Becoming a Pinterest Manager or Pinterest VA today is a legitimate way of starting a business to earn money working from home (or anywhere in the world that has an internet connection!)

There are over 500,000 business accounts on Pinterest, and many of them need an expert eye on their management.

If you’re familiar with Pinterest as a visual search engine or just starting out with this powerhouse platform, here are 9 tips for getting started with a Pinterest Marketing business and to become a Pinterest Manager.

Step #1 Play on Pinterest

In order to become a competent Pinterest Manager or Pinterest virtual assistant, you need to become an expert. The first step is to play. When I got started with Pinterest Marketing, I had only used Pinterest for fun. 

But this experience helped me understand the basics of how Pinterest worked, how the feed looked, what type of pins I liked, which ones I would never click on and why. 

This type of hands on, user-based experience served me well when I started researching how to use Pinterest for business.

STEP #2 Become familiar with Pinterest best practices

Learn from Pinterest Itself

There are many free resources available to help you get started to become a Pinterest manager, but I recommend going straight to the source. Pinterest has excellent resources available (as well as their Pinterest Academy). Stay up to date with Pinterest’s guidelines regarding best practices for creating pins, setting up your account, what to include in descriptions, and more.

Following these clear guidelines will ensure your pins have the best chance of performing well and your account avoiding penalties.

Other Sources

Once you’re familiar with all the information on the business.Pinterest.com website, turn your attention to the rest of the web. Binge watch YouTube tutorials, read blogs posts, follow Facebook Pinterest groups, ask questions and take free courses. 

STEP #3 Create a website to advertise your Pinterest Marketing Business

It’s not absolutely necessary to have a website to become a successful Pinterest Manager. There are some advantages of a professional website for your business though, like: 

• Providing a place to build your brand
• Properly done website SEO will advertise your services for you by helping you rank high in Google search (although this does take time)
• Your website is your online storefront where potential clients can discover more about you, your expertise and your services

We recommend Squarespace if you would like to ‘DIY ‘your website. The interface is quite straightforward and it’s possible to build a pretty good-looking website as a beginner.

If you want something streamlined, SEO optimized and truly professional, it’s best to hire a professional website designer. 

STEP #4 Develop a Memorable Brand

Building a business goes deeper than simply having a website. What you are doing is creating a brand. This means creating a visual identity that makes you memorable. It means creating a brand that looks and sounds like you. 

Branding Tips

Think about colors – choose three and use those colors in your website and across all your marketing material.

Think about fonts – choose 2-3 and stay true to those. 

Use Canva to create a logo for free. You can use this on your website and on any marketing material you develop.

Get professional photos taken of yourself (people will remember your business more easily when they have a face to associate it with). Use these photos on your website and social media platforms. Try to use outfits that match your branding colors to create a cohesive and memorable experience.

Decide on imagery, what style of images you’ll use for your blogs (more on why you need to blog soon!). I’d recommend avoiding images that look too manufactured. Go for images that reflect your personality. You could decide on a theme – maybe ocean vibes – and only use images of shells, sand, waves, fish, etc. 

The brand you create will attract and resonate with a certain type of business or entrepreneur. Keep this in mind as you choose your fonts, colors and images.

Free and Paid Stock Image Sites:

My favorite free stock images sites:

Pexels

Unsplash

Canva (the free version has hundreds of images available for free)

My favorite paid stock images sites:

Kate Max Stock

Moyo Studio

Her Creative Studio

Creative Market

Styled Stock Society

STEP #5 Develop your online presence as a Pinterest manager

Whether or not you have a website, it’s important to develop some sort of footprint online. 

• This increases your legitimacy as a Pinterest manager and allows potential clients to find out more about you.
• It also allows you to advertise what you’re capable of by talking and displaying results and your expertise.

Besides a website, I’d encourage you to foster a presence on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest. It’s not necessary to go full steam into marketing yourself on each of these platforms (that would require a team of professionals or ALL of your time).

Create a business account on each of these platforms. Find out which platforms you feel most comfortable on, or which platforms will most likely attract your ideal clients.

If you’re interested in offering Pinterest Management for small businesses, coaches, or photographers, Instagram could be a great platform to engage on. If you’re interested in approaching larger companies, try marketing yourself on LinkedIn.

Whichever platform you choose to focus on, create a marketing strategy (again, research, research, research) and remain consistent in your efforts. 

STEP #6 Promote Yourself on Pinterest

As a future Pinterest Manager, a foolproof way to show your capabilities is to grow your own Pinterest account! 

Set up your Pinterest Business Account, create your group boards (more about that here), and start pinning.

Before you can start pinning, you will have to start blogging. 

Blogging for your Business

Blogging is amazing for business. It displays your expertise as a Pinterest manager, provides content that Google can crawl for keywords, and helps to grow your audience with material for content marketing.

Write blogs on your website (a great reason to build one) all about Pinterest Marketing, Pinterest Management, Creating rich Pins, How To Create a Pinterest Board, etc.

If you’re completely new to Pinterest Marketing, write a new blog for every new thing you learn! There’s always someone else new to Pinterest that will find your information useful. 

Decide on a day of the week to post your blog, and try to stick to it. Google likes to see consistent content coming out rather than haphazard content creation.

Once you have about 10 blogs written, design 2 – 3 pin templates that are on-brand. I use Canva to design all my pins. For beginners and even more experienced designers, it has everything you need to create beautiful Pinterest pins. 

Create rich pins for your blogs and start promoting your blogs on Pinterest. Test out different strategies to grow your Pinterest account. This practice will give you invaluable experience and ultimately provide proof of your expertise.

Get to Know Tailwind

Tailwind is a staple amongst Pinterest Managers. It’s an official partner with Pinterest so you can feel safe that Tailwind is maintaining best practices. 

Even if you’re not putting out tons of pins a day (although not more than 20 according to the current guidelines), Tailwind:

• automates your pinning (leaving you more time to do other things)
• pins at optimized times for your location and niche
• gives you access to Tailwind Communities

Using Tailwind for your own account will help you become familiar with how it all works before you take on clients.

STEP #7 A Note on Ideal Clients

It’s standard practice to define your ideal client so that you can know who to market to. This can be challenging when starting out because you’ve never worked with a client, so how do you know who your ideal client is?

Your Ideal Client is You

This is very often the case. Your ideal client is very much like you. A-type personality? You can relate. Perfectionist? Super organized? Same! 

Whatever characteristics you can think of, list them and then do some introspection. What are you pain points when it comes to business? Is it not having time to do it all? Is it feeling overwhelmed? This will give you an indication of your ideal client’s struggles and help you identify entrepreneurs you’d like to work with.

STEP #8 Businesses that Work on Pinterest

No matter who you work with, figure out what makes a business perform well on Pinterest. This knowledge should guide your decision, as a pinterest manager and a business owner, on whether or not to take on a client.

For example, I provide Pinterest management services to businesses that create new content regularly or have lots of products (with new products regularly added). I also work only with businesses that understand that Pinterest Marketing is primarily to drive traffic to their website (making sales is the job of the business strategy and website conversion strategy, not the Pinterest Marketing strategy). 

Over time, I’ve developed other criteria that helps me to identify whether or not a business will perform well on Pinterest. Because of this, I haven’t focused my attention on a specific business niche (such a food bloggers or wedding photographers, although you can absolutely do this).

I analyse each business that approaches me for Pinterest compatibility and take them on depending on my assessment.

As a result I’ve worked with a wide range of businesses (from travel bloggers to online course creators) and diversified my Pinterest Marketing skills.

Platforms change, algorithms change, and this is no different for Pinterest. In 2020, there were major changes to the Pinterest algorithm that saw many accounts taking a huge dive in reach . Keep educating yourself and test new strategies constantly.

STEP #9 Stay up to date

Pinterest managers scrambled to understand the changes and adjust their strategies. This is a necessary (and exciting) reality of working in the online world. 

Stay up to date, follow Pinterest best practices, ask questions of your gurus and be light-footed! Use your creativity and experience to devise new ways to best utilize the platform and you’ll become a thriving Pinterest Manager.

Recap