What Can Pinterest Do For Your Charity?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably used Pinterest to plan your dream holiday, fawn over incredible interiors, and even get inspiration for your weekly packed lunches.

A couple of weeks ago, we co-hosted our latest #MisfitsLive event with Pinterest for our friends and clients at their London HQ to find out their top tips for success, tailored specifically for charities and nonprofits.

So what can the platform do for charities, and how can you incorporate it into your organisation’s social media or digital plan? As with all social media, you need to have clear goals for your charity’s content, and then optimise it for different channels. The aim here is to drive actions — whether you want people to sign your petition, donate, buy a product, or raise awareness. Take a look at your charity’s plan for the next few months; are you planning a fundraising drive, or advocacies ask? Think about how you can transform your campaigns visually, and tap into a passionate, action-oriented audience who are open and receptive to new ideas.

Why do people come to Pinterest?

Pinterest is a very personal space — “it’s about yourself, not your selfie” is one of the points that came up several times over the course of the session. Unlike other social media platforms, which focus on recording events in your past or present, the Pinterest platform is used for planning future events and getting inspiration. Someone who might be thinking about training for a marathon, for example, is most likely going to check out a few pins for inspiration and top tips before they start sharing their fundraising page on other social media channels — its about reaching them at these early stages.

Whether it’s planning your honeymoon or looking for Halloween costume ideas, people use Pinterest to design and curate their life, making them receptive to new ideas. There are countless boards for fundraising ideas, for example, so creating visually compelling content for your charity could inspire people to take action.

Pinterest in the UK

An incredible 3 million ideas (or pins) are saved to Pinterest everyday in the UK. 40% of UK Pinners are Millennial, and 70% are female. The platform has 10 million monthly unique visitors in the UK (according to Comscore).

75% of pins on the platform come from businesses — the main verticals on the platform are Food, Holidays, Style and Beauty, so if your charity or nonprofit has compelling content relating to any of these it’s worth sharing, and tapping into this already engaged audience.

Sharing on the Platform

Content gets onto the platform from the save button, having a business profile, or a browser extension. It’s always worth getting a business profile, as it gives you access to free valuable analytics. You’ll be able to see which pins and boards are getting the most love, what people like to save from your website, and who your audience is on Pinterest. This is extremely useful in improving your content creation and distribution strategy.

Users tend to find content either through discovery (just having a browse of the feed) or search (knowing exactly what you are looking for). Because of this, followers are not a key metric for the platform — the focus should really be centered on the content. When thinking about your Pinterest strategy, think less about the boards (a curated collection of pins) and more about the pins themselves — by default, people tend to search for individual pins. As a visual platform, getting the descriptions spot on is really important — using the right keywords will help drive traffic to your site, and hopefully to the actions you want them to take, such as making a donation.

Not sure what content from your website people are finding interesting? There is an easy way to check — by checking out pinterest.com/source/[yourURL] you can see what people are pinning from your site, even if you don’t have an account. It might be worth checking out those for comparable charities too, to get some inspiration and see what resonates.

If a particular pin is doing well, you can also get more eyeballs on that content by promoting it — on a CPC (cost per click), CPE (cost per engagement) or CPM (cost per thousand impression) basis.

What Makes a Great Pin?

Every pin should be beautiful, helpful, and actionable. Why would someone save your idea (or pin)? Whether the end goal is fundraising or brand awareness, the call-to-action needs to be clear within the pin.

Again, detailed descriptions are key. This includes naming boards, but keywords in the descriptions of the pins will really help to make the pin reach the right users. Instructions and how-to style posts, whether it’s recipes or fundraising ideas, work really well, especially when done tastefully. Tasteful branding adds credibility, but shouldn’t detract.

We know that for many charities, having a budget for content creation is a struggle. The team at Pinterest recommend repurposing with purpose — use picture editing tools like Canva to transform your images and make the call-to-action clear, and invite users to find out more directly from your site.

If you have strong, identifiable brand colours then use them to your advantage! Always begin the canvas for the post at 600 x 900 px.

Who is using the Platform Well?

Pinterest UK worked with Comic Relief to establish the platform as the go-to destination for fundraising ideas.

The teams worked with influencers to create best practice pins to share baking recipes for fundraising, with ideas that were easily achievable. By doing so, Comic Relief played into one of the best performing verticals on the platform — food.

They created 12 boards with over 400 new pins to help promote Red Nose Day, and the platform worked with tastemakers to surface ‘best in class’ bake sale and fundraising content. Compared to the previous year, they saw a dramatic increase in Red Nose Day searches, and one of their boards achieved an impressive number of impressions.

How Can I Harness the Platform?

Think about big moments in the year (Halloween, Christmas, Ramadan) and consider how you can create or repurpose some of your existing content for Pinterest. Humour and memes work really well, and as a platform used to plan future events, a lot of it can be prepared ahead of time. As people keep discovering pins over a longer period of time, investing resources in sharing the content can still bring returns years down the line. Inspire your supporters to take actions for your cause, help them plan; making it is as easy (and beautiful!) as possible. Create and share your content with intent, in a visually compelling way. So what are you waiting for — get pinning!

To find out more, or to come along to our events, make sure to reach out to us to be added to our mailing list!

Originally published at medium.com on August 1, 2017.