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Do you want to help ecommerce stores, small business owners, and consultants with their Pinterest marketing?
There are many social media platforms – Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and well, Pinterest. Businesses tend to ignore the massive power of Pinterest because it’s only a visual platform where people create boards and pins to save as inspirations, right?
No, it’s much more than that. It’s a vault of potential customers that are just one strategy away from converting. Slowly, online businesses are realizing how Pinterest can help drive traffic to their website and boost online visibility, ultimately leading to increased sales.
This is why Pinterest virtual assistants are in high demand. And if you’re looking to become one, then congratulations because it’s a massive yet widely untapped social media role. You can use it to make some extra money to start and turn it into a full-time income source and you can work from home.
In this article, we’ll talk about exactly what a Pinterest virtual assistant does, how much you can make through it, and how to get your first client with a few simple steps. Let’s jump right on it!
What is a Pinterest virtual assistant?
A Pinterest virtual assistant is someone who manages a brand, blogger, or influencer’s Pinterest account, right from scheduling and creating pins to crafting a working strategy. They can revive a dead account or create a new one and take a business from average to excellent.
While virtual assistants primarily handle the administrative end of a business and ensure it’s working smoothly, Pinterest VAs solely handle the Pinterest account and grow visibility, reach, and conversions.
What does a Pinterest virtual assistant do?
On the surface, Pinterest VAs manage the accounts of businesses. But on a deeper level, they create a strategy based on the social media goals, ensure the brand’s voice matches with the boards, create pins and graphics, and more related tasks.
The critical reason businesses hire Pinterest virtual assistants is to boost their website traffic and visibility, but they don’t have the time to do it themselves. So, instead, they hire someone who’s much more aware of the territory and can bring in some quality results for their business.
Also Read: How to Become a Pinterest Manager that Clients Chase
Pinterest is a great platform to engage interested viewers and give them more than just inspiration. This social network drives the second-highest amount of traffic to websites and builds visual brand identity.
We’ll discuss more on what services you can provide later in the article – you can pick one to specialize in or a few of them to offer as packages. Now, let’s move on to the golden question.
How much can a Pinterest virtual assistant make?
When you’re working independently as a freelancer, the sky’s the limit for the amount of money you can earn, that too, while working on your own schedule. However, let’s talk figures so you don’t get all cloudy in the head and can decide if the role of a Pinterest virtual assistant is right for you.
Before we hop on to numbers, let’s see what factors determine the amount of money that a Pinterest VA can earn:
- Skills and expertise
- Experience working with clients
- Diversity in portfolio
- Services offered
- Industry or type of clients you work with (example- solopreneurs would have a less budget than businesses)
In the first month, you can charge $15 to $30 per hour or a monthly fee between $500 to $2,000 as a beginner-intermediate VA based on the clients you take up and the services you provide. It also depends on how much time you invest in the business—do you want to take it up as a side hustle or a full-time role?
Once you scale up and grow your business, you’ll be able to cross the $3,000 to $5,000 monthly milestone and consistently make good money month after month.
However, let’s not get our hopes high so soon. It takes time to build up momentum and grow. You need to improve yourself and invest in your business consistently. It all starts with taking the right course of action from the first day itself. Let’s see how you can do that!
How to become a Pinterest virtual assistant?
What should be your course of action to set up your business and get the first few clients? Since it’s a business, you can’t just hop on to Upwork or LinkedIn to get clients without even understanding what you’re going to pitch or how you’re going to take it forward.
It’s important to take baby steps and ensure you get the foundations right before you jump into a web you can’t get out of. To help you get a solid start, I have laid it out for you.
1. Learn the ins and outs of the platform
If you want to close clients and offer them services not just for the sake of money but to get real results- you need to be a Pinterest rockstar. Being a VA means knowing the nitty-gritty of the platform, finding solutions to roadblocks, and growing the business through the platform.
To provide great service to your clients and close monthly retainers, it’s important to master the platform.
You’ll have to invest in some resources- both free and paid so you can gather up all that knowledge, implement them to build your portfolio, and provide kickass services to your clients.
Before I reveal the holy list of Pinterest resources, let’s understand one thing.
Learning is only going to be beneficial until the point you convert theory into practice. If you don’t implement what you learn, you’ll find it challenging to replicate it into results for clients. So, clear up your head, and grab your notepad because these are some of the best resources for Pinterest right now.
It’s a crash course that you can get started with right away and dive deep into the world of Pinterest and all that shebang!
Here’s your resource vault.
a) Pinterest blogs
This is the only multilingual blog to exist in the Pinterest world. It has posts in both, French and English with some of the best advice on the Internet about Pinterest marketing and growing your business through Pinterest. Mary is one of the top experts on Pinterst ads.
This blog’s section on Pinterest tips is a goldmine if you want to learn some unique strategies to market on Pinterest, and grow your visibility.
b) Pinterest books
- Pinfluence by Beth Hayden
This book is a crash course in itself if you want to learn about Pinterest. It covers everything you need to know, from creating a Pinterest strategy for brands you work with to lesser-known advanced Pinterest marketing techniques.
- Ultimate Guide to Pinterest for Business by Karen Leland
This book is a step-by-step guide if you want to learn about Pinterest. Karen shares beginner tips and other actionable strategies that will help you understand the platform’s functioning in a practical sense with examples.
- Pinterest for Business by Jess Loren and Edward Swiderski
Written by social media experts, this book will teach exactly how to increase your clients’ revenue and sales through Pinterest. More than theory, there are many case studies and specific techniques in this book that will make it easier to assess what strategies you can use for your clients.
c) Pinterest podcasts
Alisa Meredith, the content marketing manager of Tailwind, hosts this podcast. You can expect some power-packed strategies to boost your clients’ presence with Pinterest through result-oriented tips.
This is a podcast from Kate Ahl. Here, Kate iinterviews guests who are doing extremely well on Pinterest. She shares amazing tips through these interviews to help listeners scale up their business with Pinterest.
This podcast is from Cara Chace. Cara gives practical tips into growing your business on Pinterest, with some episodes tilting towards entrepreneurship and productivity.
d) Pinterest courses
If you want someone to guide you through the process, right from setting up an account on Pinterest, then this course is for you. It will teach you about the Pinterest algorithm, SEO, creating click-worthy pins, and manual pinning without a Pinterest scheduler—the major reason this course is so popular.
This course by Megan Johnson takes you through the entire process through which she gets over 100,000 page views a month. Pinterest marketing strategies, conversion tips, SEO hacks — she covers it all. There’s also a private group for students where Megan gives personalized tips to improve pin conversions once a month.
This Pinterest VA course is perfect for you if you need a roadmap to become successful. It’s a course by Megan Johnson, the same coach for Pinterest Ninja. The course covers everything from creating a website, and packaging your services to setting rates, taxes, and invoices—this is a comprehensive course for VAs who want to start closing clients and working with businesses successfully.
2. Decide which services you want to offer
Pinterest is a big platform that can serve multiple purposes, but what services you provide as a VA depends on you. It can be as generic as maintaining your clients’ presence on the platform to offering specific Pinterest services. Let’s look at some of these:
a) Pinterest management
This is one of the most popular (and generic) services Pinterest VAs offer. It includes managing clients Pinterest accounts to help them drive traffic to the website. Some of the tasks you’ll handle are…
- Creating and managing high-converting pins that can attract clicks
- Creating a content calendar
- Setting Pinterest goals and KPIs to measure success
- Monitoring the account and measuring analytics to improve the strategy
- Using group boards to recognize opportunities and promote the brand
- Constantly coming up with new strategies to market and enhance brand presence on the platform
Pinterest management is like social media management only, but for one platform. It’s not a very specific service but is one of the most high-demand services by businesses. Here’s an example of a Pinterest management package:
b) Pinterest strategy consultation
Many business owners prefer to keep the management of their Pinterest account in-house while consulting an expert to create a strategy for them. This is great for those who like to play a strategic data-based role in managing a business.
Here, the responsibilities include: assessing the brand’s current positioning, understanding its audience and competitors to develop a strategic plan that can get more clicks and drive quality traffic to their website.
Apart from this, consultants also coach the execution team on how to go about it, implement strategies and suggest changes, through workbooks and roadmaps. So, it’s a coaching service where you help the client in every step of the execution process rather than handling it yourself.
c) Pinterest account audits
This is more like a one-time consultant role where you assist someone who’s stuck with Pinterest marketing. You understand their goals, assess their strategy, and offer changes they can implement to their business to grow and get more clicks, views, and saves.
The experts charge a lot for a simple account audit because this one thing can completely change the game for businesses doing DIY Pinterest marketing. However, the catch is that if you successfully help them identify gaps in their account and suggest strategies that work, they might hire you for the execution as well—it’s a win-win.
d) Pinterest custom pin design and scheduling
Pinterest is a purely visual platform where highly attractive images are a need more than a choice for a business to grow and attract more eyeballs to their pin. For this reason, custom pin designing is a very popular service where VAs design pins for the business based on their brand, goals, and audience through tools like Canva or a more advanced graphic design tool.
Earlier businesses used to work with the same pins repeatedly, but now that so many of them are trying to hack the algorithm and the daily user base of the platform is increasing—the platform demands fresh content, so custom designing is important.
Apart from this, you also schedule the pins. You can use the official Pinterest partner scheduler, Tailwind, for this purpose.
3. Set up a website and start a blog
Just like any other business, having a website is important. It’ll help display your services in a much-organized manner and can be used to capture leads that can eventually convert into paying customers. This website should tell the visitor what you do, which services you provide, and the results you help businesses achieve.
Here’s what your website should include:
- Homepage
This is the first page that potential clients will see when they visit your website, so it should be impressive and reflect your personality. It should say a few things about yourself. This includes the services you provide and how these services are beneficial for businesses. This is not a sales page, rather an educational page that will tell the visitors about the process you follow and the results they can get.
- About page
This page should be about you and the kind of work you’ve done —even if you’re a beginner, you can talk about your education or how you transitioned into the role of a Pinterest VA and how you plan to take it forward. Use storytelling here to give the visitor an insight into who you are beyond a Pinterest VA.
- Services
Your services page should talk about the services you provide, and if you have packages, make sure you mention them. It would be best to include the processes you follow for these services to give prospects a better idea.
Including testimonials and some figures regarding website traffic or conversions, you’ve helped clients achieve through Pinterest would help. If you’re new to Pinterest, that’s completely fine because this section will keep filling up as you start working with clients.
Lastly, include a form that gets the prospect’s details with a call-to-action like “Get a quote” or “Work with me.” This will help you get prospects in your funnel so that you can convert them into clients. It’s an important page, so make the copy persuasive and interesting.
- Contact
This page is for people who want to get in touch with you, so include your contact number (optional), email address, or any other communication channel you prefer, like Skype. Also, include a contact form so they can fill in details, and you can get back.
If you have free time you can work with them immediately. But if you’re busy they can join your waitlist.
As a pro tip, include a few details about when they can expect a response from you, and if they don’t, an alternative way to reach you. This will ensure transparency and set clear expectations.
- Blog
The blog is a really important part of your website because it will display your expertise in the subject. So, write and publish post blogs at least once a week to attract organic traffic through SEO and build credibility through quality content.
Pro tip: Don’t forget to optimize your website for the search engine, so you can drive organic traffic to the website.
4. How to build your portfolio through this website?
Before businesses can hire you, they need to see that you can help them achieve their desired results. So, you’ll need to build a case study for which you have to make your own Pinterest business account. Start following the same methods you would use for a client to drive traffic to their website and document your process.
Once you start seeing good results, you can convert it into a blog post or a case study and publish it on your website. Market this through SEO, running ads, social media distribution, and relevant groups—and you’ll see clients coming in no time. This is also how you will build your portfolio over time and show future clients how you helped a business through your strategies.
Ideally, you should include graphs like this to show real results. This is an insight into increasing pageviews through Pinterest marketing,
5. Invest in tools for your Pinterest VA business
As a business, you must invest in tools to organize work for your clients, increase efficiency on Pinterest, and market your services. Here are some tools you may need (free and paid):
- Airtable- Project management
- Zoom/Skype- Client meetings
- Calendly- Schedule calls with clients
- Loom- Record videos for your clients
- Canva- Design pins
- Pixabay- Get free images for pins
- HelloSign- Signing contracts with clients
- Tailwind- Pin scheduling software
Based on your business and how it scales, you should invest in some or all of these. Apart from these, it would also be great to have some templates ready for—cold emails, proposals, and contracts It will help you optimize your time in a better way.
6. Price your services and create packages
Pricing your services as a Pinterest VA depends on two important factors:
- Your skills, experience, and portfolio
- The services you’re providing
Based on this, you can either decide on a per-hour rate, say, $30. You’ll get paid for the number of hours you work for them.
The other way to price your services as a VA is to give a monthly retainer package for your services. Say you charge a client $200/month from Pinterest management based on a set number of deliverables.
As you move forward and gain more experience, you can increase your prices and set higher income goals.
7. Create an action plan to start looking for clients
Now that you have everything in place, from the kind of services you will offer to the rates you’ll charge them, it’s time for you to start looking for clients. Let’s look at some effective lead generation strategies.
- Build a personal brand and create thought leadership content
You already have a website, so create blogs regularly, so people understand the knowledge you have, and if they want to build their presence on Pinterest, you’re the person they should hire.
Similarly, start establishing authority through content on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter—the more platforms you’re present on, the more chances there are for someone to reach out and hire you.
- Do cold outreach
Make a list of brands you want to work with, and look at their Pinterest profile. If they don’t have one, or their current one is as good as nothing, they need you. So, find their email and tell them about what you can do for them. It shouldn’t be a pitch about you but an email about them that highlights what they are losing out on—and how you can fill that gap.
- Make a profile on freelance platforms
There are many freelance platforms where businesses list their requirements for VAs. Some of them include Upwork and Fiverr. You can make a profile on these platforms and start applying to gigs that fit your expertise with a personalized consulting proposal.
- Ask for referrals and connect with other Pinterest VAs
Try asking your friends and family members if they or someone they know are looking for the services you provide. This will help kickstart your VA journey and set the stage for new clients.
It would also be helpful to connect with other Pinterest VAs through social media or community groups. Talk to them, ask for their guidance if you feel stuck, or you can ask them if they have any extra leads for you that can help build an initial client base.
Once you start following these lead generation strategies and be consistent with your efforts, you will see results.
Become a Pinterest VA today
There is massive scope for Pinterest virtual assistants in the digital space because of the platform’s potential. To date, many businesses don’t realize the importance of having a presence on Pinterest and what it can do for their brand, but you can fill that gap with your services and take their business to new heights.
This is just a starter guide to give you some direction on becoming a Pinterest VA. Use these strategies to create an action plan for yourself, and move forward with the implementation bit. Take it one step at a time, but be consistent and true to your efforts, and you’ll see the results kick in. The possibilities are endless, so get on with your pen and paper and start creating a plan to become a Pinterest VA today.
About Rachel Bowland
Rachel Bowland is the content manager at Social Marketing Writing. She likes to write about marketing and design.
