Lots of Etsy stores have tried to promote themselves on Pinterest.
Some, such as DEEZART (store link | Pinterest link) have a great Pinterest strategy that brings them millions of views per month.
Others, such as Atelier Déco&Kado (store link | Pinterest link), struggle to pass even 30,000 views per month.
What DEEZART has done sounds impressive, but keep in mind that even a thriving Pinterest account will still only increase your sales by 20-30% at best.
This means that if you’re still in the early days of growing your Etsy store, it’s more time efficient (and you will make more money) by first making your store compete and stand out among other stores on Etsy.
After that, Pinterest promotion is the next logical step since you can reuse all the images and copywriting from the Etsy store to your Pinterest account.
With that out of the way, here’s what to expect if you’re a first time Pinterest user who wants to build a sales channel for Etsy:
- Gradual Growth: Pinterest is great for sending traffic to your Etsy shop, but building that traffic won’t happen overnight. Instead, expect a slow start with a gradual increase month over month.
- Adopt a “publish and wait approach”: It can take a few months or even a year for a Pin to really gain traction and drive traffic and sales.
- Pinterest is a visual Search Engine: If Etsy is a search engine for craft products, then think of Pinterest as a search engine for images. This means you will need to SEO your pins for better search discovery. Fortunately, SEO optimized text on your Etsy store can copy/pasted for great results on Pinterest.
- Consistent Posting: Unlike other platforms, the Pinterest algorithm really likes consistent posting. Try to publish 1-2 pins every day, rather than bulk posting 30-45 pins in a single day. This consistency will help increase your visibility on the platform.
- High-Quality Photos: Pinterest users really love high-quality, “aesthetic” photos. If your Etsy store already has great photos, simply reuse them for Pinterest. If you don’t have good photos, take the time to invest in professional-looking images since they’ll improve both your Etsy store and your Pinterest account.
- Initial Time Investment: Setting up your Pinterest account and publishing your first batch of pins will require an initial investment of about 10–16 hours. This includes optimizing your profile, creating boards, and designing pins.
- Ongoing Effort: After the initial setup, you can expect to spend around 4–8 hours per month managing your Pinterest account. This time will be spent on creating new pins, engaging with your audience, and monitoring your performance.
- Free Promotion: One of the advantages of using Pinterest to promote your Etsy shop is that it’s free to use. You have the option to sponsor high-performing pins or invest in quality-of-life tools like Tailwind for a fee, but the core features of the platform are accessible without any cost.
With that out of the way, here are the obvious (and not-so-obvious) steps you should take to promote your Etsy store on Pinterest.
Turn your Pinterest account into a business account
The first step is to register a Pinterest account. Make sure your Pinterest account has the exact same URL extension and profile name as your Etsy store. This helps improve brand consistency.
After you’ve created an account, you need to switch the account from a personal to a business account.
To switch to a business account, simply go to Settings -> Account Management -> Convert to a business account.
Business accounts give you extra features such as analytics and the ability to sponsor individual posts.
Finally, make sure your Pinterest account is visible on search engines such as Google or Bing. To do this, go to Settings -> Privacy and data -> Search privacy.
This should index your Pins in search engines and make them visible outside Pinterest.
In the future, you can even acquire a Verified Merchant Tag. This isn’t something you can do right away since your Pinterest account must meet certain conditions, such as being 3 months old.
Connect your Pinterest account to your Etsy store
Once you’ve set up your business account, it’s time to connect your Etsy shop. Etsy and Pinterest are partly integrated with one another, allowing you to claim your Etsy shop URL through Pinterest.
To do this, follow these steps:
- Navigate to your Pinterest settings.
- Select the “Claim” option.
- Choose “Etsy” from the list.
- Follow the guided instructions provided to link your Etsy shop with your Pinterest account.
Edit your images (without posting yet)
Next, you need to edit your images to make them Pinterest friendly.
The most important thing you need to do is crop your photos into the correct image resolution and aspect ratios:
- 2:3 aspect ratio with a 1000 x 1500 pixel resolution.
- 2:3 aspect ratio with a 1200 x 1800 pixel resolution.
You can also experiment with a 1:1 aspect ratio with a 1080 x 1080 pixel resolution.
These resolutions and aspect ratios are endorsed by Pinterest itself as being the best performing.
Optionally, you can also experiment with filters, using text in the image, or other such adjustments using photo editing apps such as Photoshop on desktop or Snapseed on mobile.
Remember, good photos are crucial. The catchier and more beautiful they are, the better your pins will perform.
Find relevant Pinterest keywords
Pinterest, just like Google or Etsy, relies on keywords to properly sort information and provide the user with the relevant, desired information.
Fortunately, it’s very easy to discover relevant Pinterest keywords simply by using the auto-complete function in the Pinterest search bar.
The terms that appear in the dropdown, such as “home design” or “home décor ideas living room” are actual keywords used by Pinterest users to discover content.
This makes the auto-complete function of Pinterest search the primary way to discover relevant keywords to use in your Boards and Pins.
Create your boards
The next step is to create “Boards” in your Pinterest account.
Boards are roughly the equivalent of Folders or Categories, and it is in boards that you will save and store individual pins.
Just like Pins, Boards can also appear in searches (both inside and outside Pinterest).
Boards are also a crucial element of using Pinterest since most users navigate through ideas and images by entering a Board, exploring it, and then switching to a different Board.
Thus, a Board with 100 Pins has a much higher chance of producing a sale compared to a Board with just 10 Pins, since the user has more stuff to choose from.
By properly naming and categorizing your Boards strictly around certain topics, you will greatly increase their relevancy and appearance in Pinterest’s search results.
DEZAART has an excellent naming and categorization system, with boards named such as:
- Christmas Décor Ideas.
- Dining Room Décor.
- Entryway | Hallway Décor.
- Bedroom Décor.
- Living Room Décor.
These names and taxonomies are very broad, but more importantly, they directly target Pinterest search traffic such as “Christmas decoration”, “hallway ideas”, “bedroom aesthetic” etc.
Thus, when creating boards, make sure they target very broad terms that instantly tell a user what sort of Pins or products they will see on the Board.
Board names such as “wood lamps” or “cozy bedroom” are great because they immediately communicate to the user what the Board is about and are also very searchable.
Create your first Pins
The final step is to create the actual Pins.
If you’ve properly optimized the descriptions and tags of your Etsy products, then you can simply copy and paste the description from your Etsy store listing to the Pinterest description.
An important thing to note is that when you create a Pin, you can only place it on a single Board. However, after you publish the Pin, you can save it to other boards as well.
Our recommendation though is that if you have 1 product that can fit into 3 Boards, then you should ideally create 1 new Pin for each Board.
For example, if your store sells a wooden lamp, then turn that product into 3 Pins:
- 1 Pin for a “wooden lamps” Board
- 1 Pin for a “nightstand décor” Board
- 1 for a “bedroom décor” Board.
This approach is granular and allows you to have Pins that are targeted for a single specific keyword, instead of using a more scattershot, broad approach.
Pin a lot and often
Before launching your first Pinterest account, try to create at least 4-5 Boards and a backlog of 40-50 Pins, complete with images with 2:3 aspect ratios, descriptions, titles, and links.
The important thing to consider is that the Pinterest algorithm strongly prefers constant pining, rather than massive pin dumps followed by nothing.
Because of this, it’s best to schedule your Pins so there are 1-2 new Pins coming out every day over the course of a month.
The advantage of Pin scheduling is that you don’t need to worry about your Pinterest account as long as there are still Pins left in your scheduled pipeline.
Scale up if you get good results
Assuming 3–4 months have passed and you’re getting some promising results, the final step is to scale up how often and how many Pins you publish on Pinterest.
Once you go past 30–40 Pins per month, you’ll need to start using some more specialized Pinterest tools to create and schedule your Pins, such as Tailwind.
Tailwind is a tool that connects to your Pinterest account so you can mass create and schedule Pins from a single dashboard. This makes scaling up and posting lots of pins much, much easier.
This is important because Pinterest accounts with lots of views and traffic have hundreds or thousands of Pins published across dozens of boards.
Conclusion
Pinterest is a great source of traffic and sales, not just for Etsy but for any type of business you can think of.
Mastering how to create Pinterest traffic is a very useful skill that can be leveraged into a lot of different endeavors you might have, so give Pinterest a shot and try it as a sales or traffic generator.