How to Use Pinterest to Market Your Nonprofit Organization
How to Use Pinterest to Market Your Nonprofit Organization
About 1 year ago, I was chatting with an executive director who was asking me basic fundraising questions.
“But how do I follow up?”
“What if they don’t respond to me?”
“How do I treat it like making friends?”
Here was a 15+ year nonprofit leader asking fundraising 101 questions.
It was then and there that I decided rather than just cater to nonprofit organizations with various projects, I wanted to focus on nonprofit founders and fundraisers directly. I wanted to teach them how to be better at raising money at this organization or the next.
A common struggle I see with organizations and especially new ones is bringing new audience members, aka potential donors, into their fold. Where do they find them?
What if I told you that one of my solutions to this problem is sitting right under your nose, free and only requires 1hr/week?
You ready for this? IT’S PINTEREST!
With over 322 million users with a base that is 71% female, 80% who are mothers, with an annual income of $50,000+ - I’m going to guess a lot of your ideal donors are interacting with the site regularly.
In the last year, here are some of the results when I’ve tried this with some of my clients:
- #1 email list builder
- #1 website traffic generator
- #2 IG follower generator
- 57% more engagement on website
If you are interested in incorporating Pinterest into your systems, here are three ways to help you get started:
Logistics:
First set yourself up as a business page: This will allow you to pull the very important analytics you are looking for.
Set up “Rich Pins”. Rich pins are a type of organic pin format that provide more context for an idea by showing extra information on a pin.
Start with a minimum of 10 boards. Try to put yourself in the shoes of your idea audience member or donor. What are they searching. For example, if you are an organization that support low-income moms, you might have some boards titled:
(insert organization name blog)
Did you know: Statistics about moms and children
Best baby gear for children 0-3
Inspiring quotes on motherhood
Recipes for toddlers
How to shop for a family of 4 on a budget
Fresh Pins:
After you get your boards organized, you are going to want to start pinning!
In early 2020, Pinterest released information that “fresh pins” ala new images will get a higher distribution priority compared to not. That means, if you want to pin and repin multiple pins linking back to the same image/blog post/website page/etc - you are going to need to create fresh pins for each one.
This means that each image needs:
A different image
A different title
To provide a different image experience
A different image with the same URL
What I like to do is when I have a new blog post, for example, to promote - I create 3-5 pin images in Canva that all link back to the same URL.
Tailwind
Serious Pinners pin 15-20x per day. If you just fell out of your chair at the amount of work that sounds like - hold on. There is a tool called Tailwind that I can’t recommend enough (and no, they are not paying me to say that, but I think we both get a month free if you sign up with that link).
Tailwind allows a Pinterest user to schedule, re-pin, loop pins and more. Truly, it allows you to do a 40% your content/60% other people’s content (the recommended split) in a matter of minutes compared to doing everything live.
My understanding is that they offer a 50% off rate for nonprofits - so definitely check it out!
Overall, I recommend trying to incorporate Pinterest into your marketing strategy using the steps above. Again, I’ve seen great traction personally and with the clients I do this for.