Why use Pinterest to promote your Real Estate Business?

You may have heard of these social networks:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Google+

You almost certainly have been told they can be valuable to your real estate business, and they definitely can be. But the social network that you probably haven’t heard as much about is the one that can be as valuable as all of the others combined– if you do it right.

Pinterest is currently the FOURTH largest social network.

Some interesting statistics about Pinterest

• It has 100 million users
• 85% of which are female
• 42% of adult women in the US use Pinterest
• It is the second biggest driver of referral traffic by a large margin

But is Pinterest Important for Real Estate?

Pinterest is positioned perfectly for today’s real estate shopper. Real estate website owners have gotten savvier about requiring registration when prospective buyers are browsing their inventory. A new home buyer often has to give out their information months or even years before they are actually ready to buy a home. Big real estate websites like Trulia and Zillow have major accuracy problems. A study conducted by Redfin indicated that up to 36% of the listings shown on these websites were no longer available. In steps Pinterest with pictures of homes separated by type, area, amenities and much more.  Accuracy only becomes important when you are actually ready to buy.

Real World Marketing Results Using Pinterest

While creating a tutorial for another post, I accidentally discovered just how powerful Pinterest is for real estate. Here is what I did in four simple steps. I followed that got 3000 new eyeballs per month to a brand new Real Estate Pinterest profile in under 45 days. The total time invested was under an hour a day for about 35 days in the 45 day period.

1. Created an awesome Pinterest profile
2. Created 67 boards focused on Denver Real Estate
3. Placed 663 pins with descriptions and keywords
4. Followed 200 Pinterest users interested in Denver Real Estate each day

Getting Started on Pinterest

1. Set Up Your Account: Go to Pinterest’s home page. You’ll get an option to sign up for a new account. You can use an email address or the super easy “continue with facebook” option. However, if you want to use Facebook as a business you’ll need to skip the Facebook option. Sign up with an email address and select the “Continue as a business” option.

Here is the continue as a business option.

2. Build an Effective Profile

Here is what users see when they visit your profile:

The Five Areas That Comprise a Pinterest Profile

• Your Logo or Your Image – If you have a logo for your real estate business, use it. Many real estate professionals are a representation of their own brand. You might chose to have a photo of yourself as I have done.
• Your Brokerage’s Name – Whether you operate your real estate business under your name or under a DBA that is the name that should be reflected on your Pinterest account.
• Your Website URL – e. http://iremwp.wpengine.com
• A description of your business – Your description should include your first and second most important geo-specific real estate targets. (Meaning: where you most want most of your real estate business coming from.)
• Your Boards – Pinterest is structured like a bulletin board that you are pinning pictures to. You should have a board for each category of images you plan on sharing. (i.e.:the best homes in Beverly Hills, Bel Air Luxury Estates, etc.)

3. Create a Board

Here is what you see when you “create a board”:

• Board Title Name: Can contain up to 100 characters, but only 26 characters will be visible to Pinterest users unless they click on your board. Do a Pinterest search for boards you’re considering creating. A good sign of interest is if you find competitors with boards on the same or similar topics that have a lot of followers. Then create a similar board.
• Board Description: You have 500 characters and should use 300 at a minimum. Make sure you use keywords, at least two hashtags, and include company information like your website address and phone number.
• Category: Pinterest doesn’t have a real estate category, but they do have an architecture category or the mysterious “other” category. I usually create boards in one of those categories.
• Map: This was created by the team at Pinterest hoping to inspire a photo journalism experience, but this feature is also amazing for real estate professionals. You can create boards on extremely small but niche neighborhoods that most real estate search engines won’t even focus on, like Lo-Hi in Denver or Mt. Olympus in Los Angeles. It also adds some geographic markers that aid the Pinterest search engine in identifying your boards when searchers are using a city or location as part of their search term. Turn this feature on.
• Secret: This determines if your board is visible to the public. While developing a board and adding pins, I recommend you keep it hidden.
• Collaborators: By adding an email address, you can invite someone else to add pins to your board. While this allows them to control where that traffic ultimately ends up by pinning images from their own website, this can be a great tool for a new Pinterest user. If you would like to see how it works, add me inboundrem@gmail.com. I’ll create a pin for your board.

4. Create Pins

The primary type of content on Pinterest are pictures, which are referred to as “pins.”  As you can see in the screen capture below, a pin is comprised of the image and a description. Pins are the heart and soul of Pinterest so I’ll spend a little more time on how to make the perfect pin.

• Description: Write longer descriptions. As the graph below shows, images with descriptions in a slight excess of 300 characters get the highest number of re-pins.
• Hashtags are searchable in Pinterest. This is an example of a hashtag search #losangelesrealestate. If you have that hashtag in your description, you have a better chance of your pin showing up. But inserting too many hashtags detracts from the most important aspect of Pinterest, which is social interaction. Optimizing your pins too heavily is a turnoff for users, which will result in high traffic but low interactions (clicks). I recommend two hashtags per description.
• I dug up an interesting article by Vincent Ng. In it, he surmises there are a number of ways that Pinterest recognizes keywords:
  • Sequences in descriptions. Like “Los Angeles Real Estate.”
  • Pin comes from a URL with keyword in it. Like “example.com/los-angeles-real-estate”.
  • A keyword in the picture or photo file name. Like “los-angeles-real-estate-infographic.jpg”.
  • Recent re-pins.

Want a Step-by-Step guide to drive 1000 visitors a month to your real estate website using PinterestEmail me at inboundrem@gmail.com and put “Pinterest Guide” in the subject line.

By now you should understand Pinterest basics. If you want a video tutorial that will walk you through the steps outlines in this article watch the video I created while doing research for this article.