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No matter what fills your schedule every week (work, parenting, school, or everything in between), here’s a truth we all feel: our time is valuable. The way we build a business for long-term success is by caring about how we spend our time.
This is a continuous refinement process for me, as I hunt for ways to better invest my time and still generate meaningful results. I didn’t want to spend 80% of my time on an app only for it to deliver 20% or less of a return for me.
When I became a parent and my time basically evaporated, this became even more important to me. Every hour away from my kids needed to be an hour that I was confident was well spent.
So, when I saw the power of Pinterest on my business (with very little effort required from me), I was stunned. For years, I had miscategorized Pinterest as an app merely for seeking inspiration for my next bathroom remodel or reminding myself why I don’t need to get bangs every fall. Maybe you’ve done the same?
I’ve watched Pinterest grow in its efficacy and popularity over the years, and I think there are many business owners and creatives of all levels miscategorizing it just like I used to.
It’s not just for inspiration. It’s not just an ‘internet mood board.’ And it’s definitely not just for bloggers.
Let me walk you through how to utilize Pinterest to not only bring in fresh traffic to your business but also sell products on the platform in just an hour a week.
Selling Products on Pinterest in Four Steps
1. Leverage Pinterest as a search engine, not just social media.
When I first started getting curious about Pinterest, it wasn’t because I’d initiated research on it myself. My first virtual assistant, Caitlyn, asked me how I was using it, to which I rambled on about how I ‘map out my dream life’ there. She replied with, “No, how do you use it for business?” Oops. I wasn’t.
I handed over my login credentials and wished her luck. When she first started publishing dedicated pins to my content, I watched the numbers start to go from basically 0 to getting over a million views a month.
I began to redefine Pinterest as no longer a mood board or even a social media platform, but a search engine. Pinterest has over 522 million monthly active users, and 97% of top searches on Pinterest are unbranded, meaning users are actively searching for new ideas and products.
So when you drop keyword-driven pins, you have a much higher success rate of your content and offers to find the right customers.
Turns out, pins aren’t just links to pretty visuals floating around the internet. People are opening Pinterest with open-ended questions, and curiosities that they don’t quite know how to word. They’re throwing keywords and phrases into the search bar and looking for guidance rather than specific answers.
Pinterest users have fewer expectations of what they will find in their results than when they go to Google with questions. They’re open to solutions, and that means they’re even more open to you.
As Caitlyn and I saw the numbers grow and the proof that Pinterest was driving consistent traffic to my site every day, we optimized our strategy, learned to batch-create and schedule pins, and watched as our new endeavor became a 1-hour-per-week strategy that did the heavy lifting for us.
As the average entrepreneur spends about eight hours per week on social media marketing (that used to include me), one hour on Pinterest generating better results was my cup of tea.
2. Create click-worthy, branded pins.
Did you know that as a user, you can upload pins to Pinterest and point them to where you want them to go? That being said, you don’t just want to be a pinner, you want to become a contributor to Pinterest — creating your own pins and sharing them on the platform.
To start building an effective, 1-hour-per-week Pinterest strategy, you must start with creating click-worthy pins. Captivating the attention of your new audience means you need to stand out in a sea of visuals.
Pins with visually compelling designs are 60% more likely to be seen, saved, and clicked on, but you don’t need to be a professional photographer or graphic designer to create effective pins.
Studies show that pins with eye-catching visuals can boost saves by up to 50% and increase click-through rates by around 30%. This is especially true when brands create images that speak to their audience and use on-brand visuals consistently.
Rather than pressuring yourself to make every single pin unique, save time by relying on easy design templates. Canva is a lifesaver when it comes to an easy way to look pro without the platforms or experience. Load up your favorite photos (even high-quality, freshly made stock images work) and create 10-15 pin templates you can use every time you’re ready to load up new pins.
Not only do templates help us save time, but they make sure that every pin we share is fully on brand. Win-win.
Take your weekly Pinterest hour to edit your pin templates, download them from Canva or wherever you like to design, and then upload them to Pinterest. Feel free to push yourself and let your creativity fly here, because this is your testing ground.
You can try new ideas, titles, verbiage, or designs without feeling like you’re spamming your audience or misleading them with visuals that aren’t your ‘usual’ vibe. Upload as many pins as you want, especially if the inspiration strikes, and see what hooks people the most. There’s no risk and all learning.
This simple technique allows me to create less and promote my creations more. I can take one episode of The Goal Digger Podcast and turn that into ten pins in just a few minutes, giving my content a much better chance of being found, seen, and enjoyed. It allows me to create knowing that my content has the ability to live on long after I publish it.
If you want to learn how I specifically take one piece of content, paid offer, or freebie and transform it into 10 different pins in just 10 minutes with my brand-centric pin templates, I am teaching my exact process in a free, virtual masterclass.
Spend an hour with me one time and then one hour a week after that growing your traffic with an easy, replicable template process. This is a great way to not overthink it.
3. Optimize for lead generation and sales.
Pinterest is the #1 organic traffic driver for us in my business, but I am not Pinterest obsessed solely because it drives traffic. I am obsessed because of what happens after that traffic lands on my website.
Because of how niche and tailored my pin audience is, they’re also coming to my site looking for my solutions, whether it’s for my free or paid offers. Pinterest isn’t a one-shot traffic generator.
Instead, the new customers landing on my pages are being invited to join my email list and stay in touch, giving me the opportunity to turn that traffic into treasure.
This effect is seen across so many industries. Around 80% of Pinterest users discover new brands or products on the platform, making it a key tool for businesses to generate new leads and grow their email lists.
Pinterest users are 2.2x more likely to click and make a purchase after interacting with products and offers they discover on Pinterest compared to other social platforms.
Driving sales through pins is a primary reason so many businesses are starting to show up on the website rather than keep their focus solely on social media.
The difference is evident in how Pinterest and social media websites function.
Apps like Instagram want to keep users ON their app, which challenges business owners to feel like they have to convince their audience to leave the app. I mean, how tired are you of typing some variation of “tap the link in my bio for more” just so you can get people out of the sea of tiny squares and into your sales funnel?
Pinterest is encouraging users to find their solution and actually leave the website altogether. They want to get people to your website, which means you have a better chance of converting and capturing new customers.
While we absolutely love the traffic we can get from Pinterest, traffic alone doesn’t always turn into treasure. We want people to not only save our pins but to go a step further and visit a page that we own (whether our website or shop!).
Using specific calls to actions and offering free value or solutions helps people want to go off of the app to get more information.
Once they click on our pin to visit the page, we want to ensure we have a plan to capture that traffic when they land on our site. For us, the main way we are able to monetize traffic coming from Pinterest is through growing our email list where we can serve our subscribers and then eventually invite them into a paid offer.
While shops with physical products can find success linking directly to their products for the people exploring the platform, as a digital company, we’re looking at ways to capture the traffic and lead them to a product aligned with the pin they clicked on originally.
4. Consistency is Key: Batch and schedule content.
Just like your elementary school teacher taught you, “Practice makes perfect,” except I’ll do a quick edit for Pinterest: Consistency makes connection.
The more you create a habit in your workflow to test and try new pins and adjustments to your strategy, the more opportunities you’ll create for the right customers to find any and all of your work.
Research shows that consistent pinning on Pinterest is essential for boosting your reach and engagement. By pinning regularly — aim for a few pins each day — you keep your content visible and perform better than if you were to post in large batches infrequently.
Active accounts that pin consistently attract more impressions and interaction because they have fresh visibility in others’ feeds. This strategy aligns perfectly with how Pinterest rewards regular engagement, making it a key component of any successful Pinterest approach.
I mentioned that we love to use Tailwind to schedule our pins, and it’s there that we save a ton of time thanks to automation.
I want my pins to flood my potential customers’ search results, which requires a lot of pins with varying keywords and eye-catching visuals. That means we’re aiming for a high daily posting rate (around 10-20 pins per day), which drives that higher engagement rate.
But don’t let that number scare you — even if you upload just one fresh pin per day, you can 20x the traffic you’re getting to your website!
I teach you how in my free masterclass, 20x Your Traffic in 1 Hour a Week with Pinterest Without Spending a Dime on Ads. I’ll show you how to take any of your offers, services, videos, social posts, or blog posts, and create click-worthy pins … even if you’re a total beginner.
Even if you’ve never even pinned a single thing on Pinterest before.
Pinterest Lets Your Hard Work Actually Work
The results we see from Pinterest might also sound like the results of many years of hard work, but I will say our results started almost immediately. When my employee Caitlyn integrated Pinterest into our workflow, I noticed some of my old blog posts started to take off. I watched as new students jumped into my programs when I wasn’t actively selling them.
I could see the numbers on my podcast, The Goal Digger Podcast, shift on the days when we would launch new pins. In fact, I know for sure that I still get book sales several years later thanks to the pins on Pinterest that pop up in just the right search results.
Pinterest’s unique and hyper-powered ability to connect your work to the right audience is unmatched. It takes less time, effort, and energy than social media and it’s far more effective and straightforward than a social media algorithm.
Finding new customers can finally have a method, rather than just feeling like a shot in the dark. Your valuable offers and impactful content no longer have a shelf-life of just a few hours or, at best, a day. Pinterest offers you weeks, months, and even years as it delivers your relevant solutions to the eyes that are seeking them.
So, Pinterest gives your work the chance to truly work for you and your business. With the help of a few good pins and 1 hour a week, what you’re already creating can help your business grow, saving you time and stress in the process.
You don’t need to do more, work harder, post more, and churn out flashy new content every few hours. Despite what the rest of the internet would have you believe, you don’t need to be a content-creation machine. You merely need to give what you do create the chance to shine.
