Demystifying Pinterest - how to get your wedding business in front of thousands more couples!

And you're listening to the wedding pros who are ready to grow podcast. I'm here to share with you actionable tips, strategies, and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level. If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business, doing what you love, then you're in the right place. Let's get going with today's episode.

If I were to ask you why you don't currently use Pinterest in your wedding business, I expect you'd give me one of the following answers. First of all, perhaps you just think it's really confusing. You don't understand how to use it, perhaps you know how to use it to plan your house out or to use it for personal reasons, but just don't understand how it's ever going to be used for business. Or the second reason is you probably just don't have enough time.

Well today, I'm going to be sharing with you three reasons why you should be using Pinterest and three top tips to help you use the. The first reason why I think you should be considering Pinterest in your wedding business is because couples are on there and they're on there in there hundreds and there thousands. Not only are they on there planning their wedding, using boards and dream wedding boards, but it's also one of the first places they go to plan their wedding.

In fact, I know that lots and lots of brides and grooms out there actually start planning their wedding on Pinterest before they've even got a ring on their. Now for most of you, you want to get in there early in the process, especially if you're a venue, a wedding photographer or wedding planner. You want to get to people right at the start when they're first engaged and Pinterest offers you that opportunity. Why? Because it's where people start their.

If you ask any of your couples that you're currently working with at the moment, if they have a Pinterest board, I guarantee a huge percentage of them will. They use it to plan out ideas, to look for flowers, to look for suppliers, to look for ideas. And there's just a wealth of content on there. It's the perfect place for planning your wedding. So if it's the perfect place for planning your wedding, why wouldn't you want your wedding business to be promoted on there? And after all it's free.

The second reason you want to be using Pinterest in your marketing is because unlike Facebook and Instagram, Pinterest actively encourages its users to leave the Pinterest platform and go over to your website. Now, your website is where you're going to make sales. Social media platforms. are like your shop window. It's the place where people are walking by and they see what you've got to offer. And then they come into the shop and that's when they come to your website.

So the idea of Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, all of these things, isn't to sell directly on the platform, although that sometimes happens, but it's actually to get people to come into your shop or come over to your website where you can do a much better job of selling. Now links on Instagram and Facebook drive me crazy. They probably do to you as well. Facebook just doesn't like links at all. It really will penalize your post if you put. Instagram. Well, we all know about Instagram links.

You can't even put a link on Instagram in your post. You have to say, go to my bio, to click on the link. And it's a right faff. The reason Facebook and Instagram do this is because they don't want people to leave their platform. They want their users to stay on there for a long time, and they want you to keep yourself and your content on there. This is why I like Pinterest though, because Pinterest does the opposite.

Pinterest is actively encouraging its users to click on your pictures and your products and your services, and come over to your website, your Etsy store or wherever it is that you're pointing them to find out more. This is a great opportunity for you to get more organic traffic over to your site. The third reason you should be considering Pinterest in your wedding business is because so many other people don't know how to use it.

If I go on the Pinterest platform and look at wedding venues and wedding suppliers, so many people are doing Pinterest wrong. They're using Pinterest. Like you would use it as a user, but not like you would use it as a business. So if you do Pinterest correctly and you follow my tips or take my courses or whatever, Then you can stand out from the crowd.

Some of my clients are doing an excellent job on Pinterest and getting people over to their website, getting people to read their blog and making sales. So if you can understand how it works and demystify it with my help, then I guarantee it will be easier for you to stand out from the crowd. So there's the three reasons why you want to be thinking about Pinterest. Number one, because brides and grooms are on there and it's the first place they go to plan their wedding.

Number two, Pinterest actively encourages its users to leave the site and come over to your website, which is where you can sell to them more traffic to your website, more chance of making a sale. And the third reason is because it's a really good secret in the wedding industry. And so many people are using it wrong. If you can use it right, you can stand out from the crowd. Now I've shown you that Pinterest is a really powerful tool.

I'm going to give you some actionable tips and advice to help you use the platform better. The first thing I want to share with you about Pinterest is the most important piece of information you are going to need to demystify the platform in your mind. Instead of thinking about Pinterest as a social media site, start thinking about it as a search engine. We tend to lump Pinterest in as a social media site. People say to me, yeah, I'm on all the social media platforms.

I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram. I'm on Pinterest, but just stop for a moment. Do you go to Pinterest to be sociable? Do you go there to like your friend's post or to comment or to do anything of a social nature? No, you don't. You go to Pinterest to search, to search for ideas, to search for information. That's why it's much more helpful to think about Pinterest as a search engine.

In fact, Pinterest is much more of a similar platform to Google image search than it is to Facebook or Instagram. So if you change your thinking about the platform, all of a sudden it starts to become less of a. Think about how a customer is using Pinterest, they're going to the platform. They've got an idea of something they're looking for.

Perhaps they're planning a yellow themed, sunflower wedding, and they're going into Pinterest and searching for sunflower themed wedding stationary, sun flowers, themed flower arrangements or whatever it is they're using it as a search engine. Pinterest is then giving them loads and loads of images. That they can choose from where they can go and get more inspiration, click on the images and go through to that suppliers.

So when you start realizing that that's how Pinterest works, it makes sense how you can use it as a business. It's just like being found on Google. It all runs on keywords. Keywords are the core of what Pinterest is all about. There is no point having lots of pretty pictures on your Pinterest account. If you're not using keywords, why? Because without the keywords, no one will. Like I just said, people are going onto the platform and searching.

So if you're someone that has a whole stationery suite with a sunflower theme, don't just upload the pictures onto Pinterest and call them stationary, make sure you're using the word sunflower themed or yellow themed, stationery ideas for your wedding. And then people will be able to find. Now, when you think of it like a search engine, it helps you to understand.

And the other thing it helps you to understand is that it doesn't matter whether or not you've got any followers on Pinterest, because unlike Facebook and Instagram, where the content is served predominantly to your followers is not the same on Pinterest. Why? Because it's a search engine. So anyone can go and search for something that you have, and you can pop up in the search results and they don't have to be following you as long as you're using those keywords.

Keywords are essential across Pinterest and there's loads of places where they matter keywords matter in the name of your profile in the bio, on your profile, in the name of your boards, the name of your pins, the descriptions you give the pins, the descriptions you give the boards, the way that you link to your website and the words on your website as well. Key words. Everywhere. So if you want to be good at Pinterest, you need to be good at keywords keywords. Don't need to be complicated.

Think like your customer, what would your customer be searching for to find what you offer? They're not going to be searching the jargon words. They're going to be searching. General woods. So for example, if they're looking for a wedding dress for their wedding, they're probably not going to be searching the name of the designer or the style of the dress. They're going to be searching something like a sweetheart, neckline, ivory, short gown, like. You see what I mean?

They're not the expert, they're the person looking for the ideas. They've got ideas in their head and they want to find them on Pinterest and find where they can buy them. From. In fact, my sister, when she planned her wedding, found her wedding dress via Pinterest because all of the gowns and the dresses she was searching for kept coming up and linking back to one dress shop in London. So that's where she went. And that's where she got her dress from.

It works, but you have to be using those keywords so that your ideal customers find you for those. The second really important thing that you need to know about how to use Pinterest. Well is all about links now, earlier on, I spoke about how important links are on Pinterest. Why? Because Pinterest actively encourages people to leave the Pinterest platform and come over to your website.

Now, when you add pictures with their descriptions as a pin onto Pinterest, it is vitally important that you always always have a website link attached to that image. Never just upload all the pictures of your work from your computer and add them to your Pinterest profile without a link. And here's why. If today I go ahead and add a picture that I've made of a bouquet of flowers to my Pinterest account.

If I just add that picture to my profile as a picture, give it a great title, but don't put a link as soon as someone else finds it, reshares it, or repins it. All of a sudden that picture has lost its attribution. Back to me, it's now just a picture of a beautiful bouquet of flowers, and nobody knows where it's from. Now. My picture could then be circulated across Pinterest, thousands and thousands of times. And when people click on it, all it does is make the picture, get bigger.

Now as a customer, this is incredibly frustrating because if that customer has found the perfect bouquet of flowers and they want to find out who made it so that they can go ahead and book them for their wedding day. Well guess what? Without that link, they can't is just a picture. As soon as it's left your profile, as soon as someone else shares it to their profile or shares it as a favorite to their board, then it's lost it's attribution back to you.

However, if you make sure when you upload that picture, you add a link to your website, ideally your website, or if you don't have a website, your Instagram page, then every time that picture gets reshared and reshared thousands of times across Pinterest, your link stays with it. So it doesn't matter if it's shared 50,000 times each time it's shared, when someone clicks on that picture, it still comes back to you and your website because you're the original poster. So it's absolutely essential.

You always, always, always have a link on every single post that you pin onto. Pinterest. Please don't make the mistake of not having a link and just adding. Now not only should you have a link on every single picture on Pinterest, that link should be relevant. Now the temptation is to just send everyone to our home page all the time to add our homepage link to every single picture that we put up onto Pinterest.

But actually, again, that's not the best way to generate sales and that's not the best way to please your customers instead of just sending everyone to your homepage. It's really important. You send them to a relevant place on your website. Remember most of the time, they're not finding you via your profile. They know nothing about you. They've just come across one image of a product or service that you offer that they want to know more about.

So they want to be able to click on that picture and find out more about exactly what you can offer them and how they can buy it. Just for a moment. Imagine you're looking for a pair of bridal shoes. You find the perfect pair of bridal shoes on Pinterest. You want to go ahead and buy them? So you click on the picture of the bridal shoes and it takes you to a shoe website with 5,000 listings and it just takes you to their home.

Have you now got the time to go through all those listings to try and track down those same shoes you just saw a picture of, or do you give up and go and find a different pair of shoes? Well, for most of us, we just can't be bothered. We don't have the time to do that. We'll just go and find them somewhere else. However, now go back to the same scenario. Imagine you found that perfect pair of bridal shoes.

You click on the bridal shoes and it takes you to a website page where you can see the same shoes, the price, the sizing, and you can. buy now. You're much more likely now to make a purchase. And it's the same with you and whatever it is that you're selling, if you send people to somewhere irrelevant or just your homepage, they don't have the time to look for the information they need.

You need to send them to somewhere very, very relevant on your website with information about what steps they need to take. Next. There needs to be some kind of call to action on that page to book a call or send an inquiry form or whatever your sales journey is. So. To conclude, make sure on that, that you have a link on every single picture that you upload to your Pinterest account. And not only do you have a link, but you also have a relevant link.

The third thing I want to share with you about Pinterest is the important of niching. We've already talked about how important keywords are when it comes to the platform. And I see the following two mistakes all the time. When I look at wedding suppliers and wedding venues, Pinterest accounts. So I'm going to share them with you so that you don't make the same mistake. The first mistake comes when you come to naming your boards.

So I see loads of wedding suppliers and loads of venues with amazing photography, all with links back to their website. But when it comes to naming their boards, they've made a mistake. They call them something like our weddings, our portfolio, our best work, our work. Now the problem with this is there's no niche and there's no keywords. If I'm looking for something, there is no way.

If I'm planning my wedding, I'm searching for the words, my portfolio, therefore, this is a complete waste of your time. You have to remember that most people are never coming to your profile on Pinterest. So although having the words, my portfolio makes sense. If someone does land on your profile, you're damaging your chances of being found by more people.

Instead of calling your boards of my portfolio, call them something with lots of niche keywords in the title, because people are searching niche people aren't just searching for wedding ideas. They're searching for very specific wedding ideas, niches that do well when it comes to Pinterest, are things around seasons of weddings, color themes of weddings, different style themes of weddings, things like boho or rustic or vintage or luxe.

The more specific you can get the better, because that is going to get you found. It doesn't matter if you have loads and loads of different boards, all with really specific keywords and keyword names. And a lot of the boards have similar images on them. That's okay. It just means you're much more likely to be found again, think like a customer.

If you're planning a wedding, you're not just searching for wedding ideas, you're going to be searching for something really specific wedding venues in Bedfordshire. Wedding flowers in Scotland. So if you want to be found for those terms, guess what? You need to have boards with those names in the title and pins with those descriptions in them as well. You cannot be too niche on Pinterest.

So start thinking like a customer and don't waste your time by having boards, which are called things like my portfolio and. If you do already have a Pinterest account and you've already made this mistake, don't panic. You can go into your account and edit the name of your boards and make them more keyword niche. The other mistake I see in the wedding industry all the time is promoting other people's work too much. What do I mean by this?

Well, the first thing to note is that Pinterest does like it. When you share other people's work on your Pinterest boards. It thinks you're a better member of the Pinterest community if you do this. So instead of only ever sharing about your work and talking about your work, occasionally you need to share other people's pins to your. Now, I'm not suggesting that you share your competitors pins.

So if you're a wedding florist, don't share other wedding florists work, but if you're a wedding florist, then why not share some wedding cars or some wedding venues or some wedding photographers work that way. You're being a good member of the Pinterest community, but you're not shooting yourself in the foot. Now I understand that most people grasp the idea of this, but this is when they make the mistake. When it comes to their boards on Pinterest, they think, right.

Becca said to me, I need to make sure I occasionally share other people's work. So what I'm going to do is I'm a wedding stationer. So I'm going to create some boards, all about wedding stationery, and then. I know what else my client likes. They want to know about venues and hair. So I'm going to set up some other boards. I'm going to set up a board called wedding hairstyle, ideas, or wedding, car ideas, nighttime, wedding, entertainment, ideas, all those different things.

Then they go ahead and pin those other people's pins to those relevant boards. And they think they've done a great job because they know their customers interested in that they're being a good member of the community and all is well, except unfortunately it's not. Why? Because like I've said all the way through this episode, most people will never come to your Pinterest.

So if you're a wedding stationer and you have a board all about wedding hair, then your board about wedding hair may be being found over and over and over again. But all you're doing is promoting other people. There's no way for them to know anything about you and your stationery, because how can you add pictures of your wedding? Stationery it's will board when it's called wedding hair, it makes no sense. So let's abandon that strategy and think a little bit.

Think back to what I said works on Pinterest, those color themes or seasonal ideas or venue and location ideas instead of creating specific boards for different parts of the wedding start creating themed boards. So for example, you could have a board which is all about eucalyptus themed, wedding inspiration. That's something that's been on trend for the last couple of. On that board, you can share your stationary collection, which fits into that.

Perhaps you've got things that you're green, perhaps you've got things with the eucalyptus theme on it, and you can share your stationery to that board with links to your website, where people can go ahead and buy. However, also on that board, you can then share hair, inspiration, entertainment, inspiration, deck, or ideas, or anything else you want to, which fits into the eucalyptus theme.

You can find them very easy, by just searching, Pinterest yourself, and then adding some of those ideas to your. Not only does that mean if someone is planning a eucalyptus themed wedding, they're going to come across your board and they're going to see loads and loads of great information. It also means they're going to find you and your products. You want to make sure your products are quite dominant on that board.

So have lots of your products and just a few inspiration ideas from other people, but this is a much better strategy rather than putting all the other pieces of the wedding on other boards and everything that you own on one. You shouldn't create a board on Pinterest that doesn't have your work on it. Otherwise it's a waste of a board. Every single board you create should always have some of your work on it. All of it with great keywords and all of it. With links back to your website.

Hopefully, you've enjoyed this little overview of Pinterest that I've given you in today's episode, I've explained why you should do it. And I've given you three huge ways to help you understand the platform better. There's loads, more things that we could be talking about when it comes to Pinterest from making sure you have a business profile to what kind of pins do best on Pinterest and how to make more people click on your products and services, or come over and read your blogs.

But we don't have time for that. The good news is if you're listening to this in real time, then I have a Pinterest challenge coming up very soon in June. And you can find out more about that in the show notes. If you're listening to this in the future then do go ahead and check out that link in the show notes still, because it may be that I've got another challenge coming up very soon that you can take part in.

If you want to get going on the Pinterest platform or just want to reinvigorate yourself, cause you kind of neglected your account for a while. Then the challenge is the best way to do that. You can find out more from me and you can ask me your questions live too. So get involved. I'll see you next time. One thing I love about the wedding industry is the other amazing people you get to work with.

If you want to meet like-minded wedding pros, just like you, then why not join my free Facebook community wedding pros, who are ready to come meet some new connections. Hang out with me and hopefully learn some things too, just search for some Facebook.