On our first edition on how to market your custom apparel storefront we discussed marketing on Tumblr and now we will have tips and tricks on the best approach to Pinterest.
What is Pinterest?
For those of you who don’t know, Pinterest is a platform of “pins” where you can discover ideas, projects, and interests. Pinterest is a very visual website allowing users to really see what they are buying into. A “pin” is an image you have captured and have added to a board. Boards are an area where you store content and once added they become easily shareable. Pinterest acts as a personalized media platform. Users can browse the content of others on the main page. They can like or repin any content they find and save it on an organized board to keep or purchase in the future. And like Tumblr, Pinterest is free and anything go viral.
Customized Girl has a “pin it” button located below every design but you can always install the pin it widget onto your desktop for all access use. If you are creating an on model or flat images to upload to your product page, you can also upload these images onto pinterest through the upload option. This is great if you want to direct individuals to your storefront with a different image referencing your storefront as a whole and then adding your storefront URL as the destination URL.
Pinning:
When pinning make sure your image has a title, a small description, and two to three hashtags that describes or organizes your pin. For example:
Like we said earlier, Pinterest is all about amazing images but your product will never be seen if you don’t provide content that will help organize and help your product be found through Pinterest’s search engine. Using the description and hashtags provided in the image above, we have a better chance of being seen when someone is searching “St. Patrick’s Day” even if it is for St. Patrick’s Day shirts, sweatshirts, ideas, parties, etc. The more the better.
Organizing Your Pinterest Page:
Your Pinterest page shouldn’t only be pins of your personal products. You should organize your pins by creating a mini theme for each board you create. Customized Girl’s Pinterest page is a great example of our target niches, seasonal pushes, and any new trends we add to the website. Repinning content relative to your product gives your products a better chance of being seen and always give users a reason to follow you for more exciting content. Plus no one likes spam. Pinterest is a super useful platform, so enjoy it for your own personal use. Pin your next DIY projects, new recipes, and if you love your storefront designs, then pin those too.
A note about Pinterest boards: they seem to rank really well on Google search results. Think about the search keyword you might want to target, and then name your Pinterest board using that keyword search phrase. As we mentioned, it’s a good idea to fill that board with other relevant pins. If you want it to rank on Google, you’ll also have to link to that board from other places on the web. From Facebook. From Twitter. And from anywhere else that would be relevant, reasonable, and not spammy.
You’ll want your designs to rank well on Google so that shoppers can find them, obviously, but you also want journalists and members of the media to discover your stuff as well. If they have an article to write, chances are they are going to do some Google research. Perhaps that’s how a smart and cool buzzfeed reporter discovered this “Meowy Christmas” Sweater pin of ours when gathering ideas for this amazing post.
Designing For Pinterest:
Users on Pinterest visually scan through pin images very quickly and many pins can be overlooked. Make sure your designs are eye-catching and grab the users attention immediately. They need to use big, bold text with a clear message. Here is some helpful information on what makes a design successful.
If you are selling custom designs, we recommend using a phrase like “[YOUR NAME HERE]” rather than a placeholder text like “SMITH”. On Pinterest, a user might see your SMITH design and think it’s an image of a stock design for someone or something named Smith. But if it says [YOUR TEXT HERE], then it’s clearly a design meant to be customized, which makes it all that more special. This Mom Means Business is a great example of pinning designs that let users understand they can customize this product with their names or dates.
Pin Sizing and Specifications:
Last but not least, sizing! At Customized Girl we are fans of the longer pin images. We use the image guideline of 500 x 1320px. You can pin or use any size, we prefer this size due to the fact they take up a larger amount of space on any device, making your pin very prominent on the page.
Here are examples of longer pins that visibly do well on Pinterest regardless of desktop or mobile users since the user is always scrolling down to see more images:
Useful Tips and Tricks:
You can easily find out what’s being pinned from a website by using the URL http://www.pinterest.com/source/websitedomainname.com/. Just replace websitedomainname with the website domain and you will be able to see the latest pins being shared. This is great way what to see what customers and users are pinning from your storefront or blog.
Pinterest has recently added a “trending” instant keyword search to their search bar allowing users to see what is trending right at this very moment. This can be very helpful if your specialty is trending and you want to add more products or if you want to jump on the trend by designing a custom shirt that relates to it.
The popular section also allows you to see what is trending. This is the place where you can find pins that are being repined, liked and commented on repeatedly. Here you can find pins your followers will like. You can share it with them to increase engagement
Let us know about your efforts to market your storefront and what Customized Girl can do to help get your products seen!