The Complete Guide to Getting Started with Pinterest: Pinterest Basics for Language Schools
When you think about popular platforms where you can promote your language school, Pinterest may not be the first to come to mind. Even though this platform isn’t massively popular as a place for marketing a business, it can be a powerful tool.
Since the pandemic, the site has grown massively and is gaining more and more attention, so it’s high time you leverage that potential for your language school marketing before everybody else catches on with the trend!
Let’s dive in and see what makes Pinterest stand out and why you should consider pinning and possibly even running your ads there.
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What is Pinterest and How Do People Use It?
Pinterest is not a typical social media platform. It’s more of a search engine – allowing users to find things across the Internet and browse them in one place. In addition, the idea behind it is to use it as a pin board („Pin-terest” – get it? 😉 ), so to save inspirations, materials, links in one place. This simple concept is why people love to use this platform for planning out projects and learning about hobbies.
So, let’s get the vocabulary out of the way!
A pin is an item on the platform that can be found and saved by pining to a board. It can be an image, a short video, or a product (so visuals matter!) and it can incorporate a title, caption, and a link. It can be an independent piece of content or a snippet from an article directing to a blog or a website outside of the platform.
A board is a collection of pins saved by users. Usually, a board has a title and is used to collect pins related to one topic or project. A board can be personal or a group board with a group of contributors that edit it.
User’s feed is divided into a ‘For you’ section, ‘Today’ section with newest trends, and ‘Following’ section:
‘For you’ is the main page where a user sees curated content suggested for them by an algorithm. The important note is that Pinterest doesn’t promote users based on how popular they are, but on how interesting they are for this specific user, so it’s much easier than on other social platforms to grow and distribute your content organically here (without paid advertising).
The ‘Following’ section shows pins created by users you followed. The page features also a search engine where users can look for anything. It is actually a powerful engine due to an exceptionally accurate algorithm and using first-party cookies (so Pinterest own data – based on user’s behavior on the platform).
From the main page, you can go to your profile, which has all your pins and boards along with your profile details.
The Rise of Pinterest Usage During the Pandemic
During the pandemic, a lot of people switched to shopping online and many of us were in need of new hobbies and ideas to spend time. Both of these reasons are probably why Pinterest has gained the most users ever during 2020 and now it has about 300 million monthly users.
There was also a significant rise in male users, although it’s still a platform used predominantly by women. When the pandemic started both Gen Z and millennial users’ numbers grew by roughly 40% and that is the biggest chunk of the site’s demographic.
It also grew as a platform to shop online – with new features making it easier, the conversion rate grew 300%. Most users claim that they’re using Pinterest when they’re in an early stage of a project or a purchase decision. And 9 out of 10 say they use it to search for purchase inspiration.
With that information, you can surely see the massive potential of the platform for different companies to gain customers.
Do You Need to Create Special Pins? What Can You Pin?
Pinterest’s general idea is to gather and bookmark things from around the Internet. This is why creating pins doesn’t necessarily mean you need to create a new piece of content just on this platform. You can also pin the content you are likely to already have in your digital spaces like:
Images from websites and blogs – great as a way to direct more people to your articles and website.
Instagram posts – a great way to cross-promote your content. Unfortunately, the option is no longer supported by the desktop version of the platform. But if you want, you can always copy the post manually.
YouTube videos – just by using Pinterest in the „Share” options under any video.
You can also repurpose content created for other social media such as Instagram Stories as a video, TikTok, and Instagram videos.
If you’re trying to maximize your profit from using Pinterest, you might want to consider putting in some extra effort to make sure your pins are well suited for the platform.
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How to Optimize Your PINS for the Best Possible Outcome?
Before you create a pin or pin your existing material think about things like:
What action do I want people to take?
What action do I want them to take once they’re on my platforms (out of Pinterest)?
What is the ultimate goal of this pin?
Remember – the ultimate goal of any piece of marketing should be selling – so which course will this pin indirectly promote? How will you ensure that it doesn’t attract random people, but your actual customers?
Example:
The potentially easiest pin to create would be to pin an article from your blog. With an interesting title and a nice picture, it has a big chance of directing users to click on it and read the full text.
But reading an article is not a good marketing outcome. Ultimately, you’re not a journalist, you’re running a school!
You want to convince people who come to your blog to allow you to create a deeper connection with them - be it via email or via social media. Preferably they’ll share their email address with you(try leveraging the power of lead magnets - read more here).
Connecting via email with people, who have shown initial interest in your content allows you to have better control of the interaction, your message is more direct and less probable to drown in the sea of other content on social media.
Read more about the power of email marketing for language schools here.
Does blogging make sense for expat language schools? Read here.
Try to think of pins that can direct your students to take action.
Avoid general language learning pins - they attract random people wanting to learn the language on their own (DIYers). To attract the ideal students who are most likely to enroll in your classes, focus on specific topics that might be of interest in regard to learning the language. To come up with ideas take a look at your client avatar.
EXAMPLE: if you're serving expats in Mexico wanting to learn Spanish, create articles about the daily life of expats and include language tips inside. That could be things like shopping, the best places for a weekend trip when you move to Mexico City, etc. You can also look at your content pillars for inspiration.
Ultimately, the pin should take people to a carefully curated and interesting page. This could be a well-written blog post, but it could be a landing page optimized for collecting email addresses. It could involve a newsletter sign-up form, a freebie to download, a quiz, etc.
Remember, email marketing has the highest ROI (Return Over Investment) among all the other marketing activities (like blogging and social media). It is cheaper and easier to use. So, if you build an email list and learn how to use it properly, you can start enjoying its power to bring in new students.
If you decide to pin content from Instagram or link to other social media that could also work for your benefit. Just make sure you optimize the chances of someone following your profile after a visit. In case you need help optimizing your social media – read our articles about Instagram, LinkedIn and choosing the right social media platform for your school.
Pinterest Boards for Language Schools
Boards are a great tool to organize and collaborate on content. They are also focused on one topic, so they help people to find a lot of content related to something they’re interested in.
When you create more pins, you can organize them into different boards with a shared theme. This will make it easier for people to look through your profile and check out more of your content.
Remember that when you create a personal board, you should check the Visibility settings to make sure other people can see them.
People can also collaborate on boards when it’s a group board. You can create them yourself and invite people or change settings to allow requests to join, or you can join an existing board with one click.
Depending on settings, people can pin to and edit boards and together share found and created content with each other. You could imagine how that could work for a group’s project like organizing a party. But it can also be used for hobbies, interests, or simply sharing inspiring photos or quotes.
To find interesting boards for language schools, you don’t need to focus strictly on language learning tips. You can also look for more loosely related topics such as local culture or guides for expats in your city or region. To get ideas you can check out the Pinterest Trends page or you can look one again at your client avatar.
Get access to our library of free marketing guides, trackers, and templates for expat language schools:
Basics of Pinterest Advertising
Pinterest has plenty of features for businesses. One of which is paid advertising.
Pinterest ads are similar to traditional pins, also centered around a visual form. You can choose between:
a standard image ad,
a video,
a shopping ad with a product as a pin,
a carousel, which is a short slide show people can click through,
and a collection that is used for a series of products.
You can create a new ad or convert one of your existing pins to a paid ad. Monitoring results and managing your ads can be done by the Ads Manager tool.
You can choose how long the ad will be shown and how much you’re willing to pay. Pinterest ads use a bidding system, so you can bid yourself or use an automated bidding tool.
You can read about the details of the Pinterest bidding method in the Pinterest help center – click here.
Pinterest promotes their advertising saying they target the demographic for your ads based on factors like the keywords, interests in similar topics, automatically analyzed details from your ad, or by factors you choose like age, gender, and location.
Due to its ‘inspiring’ nature, Pinterest has quite a high converting rate. Surprisingly, ad prices aren’t that high since it’s still not a very popular place to market a business. Unfortunately, this may change in the near future due to people catching up and changes in rules regarding cookies. This means that if you act swiftly, you can get a very good value for money by using the platform.
To make an informed decision about choosing the right advertising channel for your school read this article: How to choose the right advertising channel for your language school.
Conclusion: Should You Start Using Pinterest in Your Language School or Tutoring Business?
Our advice: yes. Pinterest is one of the best search engines available at this point, with a great algorithm that allows you to target people smarter and reach those who have a better chance of enrolling in your course.
Creating optimized pins is crucial to get high conversion rates. Pinterest is one of the few social platforms that encourages people to go off the platform and explore other websites, profiles, online shops, etc. Make sure to use that potential to your advantage!
Pinterest is also the best place, next to YouTube, to place your online ads. Due to its powerful algorithm and first-party cookies, it can get you great results for a reasonable price. But make sure to act quickly before the advertising prices start growing and your competition catches up!
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