Pinterest tips for pet businesses with Tori Mistick

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Have you heard really great things about what Pinterest can do for your pet business website?

But when you’ve tried to get involved with it you feel completely overwhelmed?

If you’re nodding along then my podcast with Tori Mistick is for you.

Tori is a Pinterest expert based in America, where she is also a blogger and influencer. She has helped hundreds of pet businesses use Pinterest to make sales and win clients.

She is so passionate about Pinterest as it’s been phenomenal in helping her grow her own business and her mission is to educate others so they can do the same.

In this podcast episode she shares how Pinterset works, how it grew her traffic by 300 per cent, and how you can use to send pet parents to your website for just a moment’s work!

You can listen in to our chat on the player link below or carry on reading this blog for the key topics covered.

Can you tell me a little about your background Tori?

“Yes, I’m Tori and I have two Chocolate Labradors, Burt and Lucy, and they’re the inspiration behind everything that I do.

“My website is called Wear, Wag, Repeat and it started about eight years ago as a hobby blog to document my two favorite things, which are style and dogs.

“I quickly found it was a lot easier to get connected and make friends with the pet community than it was the fashion blogger communities so I fell into pet blogging.

“And eight years later, I’ve grown my blog tremendously, and I have a podcast, teach online courses and have built a following online. And it’s been a great accidental career path.”

Can you explain a little about how Pinterest works?

“Yes, Pinterest can seem a little overwhelming and it’s why it can be under utilised, so try first of all to see it as a business rather than a user.

“When you’re a user you go in and look and it’s an endless stream of content and captions, but when you’re a business it’s different because you’re creating the content.

“My first piece of advice would be not to get lost in the overwhelm of the never ending Pinterest feed, instead focus on your goals and why you’re there.

“Pinterest isn’t a social network. It’s more of a search engine and it’s all about key words and it’s the only social network that wants to send traffic to your website.

“Other apps like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter don’t want users to leave the app but Pinterest wants to help their users learn how to do things – that’s why I love it!”

For those with product businesses, how can being on Pinterest help?

“Pinterest is the place to be because there are so many pet owners and lovers searching on there. Last year ‘pampered pets’ was one of their top searches, so this became a category.

“If you were selling bandanas for dogs you could make pins that are beautiful products, use some lifestyle images and then you would direct people to your product page.

“Users on Pinterest might search for a bandana for a certain holiday or a certain theme, and you can think what your customers may be searching for so they find you.

“Or you could link back to blogs such as if you have a popular blog about how to wash your dog’s bandana or dog collar.

“You just have to kind of think about what people might be searching for.”

How would Pinterest work for a pet service provider?

“I have a student who does all kinds of things to promote her dog sitting and walking business.

“She’s had great success using Pinterest and linking to her blog posts on topics like ‘Best dog friendly beaches in Maryland’ or if it was Halloween ‘Best dog friendly pumpkin patches in Maryland’

“Service providers need to think outside of the box a little bit and be creative, use what people might want to do with their dogs, such as the best dog coffee shops or best holidays with dogs.

“If you can make it geographically specific then you will likely catch the interest of local people and create content that shows your knowledge and expertise.”

Would you be able to explain how people interact on Pinterest?

“From a user perspective, you can browse, search and follow people, you have a home feed like the other apps. But everyone has inspiration boards where you can save everything.

“For example, you could create one dedicated to your dog’s birthday and save all the ideas for it there. Anyone who is on Pinterest can see your boards too unless it’s set to private.

“The more your pin gets saved to other people’s boards, the more Pinterest sees you as an authority account on the topic.

“You can repurpose your blog content to use as the description of your pins so that the algorithms pick up on the keywords that you’re using and so your content is found.”

And how does Pinterest work for driving people to your website?

“If you have a weekly blog, post content to Pinterest for each post and people can find your blog through Pinterest.

“Use Canva to create graphics and infographics and tie them into your blog post, I would suggest making about eight and then scheduling them.

“I use Tailwind, or you can manually post straight from your computer so you have lots of content going out. Then link back to your website or blog in the description.”

How can you track how well Pinterest is working for your business?

“I’ll ask people where they find me, a lot of people find me through Pinterest.

“But for the people who have product businesses, if you have a Shopify site, it will tell you in your analytics if a sale came from Pinterest.

“Also, you can actually connect your Shopify catalogue so you can see exactly how many sales are coming from Pinterest.

“And if you’re using Google Analytics, there are ways to set up conversion tracking.”

Can you share some of your own results from Pinterest?

“Yes, so everyone thinks that they have to do Instagram, they have to do Facebook, and they think their business is just gonna die if they don’t do Instagram.

“But I looked at my Google Analytics to see exactly how many visitors I’m getting to my website from all these different social networks from the last six months.

“From Instagram I had about 400 visitors. I had 1000 from Facebook, and from Google and organic search traffic I had 5,000.

“And from Pinterest in six months, I had 48,000 visitors. It was mind blowing to me. I know that Pinterest is my top traffic source because I look at my numbers every month.”

Wow! Ok so what would you say to anyone who’s still on the fence about trying Pinterest?

“The best way to figure out the services, apps and tools is to just try.

“Go and start tapping and clicking on things and see what happens and be observant about how you use it as a user then you can apply it to your business.

“Get in and make some boards, put some pins in them and start creating your own graphics!

“Give it a go. Don’t think you have to be perfect and polished. Use what you’re already created in Canva and resize for Pinterest, get started and get started today.”