Every photographer should be taking full advantage of Pinterest. It has the power to drive a ton of traffic to your website which can result in getting more leads and bookings. Using Pinterest for your photography business involves some strategy, though. It’s not quite as simple as pinning whatever you want, whenever you want. In this post, I am sharing how Pinterest for photographers is a very powerful marketing tool along with some tips for how to use it correctly.
This post contains affiliate links. Read the affiliate disclosure.
Pinterest For Photographers
There is a big misconception about what Pinterest actually is. Pinterest is not a social media platform. Pinterest is actually a search engine. It’s like Google, but heavily populated with images. This makes it a wonderful marketing tool for photographers, because it’s a way to use your beautiful images to promote your business.
Pinterest Drives Traffic. Social Media Does Not.
Did you know that there are roughly 454 million monthly active users on Pinterest? That’s a sh** ton of people who are looking for something. The cool thing about Pinterest is that it’s designed to help people find what they’re looking for.
Social media platforms, however, are designed to keep people engaged with the platform. They don’t want to send people away, because the longer people are engaged, the more money the platform makes. The algorithms are also constantly changing making it very difficult for business to get their content seen. It can turn into a frustrating scramble with businesses seeing little to no results.
People are constantly trying to strategize their social media plans. But, the problem is the algorithm changes pretty frequently, causing businesses to figure out a different social media strategy. It can be a pretty frustrating challenge. And, unfortunately, more followers doesn’t necessarily mean more business.
I use social media for an awareness play and I use Pinterest to drive traffic to attract potential clients, students and readers.
For example, when I look at my Instagram impressions over the last 30 days, it’s around 2,500. However, when I look at my Pinterest impressions over the last 30 days, it is around 199,000. It’s a pretty interesting number comparison, isn’t it?
Getting Started with Pinterest
First, if you don’t have a Pinterest account, it’s time to set one up. There are some steps you need to take to set it up right, so let’s walk through the steps together.
1: Set Up A Business Account
Whether you’re new to Pinterest or already have a personal account, it’s time to switch to a business account. After all, you are a business, right? The business account shares important analytics about your impressions, pins and overall Pinterest performance. Knowing this information will guide your Pinterest strategy rather than you trying to guess what works and what doesn’t. Pinterest has a great article explaining how to set up a business account, so be sure to check that out here.
2: Use Keywords In Your Profile Description, Boards & Pins
Although Pinterest is a visual search engine, it still needs you to use special keywords so it knows to show your pins when someone is looking for your content. Using keywords also helps people know what your account is about and whether it’s something they are interested in. It’s important to be direct and clear about what your account is all about.
What Are Keywords
Keywords are the words people use to search for something. Using special keywords in your profile description, boards and pins is really important.
The places to use keywords on Pinterest include:
- YOUR PROFILE NAME
- YOUR PROFILE DESCRIPTION
- BOARD TITLES
- BOARD DESCRIPTIONS
- PIN TITLES
- PIN DESCRIPTIONS
One (free) way to discover keywords for your business on Pinterest is to simply use the search bar within Pinterest. Start typing a couple of words relevant to your business and watch how it will populate additional words that are heavily searched in relation to the words you just typed.
See my example below. I started typing “food photography” and Pinterest showed me a bunch of popular topics to consider such as food photography styling or food photography ideas.
And, if you want to dive deeper into learning about keywords for Pinterest, there’s a really great class offered by SkillShare that is super helpful.
LEARN MORE ABOUT: PINTEREST SEO STRATEGY
3: Create Relevant Boards & Descriptions
Your Pinterest boards are basically categories to help you organize your pins. You will want to create boards that are relevant to your niche so you can add multiple pins that are specific to that board’s topic.
In my early Pinterest days, I started with two boards that weren’t very specific or keyword friendly. I had a board called “Light” and a board called “Dark.” I would share food photography that was either light or dark in each of these boards. Neither of my boards had descriptions either, so it was pretty much impossible for Pinterest to know what “light” meant. No one was searching for “light” in relation to food photography and if they were, they would probably type “light food photography.”
I needed to be more specific with my board names and consider what my audience might be searching for in relation to food photography.
Now have a board called Light Food Photography Tips & Inspiration. And, the description is “Light food photography tips and inspiration to help you create light and airy food photos.”
Take some time to consider what keywords to use in your board titles and descriptions so Pinterest can find you!
4: Quality Over Quantity
Always consider pinning quality pins over pinning as many pins as you can. Check out this great article by my friend Kayla from Writing from Nowhere. She shares 30 Different Pinterest Strategies to consider as you plan your pins for Pinterest.
Pinterest For Photographers: Create Your Pins
Once your profile and boards are created, it’s time to start creating some pins! Pinning requires the same keyword thinking, so you’ll want to be sure to include specific keywords in the following:
- PIN TITLES
- PIN DESCRIPTIONS
- IMAGE NAME
To create a pin within Pinterest, simply go to Create/Create Pin and you’ll be able to get started.
See my image below and read on for tips for each number.
1. Upload Your Pin Image
Creating pins can be pretty fun, especially when you have beautiful photography to work with already. I recommend using Photoshop or Canva to create your pins. Create a variety using different images, graphics and words. When saving the pin graphic, be sure to include keywords in the name, include your brand and save it as a JPG. For example, if I have a pin for Overhead Food Images that links to My Overhead Setup for Food Photography, I saved the pin as: overhead-food-images-reganbaroni.jpg.
2. Add Your Pin Title
Your pin title will require keywords, but it doesn’t necessarily have to match exactly to your blog post title or product title. As long as it’s similar to the content you’re sharing, Pinterest won’t think it’s spam.
3. Choose The Board For Your Pin
Select the board where you want to store the pin. Sometimes a pin topic could live in multiple boards. In fact, this is a good thing. If you have a pin that could live in different boards, create additional different looking pins for each board so you can expand your reach for that specific topic or product.
4. Provide A Pin Description
Much like the pin title, your description should include relevant keywords. Don’t skip this part. The pin title and description helps Pinterest match your pin to specific searches. Since descriptions are longer than titles, it’s an opportunity to include multiple keywords to give your pin a better chance to get ranked by Pinterest. Take advantage of using extra, relevant keywords in your descriptions.
5. Add The Destination Link/URL
Your URL is incredibly important. If people land on your pin and there isn’t a URL to take them anywhere, that’s a huge missed opportunity for you and can be a really frustrating experience for the people on Pinterest. Be sure to include the direct URL that you want your pin to lead people to. Make it EASY for people to get to the valuable content they’re looking for.
6. Schedule Your Pin
You can either publish your pin immediately or schedule it to pin at a later date and time. I usually schedule my pins ahead of time and focus on having them go live in the evening. Based on my Pinterest analytics, evenings tend to be when people are using Pinterest the most. Depending on the demographic of your target audience, pick the popular times that they are active for when to publish your pins.
Tips for Avoiding the Pinterest Hustle
In order for Pinterest to really work for you, you have to pin more regularly. It’s important to plan ahead so this doesn’t take over too much of your time. Below are a couple of tips to help you avoid the Pinterest hustle.
Tip 1: Prepare Multiple Pins Ahead of Time
I set aside time every month to do my keyword research and create new pins for my boards. I recommend designing templates for your Pinterest graphics so you can swap out images and copy quickly. As I mentioned earlier, I use Photoshop and Canva to help me keep my Pinterest graphics organized and on brand for my photography business.
Tip 2: Schedule Multiple Pins
Schedule your pins ahead of time. This keeps you pinning “regularly” without actually taking time to pin everyday. There are two programs that can help you do this.
1. PINTEREST
Pinterest has it’s own internal scheduling system for creating and scheduling your pins. It’s free and it also gives you the stats of your pins showing you what’s working and what isn’t. The only drawback I have with it, is that you can only schedule pins two weeks out. This may or may not be a drawback for you, but it just depends on whether you want to be scheduling pins every two weeks or want to schedule them even further out.
2. TAILWIND
Tailwind is an app that allows you to schedule multiple pins as far in advance as you want. It also analyzes the pin’s performance, so you can track how your pins are doing. There is a monthly fee or you can pay annually, but you can always try it for free first to see what you think.
In conclusion, Pinterest for photographers (and all businesses) is an absolute game-changer. If you want to get your content seen by a lot more people, I highly recommend taking the time to make set up your Pinterest account and start pinning. Reach out with questions anytime!
Happy Creating!
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This post contains affiliate links which means if you click or make a purchase through my site, I might make a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only promote products that I actually use and support.
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All images ©Regan Baroni 2021.
This was helpful, thanks! How many pins do you schedule per week? Also, if you repin something that’s doing well– where are you pinning it? I assume to a new board– to show activity?
Hi Briana! Currently, I’m trying something new and scheduling three “idea pins” per week to see how they do (idea pins are different than regular pins). I’m finding that the idea pins are performing way better than regular pins for me, so it might be worth looking into those for your website. As far as how many to schedule per week, that depends on how much content you have to share and how regular you can be with creating the pins. Consistency is key. So, if scheduling one pin per day is best for you (5-7 pins per week), then do that and see how it goes. Pins need time to live and breathe, so see how it goes and if you can start adding more to the schedule, go for it. Just don’t burn out on it… do what you can actually maintain. 😉 And, yes, having multiple boards to pin to is incredibly helpful to expand the reach a bit more. I hope this helps!