One of the things that catch people out when they first start with Pinterest marketing is the concept of a personal or a business account. So let’s take a look at what the differences are and what you need to have to use it for your digital business.
What is a personal Pinterest account?
A personal account on Pinterest is the type of account you’d have if you weren’t using it to market your business. If your mom or dad is a Pinterest user, there’s a good chance they have a personal account. It is the basic format of Pinterest.
With a personal account, you still have the basic structure. There are boards that you pin to and you can access them all in the ‘Saved’ area of your account. You can add pins from across the internet and on Pinterest itself. You can even give the boards names and descriptions, although most people just name them.
What is a business Pinterest account?
A Pinterest business account takes the standard features of a personal account and adds some things that you need as a marketer.
Top of the list is the ability to claim your website. This is where you add a little bit of code to the header of your website and this allows you to ‘claim’ it on Pinterest. It means you get a clickable link in your profile that goes straight to your account and that Pinterest knows the website is yours.
Pinterest analytics
The other big thing you get when you have a business account is that you can access analytics. If you don’t have a website but do have a business account, you can get a whole range of information about the pins on your account.
But if you claim your website, this information is even more useful. Now you can get data for just the pins that lead to the website you claimed on the account. This includes:
- Impressions (when the pins appear on someone’s feed)
- Pin clicks (where they click the pin to see it up closer and read the description)
- Outbound clicks (where they click the pin and go to your website)
This information is very important for your Pinterest marketing strategy because it helps you to see what’s working and what isn’t. While it is always best to use Google Analytics as the main source of data (it’s free too), Pinterest analytics is a useful way to see how your account is doing.
Extra benefits
There are other benefits to having a business account that make it worth doing. An example is rich pins. While they’ve been a little hit and miss for a couple of years now, they generally work to add extra data to each pin.
Most of the time, this pulls from the meta description of your website. More information on a pin means more keywords and more chance of appearing in search results. With recipes, it can also pull information about ingredients. There’s some debate if this is a good thing or not but that’s one for personal choice.
Comply with terms of service
The final reason to have a business account is that it is in the terms of service that you do. If you use Pinterest for business, any type of business, you are meant to have a business account. While they probably aren’t going to kick you off if you have a personal account and add some business pins, best not to take the chance!
Plus with a business account, you get enough extra benefits that make it worthwhile going through the short process of claiming your website. The actual upgrade process is just a single button to press in your account and then you are done!
