From an estate agent’s point of view, this overlooked platform can pose as a goldmine for attracting potential customers to your website – and even conversions, if it is effectively done.

It’s important to understand how Pinterest functions. Firstly, we have Pins – which are ideas to help users be inspired. These could be images of homes, developments and interiors; or anything relevant to your estate agent brand and links to content and articles on your website.

Now the magic happens – Pins are saved to boards, which contain all the pins that have been saved there; making it easy for users to find this content. People can follow these boards and keep posted on everything you share on it. As an estate agent, we would title our board under our brand name and offering, while keeping Pins relevant and consistent.

By looking at the customer’s process of buying a new home, we see that Pinterest can target those planning to move.

CREATE CONTENT

You should create content to grab the attention of buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants.

There is certainly no drought of opportunities to create appealing content – property listings for buyers, blogs for tenants, infographics for sellers. If your content is engaging and targeted we can start pinning blogs, new and available homes and interesting interior tips.

According to the Pinterest team, you can now Pin more often, so Pin away! Just like Twitter, the more posts you Tweet, the greater your impressions and engagement will be; aim for at least five pins per day to increase your engagement.

SCHEDULE YOUR PINS

Pinning five times a day isn’t as easy as it sounds. Luckily you can use scheduling tools which save you checking for pins each day. Instead, you schedule a bunch of pins in one day to space out across the week ahead! We recommend Sprout and Buffer, which allow you to schedule for multiple platforms, analyse and report.

APPLY FOR RICH PINS

You can apply Rich Pins – a free Pinterest feature that is intended to add greater detail and information on the pins themselves. These can vary from the following:

• Article pins include the headline, author, story description and link
• Product pins include real-time pricing, availability and where to buy
• Recipe pins include ingredients, cooking times and serving info
• Movie pins include ratings, cast members and reviews
• Place pins include an address, phone number and map

IMAGES AND CONTENT

Just like all the other social media platforms, size and aspect ratio matter. You can post on Pinterest vertically and horizontally; however vertical pins certainly work better, which is fitting when showing off your available properties. In regards to the dimensions, you should be looking at producing a 2:3 aspect ratio (600 x 900 or 800 x 1200 pixels) or 1:3.5 (600 x 2100 or 400 x 2800 pixels). That’s a lot of numbers to take in, but unfortunately Pinterest will cut content that exceeds these dimensions; taking out those beautiful greenspaces from your exterior photos or the contemporary fittings from your kitchen shots.

Take all the opportunities to Pin – create appealing content – blogs, listings, infographics and tips.

Of course, a Pin would consist of one image. However, there is a trick to get around this. By utilising canvas tools such as Canva.com, you can form images with 2-4 snaps in one Pin, which is very useful when showcasing properties. This way, we can include both exterior and interior images to give users an enhanced idea of your wonderful available properties.

You want to give as much information as possible about your properties in focus. Luckily, Pinterest allows for text to be used with pins as well as the descriptions of boards, so make sure that text is oozing in quality and keywords; so keep the descriptions no-nonsense, informative text with a call to action! Avoid hashtags and longer descriptions, they are proven to be less effective according to Pinterest users.

LINK YOUR PIN

Elaborating on that all-important call to action, you can include a link in your Pins, which will direct users to your website and the page were your property on interest lives. Afterall, your call to action should be on the lines of “discover more” or “register your interest today!”

There are several tips and tricks to learn when using Pinterest; just like social platforms Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. However, these ones are sure to start you off on your Pinterest journey!

Tara Dulake, Digital Marketing Director www.theoraclegroup.co.uk