One of the biggest factors to build relationships on Pinterest and close more sales in your business is by establishing trust. When your audience trusts you, they will be more likely to invest in your business or services. It’s that simple. In order to grow trust, you first need to build good relationships with your potential customers. This is an essential part of all social media marketing.

Yet, when I discussed how to use Pinterest to boost brand awareness in a previous blog post, I mentioned that Pinterest is NOT a social media platform. Because it’s more of a search engine than a social media platform, the “social” aspect of Pinterest is completely different. Let’s take a look at ways to build relationships on Pinterest so you can build trust and make the most of your efforts.

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Claim Your Business Profile

First, you’ll want to make sure you’re using a business account instead of a personal one. If you run a small business you have two choices:

1. If you already have a personal Pinterest account, you can convert it into a business account.
2. You can create a completely new business account.

The advantage of converting a personal account is that you won’t have to start from scratch. This may only be an advantage if you were already pinning content that is relevant to your business.

Let’s say you’re a business coach who teaches women entrepreneurs how to make money on Instagram. If your personal account is full of recipes, beauty tips, and cute outfits, you may want to start a new business account. I say this because a majority of that previously pinned content does not help women learn more about Instagram.

However, if you were pinning articles about social media marketing, Instagram, and blogging, you might have a great starting point to transition your personal account into a business account.

Claim Your Website

After you set up a business account, you’ll want to claim your website to gain more trust from users. You can tell if an account has a claimed website when you see a small globe and checkmark next to their URL. If you hover your mouse over it, you will see that it says the account has claimed the website.

By claiming your website, you’ll get access to Pinterest analytics so you can see how your pins are doing. Also, all pins that come from your website will display your profile picture next to it. This helps your account gain more brand recognition as people start to see your picture more.

You can only claim one website per profile and a website can only be claimed by one account. This establishes trust because people know that you are the owner of the website. They trust that when visiting your site, it’s all your content. Here are directions you can follow to claim your website on your Pinterest account.

Besides claiming your website, you can also claim 3 other types of accounts on Pinterest. By doing this, you are letting people know where else they can find your content. You can follow these instructions to claim your Instagram, YouTube, and Etsy accounts.

Provide Value

As with other social media platforms, it’s essential that you give more than you get. You want to give your audience so much free value that when it comes to working with you, they cannot say no. On Pinterest, this translates to pinning quality information from other accounts, commenting on their pins, and answering questions.

Pinterest is essentially a community in and of itself because it’s made up of users who all enjoy visually appealing content. You can also capitalize on the concept of community through group boards. You should look for group boards related to your brand and request to join as a contributor.

When requesting to join a group board, the board owner usually includes instructions in the board description of what to do.

If there are no instructions, I recommend trying the following:

1. After you find a group board you’d like to join, follow that board and look at the URL of the board.

2. If you remove the name of the group board at the end of the URL, you can find the owner of the board. Go to the owner’s Pinterest profile and follow their account.

3. Next, click on the conversation bubble, search for the owner by typing their profile name into the “To” field, and send them a message requesting to join their group board.

In your private message, be professional and polite, feel free to tell them about yourself and what you pin about, include your Pinterest URL and the email address associated with your account. Here is an example of what I send to a group board owner:

Hi there (note: use their name if you know it),

If you are accepting new contributors to your group board “Add the Name of the Board You’d Like to Join”, I’d love to join. I blog about (tell them what you do ) and think I would be a good fit as a contributor to your board. My account info is below.

Thanks for your consideration,
Your Name
Your Email Address
pinterest.com/yourusername

Group boards offer a powerful way to connect with individuals who are passionate about your subject matter. Group boards are also an opportunity for more users to see your pins than would have otherwise. You may not always hear back or receive an invite from group board owners, but don’t let that discourage you. Keep looking and applying to other group boards until you find ones that are a great fit for you.

Pin Consistently

You don’t need to spend as much time on Pinterest as other social media platforms to gain benefits from its use. But it is important to maintain a regular appearance if you hope to nurture relationships with users. No one wants to invest money or energy into a business that only shows up once in a while to drop a self-serving product pin.

Likewise, a business that bombards their feed with a ton of pins all at once and then disappears is just as bad. Instead, try to pin on a regular, more consistent schedule. The good news is that it’s easy to automate this process by using a Pinterest scheduler if you like.

Pinterest Pin Scheduler

Pinterest has its own built-in scheduler that you can use from the Web or iOS. When you go to manually add a new pin, it’s as easy as selecting the “Publish at a Later Date” option at the bottom of the pin. Then you just have to select the date and time you want your pin to be scheduled. If you want to give it a try, here are some simple instructions on how to use Pinterest’s built-in scheduler.

Note that the built-in scheduler does have some limitations. You can only schedule 1 pin at a time and you may only have 30 pins scheduled for the future. However, once scheduled, you can still make changes to scheduled pins, delete them, or even decide to publish them now. To see all the pins you have scheduled, go to the Pins tab in your profile.

Tailwind Pin Scheduler

Another Pinterest approved scheduler is Tailwind. Tailwind can help save you time scheduling pins to Pinterest. Tailwind also gives you the ability to set up a smart schedule. It looks at your Pinterest account and shows you the best times to post to your account for the best engagement. Also, Tailwind gives you more in-depth analytics about your pins and boards so you can see how your account is doing.

Learn how to schedule pins using Tailwind in this quick tutorial:

If you use my link to sign up for a free trial of Tailwind, you’ll get 100 free scheduled pins (with no time limit to use them). Then when your free trial is over and you want to upgrade to a Tailwind Plus account, you get your first month of Tailwind for free!

Provide Accurate Descriptions

When adding descriptions to your pins, be sure to make them as clear and accurate as possible. Use simple and relevant titles, with keywords that tell the reader exactly what they will find when they click through to your content.

This same principle applies when choosing titles for your pins. By using straight-forward, relevant words, you’ll be providing your users with the best information available. And as a bonus, you’ll also be increasing your brand’s SEO on Pinterest!

Pinners want to know that when they click through to visit a website that it’s exactly what they expected, based on the pin title and description. If they find helpful, relevant content, you are building brand trust. If it’s not on topic or a solution they were looking for, you risk losing out on a potential customer by not delivering what they expected.

This may seem obvious. Unfortunately, some marketers still feel that hype sells. In reality, exaggeration and using inaccurate descriptions destroys brand trust.

Why Build Relationships on Pinterest?

These small tweaks go a long way toward instilling trust and legitimizing your business in the eyes of consumers.

Start with these tips to start building relationships on Pinterest. You’ll find that as your authentic interaction and engagement start to increase your reach and your sales will go up as well.

Need help setting up a business account, writing better pins descriptions, or scheduling out monthly content for your account? Be sure to check out my Available Services to see how I can take these tasks off your to-do list!