Using Pinterest Collages for Product Sales - Simple Pin Podcast: Simple ways to boost your business using Pinterest

Summary

Simple Pin Podcast: Using Pinterest Collages for Product Sales

Host: Kate Ahl
Release Date: November 13, 2024

Introduction to Pinterest Collages

In the latest episode of the Simple Pin Podcast, host Kate All delves into the emerging feature of Pinterest Collages and their potential to enhance product sales for businesses. Released on November 13, 2024, this episode provides a comprehensive guide for E-commerce brands looking to leverage Pinterest's latest tools to boost their marketing strategies.

Unveiling Pinterest Collages

Kate All [00:00]:
"Today we're going to be talking about Pinterest collages. Now I have a slight obsession with these for no other reason than I have been trying to figure them out..."

Kate begins by expressing her enthusiasm for Pinterest Collages, highlighting her initial confusion and subsequent discovery process. She emphasizes the importance of this feature for product sellers, especially those managing collections.

Key Points:

Pinterest Collages allow users to create themed visual collections.
Initially introduced through the Shuffles app, Pinterest collages were not immediately clear in their application for business users.
Kate's breakthrough came after experimenting with Shuffles and integrating it with her Pinterest catalog.

The Journey from Shuffles to Collages

Kate All [02:38]:
"Collages. So a couple of years ago Pinterest released this app called Shuffles... We thought, okay, maybe this is going to be a tool that's just, like I said, for the Pinner."

Kate recounts the evolution of Pinterest's tools, starting with the Shuffles app, which was an experimental side project by Pinterest engineers. Initially perceived as a feature aimed at individual pinners, Shuffles laid the groundwork for the Collages feature.

Insights:

Shuffles App: An experimental tool designed for creative pinning, integrated seamlessly with Pinterest boards.
Transition to Collages: Pinterest integrated learnings from Shuffles into the core platform, introducing Collages as a new pin type.

Creating and Utilizing Collages

Kate All [07:15]:
"I started creating a collage. What's great is that you can pull from your own images... I searched to tag Pinterest marketing products and my products came up because my shop is connected."

Kate demonstrates the practical steps to create a collage:

Accessing the Feature: Available through the Pinterest app, Collages can be created by merging multiple images.
Tagging Products: By integrating with her Pinterest catalog and Shopify store, Kate was able to tag individual products within the collage, linking directly to purchase pages.

Notable Features:

Thematic Collections: Ideal for showcasing product lines, such as different candle scents or makeup palettes.
Enhanced Shopping Experience: Users can click on individual products within a collage, leading directly to purchase options.

Benefits for E-commerce Brands

Kate All [15:42]:
"I think for product sellers, Pinterest is having a new moment. I think 2025, it is full steam ahead."

Kate emphasizes the strategic advantages of using Collages for E-commerce:

Increased Engagement: Collages offer a visually appealing way to display multiple products or variations in a single pin.
Enhanced Discoverability: By categorizing products into themes, businesses can better align with user searches and trends.
Sales Boost: Pinterest reports a 30% increase in sales for Verified Merchants who utilize their catalog features effectively.

Recommendations:

Connect Your Catalog: Ensure your product catalog is uploaded to Pinterest for seamless integration and tagging.
Join Verified Merchant Program: Gain access to advanced features and analytics that can drive sales and simplify inventory management.
Utilize Thematic Collages: Create collages based on seasons, product variations, or customer preferences to resonate with target audiences.

Practical Applications and Future Potential

Kate All [23:10]:
"I like that it gives us a new option. Thank you so much for listening to the SimplePin podcast or watching on YouTube."

Kate shares practical examples of how businesses can implement Collages:

Candles: Displaying multiple scents in a single collage to highlight variety.
Makeup: Showcasing different eyeshadow palettes tailored for specific seasons or looks.

She anticipates that Pinterest Collages will continue to evolve, potentially incorporating more advanced tagging and advertising options, making them a staple tool for product marketing.

Future Outlook:

Integration with Advertising: Possibility of creating ads using collage pins to target specific demographics.
Enhanced User Interaction: Improvements in how users interact with tagged products within collages.

Actionable Tips for Listeners

Experiment with Shuffles: Download the Shuffles app to familiarize yourself with the collage creation process.
Connect Your Store: Ensure your Shopify or other E-commerce platforms are linked to Pinterest for seamless product tagging.
Create Themed Collages: Develop collages that reflect current trends, seasons, or product launches to engage your audience effectively.
Monitor Categorization: Use the "More like this" feature to verify how Pinterest categorizes your pins and adjust accordingly.

Kate All [35:50]:
"If you are a product seller that has not uploaded your catalog to Pinterest or done the Verified Merchant program, I highly, highly recommend that you do it."

Conclusion and Call to Action

Kate wraps up the episode by encouraging listeners to adopt Pinterest Collages as part of their marketing strategy. She invites feedback and experiences from the audience, fostering a community of Pinterest-savvy E-commerce professionals.

Final Thoughts:

Versatility: Collages combine the strengths of image and video pins, providing a richer context for products.
User Engagement: Enhanced interactivity within pins can lead to higher engagement and conversion rates.
Future Developments: Stay tuned for updates from Pinterest to maximize the potential of Collages in your marketing efforts.

Kate All [38:25]:
"I would love to hear from you. Have you tried out collages? Is this something that you've tested out or have you tested out shuffles?"

Listeners are encouraged to connect with Kate via Instagram (@simplepinmedia) or comment on the YouTube channel to share their experiences and ask questions.

By exploring the capabilities of Pinterest Collages, businesses can unlock new avenues for product display and customer engagement, positioning themselves for success in the dynamic world of E-commerce.

Transcript

Kate All (0:00)

Hey there and welcome back to another episode of the Simple Pin podcast. I am your host, Kate All. If you are watching on YouTube, welcome. We're so glad that you're here. If you are new to Simple Pin, go ahead and hit like and subscribe and you will get more of these podcasts and our educational videos if you are listening in a podcast app. Thank you so much for listening. Don't forget to hear to hit subscribe as well so you can be notified of new podcasts. Today we're going to be talking about Pinterest collages. Now I have a slight obsession with these for no other reason than I have been trying to figure them out because it came up in a recent conversation when Pinterest Presents was released. So they've been a feature on Pinterest for a while, but we've primarily seen it just for the pinner, not for the creator. The creator is what we call the business user on Pinterest. But like I said, when they talked about it in Pinterest Presents, I thought something's here and I kind of went on this like rampage within the team to figure out how to figure it out. And I figured it out at 10pm at night. So I'm going to walk you through this whole thing. This might not be the way that you're going to create collages in the future, but as of October 2024 this is what I have figured out. I think this is going to be key for product sellers, such a key for getting in front of audiences, especially with collections. So if you are an E commerce brand that is struggling to figure out a plan for Pinterest, you don't even know what collages are. Verified Merchant Adding your catalog to Pinterest, it all feels very confusing. There are two options for you. You can hire our team to help you figure it out. We've worked with tons of e commerce creators and and we or sellers we have really helped them get increased sales of their products. Or you can hire us for a one off consult call and a specific E commerce consult call so it can help you figure out how you can do this on your own in a very strategic way. So just click down below in the description and you will find the link to both of those options and we would love to work with you.

Unknown (2:17)

Foreign. You're listening to the Simple Pen podcast Pinterest for business advice that goes down smooth and easy. Here's your host, Kate all.

Kate All (2:38)

Collages. So a couple of years ago Pinterest released this app called Shuffles So this is really important because Shuffles was kind of an app that we thought, what are they doing? But we did hear that they were letting engineers work on a really fun side project. And that's what Shuffles was. It was very clear that it was created with Pinterest by Pinterest. And the engineers were over there kind of quote unquote, playing around, right? When we looked at it, we thought, okay, maybe this is going to be a tool that's just, like I said, for the Pinner. We went over there, played around with it. You can still get the Shuffles app, which, you want to remember that name because it's going to come in later. So we saw the Shuffles app and we were like, okay, this is cool. It integrates automatically with Pinterest. Your boards come up, all this other stuff. But we don't really get how it's supposed to be used. So we just kind of set it aside and we said, don't worry about Shuffles. It's not something you need to know. Fast forward to this year when Pinterest changed up idea pins. And at the bottom, when you opened up Pinterest, you saw all these different things, whereas now all you simply see is, I can't get out because I was playing with Shuffles. Actually, all you see is pin collage board. When you hit the plus sign, we then were like, okay, well, maybe what they've learned from this whole Shuffles app thing is now being pulled over into Pinterest. And I just walked through how to create a collage. They give you a tutorial, all of these kinds of things. You can create a collage in Pinterest. The collages are really great because what you can do is you can create a theme, you can create a design. If you are trying to do something personally for your house, maybe you have a redesign or something like that. This is a really cool, creative way to pull together different ideas to see how they come together. It could be used in fashion, it could be used in beauty. Home decor is really where I think it's going to shine the best, or with something that has a collection. So looking at it, it is, again, like I said, a super cool tool. So then fast forward up to Pinterest presents and collages came up again. And it came up with this idea of being used to tag products in collages. So I went after my team and I was like, how do we tag products in collages? And Tabby, who I've worked with, kept saying, you can't do it. You can't do it. And I'm like, there's gotta be a way to do it. So then one night, I was on Pinterest with my daughter. She is a senior in high school, about to get senior photos, and we were looking through different types of aesthetics that she wanted for her photos. All of a sudden, what comes across my feed is a pin. And in the upper left, it says collage. And I was like, what? This is crazy. And when I clicked on the pin, all of the products lit up and it was this collage. It was all orange and it had some smells like fall in the middle. It had candles, it had lotions, it had sprays, perfume, all put into this particular collage. If you're on YouTube, I'll go ahead and share it up here so you can see what it looked like. If you're on the podcast, you're going to have to hop over to YouTube to be able to see what that collage looked like. So this is what it was. And frankly, it was, like, really awesome. And I thought, well, this is cool. So I played around with it, and what I found was that when I clicked on the pin title, it opened up a new pin, and then I could click on all the individual products and that information would pop up below. So then that really got my wheels turning, and I thought, okay, well, how do. How do we create one? So I tried to create one, and I couldn't tag. So I thought, well, maybe we just don't have the feature yet, which, again, we might not. I think collage features are still being rolled out. And it just kept driving me crazy that we couldn't tag. So then I thought, okay, I'm gonna look underneath. So a really cool feature when I say, like, look underneath is when you see a pin on Pinterest. And then you scroll down below, it says more like this. This is like a rabbit hole for searchers on Pinterest. So then when you go down below, what I'm finding is more collages like this. It might be smells like orange, smells like cinnamon. We're seeing the same theme, right? Because the more like this is supposed to be pins that are like the one that you have above. It's a really cool way to actually see if your pin is categorized correctly. So this is a side tip. If you've never done this as a pinner or as a creator, a business user on Pinterest, to see where your pin is being categorized, go click on a pin, scroll down below, and you'll see More like this. It's super cool. This is also a great way to indicate if your pin is not being categorized correctly. We especially see this in the food space. Maybe you've created a pie, but it's being categorized with cakes. It's just a really great way to check on the category. How the algorithm is categorizing your pin back to collages. Okay, so I had a moment. I was up late at night, I was looking at Pinterest and I was thinking about this collage thing. At Simple Pin Media, we eat, breathe, sleep Pinterest even at 9:40 at night. So I thought I'm gonna go back to that pin. And what I saw with the pins in the. More like this was some said created with shuffles and I had a light bulb moment. So I went over to shuffles, which I had already previously downloaded on my phone because I wanted to check it out. And I started creating a collage. What's great is that you can, you can pull from your own images. I just started pulling in certain types of images into my collage and. And then I searched to tag a product. Right at the bottom there's a tag. I clicked tag and then I searched Pinterest marketing products and my products came up because my shop is connected. I have my catalog connected, I have a Shopify store. And I was like, oh sweet Marie, I just figured it out. So I put em in there and I put a few products in and then I was able to save it to my board. So then I hop over to Pinterest to see if it actually saved and lo and behold, it did. And I could click on that particular product and it highlighted and it would take me to the place where I could buy the product. This was amazing. So here's why I'm so excited. I think for product sellers, Pinterest is having a new moment. I think 2025, it is full steam ahead. If you are selling a physical product or digital product, Pinterest is the place to be. They are making it very friendly for shopping. They know it's the great originator of where people find ideas and they want to make it as easy as possible. Do I think collages are going to like revolutionize the whole thing? No, but I think they're another tool. I think they're an option for people to use to be able to create collections or a theme around your particular product. So let's walk through a physical product example. Let's say that you sell this amazing candle one, maybe you have five other scents you could do a collage with all five of those candles and the scent. Maybe you have a particular type of product that has three other options. Maybe you are a makeup seller and you have five different eyeshadow palettes for fall. You could put all five or six of them in there and label it Eyeshadows for Fall. So be thinking about how people would put collections together if they're a regular user. Think about what they're searching and how they might want different theme or different themes of color or color. Seems like the way that collages really, like, pan out well. So right now, as I'm recording this, the way to tag a product is in shuffles. You will have to go to the app, you know, connect it to your Pinterest account, play around with it and see if you can pull your products in through tagging. I'm not guaranteeing this is going to work 100% for everybody, but the reason I want to get this out there is I want you to be thinking about how to use collages in the future. Because we're seeing the fusion from shuffles into Pinterest by collages being a part on there. And then at Pinterest Presents, we're seeing it as a tool that they can use in order to. Eventually, you can do an ad of a collage or you can tag with a collage on Pinterest. So that is where we're at today with collages. I will put a link in the show Notes. If you're not going to go to YouTube, I'll put a link in the show notes to the pin. But if you are listening to the podcast and you want to watch this particular podcast, go to YouTube and you can see it over there. So where does this leave us? I think it leaves us with this. We have a few different vehicles to be able to get in front of our user on Pinterest. One, we have a stand, an image pin. We used to refer to these as standard images or static images. We're just going to call it an image pin. And then we have a video. We all know this is like short form video. You know what a video is? It's a video pin. And now we have a collage pin. And I think collage kind of marries the two together. Not so much that it's moving like a video pin, but it allows us to add context instead of just a singular image pin. And that's what got me so excited. That's what got me in this mode of saying, I'm going to figure this out because there has to be a way for people who have already connected their catalog to be able to tag products. If you are a product seller that has not uploaded your catalog to Pinterest or done the Verified Merchant program, I highly, highly recommend that you do it. In fact, Pinterest said those who do that see a 30% increase in sales. So it is important. Also, it will save you so much trouble when it comes to updating inventory and updating pricing. Just recently in one of our Pinterest town halls that we did, somebody asked a question about their inventory. They go in and out of inventory all the time. Having your catalog uploaded makes your life a thousand times easier. Because once someone pins in a pin to Pinterest, it lives forever. It's not like you can take it away. When you have the catalog and you remove inventory, that pin does go away. So it's actually really helpful for you because somebody is not going to click on a product image, come to you and say, I really want this particular product. Where is it? You're like, well, it's gone. So having your catalog connected, getting Verified Merchant, those are things that make your life way easier as an E commerce seller. I would love to hear from you. Have you tried out collages? Is this something that you've tested out or have you tested out shuffles? I would love to hear from you. How do you see yourself using collages on Pinterest in the future to drive sales of your products? I think it has great potential. I don't know how they will be distributed. I don't know how we'll see them integrate with users on the platform. There's still a lot of unknowns, but I like that it gives us a new option. Thank you so much for listening to the SimplePen podcast or watching on YouTube. As always, if you have any questions for us, you can simply DM us on Instagram simplepin media or you can comment here on YouTube. We always love to hear it from from you. Thanks so much for watching and listening.