To use Pinterest or not to use Pinterest? That is a big question on many of our clients' minds.
While yes, Pinterest can be a profitable social media platform to invest your ad dollars into, it really depends on your industry and product or service.
With more than 150 million monthly users, Pinterest provides a refreshing way to maintain and enhance your SEO efforts and reach a wider audience.
The pinning platform spurs more than 2 billion searches each month. Additionally, more than 250 million of those monthly searches are visual searches — opening the door for a lot of multifamily marketing potential.
So, for those who do want to dive into Pinterest and give it a shot — the next question is, how can I maintain a strong presence on this platform? Below, we explore a few ways to make the most bang for your buck.
The first step is ensuring you create a business account and not personal as this will give you access to the Pinterest ads manager and analytics tracking. Use your property’s full name in your account, and be sure to include all necessary descriptive information in your bio sections, including contact information, apartment logos, and any community amenities or features you would like to highlight.
Pinterest boards are the topics by which you organize your content. You should create boards that showcase your property (rooms, amenities, events), as well as boards that provide tips and tricks for commonly searched apartment topics.
Make sure not to go overboard with the number of boards so that you can keep all of them active, and create descriptions for each one. Consider creating the following boards:
Perhaps one of the most important aspects of Pinterest is to include appropriate keywords. Each “pin” needs to contain keywords in the title or description to increase its relevance in search engines and direct more people to your boards. To accomplish this, you will need to conduct thorough research on your target residents to discover what they are most interested in and searching for online.
Pinterest offers a guided search tool to help find more relevant results and narrow down the focus of searches. Once you type in a keyword or topic into the search query, Pinterest will suggest semantically-related modifiers, which indicate some of the most popular search queries related to your topic. Keep track of these popular queries and paste them into a document that you can keep on hand when pinning new content to your boards.
While Pinterest may operate a little different than other social sharing networks, that does not mean you can create an account and occasionally log on to pin posts. Just like your other platforms, it’s crucial to develop and maintain a consistent sharing strategy, regularly check analytics, and continually “repin” other user’s content (this is how you “engage” with your followers). Strategy is at the core of building a following, spreading brand awareness, and enhancing your multifamily SEO efforts.
According to Buffer, you should aim to post between five and 30 pins per day. Be sure to spread these pins out at different times.
Here are a few other Pew Research Center stats to keep top of mind:
Varying your timing will help you reach different segments of your target residents and create more exposure. We recommend pinning content on Saturdays as well as weekdays in the afternoons and evenings, as this is typically when most residents are active online.
Customize your pin’s link to direct potential residents back to your website so they can check out your property. Click “Edit” on your pin, insert your website URL into the “Source” bracket, and make a captivating caption that will entice users to click on it.
In the case of multifamily, the jury might still be out on whether this platform can significantly generate qualified apartment leads. However, some of our clients are seeing success with increasing their brand awareness and SEO.
Pinterest is a unique social media channel that may not be successful for everyone, but when utilized correctly, it does have the ability to increase your brand awareness and potentially enhance your SEO efforts. The key is to ensure you utilize the platform to the fullest: by regularly pinning and engaging with residents and maintaining a strategy to optimize SEO.