Page
If you don’t already have a page for your business, you’ll want to create a business account on Pinterest. This prevents you from pinning things for personal projects such as “how to renovate your bathroom” on your RV, trailer, powersport or marine dealership page. Pinning from irrelevant topics can confuse the algorithm on what your page is about, so you’ll want to separate your business and personal profiles. When doing Pinterest for dealerships, content like educational hot-to’s, information to consider when purchasing, and upkeep tips and trick are great options to write about. A benefit of a business account is the extra analytics it provides. This will help you gauge what type of content is best driving leads to your website.
Optimize Your Pinterest Profile with SEO
Pinterest is itself a search engine. Because of this, search engine optimization is one of the most important aspects of successfully using Pinterest for dealerships. It starts with optimizing your profile for searches just like you’d optimize your website with SEO. Simply having your name and company slogan in your profile is not enough to help users find your profile. If they don’t already know about your dealership or outdoor business, they won’t search for you by name. Instead, they’re searching for your products or services, like best RV’s for full-time living, or yearly boat maintenance. You can use those types of keywords in the “Name” and “About” sections on your profile.
Register Your Site and Create Rich Pins
When running a Pinterest for dealerships, be sure to claim your website under the “claim” tab. This ensures anything pinned from your URL by you or by others will register under your analytics and have your name and profile picture next to it. You’ll also want to set up “rich pins,” which automatically syncs information from your website as you create new pins. You can read this guide to applying for rich pins from Pinterest’s help center to get started.
Pin Straight from Your Dealership Blog
Now that your website can generate rich pins, it’s time to start pinning! Some web building platforms already have a feature installed where a Pinterest icon appears when you hover images. You can click the icon to pin the image to your Pinterest boards, and a rich pin will be generated. If your site doesn’t already have this, your website manager can install a Chrome extension that will let you do this on any website. It’s highly recommended to use Pinterest to drive traffic to informational blogs where users will be drawn in with strong calls to action. It’s important to note that Pinterest and writing expertly crafted blogs go hand-in-hand. Unless you are pinning products for sale, it’s hard to make Pinterest work for your business without a quality, consistent blog.
Create Original Pins
In addition to using rich pins from your website, you’ll want to create plenty of original pins as well. You’ve seen these pins with text on them that read things like “10 Easy Weeknight Recipes” or “5 Road Trips You Have to Take.” You can create these graphics using Canva or Pinterest’s official scheduling platform partner, Tailwind, which generates pin templates.
Optimize Your Pins with SEO
When you’re creating your own pins with text that isn’t auto-generated through a rich pin, surprise! You’ll want to search engine optimize these too. Use keywords in the title as well as the description. Keyword research is always done for every account and client. This information is based on their niche and done before writing pin titles and descriptions.
Avoid Square and Horizontal Images
As you’re creating these pins, try your best to avoid pinning square and horizontal images. Pinterest’s feed is designed for vertical pins. The platform says in their best practices that 2:3 ratio pins are best, or 1000px by 1500px. It also says that using any other size could “cause your pin to truncate or may negatively impact performance.” In other words, the Pinterest algorithm prefers vertical pins.
Pin Consistently
Just like many other social media platforms, Pinterest’s algorithm much prefers for you to post consistently over time rather than going on a pinning spree. You want your pins to trickle out over time so the platform sees that you’re active. Posting a few pins per day is a smart approach to Pinterest for your business. This can be a time-consuming task, so it’s one of the reasons why outsourcing your Pinterest strategy can bring more return on your Pinterest investment. If you have trouble coming up with content on the fly, try creating a content calendar with pin ideas or topics to showcase on your Pinterest page ahead of time.
Pin Single Images to Multiple Boards
When you create a pin, you shouldn’t pin it to just one board. If your pin applies to a couple different boards on your page, pin it to all of them! Some Pinterest users may only follow one of your boards. This is also a benefit to doing Pinterest for dealerships: you can reach multiple audiences with multiple boards! Communicate with different audiences using individual boards. Don’t go overboard (pun intended), but remember that pinning a pin to 4 to 5 boards is a good idea. Just share it to different boards at different times to keep consistency and avoid a pin-storm.
Pin Other Creators’ Content
While your content that links back to your site and drives leads is the most important for you to share, Pinterest wants you to be part of its community. This is why it falls into the social media category and not just a search engine! Participate in the community aspect of Pinterest by pinning other pins in your niche. Try to avoid pinning competitors’ content, but think of other adjacent topics people who are interested in your services may be searching for. Are you a wedding photographer? Try creating a board for wedding dress inspiration and pin a mix of your own photos of brides as well as pins from wedding gown designers.
