Do you ever wonder how to make video pins for Pinterest? Or wonder if putting video content up on Pinterest is effective?

Wonder no more, we got you covered! 

When you are done watching this video (or reading the blog post), you will know how to avoid the most common pitfalls marketers fall into when creating videos for Pinterest. Furthermore, you will have a step by step guide on setting yourself up for success with your video pins. 

Sadly, most people on Pinterest miss out on harvesting the great results videos could generate for them if only they knew what we are sharing today.

We invited Pinterest Specialist and trainer for Social Media Pro, Katrina van Oudheusden, and Pinterest Video Specialist, Felicia Faerch. 

Katrina and Felicia both help marketers succeed with their Pinterest marketing strategies and shared mindblowing insights with us that we know will change how you use the platform for your business.

Getting Set Up With Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the most misunderstood platforms out there. With over 400 million active users, the user count is steadily growing, so now is the time to get started with Pinterest if you aren’t there already. 

Pinterest is all about visual content and has the potential to inspire decision-makers. What drives the commercial potential of Pinterest is the motto:

We see what we want and we buy what we see.

This is what Pinterest is based on, so if you manage to get traffic from Pinterest, it can make all the difference to your business.

To make sure you avoid the initial pitfalls that potentially hinder your Pinterest success, we need to talk about the process of setting up a business account:  

Pinterest business account settings

1. You should create a separate business account on Pinterest 

I do not recommend mixing up personal and business accounts as it can lead to unfortunate mistakes like posting a pin meant for your friends to your business account and vice versa. 

2. Ensure consistency with your accounts across other social platforms 

If you are already present on other social platforms, make sure your Pinterest account is consistent with the rest. Use the same photo or logo as people recognize you by your visual brand, and also put in the same display name as you do on other platforms. 

3. Add a phone number and address if you have an offline presence

If you have a retail/brick-and-mortar location, make sure to include your phone number and address within your detailed info space. Pinteresters are browsing through the platform not only in search of inspiration, they want to highlight and promote your ideas as well as use imagery to find products and services they need. 

And people on Pinterest do search locally, so don’t miss out on a chance to get discovered and contacted.

4. Put ‘direct message mode’ on

Make sure to turn on direct messages to get questions from potential customers, and simply followers who need a bit more boost and conversation to convert into clients.

5. Claim your website

If you have a website, Instagram, YouTube channel, Etsy, or Shopify store, make sure to claim your accounts and sites, as Pinterest aspires to be the ultimate visual hub for your services and products. If you include your site and e-commerce shop, it can also boost your organic reach as people can make a seamless move from Pinterest to your site.

6. Think “boards” not “pins”

What I want to emphasize is that your Pinterest business journey starts with creating boards. They have the biggest weight on Pinterest from an SEO standpoint as the platform better knows how to rank pins that are inside relevant boards. 

Yet even from a user’s perspective, boards are an absolute must. Boards are how you categorize your business, and if someone from the audience is interested in a particular area of your business, they have to have a specific “hub” for all things related to their topic of interest. 

You have to get into the mindset of developing your boards, just the same way content marketing works: when you create sets of topics and start building up other sets of content assets related to these topics. 

Pinterest as a search engine?

To build a successful Pinterest strategy for your business, you have to understand how the platform inherently works. 

Don’t think of Pinterest as merely a collection of nice-looking images and infographics. Pinterest is a technologically-advanced search engine, only it’s a visual search engine. 

And Pinterest is one of the most powerful search engines out there, as people are actively searching there, and not just stumbling upon content as they do on other platforms. 

Stop interrupting, start inspiring!

Do not confuse Pinterest’s visual search with facial recognition, though:

If you upload a selfie to Pinterest, it pulls up all items within the photo but your actual face to identify what it is that you’re looking for: short hairstyles, earrings, headphones, etc.

Once Pinterest is done guessing what you’re interested in, it offers its users to shop for the items it managed to identify and scroll through the relevant pins. 

Yet this logic doesn’t only work for physical products – digital products can be searched for in the same way. 

Thus, your job as a marketer is to be as clear as you can – both visually and description-wise – regarding what you are uploading to Pinterest.

If Pinterest is a search engine, what are people searching for?

You’d be surprised to discover what people are searching for on Pinterest – from personal growth training to before/after photos of cosmetological procedures.

All you have to do is analyze what topics regarding your business are already out there and contribute to the existing demand or, better, find gaps within Pinterest content. 

Make use of Pinterest Analytics for audience insights to see what’s trending on Pinterest and find what interests your particular audience. And use this info to identify gaps in topics that are covered throughout Pinterest.

5 Fatal Mistakes to Make When Creating Video Pins

Now that Katrina has cleared out what Pinterest really is and how to leverage its full potential for your business, it’s time to understand what big no-nos are out there when dealing with video pins.

We know that video is now as big as it has ever been, so you would naturally want to integrate videos within your Pinterest strategy.  Yet there are some peculiarities to video content within Pinterest you should be aware of to see results from your Pinterest video pin efforts.

Mistake #1. Sharing videos to an irrelevant board

If you want Pinterest to recognize and rank your video, make sure to keep things relevant. Why? This has to do with the way Pinterest works, and Katrina went into great lengths to explain this.

Pinning videos to the relevant board is extremely important for SEO purposes (remember, Pinterest is a search engine).

If you pin the video to a completely irrelevant board, it is highly unlikely that Pinterest will understand how and where to rank your video. The same thing goes for any other type of pins.

Mistake #2. Misaligning the video content with video visuals

The visuals have to match what your video is about. Unlike Facebook and its focus on engagement and watch time, Pinterest operates differently. There has to be congruence between the content, the video, and the text you are sharing.

Remember how we explained that Pinterest is a powerful visual search engine?

Pinterest recognizes what is in the image and ranks it accordingly. That’s what makes Pinterest so special:

You can rank both based on keywords and based on images.

So, if you don’t match your visuals to your words, your videos will have a harder time ranking on the platform.

This makes video repurposing for Pinterest a bit tricky – if, let’s say, cat videos with a business message can work for Facebook or Twitter, they are unlikely to work for Pinterest. However, on this platform, you can afford to be more direct about what you are here for – to sell your services, advertise your new book, and so on.

Mistake #3. Forgetting about a problem-solving or a pain point element

In the video marketing industry, we often assume that if we create great-looking videos that beautifully display our product or talk about our service, we will sell like hotcakes. 

But if you don’t communicate clearly what the value of your product or service is, your audience most likely won’t know.

People buy solutions to their problems.

If people don’t understand the value of what you are selling, chances are you won’t sell much, if anything at all. Find out what it actually is that you are selling.

Consider this backpack video ad. It has everything a potential customer needs to understand what problem this product solves.

You might think to yourself, but I sell clothes (or flowers or cups), I don’t solve problems, do I?

Yes, you do!

Why should people buy your flowers rather than some other flower shop’s flowers? You could be standing for something: “Don’t let people you love feel undervalued, buy an appreciation bouquet today.”

In this case, you would be solving the problem of underappreciated people. No need to overthink this problem thing, just understand and communicate what problem you can solve.

Mistake #4. Focusing on the wrong metrics

Now, this is a mistake I see among businesses trying to measure success on Pinterest. They often focus on video views, but it is in no way a standalone metric. In fact, views is a vanity metric, as it doesn’t reveal whether your content is actually spot-on. 

By views, Pinterest actually implies impressions, meaning that people might have had the video playing while they were scrolling through the page or it showed up on their feed. 

Closeups are a better way of assessing video performance, as it reflects the number of people who actively clicked and watched the video. 

Link clicks and Saves are also great metrics to keep an eye at, as people may be saving your product or services for later consideration, meaning you might see some tangible business results later on.

Mistake #5. Thinking that size doesn’t matter

Previously, endlessly long pins were the it-thing for the platform – but they are really losing their edge now. As a marketer, it is your job to think about user experience, and making sure your video fits the users’ screen size is just one aspect to name here. 

There are three formats that work great for Pinterest video pins in regard to user- and mobile-friendliness:

• The square format,
• 4:5 ratio videos ( they display perfectly on all devices), and
• 2:3 ratio format.

Note that 9:16 videos don’t perform so well on Pinterest, as they take up too much space on the feed, bringing user experience down and making your pins hard to watch.

Final words

Certainly, there are more peculiarities to Pinterest than were discussed here. But if you manage to implement at least the few key points made throughout our brief conversation with Katrina and Felicia, you will already put your marketing efforts on the right track to Pinterest success. 

Good luck Pinteresting and feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions regarding the platform.