Posted by Ben Silbermann, a former Googler and Yale graduate, conceived this innovative idea on Thanksgiving Day in 2009. He and his friends were building a site when his now-wife came up with the name Pinterest.
After a year of hard work and brainstorming, they finally launched the site in private beta in 2010.
Initially, the growth was slow, but within a decade, the brand had reached a count of 1million unique visitors.
The most exceptional quality of Pinterest is that it constantly evolves as per the user needs to facilitate quick search facility to its users.
This is evident from their initiatives and features on the website and application. For instance, they observed a boom in the eCommerce market, introduced impeccable eCommerce features in their applications, and have turned into a prominent hub for online shopping.
Pinterest marketing is now eCommerce friendly and suitable for all businesses.
You never recognized this transition, right?
Well, now you know!
Today, as Digital Marketing, we are going to update you with one more significant initiative of this famous brand, and that is
New Pinterest guide on optimizing your product catalog feed
Here’s how you can learn more about it –
- Getting to Know the Feed Basics
- Ticking-Off the Feed Maintenance Checklist
- Familiarizing with Metadata Fundamentals
- Optimizing Metadata
- How to Follow Shopify Guidelines?
1. Getting to know the feed basics
A product feed is considered the sturdy base of the Pinterest catalog and facilitates users the much-needed access to diverse shopping solutions.
A feed is commonly known as a data source, product catalog, or data feed. This feed is a comprehensive list of products and their corresponding attributes. Each row showcases a product, and each column represents details (metadata) of the product.
You can add a maximum of 20 feeds to your account to promote your products across multiple markets, currencies, and languages. Ensure the data source requirements to discover the right method to upload a feed.
Catalogs UI’s presence makes it easy for you to upload your product on Pinterest in seconds. Remember, to see your products on Pinterest, you have to upload your product feed to Pinterest. The feed is the base of your catalog.
Steps to Upload Your Feed
- Step 1: Create your feed, provide a file location so that your feed form can easily fetch it.
- Step 2: Make sure to save your feed in a compatible format; HTTP or HTTPS direct download links are compatible with Facebook, Google, and Pinterest.
- Step 3: Compress the file in .zip or .gx format.
- Step 4: Your file is ready to upload to your feed.
When you connect your feed and publish it as product Pins on Pinterest, you create a niche for your brand on the platform. You can share all the product information such as availability, price, and suitable sites for purchases in your product pins.
All the necessary details will appear organically on the tabs when the user searches for an item on Pinterest. Pinterest acts as a merchant storefront for your products, a storefront that shares shoppable content, and users can like their favorites.
Merely uploading the product pin may not always get you the preferred visibility. For this purpose, you can create product groups to promote a wide range of products collectively.
It is observed that when companies use Pinterest Shopping ads in their campaigns, they drive 3X more conversions, sales, and 2X improved ROI.
Pro Tip 1: Advanced product group management
The advanced product group management comprises modern age features such as creating, filtering, editing, and managing multiple products on Pinterest. These product groups encourage the promotion of multiple items on shopping ads.
New filters also include the following customization options: brand, category, custom label, and product type. You can filter products through gender, item ID, price, condition, and availability with these features and enjoy a quick search facility.
Pro Tip 2: Multi-feed speed for catalogs
With this feature, you can upload multiple product feeds with diverse local data such as currencies, languages, and countries through a single Pinterest Business account.
This way, you can build a global presence on Pinterest through a single account and strategize your products into Pins optimally.
2. Ticking-off the feed maintenance checklist
Pinterest inspects your feed every 24–48 hours and notifies you about discrepancies. Therefore, reviewing your feeds constantly can help you fix errors immediately to provide accurate and updated product information to users.
Pro Tips:
- Regularly analyze feed status and instantly rectify errors.
- Schedule data source updates.
- Select your desired slot and date to ingest your feed based on recent website updates.
- After every change, ensure that the data source URL is accurate.
3. Familiarizing with metadata fundamentals
It is mandatory to fill the required fields; however, it is recommended to fill optional attributes called metadata. This will make your task convenient, and you can swiftly map products among the right audience without the fear of ingestion failure.
Be mindful of the column names and fill the following feed data attributes as missing them can lead to ingestion failure:
- ID
- Title
- Description
- Image_link
- Link
- Availability
- Price
Often, the optional attributes can lead you to your potential shoppers. Therefore, a product feed can also include other optional fields alongside these seven required fields.
Optional fields can eliminate roadblocks between your product and shoppers. All necessary product details provide a better insight into Pinterest’s product as to what it is and for whom.
The Pinterest team strongly recommends filling the optional fields and providing detailed descriptions to your feeds for improved relevancy.
4. Optimizing metadata
A comprehensive and precise data helps shoppers find your products easily on Pinterest. This increases the probability of their purchases.
Here’s a simple guide to a good title:
- Relevant: Match your title with your image to promote it effectively.
- Above 40 Characters: Longer titles give clarity about your products to shoppers.
- Description: Details are important! Hence don’t forget to mention your brand, size, and color wherever possible.
- Eliminate Hashtags: Pinterest does not function on hashtags, so no hashtags are required.
5. How to follow Shopify guidelines?
As a Shopify merchant, you can optimize your product feed on Pinterest.
Shopify merchants have to make a few adjustments to optimize products on Pinterest. With the help of Shopify store UI, you can manually edit the following product attributes:
- Title Length
- Product Type Depth
- Color
- Description
- Material
- Size
Advertisers do not have the option to add additional attributes in the Shopify store, such as third-party Shopify apps or UI. However, you can skimp through the following columns if possible:
- Gender
- Age
- Custom Labels
- Additional Images
- GPC
Final Thoughts
In the last 12 months, Pinterest has made several dynamic changes in the features and experience of shoppers and businesses. With these new features, Pinterest is likely to be one of the leading storefronts for shoppers, and you can optimize this platform for your business.
Improved feed quality is a surefire solution to increased qualified traffic, engagement, reach, and relevancy. On the other hand, such a feed quality can reduce CPC/CPM and auction favorability.
Next time you include Pinterest in your Social Media Marketing plan, make sure that you use this insight to tap on the right audience and boost conversions.