Everything you need to know about Pinterest as a wedding photographer
Photo by Jessica Favaro
Pinterest is a great platform to use as a wedding photographer. No matter if you've been active on it for years or are still thinking about creating a Pinterest page for your wedding photography business, you will surely find some useful information in this article.
The purpose of this blog post is to create a comprehensive guide that will help you navigate Pinterest and learn all you need to know about it. You can find out a breakdown of reasons why Pinterest might be a good idea for you, tips on how to use it, what kind of results you can expect and so much more. Furthermore, this blog post will be regularly updated with new content, so you can be sure that the information you can find here is relevant, no matter when you're reading it.
What is Pinterest?
At its core, Pinterest is a visual search engine. Even though many are mistakenly thinking of Pinterest as a social media platform, this is not true. If you think about it, Pinterest is more similar to Google, than it is to Instagram, for example. As a Pinterest user, you don't open the app to see posts of people you know or chat with your friends. You go to Pinterest whenever you want to discover something, whether that is information, inspiration or ideas.
How many times have you found yourself planning your next trip, searching for dinner party recipes or decor inspiration for your living room all through Pinterest? Well, you're not the only one. According to Pinterest, there are 300 million people actively doing that, with 98% of them saying that they've tried something new that they found on the platform.
Why should wedding photographers be using Pinterest?
As it so happens, weddings are one of the most popular categories on the platform and generate a lot of interest from its users. Every year, Pinterest users save more than 3 billion wedding-related pins and search for wedding content over 1 billion times.
If you think about it, how many times have you heard the expression "Pinterest wedding"? How often do your clients hand you wedding photography ideas straight from Pinterest?
Pinterest is one of the most popular ways future brides and grooms plan their wedding day. They create boards and fill them with pictures of wedding dresses, table decorations, wedding bouquets wedding portraits they love. Their big day is shaping slowly but surely in their minds, and you want to reach them while that is happening.
Even though they might not be consciously thinking about it, they are constantly looking at photos created by wedding photographers. They are not only falling in love with wedding invitations, but also in a way how they were styled and shot. A bride may save a wedding dress pin because she likes its style, but she also likes the portrait. Someone might be researching wedding venues in the area, but that one shot, created by that one photographer who they may or may not know, but whose style they relate to, will be the one that will make them want to get married there.
On Pinterest, you have an amazing opportunity to reach your dream clients even before they start looking for a wedding photographer. By doing that, you get to create a connection with them through your photos and have them fall in love with your work before they even think about researching your competition. Isn't that amazing?
If that is true, why aren't there more wedding photographers active on Pinterest?
Truth is, not only wedding photographers, big brands are only just discovering the power of Pinterest. Throughout the years, Facebook and Instagram sort of became the go-to platforms businesses use when they are trying to reach their potential customers. Because of all this competition, it keeps getting harder and harder for small businesses to achieve meaningful results without paying for them.
On the other hand, precisely because there aren't that many brands using Pinterest just yet, it is still fairly easy to achieve amazing results. Have you ever thought about how great it would have been to start your Instagram account years ago when it was so much easier? Well, on Pinterest, you still have the opportunity to do this, before it becomes crowded.
How is Pinterest different from Instagram and Facebook?
One of the things that differentiate Pinterest is the fact that it is not a social media platform. On Instagram, Facebook and other similar platforms, it is crucial to be social. As a business, you need to work on creating a connection with your followers. They need to feel like they know you and trust you because that's not only how you build relationships, but also how you sell more. For great tips on how to use Instagram as a wedding photographer, I advise you to check out this article.
In a way, Pinterest is not as personal. As a wedding photographer, you don't need to be sharing your personal life, interesting stories from weddings or anything else in that regard. Your photos are the ones that matter. They are the ones that will be convincing Pinterest users to click on them and visit your website. And that's where you will have the opportunity to tell them more about yourself and create that meaningful connection that is so important in your business. That is also one of the reasons why Pinterest is such a great platform to outsource. You can find an in-depth article on this very topic at this link. It breaks down some of the most important questions you should ask yourself when considering whether you should hire a Pinterest manager or not. The questions are also separated into two different groups - those for photographers who are already managing their Pinterest presence themselves and those who haven't started yet. Find them here!
Another great thing about Pinterest that really differentiates it from Instagram is Facebook is how it works. I like to say that Pinterest works like Instagram and Facebook on steroids. Even though this may seem like a strange statement, it is somewhat accurate.
To simplify it as much as possible, imagine Instagram likes working the same as Facebook shares. Every time someone likes your post, it gets automatically shared on their people and seen by their followers too. This is somewhat how Pinterest works.
On top of that, their algorithm populates your feed with content they believe you may like. It looks at what you've searched, clicked or saved on your profile and it suggests similar content to that. Instagram does something similar in their Explore feed, but with one big difference - it is much harder for your posts to show up there than it is on Pinterest.
What kind of results can I expect as a wedding photographer on Pinterest?
Same as anywhere else, the answer to this question depends on how much time and work you are willing to invest in the platform. Of course, if you only post every once in a while, you won't be achieving the same results as someone who would be posting regularly every day. If you know that managing another platform, creating content for it and everything else that comes with it is something you just don't have the time for, then it's probably best to hire someone to do this for you. There's a special post on the topic on how to decide if it's best for you to work with a Pinterest manager or do it yourself. Find it here.
Now, let's talk numbers. As a Pinterest manager myself, I can tell you that Pinterest has the power of bringing your work to thousands of people every month. If this seems expensive, time-consuming or all in all unattainable, let me tell assure you that it is not. I work with freelancers who have been in business for about 2-3 years, they are already recognized in their market, are active on social media, write blog posts and so on. Even though, after approximately 3 months, Pinterest would be bringing them just as much traffic to their website as Instagram does. Not only that, in about half a year, my clients would be getting over 1000 click to their website per month with Pinterest being their biggest source of traffic. You can find even more details and a real-case example of how one of my clients grew her website traffic by 300% using Pinterest here.
That is a lot of traffic! But, how quality is it?
The way Pinterest works makes it easy to reach thousands of people on a regular basis. However, a big majority of people who see your photos in their feeds or click on one of your pins may come in contact with your work for the first time. That is why usually, a lot of people who visit your website from Pinterest won't stick around. Even though, because you are reaching so many people, you can still get a lot of leads from Pinterest. If you get 1000 unique visitors to your website every month and only 0,1% of them convert, that still sums up to 12 clients in a year, booked because of Pinterest alone.
I want to add Pinterest as a way to market my wedding photography business, but where do I start?
First thing you need to do is to create an account. If you already have a personal one and want to use it for business, there are two things you can do. You can either transform it completely and use it for your work only, or create a separate account that you will use for that purpose.
The reason why you will want to separate your business one from personal is that this way, Pinterest will be ranking you better. If your account is full of wedding-related content only, then Pinterest can see this and start showing your pins to people who are searching for this kind of content. On the other hand, if you have interior decor, DIY ideas and outfit inspiration mixed in between, then Pinterest doesn't really know what you are all about.
The second thing you will want to do is to use your business name and words "wedding photographer" in your profile name. This is important because of SEO or search engine optimization. If you include this keyword in your profile name, then your page will start showing up in results when someone is intentionally searching for wedding photographer profiles on Pinterest.
Next, you will use the same profile photo that you do on your other channels. Take the one that you have on Instagram or Facebook and add it to your Pinterest page too. This way, whenever someone who is already following you there can quickly recognize you and follow you on Pinterest too.
After you complete this step, you will claim your website and Instagram. You can find instructions on how to do this here. The reason why you must do this is simple - this way anytime someone pins a photo from either your website or Instagram to their Pinterest account, that pin will be attributed to you. Your profile name and link will show up next to it and you will also be able to see analytics for this pin.
Lastly, you will enable rich pins. After you do that, Pinterest will be able to pull up additional information from your website and add it to the pin itself. This way you can provide more value to Pinterest users and let them know about the content that they can access when clicking on the pin. Learn more about rich pins and instructions on how to set them up here.
