Let’s just clear the air now. I definitely have more than 3 reasons why you should be utilizing Pinterest for your TpT business. But today I’m going to try and keep this concise and share some of the reasons that are the most obvious to me!
In case you’re new here (welcome!), let me just give you a little background on Pinterest…
Pinterest is a visual search engine. Many people use the platform for ideas, inspiration, planning major life events, tutorials, DIYs, etc. Businesses use it to drive traffic to their website, YouTube channels, podcasts, blogs, etc.
So a business has to:
- Create Pins
- Write descriptions and titles for said Pin
- Add a link for where they want to drive traffic for said traffic.
In my opinion, almost every business can benefit from Pinterest. There are very, very few business owners that I would say, “I don’t think Pinterest is the best platform for your business”.
This brings me to my next point.
Do you know who absolutely does need to be on Pinterest? Teachers Pay Teachers Sellers!
As a Pinterest marketing and ads strategist, I offer done-for-you services for educational visionaries. I work with TpT sellers and course creators, which sometimes includes business coaches!
Now the reason I’m telling you this is because working with TpT sellers is a unique specialty for me, and luckily, it’s a HUGE niche.
Speaking of the teaching niche being competitive, this leads me to my first reason that you should be utilizing Pinterest for your TpT business…
Reason #1: Your Audience is on Pinterest, and it’s a BIG Audience
The TpT seller niche (not just on Pinterest, but in general) is very popular and competitive. Whether you’re a seasoned seller, or just getting started, it’s important to understand this concept.
With any intelligent marketing approach, before you go all-in on a platform, you need to ask yourself, “Is my ideal avatar on Pinterest?” This is basically a fancy way to say, is the person who wants to buy from you spending time on Pinterest.
Now I know I mentioned that education is a popular and competitive niche, but I want to remind you that 97% of searches on Pinterest are unbranded!
Yes, that means whether it’s a classroom teacher or homeschool mom that’s searching for their problem, if you offer the best solution, they don’t give a rip who you are!
Refreshing right?
Reason #2: The Snowball Effect
Say what??
Don’t worry, I’m going to explain what that means, because I’m sure “the snowball effect” means absolutely nothing to you in regards to Pinterest, haha.
Now the snowball effect means one event causes a series of many other similar actions or events. I will clarify, I don’t think you’re going to trigger hundreds or thousands of website visitors from the first Pin to Pinterest.
The point here that I’m trying to make is the longevity of Pinterest. You DO need to be pinning consistently every day, and over time you will start to see a compound of your traffic.
This is when things start to snowball.
When Pinterest understands what your content is about and who you serve, they start showing it in the searches of people who are actively searching for you!
An important takeaway that I mentioned there though was that it will take time for your content to be indexed by Pinterest.
Once you start utilizing Pinterest for your TpT business and have Pins that perform well, you’ll start to see legacy Pins take form. Legacy Pins are what your top Pins will be and they surface to the top year after year!
Isn’t that incredible that one Pin can literally continue to bring traffic year-over-year?
Your Pins have a much longer lifespan than any Instagram post which lasts, what, 24 or so?? I don’t know, I’m not an IG strategist but I do know it doesn’t hold a candle to Pinterest.
And geez, think about Instagram stories. Fun? Yes! Can you get some great traffic, yes! But they also disappear after 24 hours!
**PRO-TIP: Save your Instagram stories and repurpose them to Pinterest! It’s such a shame to create that content and have it disappear. Now that’s a blog post for another day though. I don’t want to get on a content repurposing tangent now!**
And here we are, arriving at…
Reason #3: Diversification
What’s the phrase? “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket?”
Yes, that also pertains to marketing your business! There are so many wonderful platforms out there. Unfortunately, I’ve seen business owners make the fatal mistake of going all-in on one platform. That’s why I always encourage my clients to…
- Have their own website and/or blog, where they OWN the real estate
- Build their email list, which is once again something they OWN
The other platforms are great tools to drive traffic and build your email list, get sales, etc., but I would not solely build your business on borrowed real estate.
I once did an account set up for a client that was going to mainly drive her traffic to her products, lead magnets, and Instagram. This is okay in the beginning when you’re just getting started on Pinterest.
However, I made it abundantly clear that in the long run, she’d want to have some type of long-form content that would be housed on her website. That way she could drive traffic to her OWN domain.
I only did her setup, but after that, I vowed to myself I would not take on clients that did not have consistent content creation and strategy for driving traffic to their own website.
I say this because down the road the growth will be much more challenging, and honestly, it will not be the best use of Pinterest marketing efforts.
There are certain boxes that I need clients to check because otherwise, they have no way of serving their person on Pinterest. They are just going to be continually asking for the sale (aka only driving traffic to TpT products).
This is not a sound strategy, therefore, I don’t want to take their money and be Pinning in vain.
Hopefully, that makes sense. 🙂
That’s All For Now
So in summary, think about this.
Your Instagram account could be lost tomorrow, and those tens of thousands of followers you have? They now mean nothing if something happens to your account.
And then there’s Facebook. Some people absolutely crush it on Facebook with ads. But if their ad account gets suspended (which is actually quite common), you can kiss that amazing ROI goodbye.
Once again, all the more reason to diversify where you are marketing your business! Plus, audiences can vary and be different from platform to platform.
The way people behave and what frame of mind they’re in also varies depending on the platform they are on!
Okay, I know I said this was going to be concise but to know me is to know I’m long-winded. This includes my writing as well! If you’d like to learn about refreshing your marketing strategy as a TpT seller, be sure to read my post here.
I hope you found this post helpful, and that it also supports what you may already be thinking. You either need to get started on Pinterest or at least reassess and give your strategy a makeover if it’s kind of down the toilet right now.
Hang in there! There’s hope.
One of the best ways you can learn more from me is to download my FREE Pinterest strategy guide or take the dive off the deep end and enroll in my signature course, Pinterest Marketing Magic! 🙂
