In this blog, we go through different ways that creators who are on Pinterest can find opportunities to monetize their pins and their online social media presence.
For the last six or seven years or so, brands have been putting influencer marketing as a big part of their brand strategy and they are seeking out brands influencers on various different platforms that align with their brand message and offered them brand deals.
Normally the big platforms that get them are usually YouTube or Instagram and TikTok as well. However, Pinterest is a platform where you can get brand deals too.
I’m gonna show you three different ways that you can use Pinterest to broker brand deals for yourself.
Optimizing account links to other socials
The first way is by making sure that when you have your Pinterest account claimed. You can actually link your Instagram if you are an Instagram influencer or your YouTube, if you are a YouTube influencer or whatever you are an influencer, you can actually link that social media account as your business account because you’re making business, you are a business person.
Once you do that, you can unlock some analytics and unlock some data, you’re going to unlock some trend data that you can actually use as you’re building out your brand and as you’re building out your account on Pinterest.
What happens as you create idea pins or Pinterest pins, brands discover you or people who work at Brands discover you.
The natural thing when they click a link if it’s a static link, or if you have a video pin that goes straight to a YouTube channel, that’s going to take them over to a place where you have more followers.
So for those of you who are just starting out on Pinterest, and don’t have a lot of reach, views or big follower counts, but if you do have another platform like Instagram to TikTok where you have a big following, you can actually use Pinterest to drive folks who are on Pinterest.
There are some people when they search, they don’t go to Google, they don’t go to YouTube, they go to Pinterest, and that includes people who work at brands. I myself personally, I’m talking from experience. I’ve been on Pinterest for over 10 years.
When I got on Pinterest, brands found me and reached out to me and offered me brand deals because they saw what I was pinning aligned with their message they saw that I reached an audience that’s similar to their audiences similar to their customers.
Obviously, one thing you want to do is make it easy by having email in your bio, you know have someplace for them to reach out easily.
Brand On App
The second way that you can use Pinterest to get brand deals is through the app itself. So before you can do that you kind of actually have to make sure that your Pinterest account is optimized. I mean if you have a brand that you’ve been using across platform brand colours, brand aesthetic, brand thoughts, vitality use if you’re more with bold fonts if you’re with subtle hues like greys and things like that have that content that continuity across platforms, so if they were to leave Pinterest and discover you on Instagram or you on YouTube, they’ll see there’s continuity.
When you go on Pinterest, make sure that your brand matches aesthetically on other platforms. So visually, and then also not just visually, but then also your niche.
Whatever niche you just decide to hone in on that you stick to that, because that’s also going to help you get more followers and also to kind of have a sense of, oh, this is what she’s doing on Pinterest. This is what she’s selling. This is what she has to offer on this platform.
Mention the words creator influencer, Blogger or podcaster this is because now on Pinterest when people search, the results are gonna get actual maybe blog articles, places you can shop and profiles.
Repurpose Best Content from other platforms onto Pinterest
Unlike before, you might have seen static pins or video pins and if you’ve been on Pinterest before, whether you ignore it or take your active user on it, you might have seen your reach go down, you might go in there and see that your engagement everything is going down. That’s because the platform recently changed in 2021.
Pinterest started optimizing and prioritizing idea pins (idea pins or one to 20 slides) it could be a static image or a video, but they usually say they prefer a video first.
So anything you’ve been doing on other platforms as a trader, whether on Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube, on your podcasts or your blog, whatever you’ve been doing all those other places, take all of that content, bring it to Pinterest because it’s fresh and especially if it is video content.
Pinterest and LinkedIn are what I call content deserts because everyone’s flocking to TikTok, and Instagram where everyone’s competing. I don’t think it’s oversaturated but everyone’s competing for the eyeballs on those two platforms. Meanwhile, on Pinterest platforms like LinkedIn, for example, they are starving for people like you. So when you go in there, you have a better chance of actually blowing up or getting attention because you are essentially, a big fish in a small pond versus Instagram, a small fish in a big pond to borrow that.
RELATED CONTENT: 10 Ways to Repurpose Idea Pins | Social Media & Content Marketing Tips
Tag Brands in Idea Pins then Pitch
When you come over to do your idea, pins, the beauty of Idea pins, even though can’t go off-platform, what you can do is add tags, add your affiliate links, if you have an affiliate link to a product you own Reward style,Shopstyle, Amazon associate, SkimLinks or any one of these various different affiliate marketing platforms if you have an affiliate link, you can actually if you’re doing even showing the style, you say this is how I detangle my hair and this is the paddle brush I use and this is the comb that I use. You can tag that comb in that video when you show yourself detangling your hair and tag it and have the call to action say buy this brush.
So, when your idea pin blows up all the people who watch the idea are also going to see your tag on that paddle brush the links gonna go to a link on Pinterest. They buy it and here’s where the influencer branding. So you draw in the maker of that brush by tagging them so you can actually tag people and you can tag the product.
So while you’re making money because you’re tagging your affiliate link to that product, you also tag the brand person who sees that they’re gonna see that so if that idea pin blows up like I’ve had idea pins blow up and you’re getting a lot of engagement it’s going pretty well. The brand knows that you are not just doing well with your idea pin you also promoting them by tagging them.
The natural thing is if they don’t reach out to you, but that idea pin is blowing up is for you to reach out to them. Send them the link to that pit and say, Hey, I love your product. It’s great. It’s wonderful. I think we have a partnership opportunity, and maximum success, you saw how well this can do, and we can start a strategy.
Whatever it is how you structure your brand deals, you can pitch to them, because you already had what’s called social proof. You can show them that this pin has been shared outside of Pinterest a number of times and they shared it to other places. So you’re telling the brand, here’s my social proof that I am successful, and I can be successful in promoting a brand.
Create Brand Offer
Create your own brand deals like you don’t have to wait for someone to come to you or you don’t have to pitch and hope that someone says yes, you can actually create your own brand deals.
And where you do that is sites like Upwork, Fiverr, and other independent marketing or independent contractor platforms where people can go if someone needs to get someone to edit their website or create some CSS or do something those platforms are there for folks who are creatives, and they’re selling the services.
What you might be asked also by those people who have active Pinterest accounts is:-
- If you have a large following if you have a large reach
- If you have even one pin go viral
That’s enough for you to fashion a media kit that says that I know how to make viral pins. So I can pin your product and charge them a certain amount of money. And you offer their KPI, what you can do for them how often you’re going to do that whether or not you know, you know what level of access, you’re giving them to that content that you create, whether you’re gonna be doing it organically, whether you’re going to be creating the content, or whether you’re gonna get users and just repin their thing onto your account.
Influencer Marketing Apps
There are different influencer marketing apps, now that they have recognized Pinterest itself as a platform are trying to cater to influencers to the creators, the people who make the pins on the Pinterest app, the Pinterest platform is doing more to bridge brand deals.
They are in the process of creating their own sort of brand management that can be the intermediary between Pinterest, creators and brands. They’re in the process of that and they might have been inviting some people to do that, where your Creator hub will have an option where you can pin certain things and Pinterest will pay you that also brokering for brands who want Pinterest creators. Separate from that.
You have sites like Izea and Aspire that now allow you to connect your Pinterest account, especially those of you who have a good reach and Pinterest and have a good following inside your brand. So while you’re also getting Instagram deals, and YouTube deals with Tiktok deals, you can also offer as part of a plan or package a Pinterest deal and if someone comes to you for an Instagram, but not specifically for Pinterest, you can let them know, hey, as a bonus, or capital and I can also pin this on my pictures account for X amount of money.
That way you elevate and, you know, optimize, and you know sort of essentially selling and marketing, you’ve probably gone to buy something and then as you’re about to checkout, they say hey, Amazon does this famously, people who purchased this, purchase these other two things together as a bundle.
So you’re looking in there, you didn’t go in to purchase the bundle, but then you look at it, it’s cost effective. Like I might have to buy this later on. Instead of buying this later on for higher costs. Let me just get it now. So upsells so you can upsell brand deals that you have for other platforms into Pinterest as well on these influencer marketing platforms.
Jay Jay Ghatt is also editor at Techyaya.com, founder of the JayJayGhatt.com and JayJayGhatt.com where she teaches online creators how to navigate digital entrepreneurship and offers Do-It-For-You Blogging Service. She manages her lifestyle sites BellyitchBlog, Jenebaspeaks and JJBraids.com and is the founder of BlackWomenTech.com 200 Black Women in Tech On Twitter. Her biz podcast 10 Minute Podcast is available on iTunes and Player.fm. Follow her on Twitter at @Jenebaspeaks. Buy her templates over at her legal and business templates on Etsy shop!
