When I am coaching people on how to use Pinterest the first hurdle that we have to get over is that writing for Pinterest is completely different than writing for Instagram.
On Instagram, your followers are brand loyal. They are following and interacting with you on this platform because they enjoy your brand and reading what your brand stands for and offers. On Instagram, you need to not only have photos that are on brand but you also need to write your content on brand. On this platform, keep in mind that you are also dealing with a seven-second attention span. Your photo needs to be scroll stopping AND your caption needs to be witty and captivating.
In coaching sessions when we are creating pins, clients want to write the pin description as if they are writing an Instagram caption. Writing an Instagram type caption on Pinterest is not going to help you get found on Pinterest, and here’s why.
People searching on Pinterest are not brand loyal. Read that again. People searching on Pinterest are not brand loyal, meaning most pinners do not give a shhhh about your brand. These people are searching to achieve a predetermined outcome in their mind.
Here’s an example: A pinner types into the Pinterest search bar “San Francisco Industrial Wedding Venue” what this person wants to achieve is finding examples of all of the Industrial wedding venues in San Francisco that are on Pinterest. When they find a photo that they are imaging as their dream wedding location they will click on the pin and be taken “fingers crossed” to the website of that venue or at least a photographers site that has tagged the venue in their blog post.
The reason that this searchers results came up with so many Industrial wedding venues in San Francisco is that the pin description was littered with these terms. See Pinterest is a search engine, their algorithm could care less how witty and popular your caption is. Pinterest’s main job is that it wants to show it’s users the most relevant items related to the words that they typed into the search bar. The results that show up in your search are directly related to the keywords in the description of the pins that are being shown to you.
I heard a saying once that said, “My eyebrows are sisters, not twins.” Not only is that true for your eyebrows but it’s true about the digital marketing platforms of Pinterest and Instagram.
Let’s get into the 7 “sister” qualities on both platforms:
On both platforms, you need to have a well lit and captivating scroll stopping photo.
On both platforms, the images should be branded, meaning they look like they belong to the same family because chances are if someone is very interested in all the things that you have to say, you want to be recognized on both platforms.
Instagram photos with words tend to perform as well as photos without. Whereas, Pinterest photos with words perform exponentially better than photos without words.
Instagram: Hashtags matter on how you are getting found.
Pinterest: Hashtags do not matter on getting found, it’s all about the search terms baby.
Instagram: Witty or emotionally heartfelt captions perform best.
Pinterest: It’s all about the SEO, save your emotional words for Instagram.
In conclusion, the moral of the story here is that to be successful on both platforms you need to flip your brain when you are writing for one over the other. Both of these platforms should be a part of your digital arsenal but how you use them and obtain leads through them are completely different.