6 Ways to Utilize Pinterest to Drive More Leads to Your Property

Today’s residents are not just relying on Facebook recommendations or Craigslist to find their next multifamily apartment home. They are turning to alternative tools as well for research, guidance, and inspiration, such as on-line bookmark and picture-sharing site Pinterest.

What once was a site for teens to share crafts and recipes with friends, is now a profitable social media platform for savvy marketers. With more than 150 million monthly users, Pinterest provides a refreshing way to maintain and enhance your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. While Pinterest relates more to social shares and engagement metrics rather than technical SEO tactics and back links, the pinning platform spurs more than 2 billion searches each month. Additionally, more than 250 million of those monthly searches are visual searches — opening the door for significant multifamily marketing potential.

How do you build (and maintain) a strong presence on Pinterest? Below, we explore a few ways to get started and make the most of this growing social media platform.

1. Start a Business Account
The first step is ensuring you create a business account and not personal as this will give you access to the Pinterest ads manager and analytics tracking. Use your property’s full name in your account, and be sure to include all necessary descriptive information in your Pinterest bio, including contact information, logos, and any community amenities or features you would like to highlight.

2. Create Your Boards
Pinterest boards are the topics by which you organize your content. You should create boards that showcase your property (rooms, amenities, events), as well as boards that provide tips and tricks for commonly searched apartment topics.
Make sure not to go overboard with the number of boards so that you can keep all of them active, and create descriptions for each one. Consider creating the following boards:

• Interior decorating tips
• Neighborhood guides
• Easy recipes for entertaining
• Space-saving tricks
• Household hacks or craft ideas

3. Research & Include Keywords
Perhaps one of the most important aspects of Pinterest is to include appropriate keywords. Each “pin” needs to contain keywords in the title or description to increase its relevance in search engines and direct more people to your boards. To accomplish this, you will need to conduct thorough research on your target residents to discover what they are most interested in and searching for online. Pinterest offers a guided search tool to help find more relevant results and narrow down the focus of searches. Once you type in a keyword or topic into the search query, Pinterest will suggest semantically-related modifiers, which indicate some of the most popular search queries related to your topic. Keep track of these popular queries and past them into a document that you can keep on hand when pinning new content to your boards.

4. Develop a Strategy & Be Consistent
While Pinterest may operate a little different than other social sharing networks, that does not mean you can create an account and occasionally log on to pin posts. Just like your other platforms, it’s crucial to develop and maintain a consistent sharing strategy, regularly check analytics, and continually engage with other users. Strategy is at the core of building a following, spreading brand awareness, and enhancing your SEO efforts.

5. Pin Frequently & Vary Your Timing
According to Buffer, you should aim to post between five and 30 pins per day. Be sure to spread these pins out at different times. According to the Pew Research Center, 17 percent of Pinterest users visit the site daily, and 9 percent visit several times a day. Additionally, about 29 percent of users go on Pinterest weekly, while 52 percent say they visit the site less often. Thus, varying your timing will help you reach different segments of your target residents and create more exposure. We recommend pinning content on Saturdays as well as weekdays in the afternoons and evenings, as this is typically when most residents are
active online.

6. Customize Source Links
Customize your pin’s link to direct potential residents back to your website so they can check out your property. Click “Edit” on your pin, insert your website URL into the “Source” bracket, and make a captivating caption that will entice users to click on it.

Pinterest is a unique social media channel that may not be successful for everyone, but when utilized correctly, it can significantly increase your brand awareness and potentially drive more leads to your property. The key is to ensure you utilize the platform to the fullest: by regularly pinning and engaging with residents and maintaining a strategy to optimize SEO.