If you’re sick and tired of being a slave to social media, wasting hours of your time posting and engaging in the hopes of seeing an uptick in sales…

…we have great news for you. 

Unlike Instagram and TikTok, Pinterest is a platform that can yield amazing results with a minimal investment of your time.

We’re talking 15 minutes per day. That’s all it takes.

Here’s the catch—you have to be patient. Pinterest won’t make you go viral overnight. Slow and steady wins the race.

So, why is Pinterest such a goldmine for custom apparel brands?

Pinterest is a visual platform, which makes it the perfect portfolio for your apparel designs.

On top of that, it’s important to consider the user intent of Pinterest fans.

The name probably gives it away, but people go on Pinterest for inspiration—they literally pin their interests.

Users find inspiration on Pinterest in the form of quotes, recipes, DIY projects, travel destinations, and you guessed it… fashion!

So, when you share your custom apparel on Pinterest, you are putting your designs in front of people who are eager to save and eventually purchase your apparel.

According to Pinterest’s feed optimization playbook, “people who use Pinterest weekly are 40% more likely to say they love shopping and 75% more likely to say they’re always shopping.”

For pinners, shopping is a lifestyle—and your custom apparel can be a part of it.

Here are a few hot tips that will help you ace the Pinterest game:

1. Set up your account for success.

Here’s your Pinterest punch list:

  • Convert your account type from personal to business.
  • Upload your company logo or a photo of you for the profile pic.
  • Customize your Pinterest URL to reflect your brand.
  • Add your business name as the account title and include relevant keywords after it.
    • Ex. Scrappy Apparel | Custom Apparel Division
  • Verify your website.
  • Add your physical location if you want locals to be able to find you.
  • Create five boards that are relevant to your brand, and include searchable keywords in the title and description of each one.
    • Ex. Skater Girl Outfits | T-Shirts for Women

The entire setup process should take 30 minutes to 1 hour. Quick and simple!

2. Include searchable keywords in your pin titles.

If you thought you escaped SEO, think again. Google isn’t the only platform that utilizes SEO.

Pinterest has its own search engine that people use to find what they are looking for. If you optimize your bio, boards, and pins with relevant, searchable keywords, you will reach more members of your target audience.

You can find keyword suggestions by typing a general keyword in the Pinterest search bar. The platform will suggest longer, more specific keywords that are sorted by popularity:

pinterest keyword research

You should target the keywords in the list if they are relevant to your custom apparel—but make sure you don’t include irrelevant keywords, or else you will run the risk of reaching people who aren’t interested in your products.

3. Make your pins shoppable.

To create shoppable pins, you will need to claim your website and upgrade to a business account.

Then, you can tag the products in your pins to direct users to the corresponding product pages on your site.

That way, if someone really digs your t-shirt design, it will be a piece of cake for them to order it from your website.

Pretty cool, right?

4. Use mockups to consistently produce sharp-looking, original content to share on Pinterest.

You know how the social media game goes. The content engine churns, and the platforms demand more from you every day. 

If you’re not consistent enough, you run the risk of getting buried by the algorithm as it prioritizes other creators’ posts.

Pinterest is no different. It’s best to work smarter, not harder—and that means using mockups to showcase your apparel designs.

Once you have the right mockup, you can place your design on it, upload the post to Pinterest, and publish it within 10 minutes. 

Just showcase your design with our free social media templates, resize the mockup for Pinterest, pin the image with a keyword-optimized title and description, and you’re done!

5. Pin consistently. 

Don’t fall victim to shiny object syndrome. Pinterest might seem like fun and games in the beginning, but it requires consistency to be successful. 

If you pin for a month and don’t see results, don’t give up—it could take even longer for you to see major results from the platform.

But once you start getting thousands of hits on your website from a single pin, don’t you think the 15 minutes per day will be worth it?

Besides, you get to decide what “consistent” is for you. It could be one pin per day, three pins per day, one pin every three days… it doesn’t matter. 

Just make sure you choose a posting frequency you can keep up with.

Consistency = more of a reason for the Pinterest algorithm to trust you and push your pins out to more people. So, don’t slack on your regular pinning!

And now, let’s look at the 15-minute Pinterest strategy you’ve been dying to read this whole time:

Assuming you already set up your account and a few relevant boards, this will be your powerhouse Pinterest plan to follow each day:

1. Upload photos or mockups of your products to Pinterest.

You can create multiple pins at once by clicking the + sign on the left side of the Pin Builder. Make sure each pin uses Pinterest’s ideal aspect ratio of 2:3.

2. Tag all the products in each pin.

Link the tagged items to the product pages on your website.

3. Write a keyword-rich title and description for each pin, keeping searchability in mind.

Don’t keyword stuff—meaning don’t add in irrelevant info or overuse your target keywords. Write your pin descriptions with the user in mind. Speak to them and entice them to click, just as you would in a meta description for Google.

4. Schedule one pin per day until you feel comfortable with the posting frequency.

You can always go back and schedule more than one per day later on, but your initial goal should be consistency. 

We recommend scheduling one pin per day for a full month before doubling up and posting more than one per day.

5. Be patient!

Don’t expect results overnight—it might take a month or two before you start seeing a significant increase in website traffic and sales. But remember, if you’re willing to invest your time into your Pinterest strategy, it will pay off in the end.

Don’t have any products to pin? We can fix that!

Choose us to be your custom apparel partners and we will deliver your order to your doorstep faster than you can say “Pinterest.”

Work with us!