Pinterest is the perfect place to plan your dream home…and the right platform for home builders, REALTORS® and professionals in the home industry to reach an audience who is actively searching and planning for their life—from everyday tips and tricks for sprucing up a room to the big life moments like buying or building their dream home.
Pinterest is a platform built for search and discoverability where your content will inspire users to pin for later or click to learn more. Whether you’re an independent real estate agent trying to reach new customers while keeping existing clients engaged or a home developer looking to inspire potential homebuyers to take the step of building from the ground up, Pinterest is a platform that could help you connect with over 150M monthly users actively searching for domestic inspiration.
Branding Matters
Typically branding on social content is taboo because it’s recommended that you let the creative speak for itself—fans are more likely to engage and stay engaged with content that has less branding. However, if done tastefully, Pinterest branding can actually add credibility to your pins. Subtle branding that does not overtake your creative or messaging can help pinners easily identify your content in their Pinterest feed, as well as let people new to your brand know who you are so they can easily learn more or reference back when the time is right to start looking for a home.
Do Your Research
Pinterest is a search engine just like Google, which means that users are constantly looking for inspiration, planning DIY projects, and on the hunt for insightful tips and tricks. One of the best things about Pinterest is that you can see what the most searched terms are for your specific brand or the topic of your pin along with what’s trending (what people are searching for now). For example “2017 trends” and the color “gray” were two of the most searched terms on Pinterest towards the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017. This means that if you can create a pin that organically aligns with your brand and incorporates “2017 trends” and “gray” into the creative and keywords in your description, your content will be more likely to surface at the top of a pinner’s search, increasing your pin’s reach and engagement. We recently created a pin highlighting 2017 color trends that can be incorporated into your home for a home developer client which drove more than 57K impressions.
Share Your Knowledge
It may seem obvious, but Pinterest pins that share insightful tips and tricks (like Home Maintenance DIYs) that pinners can actually use receive higher reach and engagement than other types of content. According to a survey conducted by Pinterest asking users to describe what content needs to be on the network—pinners said useful (54 percent), helpful (50 percent) and inspiring (45 percent). This is such an important factor for Pinterest that they recently released a new feature, the “Tried It” button, that allows users to confirm that the information shared in your pin actually works or not. The “Tried It” button adds a layer of validity to the content you are sharing, which will make pinners more compelled to repin and save for later because they know it works. On the contrary, if you are creating content that pinners indicate does not work (identified by a small check mark next to a red unhappy face), pinners will be less likely to trust your brand and invest in your products, so be sure to fully vet and test your concepts before publishing.
Size and Direction Matter
Pinterest’s feed is vertically aligned, which means that as pinners are searching for pins to save on their boards, they are scrolling down versus horizontally left or right. Take advantage of this functionality by optimizing your pin creative vertically. This will ensure pinners see your content in their feed longer as they scroll. Not only do long-form pins take up more real estate in the Pinterest feed, they give you a unique opportunity to be creative with your layout, especially when showcasing different rooms within a new home listing, allowing you to share more information than you would be able to on Facebook or Instagram.
Plan Ahead
Pinterest isn’t like other social platforms where you have to move quickly to capitalize on a culturally relevant and “trending at the moment” topic to hopefully interject into the conversation. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. When planning your Pinterest strategy and execution, you need to plan weeks and months in advance to reach your intended audience and see your desired results. If you pin too late, you’ll likely miss the timeframe when pinners are actively searching and planning. Even seasonal content you previously posted will begin to resurface in pinners’ feeds when they start to search terms again. For the same home developer client, our fourth top pin during October was a “how to” table setting pin from exactly one year prior. Because we used topically relevant keywords in the description and created an insightful pin guiding pinners on how to set a formal dining table, without additional promotion or reposts, we saw our pin organically start trending on its own as pinners were actively starting to plan for the upcoming holidays again.
Put Your Money Where Your Content Is
The advertising offerings for Pinterest are still relatively new and not quite as nuanced as other social platforms, but they are rapidly evolving. Pinterest’s advertising capabilities are the number one reason I recommend Pinterest to my clients. It’s not only effective, but the money you put behind your content is also really going to work for you if executed right. Imagine your pin is a snowball rolling down a hill and as it continues to roll it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Well, that’s essentially what your media dollars are helping you do with your content. You select your ad objective (engagement, traffic or awareness), add your relevant keyword search terms (hint: make sure to include all words that pop up in Pinterest’s search bar, but do not spam people by including unrelated terms), set the flight, and watch it go. Unlike other advertising platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram where your ad will stop working the minute your flight ends, Pinterest’s promoted pins keep going long after the last cent is spent. I saw how effective Pinterest advertising can be when my home developer client’s pins went viral. With no more than $300, we initially earned 380K impressions and 54K repins. Since the paid campaign ended, we’ve continued to see it earn more than 324K additional engagements and pick-up from over 16 blogs, with the pin now living at the very top of Pinterest’s search feed.
Pinterest is the platform to inspire potential homebuyers. With beautiful home photography and insightful maintenance tips and tricks, you can reach an audience that is actively dreaming of their best life. Pinterest users are a productive audience who are constantly in search of the next best thing and planning for their lives from everyday occasions to holiday prep and monumental life changes, it just might be the right platform for you!
Alexandra Guglielmino is Account Director for McBeard (a Fullscreen Company). Alexandra is focused on leading innovation and a data-driven strategy to support McBeard client’s business objectives. She has over seven years of experience advocating on behalf of the brand audience to develop deeper connections with their fans.
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