10 Ways to Use a Pinterest Virtual Assistant to Grow Your Business
Using Pinterest to promote your brand, products and services requires a lot of time, knowledge and strategy—especially if you are just starting out on the site or don’t have an expert-level grasp of how everything works just yet. One solution to that problem? Hire a virtual assistant to do it all for you! Read on to learn how you can use Pinterest to grow your business and how hiring a virtual assistant can help with that goal.
1) Organize your boards
One of the best things about having an online VA is that you can rely on them for tasks that don’t require any particular expertise. If your Pinterest boards are messy and confusing, consider putting together a simple step-by-step plan for your VA. It’s likely they won’t be professional-level Pinners, but they can help you get everything in order so that your boards look professional and attractive to potential customers. Once organized, your VA can begin helping you grow engagement on your boards by following users who share similar interests with those of your brand or business. You can also encourage sharing by including special offers for people who repin certain pins or images from your site—or use hashtags associated with relevant topics to make it easier for people looking at related content to find yours.
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2) Add captions to your pins
Captioning your pins not only creates more opportunities for them to be shared on Facebook, it also boosts their chances of showing up in Pinterest’s Pins from others you might like category, which can increase their visibility even further. When writing captions, keep them short and use keywords that are relevant to your business. You should also include information about where people can buy what they see or visit an informative website with more details about your products or services.
3) Manage your scheduled pins
It’s not always easy to keep track of which pins you’ve scheduled and which ones you haven’t. With tons of new ideas coming your way, managing these pins can become even more difficult. That’s where an efficient Pinterest VA comes in handy: they can help you stay on top of scheduling pin after pin without skipping a beat! In fact, some VAs specialize solely in helping clients schedule their pins—and it’s no wonder why: if you’re using Pinterest as part of your marketing strategy, then using an assistant to manage these tasks is absolutely worth it.
4) Respond to customer comments
It’s hard to monitor every post on your site. But what you can do is make sure you stay on top of comments and respond quickly when people have questions or concerns. This demonstrates care, boosts trust, and keeps engagement levels high. Make sure you choose an appropriate tone—you want your business to be perceived as approachable and trustworthy—and try not to be too sales-y (e.g., Great comment! We just launched some new widgets that I think would be perfect for your store!). If you’re looking for more ways to grow your audience through social media, check out our guide to Facebook marketing.
5) Edit or remove old pins
If you’ve been pinning for awhile, it’s likely that some of your pins are out-of-date or irrelevant. Make sure they live up to their original intention by removing them and rewriting your description. This will improve your engagement rate with current followers and attract new ones! Be sure that what you take down is replaced with content that matters—you want every single pin on your page to be as helpful as possible. It’s also important to make sure that each pin has an informative description, so people can quickly see why they should click through to read more.
6) Change image sizes
There are tools that make it easy to quickly change image sizes and dimensions. For example, you can use Canva (an online tool) to create graphics that fit perfectly within Facebook’s display standards or Google+’s display standards. You could also hire an assistant who will resize images for you on her own computer as needed. This is one of those tasks that doesn’t need to be done often, but when it does need doing, having someone else do it saves you time and energy.
7) Co-ordinating your ads with related content
According to an infographic from 2013, 97% of consumers say they trust earned media, like recommendations from friends and family, over all other forms of advertising. When it comes to Pinterest marketing in particular, your brand’s Pin It button should be displayed on pages that are relevant to what you’re trying to sell—this way, followers can quickly share your pins with their social network. And if you want to really get strategic about it, you can create Pinterest Parties for your team members: set aside some time each week for employees to brainstorm boards based around keywords related to your business, then vote on which ones should be featured prominently across your website. As long as everyone is contributing (and not just taking), Pinterest parties can help spread ideas throughout your company while also driving traffic back to specific products or landing pages.
8) Maintain consistency across the website
To ensure a consistent experience across your website, each pin should be followed by an open-format clickable link. That way, if someone is interested in any of your pins (and you want them to know that they can find more information on your site), you can maintain that consistency and keep them engaged with your site.
9) Branding and marketing ideas
Pinterest is one of today’s biggest social media platforms with over 250 million active users and over 100 billion pins! If you aren’t taking advantage of it, you are missing out on free marketing opportunities. Here are 10 tips to help you use your virtual assistant to help grow your business.
10) Social media strategies, automation and analytics
Because more than 60 percent of online activity is spent on social networks and communities, it makes sense that your virtual assistant would use those channels to help you out. But that’s not all VAs can do. These specialists can also help you with social media automation, Google Analytics and other data analysis projects, copywriting and writing press releases—and even basic SEO. In fact, there are over 50 different services that virtual assistants can provide for small business owners today.
