Why You Should Reevaluate Your Pinterest Strategy

For most brands today, Pinterest is not a core element of social strategy. But, with recent updates to the platform, it could become as important to you as other social sites like Facebook and Instagram. 

At its inception, Pinterest was a fantastic way to store and share images — something that most would say Instagram has now mastered. 

After its initial popularity, as with any other social media network, some brands like IMPACT began to measure the effectiveness of their efforts on the platform and backed away from their strategy. Simply put, we don’t have an endless amount of visual graphics based on the nature of our business, and our posts weren’t performing as well as other social networks.

In March of this year, Pinterest went public. Since then, it has been hyper-focused on improving its platform to increase engagement, and reignite interest and drive results for businesses. 

In Q4 2018, the company had 265 million monthly active users, and it expects growth to continue — correlating with the enhancement of their product. Shortly after going public, Pinterest released an update that made it easier for creators to upload videos directly to the platform. 

According to Techcrunch, “The company says they’ve observed a 31% increase in searches for ‘inspirational videos’ since 2018 and that “Pinners are 54% more likely to say they’re inspired to action by videos on Pinterest compared to videos on other media platforms.” 

Because of the increase in users on their platform, and the endless stream of data showing the importance of online video in general, Pinterest enacted additional updates to improve the video experience for both users and brands/creators. 

These additional updates just rolled out — here’s what you need to know.

What’s included in the Pinterest video update?

New and improved video uploader

This update makes it easier to upload videos at the right quality and get them to look as intended in feeds. 

Video tab on business profiles 

This tab allows companies and brands to keep all of their videos in one place for users to find, search through, and engage with. This is better for brands and marketers to group posts together — and better for users to interact with video content, if that’s what they’re looking for.

Analytics tool for videos 

This tool helps companies and brands review and understand their video views and overall performance. 

Pin Scheduler tool

For brand efficiency, scheduling video posts is essential, and the new Pin Scheduler will allow marketing managers of profiles to pre-schedule video posts to batch upload and save time.

In addition, Techcrunch points out, “Because videos on Pinterest surface and resurface over time, videos uploaded directly to Pinterest will have a longer shelf life and, in theory, more engagement than if posted to other platforms.” 

Reevaluating your Pinterest strategy

Knowing that there are updates to the platform is exciting, but why should it make you reevaluate your Pinterest strategy (or lack thereof)? 

Video is proven to be more engaging, no matter the platform, so if you’re not using video on your website or in social, you’re behind and need to catch up.

Based on statistics, video on Pinterest is performing well and could be a way your brand stands out.

Lastly, with the new updates you now have greater visibility into performance. That means you won’t be left in the dark with individual post and video performance, so you’ll quickly be able to tell if what you’re doing is working.

So, if you’re ready to try video on Pinterest, what should you do next? 

Get comfortable with the tools

Log in and test out the platform and its posting capabilities — and read up on the analytics tool.

Look at others

See what other brands are doing that would resonate with your audience. What do their posts look like? What types of videos are they sharing? 

Make sure you have tracking set up

If you don’t already have a way to track performance back to your website from Pinterest, now is the time to set it up. You’ll want tracking on the videos within the platform itself, but of course we want to see if users are making their way back to our site after engaging. To put it simply — are viewers of videos on Pinterest coming back to your website for more?

Test with current videos

In an effort to be lean, try posting clips of existing videos your brand may have, but only if it makes sense with your research. This could be a quick way to get videos posted and to start measuring what works and what doesn’t. 

Try Pinterest-specific videos

Alternatively, you could try videos specifically made for Pinterest. You may want to start here if you have no videos, or if you think your videos won’t resonate on the platform. The risk here is that you might spend time making video content that doesn’t achieve the outcome you’re looking for on the platform. So, to avoid a major fail, make sure that you’ve done your research on what’s going to perform well, and make sure that you keep a close eye on how the video content is performing. And, as always, know when to adjust or pull the plug.

Review/Repeat

Make note of what worked, what didn’t, and decide how you’d like to proceed. If things didn’t work out as planned right away, don’t give up. You may want to try something different to test.

Digital marketing changes quickly, and if we’re not open to trying and ‘failing fast,’ we’ll always be playing catch up. Testing and trying out new ways of helping and reaching our audience is the fun part of marketing, so why not allow yourself to get creative and go out on a limb every so often?

Pinterest might be worth it.