Mastering Product Tagging on Pinterest

Hey there and welcome back to another episode of the Simple Pin Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about mastering product tagging on Pinterest. This will essentially be your guide to shoppable pins.

I want to break down everything you need to know about Pinterest powerful tagging feature that can literally transform your pins into direct shopping opportunities. It's called product tagging. So, in this episode, we're going to learn the why, the how, both product sellers can leverage this tool as well as affiliate marketers to make more sales.

We're going to cover some technical how-tos, best practices for a seamless user experience, and share statistics that show why Pinterest users are two times more likely to be ready to shop compared to any other platform. Whether you are selling your own products or monetizing through affiliate links as a creator, I want you to discover how to tap into Pinterest's highly engaged shopping audience where 83% of weekly users have made purchases based on this content. Before we dive in, I want to let you know that this podcast has been created in partnership with Pinterest.

I am an educator on the Pinterest team right now and it has been so great to be able to record these episodes. Actually, I should back up and say to build these episodes in order to record them for you so that you can learn more about what product tagging and other features are on Pinterest. So, I'm so grateful that they've given me support with information and stats as I've gathered all of the information for this podcast episode.

There's going to be a lot of important links that I'm going to be sharing. So, they will be down below in the description. I'll reference some example boards with product tagging, all of the help articles that Pinterest has, and some guidelines that are really, really important.

So, both if you're listening to the podcast or you're watching it on YouTube, we're going to have those all linked below. Product tagging. Here are the five things we're going to cover.

The what, the why, the who, the how, and some troubleshooting. So, let's baseline for everybody. What is product tagging?

Basically, what you can do is you can turn any pin that you pin to Pinterest into what's referred to as shoppable content by tagging up to 20 products on the image. Note, I don't recommend that you do 20, but you do have the ability. So, think about a pin image and envision that image having pictures of your products or affiliates you want to share.

Maybe it's a Dutch oven with bread inside and a dough hook next to it. BTW. I have bought that, by the way, and it's great.

You can tag them as your own products that you might create if you're an amazing Dutch oven seller. Or you would tag them as affiliates. Then basically, you're taking that pin, which yes, will still lead to the content on your website, but it'll pop up these little bubbles next to the pin or underneath the pin, we will have a picture for you.

That will essentially make it shoppable so that people don't have to look. It shortens the distance between inspiration like, "Ooh, that's so awesome. I want to get that.

" And buying the product, click to buy. I want to make a clarification here because this is different than tagged topics or the Pinterest tag that you use with ads. Some people can get really confused.

So, just to say that again, we are talking about product tagging on individual pins. tagged topics is what you can add to your pin descriptions when you are adding pins. And the Pinterest tag is what you add to your website when you're adding an element of tracking for your Pinterest ads.

These last two, tag topics and Pinterest tag, we're not talking about today. I'm going to share an example of what this looks like here on the screen. And those of you who are listening to the podcast, I'm going to kind of describe it.

So, we have an image above of a corner of a room. You don't know if it's an office or not, but it has a chair with a pillow and then what looks to be similar to a bar cart. When you tag those products, what happens is right below the pin, I can see the chair, I can see the bar cart, and then I can see the planter that's in the picture.

So, tagging these items, here's why it matters. You want to create the seamless shopping experience like I just talked about above to where when somebody comes across a pin, they're like, "Oh, this is so cool. Okay, I want to go purchase it or I want to know where I can purchase it or they want to save it for later.

" That's a very common practice that a lot of people on Pinterest do when they're interacting with the platform. They save things for later. So, there's value in showing the product in action.

Let's say I'm going to take two examples of this. There's a lifestyle image of a chair. Let's say you are selling this chair, right?

So, you want to show what the chair could look like in what they call lifestyle pins. So, this allows the pinner to connect in their brain with how the product can come to life. So, the reason I want to distinguish that is there are what's called lifestyle product pens or there are traditional product pins.

A product pin might just show the chair by itself, whereas the lifestyle pin shows it in context, how they could put it into their home and envision it, right? Which helps people want to buy, they are more likely to click. So, if I'm looking to design an office and I'm looking for a specific chair with some accent items, I come across this amazing pin, which is our example pin.

We will put it in the blog post, but if you're watching on YouTube, we're going to have it here on the screen. And I see this image and I go, "Ooh, I want to buy that. " Previous to product tagging on Pinterest, I would have had to screenshot it or look around or maybe they had a blog post where I could go buy it.

I had to do a lot of digging to get to the point of being able to purchase the chair. Well, many of you know putting our name and email into a form feels like gh it's taking forever. It's ridiculous first world problems, but we always feel short on time.

So, it's very likely that without product tagging, somebody's going to try to dig and then all of a sudden they're going to be like, "Nope, not worth it to me. " Like, I'm out. I'll save this for later and maybe I'll revisit it.

but chances are they're going to find a different chair or something similar and they're going to go buy it. Having this product tagging removes the barriers and allows for a smooth shopping experience. I'm much more likely to purchase the chair.

The second reason, which is incredibly important to tag, is for affiliates. So, you can tag affiliates. I'm going to talk a little bit more about like who's approved and all of that kind of stuff.

But even if you are not a product seller and you bought this chair, you put it in your home, you created a Pinterest image for it, and you want a link to where people can buy it because you didn't build the chair or create the chair. It's not in your shop, but it is an affiliate, say, on Amazon. This is an opportunity for you to create a commission, right?

So, that's why you want to remove the frustration in the shopping experience. You want to make some sales of your own products, and you want to make some affiliate commissions off of products that you support and think are amazing for your audience. So, let me get nerdy for a minute with some stats that relate to product tagging.

There's been a line on Pinterest for years, and that is that Pinterest penners love to shop. years ago when I spoke at Social Media Marketing World, there was this great graphic that I would use that was supplied by Pinterest way back when and it showed this shopping arc to where people would go to Pinterest and let's say they're planning for a trip to the Dolommites in Italy. I have a friend going there so it's at the top of my mind and they're looking for hiking gear, right?

So they're going to search on Pinterest for all of these things and at the time there was no seamless shopping integration. Yes, they could go to a blog post. Yes, they could go to a website, but it wasn't like instant, if you will.

So, they would then save all this stuff to their boards and then they would go to Google or they would go somewhere else and they would make the purchase and then they would hit Instagram and they'd be like, "Look at my amazing hiking boots. " And they found it on Pinterest. A phrase I've used several times is that Pinterest is this great informer of the purchase.

It is the great aha, right? So, here's a few stats for you. I said it in the beginning, but I'll say it again.

83% of weekly penninners have made a purchase based on content they saw from brands on Pinterest. Eight in 10 weekly penninners, I'm going to real stress that, say that they feel inspired by the shopping and the browsing experience on Pinterest. Click-through rates and saves of shoppable pins grew over 35% yearover-year.

And I'm going to have sources for all of this, so you'll be able to read those, too, in the blog post, which you can find by going to simplepindia. com/429 or just click down below in your description. So, there's value showing your product in action.

This is what we call the lifestyle pins again because 70% of searches on Pinterest are in highly monetizable categories such as home, fashion, or beauty. This was interesting, too. Scroll speeds on other platforms are three times faster than they are on Pinterest.

What that means is that people are slowing down and they're taking a little bit more time to process the information and see if this is a good fit for them. Pinners are also two times more likely to say they're ready to shop when they open the app compared to users on other platforms. I agree with that.

I'm very much in factinder mode when I hit Pinterest. I if I find a product that I love, all in penninners are primed to shop. They saw a 50% increase year-over-year in clicks and saves of buyable items in Q2 of 2023, and I'm sure the stats have just gotten better since then.

Three in five weekly users say Pinterest is first or one of the first services used when they want to shop or browse. So, I share all those kind of stats that maybe are a little bit mind-numbing to remind you that people are really curious on Pinterest. And if you are a content creator and you're thinking, "This doesn't apply to me.

I don't sell products. " I'm pretty sure most of you are affiliates. This does apply to you.

If you are creating a gift guide, if you are creating a guide to the five garden tools that you need to make an amazing garden this summer, there's five things you can tag right there. You could do different types of images. You could do all of that.

So, actually that gets into who should use product tagging. There are two groups of people, affiliate marketers and product sellers. So, affiliate marketers, one of the things I see all over YouTube, it's all over blog posts, been around for years, is that there's this very easy plug-and-play strategy where you can just whip up a post, throw together some Pinterest images, blast them out on Pinterest, tag the affiliates, and you're going to make a ton of money.

I see these claims of like 15,000 a month and all of that. Do not fall for that. It is something that is very hard to do when you do not have a connection with your audience.

It is really important for you to curate a great blog post or a great experience on the pin that makes people want to purchase. So, here's a workflow of something that might happen. If they look at this image, and maybe it's I'm thinking of an older client of ours, a taste of cocoa.

She has this amazing backyard with this pool and all this kind of stuff. If I see that image, there's two things I'm likely to do. One, look at the image and I can see the products below.

I'm going to save it right away cuz I don't want to lose it. Number two, I'm going to go to her website where it takes me and I'm going to read all about it. And here's what I'm looking for and why this distinguishes from those people who are just slapping up an affiliate post that's written by AI.

I know that she put in the effort to figure out the right products, the right design, and she's touched them and she knows what it is works for them. It's the same thing with somebody who's putting in a new backyard awning or something like that. I don't simply want a list of things.

I can get a list of things anywhere, but I want your perspective. And that always works when you are selling something because I don't want a sterile dry post that says, you know, here's the AI description of it. I want you to tell me why you love it.

So I say that because that is where you will make your money. You will make your money through an authentic connection where somebody feels like you have put in the time, you have put in the knowhow to be able to speak to whatever this affiliate product is. And I think optimizing for tagging on the pin as well as writing a great blog post is a win-win for everybody.

So, here's a few tips I want to leave you with when it comes to affiliate marketers. Only use affiliate links on pins that go directly to the product page. Do not have me clicking around all these different places.

It's just I'm out, right? You want to use highquality images that match the landing page. So, think about the vibe of what the pinter is looking for.

They want to go, "Oh, yeah. I'm in the right place. I'm not confused.

You also must toggle the affiliate setting on. You always I feel like I shouldn't have to say this, but I'm just going to say it anyway. You always want to be transparent and follow all the rules according to the FTC or your local guidelines when it comes to affiliate links.

Don't be sketch about them. The official partners for those who are doing affiliates, Amazon, I don't know if any of you remember this. There's a lot of new listeners to my podcast, but if you've listened ages ago, there was a debate four years that raged from, I think, 2016 to 2020 about whether or not you could use Amazon affiliate links on Pinterest, I am here to tell you Amazon is official partner.

Go ahead and use your Amazon links. Even if some rep told you you couldn't, I'm telling you, you can. Rakuten, Shop Style, Collective, Voice, and LTK like to know it.

You can use all of those. So, those of you who are doing LTK all over Instagram, this is your time to shine when it comes to Pinterest and product tagging over there. It's time to test it out.

I'm going to share an example board for you in the description below so you can get some inspiration there. This is from Pinterest, but don't hold too tightly to what everybody else's looks like. Really try to create your own inspiration when it comes to this.

I love affiliate marketing. I used to do it ages ago. I've been in the blogging industry for 15 years.

And that was something that I did really the first 5 years that I was in this space. I love it. I think there's such creative ways to serve your audience with great products that you love.

So there you go. The second product sellers. You want to showcase your products with your inspiring pins.

Now I'm going to put below to another image. We're going to have it here on the screen as well. the workflow going from an image pin to where it's a tagged product pin so that when they click on it that's what they see to the shop's detail page.

This is all about the chair. So you're going to see the workflow below. It's a little bit hard to describe in voice.

But essentially you're going from this really great image to looking up close at the actual chair. So the image of the chair in the office, then the actual chair, then I'm going to go to the website. It's pretty cool and it's easy workflow.

Here's some things you need to know. Tag products by your catalog ID, finding them on Pinterest, or creating from your website link. You can also do this with digital products.

I have my catalog connected, so I can tag my products on that. It's pretty easy. You want to include all the details, header, description, price, availability, and then tagged products appear first in the shop the look section.

So, it's a really great reason to be able to tag your products on your images. Okay. When it comes to how to, that's a little bit tough.

We do have a video, but I believe some of the things are a little bit old. Stickers, if you have tagged via stickers below, those are gone, so don't worry about that anymore. But I'll show you an example by linking an older YouTube video so you can kind of get an idea.

But honestly, it's really easy. I tested it out yesterday. If you're on desktop, then you will upload your image and when you hover over the image to the left, there's a little tag.

Click on it and then follow the prompts. When you are on mobile and you upload an image, you're going to see tag your products as a line down below. Then just go ahead and tag your products.

I promise you it's super intuitive. It's not super hard. So, as far as how to just play around with it a little bit, okay, here's some extra tips for you about product tagging.

I want to go through common mistakes to avoid and seasonal trending considerations, troubleshooting tips, analytics, a few of those things. So, let's start at common mistakes to avoid. So, my question for the Pinterest team was actually, "What errors do people typically make when product tagging?

Do they overtag? Is it poor image quality? Is it broken links?

" And they came back with these things. Broken links was one of them. And I think that's really, really important to check your link before you add it in there.

That can be a super frustrating customer experience. So, if you're on your desktop, which I love that you can product tag on desktop, just go ahead and check your link to make sure it works. That's it.

Or there's a mismatch between the product tagged and the theme of the pin. So, think if you have a winter pin and you tagged a beach ball. I'm assuming many of you would not do this, but it's kind of like the best example.

You want to make sure that people are clicking on that and they're going to exactly what it is they're looking for. they don't feel like they're out of place. So, some seasonal and trending considerations you want to think about.

My question for them was, when do you update or refresh your tagged content? Number one, you don't need to go back and refresh or update your tags or anything like that. I would only say do that if it's been unavailable.

In fact, I'm going to drop that down. Got ahead of myself in troubleshooting tips. But, let's talk about refreshed really quick before I get into that.

So refreshing, you want to think of, let's say you have the chair. That's our example we're using this whole time. And in the image, the chair is next to a bar cart and it has a very dark green wall in the back.

If I wanted to update that for the fall, what I might do is put that chair in a setting that looks very much like autumn colors or I want to put it in a setting that is maybe more summery or something like that. So, think about number one, if you're a product seller, how to position your lifestyle pins on more of a seasonal way as well as evergreen. And if you're an affiliate, think about the same too as well.

Maybe you sold this really great I'm trying to think of a good example. I'm like looking around in my office. I'm just finding pens and keys and phones.

Let's say you actually were an affiliate for a really great phone cover. And that phone cover has a couple of different options and you want to show it on your desk in a Christmas option, but then when you get closer to spring, you want to show the tulip option, but you know right away that your phone, this phone cover gets sold a lot and you're a great affiliate for it. So, take advantage of these moments to really serve your audience.

Okay, on to troubleshooting. I got a little bit ahead of myself. Okay.

What do you do if your tags aren't showing up or your products become unavailable? This doesn't happen very often. That's what me they told me.

But you can file a support ticket if your tags aren't showing up. Pinterest can help you with that. If your product becomes unavailable, don't go back and update or edit the product tagging as it may not be a good use of your time unless the pin is being widely saved.

So, I always tell people to look at your analytics, and we're going to talk about this in a second, but if you pinned something and it's getting a lot of saves, a lot of impressions, a lot of clickthroughs, and you know, you product tagged, and you know, one of those products is out of stock, I believe you can go back and update it and change that tag. But if not, I would just create new content and then tag the new product that is in stock. They also say Pinterest has the signals to make sure it's pushing pins with up to-date and available products.

So that might be another reason too that if you do have something that is doing really well for you, you want to go back and make sure it's updated. Analytics and tracking. How do you measure the success of a tagged pin?

What metrics do you watch and where do you find this data in Pinterest analytics? Right now there are no filters in Pinterest analytics. So you will have to go to the pin itself.

That is where you're going to track performance. So, what I suggest you in the beginning, if this is totally new to you, is I would test product tagging on 10 or so pins. Keep track of those 10 or so pins inside a spreadsheet and then visit them once a month and then grab the pin link obviously, so you can go visit them and just check out what it is it's doing.

So, you can see how product tagging works. It's kind of a fun experiment. Here are some concerns that content creators have.

They are concerned that if they turn on product tagging that these Pinterest will add tags automatically. So that is what I asked about because the concern is then that instead of going to the content that this creator has created, they'll go to the product. So here's what Pinterest said.

If you do not tag any products on your pins, Pinterest will still display similar products in shop the look. That generally will not be your products. It won't automatically recognize and add your own product tags, but it will populate shop the look with similar or related products.

If you do not want this to happen, you can turn off shopping recommendations on the pin or the account level, and I will have a link for you to be able to do that. All that said, if you're a content creator and you do not want any shop the look or any products tagged on your pins, that is just fine. Just go ahead and turn it off.

But if you would like to leverage it, then you can turn it on on specific pins. Maybe those 10 pins that you want to track. That would be a great suggestion.

Then you can keep main control over those pins and what happens with shop the look. All right, let's wrap this up here cuz this has been a lot of information. All the tag products that you do, whether it is affiliate or whether you are a merchant, you must comply with Pinterest guidelines.

And if you don't know what those are, I'm going to go ahead and link them below in the description. Two, focus on user experience. Get your buyers from point A to point B effortlessly and in a very authentic way.

Pinterest users are cold to you. They don't know you. They are not brand loyal, which is often why we say 96% of searches on Pinterest are unbranded, which is incredible for creators and sellers.

So when these features come up like product tagging, test them, use them, see how they work. You really want to make sure that you are providing value to the pinner in order to create a great experience for them. Test these features, see what works for your business.

So I'd love to hear from you. Have you tried out tagging products? What has been your experience?

What's been your takeaway? I would love to know. one, you can always comment on our YouTube videos just by going to YouTube and searching Simple Pin Media.

We even have a podcast thread there, but you'll probably see this podcast right near the top if you're listening to it close to when it's released. The other place is you can email us, hello@simplepinia. com.

We read all of your emails. We actually take them into consideration when it comes to the content we're creating here on the podcast and on YouTube. So, we would love to hear you with that.

Thanks again so much to Pinterest. I have been delighted and just overjoyed to be a Pinterest educator on the educator team along with my five other educators alongside me. It has just been really fun to be able to deliver accurate, current, and the right information to you straight from Pinterest.

All righty, thanks so much for listening.