The Benefits of a Pinterest Business Account and How To Set Yours Up

I’m a firm believer that Pinterest is a non-negotiable must-have for all business owners and entrepreneurs as part of their overall marketing strategy and lead generation. There is so much more to Pinterest than home decor, planning a wedding, or finding a quick & healthy recipe for dinner tonight. Pinterest has an enormous audience of highly engaged users that are looking for an answer or solution.

That’s where your business comes in.

Before you begin executing your Pinterest marketing strategy, it is essential your account is set up for optimum success and that starts with a Pinterest Business Account.

The Basics of a Pinterest Business Account

With Pinterest, you have the option between a personal account or a business account. If you’re a business owner, entrepreneur, blogger, or creative, a business account is a must. A Pinterest business account automatically conveys a sense of professionalism as compared to a personal account. Though you may have hundreds of super inspiring quotes pinned on your personal account, those aren’t going to help drive traffic to your website or convert leads.

I’d also like to point out that in the Pinterest Terms of Service, they note that if you’re going to use your Pinterest account for commercial purposes (ie: for your business, to make money, etc) you must have a business account. In basic terms, if you’re using Pinterest for work, you need a business account.

The Benefits of a Pinterest Business Account

There are ample benefits to creating and using a Pinterest business account. Let’s dive into four (4) of our favorites that we’re certain will be top of your list, too!

No Additional Cost

That’s right, a Pinterest business account is free – there are no additional fees! As a business owner, that’s a huge perk to your bottom line. It’s incredible to see a platform that has incredibly valuable resources and tools available to business owners at no additional cost. This shows you just how much they want business owners and creatives to succeed on their platform!

I’d like to note that while a business account is free, there is a cost associated with running ads. I’ll dive into that in just a bit.

Business Hub

When you log into your Pinterest business account, you are brought directly to your business hub. The business hub provides you a quick snapshot and overview of how your account overall and pins are performing. If you’re like me and are big on analytics, this is a great way to get a quick daily check-in without having to do a deep dive into your Google Analytics.

The business hub first gives a snapshot of your account’s performance over the last 30 days highlight impressions, saves, and link clicks. You then get to see your recent top pins over the last 30 days, along with the most recent pins you’ve pinned. You then have an option to see all of your pins or dive deeper into your analytics.

The business hub also gives you a snapshot of your recent Pinterest ads. It highlights your total Pinterest ad spend over the last 30 days, plus impressions, saves, and link clicks. Similar to the overall account snapshot, you’ll get to see your recent ads at a glance or dive into them in more detail with the ads manager.

There are a few other features to the business hub that we feel are great perks. You can explore different resources that help you meet all of your business goals like creating the best pins or using audience targeting tools. They offer quick links to their Pinterest Business Site where you can find tips and best practices, the Pinterest Business Community where you can connect with fellow business owners overall and in your niche, and lastly easy access to their Pinterest Help Center.

Built-In Analytics

Along with the Business Hub, your Pinterest Business Account comes with built-in analytics. These analytics are a deep dive into the performance of your account as a whole and each individual pin. This allows you to truly see what pins are driving the most traffic to your website, what pin design is performing best, a look at your audience, and so much more.

The main analytics page provides you with information including:

• Impressions: the number of times your pins were seen
• Engagements: the total number of saves, closeups, link clicks, and carousel swipes (ie: the interactions on your pins)
• Total Audience: the total number of people who have seen or engaged with your pins
• Engaged Audience: the number of people who engaged with your pins (ie: saved, clicked a link, etc)

In the analytics dashboard, you can see the performance of each of your pins, broken down by the specific pin, the type of pin (organic vs paid), the source, the format, and total impressions. They are organized initially from highest engagement to lowest, but you can filter as needed.

You are also able to view your top boards and filter based on impressions, engagements, saves, closeups, or link clicks. I think this is equally as valuable as knowing what pins are performing best to ensure you are pinning your pins to the proper board first.

There is also a section in the analytics where you can dive into your Pinterest audience. It shows you stats on the most popular categories and interests of your audience (ie: home decor, design, quotes, food, etc). You can then click on each overall category, say food for example, and see a breakdown of the related niche categories (ie: desserts, healthy recipes, etc) and their popularity among your audience. You’ll also see a breakdown of the age, location, gender, and device used by your audience.

Rich Pins

Simply put, Rich Pins contain additional information directly from your website that helps your pin stand out and rank higher on Pinterest. Pinterest describes Rich Pins as:

“Rich Pins are a type of organic Pin that automatically sync information from your website to your Pins. You can identify Rich Pins by the extra information above and below the image on closeup and the bold title in your feed. If something changes on the original website, the Rich pin updates to reflect that change.”

Pretty neat, huh?

Once you have Rich Pins enabled, Pinterest does the rest of the work for you when something is pinned from your website. From your keyword-packed meta description (aka blog excerpt) to recipe ingredients, Pinterest automatically pulls this information for you and anyone that Pins from your website. We call that a win-win!

Related Post — Rich Pins: What Are They + How To Enable Them on Squarespace

Pinterest Ads

One of the biggest benefits of a Pinterest Business Account is the ability to create and execute ads through Pinterest Ads. This is a robust platform that allows you to really target your ads to reach your ideal audience and get the biggest bang for your buck.

I think Pinterest does a really great job at explaining the process so I’ll give you the cliff notes, but you can find the full details here about advertising on Pinterest.

• Before starting an ad, you must create a campaign. Pinterest refers to this as the umbrella that shapes your ad. You must create a title for your campaign and assign an objective. Essentially, what is the purpose of your ad.
• Within any and all campaigns there are multiple ad groups. Pinterest refers to these as chapters and where the action takes place. The ad groups are where you set your budget, determine your timeline, and target specific audiences.
• Next, you get to play around with pins to fit within your campaign objective (that overall umbrella). As Pinterest mentions, you may need to adjust some ad group elements like audience or timeline to truly fit your campaign and objective.

How To Set Up Your Pinterest Business Account

Setting up your Pinterest Business Account is as easy as 1-2-3! There are actually two (2) ways to do this, and neither option is better than the other – it comes down to personal preference. Here at The SM Collective, I went with option 2 and created a separate business account that is not linked to a personal account. Again, it comes down to personal preference.

Option #1: Add a Pinterest Business Account to your personal profile

For option 1, you can add a business account to your existing personal Pinterest profile. With this option, you’ll only need to remain logged into your personal account.

1. Log into your personal Pinterest account.
2. In the upper right-hand corner, click the drop-down menu to open the navigation.
3. Select “Add A Free Business Account”
4. Select “Get Started” and follow along with the step-by-step instructions
5. Select the focus of your business from the drop-down menu
6. Select your business type
7. Choose if you’d like to run ads or not on your account
8. That’s it! Your Business Account is now set up and linked to your personal profile

Option #2: Create a new Pinterest Business Account not linked to your personal profile

For option 2, you’ll be creating a new business account from scratch that is not linked to your personal account. It is a completely separate account with separate login information.

1. Visit pinterest.com/business/create to start your new business account. (Note: you’ll want to make sure you’re logged out of your personal account)
2. Enter your business email address and password and click “Create Account”
3. Select “Get Started” and follow the step-by-step instructions to get your account started (ie: profile picture, website, business name, etc)
4. Select the focus of your business from the drop-down menu
5. Select your business type
6. Choose if you’d like to run ads or not on your account
7. That’s it! Your Business Account is now set up and separate from any personal account

Phew! That is a lot of information but part of the mission here at The SM Collective is to help fellow business owners, entrepreneurs, and creatives in any and all ways. I understand the importance and value of having Pinterest as part of your overall marketing strategy and want to ensure that you are set up for optimum success.