A Guide To Pinterest For Event Planners: Strategy & Best Practices

A Guide To Pinterest For Event Planners: Strategy & Best Practices

This guide covers all the best practices for sharing and getting found on Pinterest for event planners. When it comes to social media and search engines, Pinterest is a natural fit for event professionals.

Pinterest has over 300 million active users who explore the visual platform each month. And sure, while that’s only a fraction of Facebook’s audience, it’s still the 3rd largest social network in the USA. But forget about all the boring numbers because Pinterest could have been designed with event planners in mind. 

The social network melds organization and inspiration, bookmarks and beauty, and proper old fashioned search and discovery. It’s perfect! But let’s dive into the details of Pinterest for event planners and how to best use the platform.

Related article: Event Marketing On Social Media: Make Your Event โ€˜Gram-able

Pinterest Strategy For Event Planners

If you were looking for shortcuts, well, this ain’t gonna delight you. Pinterest themselves recommend prioritizing high-quality content. Later, we’ll get deeper into what this means in more detail, but, basically, Pinterest recommends relevance.

“Content relevancy matters more than anything else on Pinterest.”

Pinterest content tips

The foundation of your Pinterest strategy is excellent content that your audience wants to see. If you’re going to be found by potential customers, try to think about what your clients would want to see. So if you’re a wedding planner, your clients want to see wedding pins, right? Well, yes, but you can’t merely call all your pins, “wedding pictures.” You need to think about your audience.

Try to think of the questions your customers usually have. Then build your pinning strategy around that. As an event planner, you know what your customers struggle with. Your pins should reflect that knowledge. Image a common client question, then imagine what you’d expect to see if you typed that into the Pinterest search bar.

Get Niche In Your Pins

Pinterest searches are different from those on Google. While on Google, a search might be something like event planner in Austin, in Pinterest, it’s more likely to be rustic weddings

For example, Pinterest searches for backyard weddings increased in 2019 by 441%. So when you’re taking your amazing events and turning them into pins, try to figure out the niche it fits into. Dividing your world into corporate or weddings won’t be enough. Get granular. Get specific. 

“People are going nuts for donuts as colorfully edible party displays – raised, old fashioned and sprinkled. Searches for donut decor +748%.”

100 Pinterest trends for 2019

Use The Insights in Pinterest For Event Planners

And if you want to get ahead of these trends, Pinterest shares the trends in multiple ways, including their Insights section. You’ll see monthly trends on Pinterest for event planners to use in pins of their own.

Trends in Pinterest For Event Planners

But getting found in searches is not actually everything that matters when it comes to trends. It’s also an excellent way to engage with clients and guide them to new ideas. Try this idea: watch trends and build boards of your own. These can be shared with clients, especially those that want to be on the cutting edge. 

Lastly, monitoring trends will allow you to anticipate what customers will be asking for. Whether it’s finding new locations, or lining up the right vendors, by keeping your finger on the pulse, you’ll be proactive rather than reactive. Getting ahead of trends is confidence building, right?

Almost done with trends in Pinterest for event planners, I promise. There’s one more little marketing hack that can be done with this knowledge. If you know that people are really into garden weddings, you can blog about garden weddings in Austin. So when a client heads over to Google and searches, you’ll be a super relevant result. Search engine ranking boost!

You might like to see 2019’s top trends below:

Consistent Posting Is Key To Pinterest for Event Planners

Pinterest recommends posting consistently, rather than uploading a ton of images all at once. While your Pinterest pins are somewhat evergreen, there are benefits to the drip approach.

Consider hashtags. Often, they’ll be sorted in chronological order with the latest pins showing up first. A steady posting schedule keeps your pins near the top.

And if this sounds like a headache, you can use Pinterest’s scheduling tools. That way, you can set up the next two weeks of posting all in one shot. 

Optimize Your Landing Pages For Pinterest Click-throughs

It’s all about the follow-through. When a potential client clicks on one of your pins, you want them to visit your website, right? Well, sure, but sending people to your homepage isn’t always the right thing to do.

Let’s stick with our example of backyard weddings. If you’ve recently done a garden wedding, put those pictures up in a blog post and link your backyard wedding pins there. That way, there’s a logical flow from the pin to your post and then ultimately to your contact form.

Details, Keywords, and Descriptions

When you do put up a post, don’t do it half-way. Pinterest recommends filling in the title, description, and URL. 

“The text also helps us understand more about your content so we can show it to the right people.”

Pinterest content tips

When adding in the full description, which allows for up to 500 characters, consider both humans and algorithms. It should read nicely and “sell” your message to potential customers. But the keywords you use in description also help Pinterest’s algorithm know what the pin is about. So write keywords in your descriptions. Use the space to describe the content of the pin or the page it links to. 

Pinterest recommends writing in complete sentences and including a call-to-action in the description area. No need to stuff in keywords, just write them in naturally. 

And yes, you can indeed include hashtags. Pinterest recommends keeping the number of hashtags below twenty. And of course, make sure the hashtag is relevant to the pin, and your business. 

8 Pinterest Best Practices For Event Planners

  • Pick eye-catching images: Bright, vertical photos will get you noticed by those scrolling by.
  • Keep it contextual: Match the image to description and content, and of course, to the landing page too.
  • Brand your pins: Put your logo on images, but avoid the lower right corner since Pinterest covers that area up sometimes with product icons.
  • Add text to the image: A picture may paint a thousand words and all that, but adding a few words will help the audience grasp the context. 
  • Avoid abstract images: Pinterest does best when things are explicitly clear. Abstract pictures don’t translate well to the medium.
  • Video pins should be short: Try to keep your video less than 15 seconds in length. 
  • Pick a bold cover image for videos: Your cover image should be awesome, and attention-getting. And like a picture pin, it should be contextual. 
  • Get to the point: Try to make your point in under 5 seconds. 

Size Things Correctly

If you want your imagery to appear as expected, take the time to size things according to Pinterest’s specifications. A 2:3 aspect ratio and a size of 1000 pixels by 1500 pixels is ideal for Pinterest.

Oh, and when writing titles or descriptions, only the first few characters show. In the title, only the first 30 characters will show up in the feed. Similarly, only the first 50 characters display from the description in the feed. So put your best foot forward. Try to get the point across in the first few words in both the title and description.

Beyond Pinterest For Event Planners

Pinterest for event planners is only one tool, our of many. And I hope you’ll include our event planning software in that toolkit too. But hopefully, you’ll discover some new ideas of how it can work for your event planning business both online and in-person. And of course, come follow our Pinterest account too. We’ll follow back!

If you liked this guide, check out Event Planning 101: A Guide For New Event Planners in 2020.

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  1. Pingback: Blogging Tips For Event Planners: Search Engine Optimization : ThymeBase Blog

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