Has anyone had success using Stories for business? I can see how Pinterest benefits from Stories—it keeps users on the app, much the way Instagram does.
But the lack of click through or CTA options doesn’t make me particularly incentivized to use it as a business. They take a long time to create and don’t get people to my website.
Is their main benefit for Business brand awareness?
@LaurenLayneAuthor As an author, I've used stories to literally tell a story sequentially, as well as to mix and match previously used pins and movies. I do consider Pinterest Stories as a way to create brand awareness. They are currently given a higher priority and distribution. So the stories are also a nice way to boost your impressions. 272,000 of my impressions in last 30 days have come from story pins. That is more than a third of my impressions.
Here's a couple of examples:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/686587905682625318/
@LaurenLayneAuthor, welcome to the community, and thanks for starting this topic! Tagging in a couple folks to chime in on how they've used Story Pins. Also, have you checked our article on Story Pins best practices? You might find some useful tips in here. 😉
@owlbbaking @theburntsunsetnovel @AmericanoCrystals any thoughts here?
@LaurenLayneAuthor , thanks for this question. I made my first story pins and for the life of me, I do not know where they go or where people see them. I took about 30 minutes to try, since I kept getting emails to try it. I looked on my iPad and iPhone apps and nothing. Making the pins for Pinterest in Canva takes enough time, but I still do not understand the benefits of stories on Pinterest yet.
I have read the articles! They’re really great for understanding how the user benefits from stories: I’m still not clear on the ROI for me as a business—I’ve been getting moderately impressions, but my bills are paid on clicks (and to a lesser extent, saves). ☺️Perhaps my particular business is just not an ideal fit for Stories.
Hey @LaurenLayneAuthor ! Definitely see your points and I'm totally on the same page, but nonetheless, I actually did have a good experience with my first few stories.
After publishing my first story, it received an immediate high amount of impressions and clicks which was pretty cool. I had wondered if that was a fluke or if perhaps it was the cover design that was driving those clicks. So I experimented & made an identical pin and shared that as I did with the story. In a period of 24 hours, I got about 400 impressions with the identical pin vs. 6k with the story.
All 3 stories that I've published so far received a very high number of impressions & engagements vs. some of my recent pins.
Based on this, I'm lead to believe that the main benefit to stories is as you said, building brand awareness.
My overall profile impressions dropped over the last month, so seeing this uptick for my story pins has been motivating.
While I am DEFINITELY sad to miss out on the potential traffic to my website, I am happy to see that stories seem to help build up my profile. My hope is to build up my engagement & followers through the use of stories and then when I do push out actual pins, they will reach more people resulting in more traffic to my site.
To get around the lack of ability to add links, I add a CTA to visit my site via text in the last story board. While there's no gaurentee the user will visit my site since it's pretty inconvenient to go to a new tab and type in the address, at least the option is there for them. It's the minimum we can do to inform the user there's a place to go for more information. But really, I doubt they'll go so I'm actually thinking of changing that and including a CTA to follow my Pinterest profile instead and maybe get another follower!
Making stories does require more effort, but I think it's worth experimenting with to try and build up your profile.
I hope that helps!!
@LaurenLayneAuthor As an author, I've used stories to literally tell a story sequentially, as well as to mix and match previously used pins and movies. I do consider Pinterest Stories as a way to create brand awareness. They are currently given a higher priority and distribution. So the stories are also a nice way to boost your impressions. 272,000 of my impressions in last 30 days have come from story pins. That is more than a third of my impressions.
Here's a couple of examples:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/686587905682625318/
This was so very helpful, thank you!
Loving this whole thread! Thank you all for your contributions. ❤️
Hey There! Thank you for this question. I usually post 3-4 stories in a day. I love making videos for my stories, I think it is the best way to keep connected with your audience. So they can view your work daily and stay engaged. I advice you not to just focus on link clicks and sales, showing your human side to your customers and followers also will help you to build a community and it will automatically increase your clicks etc.
I think the main reason why you should consider Pinterest stories for business would be for brand awareness, keep your brand name on your followers' minds rather than to drive traffic to your blog/website.