Believe it or not, Pinterest marketing isn’t just pinning pretty pictures and hoping for the best. There’s actually a lot that goes into creating a great Pinterest page, a lot of concepts to understand. To help you make the most of your Pinterest, we’ve created this list of all things Pinterest – from A to Z. Keep reading to increase your Pinterest marketing vocabulary. 
A is for Analytics
The information you obtain from your Pinterest analytics dashboard must be the backbone of your Pinterest marketing campaign. Using a platform like Tailwind can help you understand what your audience is interested in, who your influencers are and track your Pinterest success along the way. If you don’t know what’s working and what isn’t, how can you ever improve?
B is for the Business Insights API
A few months ago Pinterest announced their exclusive Business Insights API. While this is great news for the seven companies named – including Tailwind – it’s also great news for Pinterest marketers everywhere. The Pinterest Business Insights are helping make our “A”- word listed above even stronger. Here at Tailwind, we’ve already taken advantage of this opportunity by rolling out v3 of our dashboard – and that’s just the beginning!
C is for Contests
Pinterest contests are a great marketing technique, but you have to be careful about how you run your contests. For a long time now, Pinterest has been clear about the practices they do not want to see. When running a contest, remember that it’s about quality, not quantity. Do NOT ask them to repin, follow or pin from your site. These type of contests produce spammy behavior, potentially flooding Pinterest feeds with the same content over and over again. Instead, have users build boards around a theme, use a certain hashtag – or think outside the box! Contests should be creative and fun for everyone.
D is for Domain
With Pinterest driving more traffic than Twitter, LinkedIn and Reddit combined, it’s imperative that your domain is optimized for Pinterest. Provide rich detail, descriptive text and pin-it buttons for all pinnable images on your site. You should also clearly link to your Pinterest profile from your domain, as well as verifying your site on Pinterest (more on that later).
E is for Engagement
Engagement is the driving force behind all social media marketing. Why? Because social media is about building relationships! While engagement on other social media platforms is most often done through commenting, comments on Pinterest are actually really rare. Because of this, it is important to comment, repin and like pins from your fans.
F is for Followers
The more followers the better, right? Wrong! Three hundred engaged followers is worth a whole lot more than one million zombie followers, because those engaged followers are helping spread your brand. Because Pinterest is based on sharing interests, a person with only a few followers could have a pin picked up by an influencer and have that pin go viral. For example, a pin that was originally pinned by someone with 30 followers ended up in the hands of a Pinterest influencer, leading to it gaining more than 2,300 repins! Check out the pin’s “family tree”: 
G is for Guided Search
While Pinterest has long been thought of as a social media platform, the release of their Guided Search feature shows that they are serious about search. From the Pinterest search bar, users can type in what they’re searching for, and Pinterest will suggest additional searches to make the results more personalized. Thanks to Pinterest’s visual nature, their search engine will be based on “lot less typing… and a lot more browsing”.
H is for the Half-Life of a Pin
Want to hear something crazy? Content on both Facebook and Twitter are only relevant for less than two hours (80 minutes and 5-25 minutes, respectively). However, content on Pinterest stays relevant for more than a week. Because content can easily be discovered via search or category boards months after it’s pinned, it’s extremely important to make sure your links work. Don’t let potential traffic go away!
I is for Influencers
Influencers are users on Pinterest who have a large and engaged audience. Building a relationship with these pinners can be very lucrative for brands on Pinterest, it’s just important to choose the right influencers for your company. While someone like Jodi McKee and her 3.8 millions followers might seem like a great resource for an influencer campaign, if your company specializes in Ultimate Fighter gear, she may not be the right influencer for you. So, before you contact that influencer, make sure they’re pinning the right content for your brand.
J is for Joy Cho
The woman, the myth, the legend. Joy Cho is the most followed person on Pinterest. Joy’s Pinterest account is a perfectly curated collection of her blog entries and interests. In fact, her incredible Pinterest account even helped her beat out Harpers Bazaar in our “Blogger vs Brand” show down. Thanks to her popularity on Pinterest, she is now a bedding designer for The Land of Nod and she has a line of home decor items at Target.
K is for Keeping It Clean
Like most social media platforms, Pinterest has guidelines for what content is acceptable on their site. While most companies are probably not looking to post explicit content on their Pinterest account, sometimes that’s what a brand is based on. For instance, even though Playboy’s typical content would be restricted on Pinterest, they actually have a very successful Pinterest account. They keep in line with what their audience is interested in by posting about fitness, fashion, lingerie and general lifestyle tips.
L is for Like
The word “like” has become as synonymous with social media as it is with, like, teenaged vocabulary. While some have argued against the very existence of “likes” on Pinterest, they can actually serve a pretty useful purpose for Pinterest marketers. If someone pins something from your site, instead of repinning it and seeming overly self promotional, you can simply “like” and comment on the pin. That way the pinner feels the love, but you don’t overload your followers with self-promotional pins.
M is for Men
Don’t let the wedding gowns, high heels and flowery home decor fool you – Pinterest is totally for dudes, too. There are some seriously manly brands out there, and some typically “dude-like” brands have extremely successful profiles. Just take a look at the NHL, Motor Trend and IGN Pinterest profiles to get your dude on.
N is for Networking
A great way to spread your name and content across Pinterest is by networking with others to create community boards. Community boards provide you with a network of fellow pinners while getting your content seen by a larger audience than just those that follow you. You can start these boards with influencers, brand advocates, fellow brands in your space – who ever! It’s time to start networking.
O is for Optimize Content
What works for Facebook and Twitter won’t necessarily work for Pinterest. Because it’s such a visual platform, having the right visual content will do a lot to boost your influence. Images that tend to perform well are high quality, vertical, colorful and lack whitespace. So, a boring product shot just won’t cut it. Instead, show your product in use or even make a step-by-step usage guide – a huge draw on Pinterest!
P is for Promoted Pins
The age of Pinterest advertising in imminent. While we do not know what exactly those pins will look like, we do know that it will fundamentally change the way brands market on Pinterest. For the time being, brands can fill out this form to be put on the list for promoted pins.
Q is for Quality
It goes without saying that pins with the highest quality get the most engagement. This means putting extra effort in using non-pixelated photos, at least 735 pixels wide by 1103 pixels tall, eye catching fonts and beautiful color schemes. In the pin descriptions, don’t overload them with hashtags, use proper grammar and link in the description where applicable.
R is for Rich Pins
First introduced in May of 2013, rich pins now come in five different styles: product, recipe, movie, article and place. Each kind provides more detail than your typical pin and let’s brands get across relevant information. Product pins help brands display price and availability on a pin. Movie pins provide information on the actors and rating of a film. Recipe pins provide the full recipe directly on Pinterest. Article pins show the authors name, date published and provide a brief description of the article. Place pins, the most recently added rich pins, work with Four Square to display the location of the image on a map. Rich pins are open to most brands, you just need to follow their simple instructions found here.
S is for Scheduling Pins
There are plenty of benefits to social media scheduling, and scheduling for Pinterest is no different. With the freedom to post pins when your audience is active – and not only when it’s convenient for you – you’re able to get the most from your pinning. Not only would scheduling allow you to be on their time, it would also help prevent you from overloading their feed. Interested in pin scheduling? Click here for more information.
T is for Timing
As we mentioned above with scheduling, it is important to get the timing right for your audience. Although the lifespan of a pin is incredibly long, it’s still good to put your pins out there when they’re more likely to be seen. While there are some suggestions on when to pin out there, it’s important to understand when your audience is pinning. Once you understand that, and start scheduling pins, you’ll not only be perfecting your timing – you’ll also be saving yourself time.
U is for User-friendly
Part of the beauty of Pinterest is it’s simplicity. It’s a site where you see something you like and share it. Even with the emergence of more complex features, like Rich Pins, the basic usage of the site remains the same. Because the site is so user-friendly, it appeals to everyone from the grandmother just learning about the amazing recipes to be found on Pinterest to the savvy-developer looking for the best web designs. Pinterest’s layout is proof that user-friendly, simple design is best.
V is for Verify
Verifying your brand on Pinterest is incredibly important for not only gaining access to Pinterest’s in-app analytics, but also important for being found in search results. For example, a search for Target on Pinterest turns up hundreds of results, but because Target is verified it not only shows up first, but also gives users the confidence to know that they’ve found the correct profile. Verifying your site just takes a snippet of code and a couple minutes of your time.
W is for World-Wide
Pinterest is going global. Last year, Pinterest first opened the international doors with a localized version of the site for the UK. The site is now available in more than 20 languages, with international companies flocking to the site for the excellent marketing opportunities Pinterest offers.
X is for eXperts
Whether you’re just looking for blogs to help grow your brand, or you’re in need of full account management, there are some excellent Pinterest marketing experts out there. These are the people who understand Pinterest and have made it their main focus, so you know you’re getting the very best information out there. A few of our favorite Pinterest experts include: MCNG Marketing, Oh So Pinteresting, White Glove Social Media and #PinChat.
Y is for YouTube
In May of 2013, Pinterest unveiled the ability to post and play YouTube videos directly from a pin. This enables users to not only collect their favorite images from the web, but also their favorite videos. Plus, YouTube isn’t the only video site users can pin from. Videos from Dailymotion, TED, YouTube, Vimeo and now Vevo can all be added to boards as pins.
Z is for over Zealous
Sure, users love to see lots of content on Pinterest. However, users don’t love to see only the content you’ve created! Have a healthy mixture of your content, your followers content and content your followers will enjoy. Be zealous about pinning, but don’t be over zealous. What definitions did we miss? Let us know in the comments!
