The Daily Social: How to Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic to Your Local Business

Most small business owners think of Pinterest as a place for wedding boards and recipe collections, so they skip it entirely. That is a mistake worth correcting. Pinterest behaves far more like a search engine than a social network, which means a single pin can keep sending visitors to your website months after you posted it. While an Instagram post fades in a day, a well built pin quietly works in the background. If you sell anything people plan for, and that includes home services, food, fitness, events, retail, and design, Pinterest deserves a small slice of your week.

1. Set Up a Business Account and Claim Your Website

Switch to a free Pinterest business account so you get analytics, ads access, and rich pins. Then claim your website inside settings, which adds your logo and business name to every pin that links back to you. Fill out your profile with the same name, photo, and description you use everywhere else, and include your city in the bio so local searchers can find you. This takes about fifteen minutes once and pays off every time someone saves your work.

2. Think in Search Terms, Not Clever Captions

Pinterest users type what they want into the search bar, so your pin titles and descriptions should read like answers to those searches. Start typing a phrase related to your business into Pinterest search and watch the suggestions that appear, because those are real queries people use. Work those phrases naturally into your pin title, your description, and your board names. Skip the inside jokes and write the words a stranger would actually search.

3. Design Tall Vertical Pins With Readable Text

The format that performs best is a vertical image at a two to three ratio, which usually means 1000 by 1500 pixels. Put a short headline across the top in a font large enough to read on a phone, keep your logo small in a corner, and use bright natural photos of your actual work. You can build these in a few minutes with a free design tool, and one photo shoot can produce a dozen pins if you vary the headline each time.

4. Link Every Pin to a Page That Answers the Promise

A pin is only useful if it sends someone somewhere worthwhile. Link each pin to the specific page it relates to, whether that is a service page, a blog post, a booking form, or a product listing. Sending everyone to your homepage wastes the click. Add a tracking tag to those links so you can see in your analytics exactly how much traffic Pinterest is delivering each month.

5. Pin Consistently and Plan Seasons Early

Five to ten fresh pins a week beats fifty pins in one afternoon, so batch your designs and schedule them out. Pinterest users also plan further ahead than users on other platforms, often searching for holidays and events six to eight weeks in advance. Post your fall content in late summer and your holiday content in October, and you will be in front of people while they are still deciding where to spend.

Pinterest rewards patience more than it rewards volume, and a handful of good pins can quietly bring in traffic long after you have forgotten you made them. Start with one board, ten pins, and a month of consistency, then check your analytics and adjust. If you would rather have someone build the boards, design the pins, and keep the pipeline full while you run your business, Vero Beach Social Media can take it off your plate. Reach out at curtis@verobeachsocialmedia.com and we will put together a plan that fits your goals and your schedule.