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Beginner’s Guide to Using Pinterest for Digital Marketing

By This post may contain affiliate links

Using Pinterest for Digital Marketing
Photo by Fahim R. on Unsplash

Pinterest is such a visual social media.  It’s a great way of putting across your brand’s image.  Because you can use multiple images, you can create a much more complex and nuanced picture than simply using say Instagram alone.  I use it on a personal level too and use it to create mood boards for a home renovation project, a planned garden redesign and even to help me plan my next holiday.  As I’m not the only one doing that, as a brand you want to encourage other potential consumers to pin your images and your products onto their own mood boards.  Because they will see your image every time they access their mood board, your products will be very much part of how they see their project developing.  From there it’s a fairly easy leap to transfer that aspirational idea into actual physical sales.  Read on for more information about getting started on using Pinterest for digital marketing.

Ask most bloggers or online business owners and they’ll say there are two main areas they get traffic from. One is organic traffic from Google and other search engines. The other is Pinterest traffic.

But why would Pinterest send traffic to your website? And how does it end up being one of the two top traffic sources for so many digital businesses? Let’s dive into a beginner’s guide to using Pinterest for digital marketing and explain.

What is Pinterest?

The first thing to understand about Pinterest is that it isn’t a social media site. It is a visual search engine, so pictures are key. While it does have some social features to it, it is a search and discovery platform. It is Google search but with pictures.

Now, this does mean there’s the very occasional business that doesn’t really work so well on Pinterest. The local garage trying to advertise their car servicing might not find Pinterest hugely useful. It isn’t visual and Pinterest isn’t the best for local traffic.

But for any business with an online presence and who can create some kind of graphics for their content, Pinterest is a must-have part of the marketing arsenal. Unlike social media, which doesn’t really like to send people off the platform, Pinterest is about providing users with information that they follow through to the website to explore.

How does Pinterest send traffic to your website?

Pinterest works like a digital version of those old pin board we had on our walls as kids. You know, where you pinned the magazine page of your favorite boy band? Or the latest sports star you wanted to meet?

The idea is that businesses pin images that relate to their content, products, and services. They use keywords in the descriptions they add to those pins and when someone searches the relevant term, that pin appears.

Let’s say I’m looking for a new cocktail recipe to use my tasty gin with. I might search for ‘gin cocktails’ or ‘drinks for gin’ or even a specific gin cocktail. If you have a recipe on your blog that is for a gin cocktail and you’ve pinned an image of it, then your recipe could appear in my search.

Getting the click

Appearing in search is one of the key ways you drive traffic to your website. But you need to compel me to click your recipe over the others that appear on the screen. That’s where a few factors come together:

  • The pin image – in this case, a photo of the cocktail that looks tasty or maybe a shot of the finished drink with ingredients scattered around it
  • The pin headline – the words on the pin that tell me what the cocktail is and pique my interest
  • The pin description – the part that tells me more about the drink and prompts me to click the image with a call to action to visit the website

Strategy and tactics

Now there’s a bit more to driving traffic from Pinterest than just popping up a nice image with a headline, a good description, and expecting hundreds of people to click. But they might!

Strategy and tactics are the key things to understand. Strategy is the overall why you are using Pinterest and what you want to achieve with it. Tactics are the things you will do to drive that traffic and get in front of your audience.

Building for success

Pinterest is a great platform to market almost any type of online business. It can be amazing if you create content and also if you have products. Even service-based businesses can find they can drive traffic to their websites from it. But you do need to learn the basics so that you can make the most of it.

Inbox Pounds – I Really Wouldn’t Bother

By This post may contain affiliate links

earning and saving money - pile of coins
Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash

I signed up to Inbox Pounds quite a while ago using another blogger’s affiliate link.  To be honest I can’t recommend doing that because it’s actually quite difficult to get any money out of them.  It’s quite easy to get your first few pounds stacked up, but it requires a hard slog to get up to the minimum withdrawal amount of £20.  Months in I haven’t got there, but I feel I’ve too much time invested to bow out before I earn my £20.

Like other reward sites such as Swagbucks, you can earn money on Inbox Pounds by performing various tasks like searching the web, answering surveys and taking up special offers. The problem is that most of the surveys are badly paid, for example 25 pence for a 25 minute survey, but there are slightly better paid ones like 25 pence for 5 minutes, but it’s not a great hourly rate of pay.  You might get screened out too.  The surveys will be a hard slog to get to your £20 first withdrawal.

The search feature pays better in a way as that is something you might be doing anyway as part of your daily routine.  There is a limit on what you can earn though each day and certain searches are excluded e.g if you search for well known sites like Paypal or eBay it’s not counted.  I find that a bit frustrating as I tend to search for sites like that if I haven’t got a bookmark – it’s easier than typing in the web address even if I know it.  Once you reach your daily search limit, you’ll be searching for no reward, so it might be worth using other sites for searching too.

You can earn more money by clicking through on offers and taking them up.  The credits you’ll earn for this are much higher and you could easily earn your £20 through a handful.  I’m not that keen on signing up for bingo sites and the like though, so I haven’t done it.  Others want you to sign up for a free trial, but then you need to remember to stop membership if you don’t want to get charged.

I had been getting daily emails which enable you to click through for details of an offer and earn a penny a time.  I was doing this and earning very slowly.  They weren’t happy that I hadn’t taken part in any other offers for a while and sent me an email saying they would stop the daily emails, if I didn’t participate.  I went over for a few days and searched and tried a couple of surveys, but no daily emails arrived.  I contacted them and they said I wasn’t eligible (despite what their email had said).  Their replies were unhelpful and failed to address some of the issues I raised.  Their customer service left a lot to be desired.  They did say that I would still get a weekly paid email, even though I wouldn’t get the daily ones.

If you think you have more determination than I do and can do better than me with them, feel free to sign up under my affiliate link for Inbox Pounds (I’ve got to get to my £20 payout somehow).  If you are struggling with the cost of living crisis, you might think it’s worth a go even if the rewards are fairly slim.

Update 01/05/2020: Stubborness has got me up to the minimum payout. I did the last few pounds by searching.  You can earn about 7p a day by searching.  Don’t search for something like eBay or Paypal as you won’t get credit for searches like that.  Likewise searches with the same words as previous searches.  Occasionally you get timed out and a good way round this is to click through from the search results.  The weekly paid email never materialised.

In terms of cashing in, you can either do a cheque or a electronic gift card. I went for an electronic gift card for Amazon as I know I’ll spend that and it seemed less hassle than a cheque.  Apparently it will take about 5 days to be processed. With the gift cards it’s £20 or multiples, so I’d suggest earning dead on £20. You do immediately get a credit towards your next reward of £1. Given how long it’s taken me to get to this point, I won’t be bothering with that unless I am in desperate financial straits.

Update: 06/05/2020 I received my voucher today.  They use an intermediary called Tango Card.  You can choose from a range of gift cards when you follow the link through to their site.  I picked Amazon.  I got an immediate email with a code and worked for redemption on Amazon.  I was impressed by the cashing in process, but it’s a shame it’s such a faff to earn the money.

Update: 05/08/2020 Well I never got the weekly paid email that they promised, but a few days ago they started sending me daily paid emails again.  I’ve started clicking through again.  Will see how things go.  £20 is a long way away for a payout.

Update: 22/12/2022 I’ve been getting the daily paid emails and I’m now up to about £7 credit somehow. I did manage a  bigger payout from them though recently by downloading a game through their offers and getting to a certain level.  I didn’t get credited automatically, but they did eventually sort out payment.  It was a good offer and I got £100.  These offers are few and far between, but they do exist.  I did have to spend a reasonable amount of time playing the game, but it was quite enjoyable.  I guess I’m a little more positive about them now I’ve had a larger payout.