As more brands join Pinterest, all companies on the platform need to put in extra effort to stand out and remain memorable to consumers. Target’s Pinterest account is a great example of a major brand thinking creatively. On Pinterest, Target showcases a range of products, home decor ideas, recipes, holiday inspiration, and more through unique boards and partnerships with designers and bloggers. With 49 boards and over 6,000 pins, Target’s Pinterest is well-suited to its main audience, its customers, and takes a creative approach to engagement while connecting to the in-store Target experience. By mixing its products with unique and appealing Pinterest board topics, Target has gained over 146K followers, but with more than 2 million followers on Facebook, there’s still significant room for growth in Target’s Pinterest strategy.

What Target is doing right

Target’s creative campaigns on Pinterest clearly shine compared to others. The Best.Party.Ever campaign with David Stark allowed followers and customers to engage with the brand directly in a fun and unique manner. Target teamed up with designer and event planner David Stark to assist pinners in organizing their next “best party ever.”

Source: Pinterest

The first step was for pinners to follow Target’s Best.Party.Ever board, then they were asked to create their own Best.Party.Ever board. They would then repin Target’s question pins answering about their upcoming party in the description. They also has the option to pin an instructions pin, a rules pin, quick tips, a thank you pin, and more. Target would then follow them, be invited to the board, and pin inspirations fitting their party guidelines to help them plan their “Best.Party.Ever.” Even David Stark himself pinned onto a few boards! This was a great campaign with a unique and fun concept.

See these guideline pins and more on this example Best.Party.Ever board from pinner Julia.

Target’s latest Pinterest campaign is a collaboration with three top pinners/bloggers, Oh Joy!, Poppytalk, and Wit & Delight, who will all collaborate on Target’s group board and who will release their own collections of designed party supplies in Target stores this year.

Only downfall, the image sizes on the board aren’t optimized for Pinterest.

Below I created an example board of how Target could have used Pinterest-optimized images to make a bigger impact.

Image sizes aside, this campaign does a great job at integrating the in-store experience and the Pinterest experience in a unique and fun way. Learn more about this new Pinterest campaign here on Target’s blog.

What Target could improve on

With an estimated one third of women in the U.S. using Pinterest, it’s very likely that millions of people would follow Target if they only knew they had one! Although Target’s Pinterest has a solid following with 146K followers, their Facebook page has well over 22 million Facebook followers and over 1 million Twitter followers. In the last 3 months, Target hasn’t once mentioned their Pinterest account or any of their pins. These are huge networks of brand-loyal customers who’d most likely want to follow them on Pinterest, but Target hasn’t yet suggested they do. If a company asks its other social media networks to follow them on Pinterest and makes it easy by providing the link, people will follow. It’s that simple.

Target’s Facebook doesn’t mention or promote its Pinterest at all.

It’s great that Target has a blog but the main problem is, Target’s blog content isn’t optimized for Pinterest. The images are very wide making them appear very small on Pinterest boards and feeds. These sizes of images aren’t ideal for pinning because they’re hard to see and don’t create nearly as many conversions as optimized images do. The optimal dimensions for pins on Pinterest is 730 x 1200 pixels.

PROS

– Target has had creative collaborations on Pinterest. (Best.Party.Ever & Target’s new Party with Pinners)

– Nice variety of board topics (Food & Drink, Healthy Living, and Getaways)

– Target’s boards have descriptions, which helps increase Pinterest SEO.

– Target has a good number of boards (49, although 30-40 boards total is ideal).

– Products mixed in well with interesting, appealing content (ie: Valentine’s Day ‘Love Is All You Need’ board).

– Target’s Blog provides more content for pinning (Exception: poor image dimensions for Pinterest).

– Target has 12 group boards featuring bloggers, stylists, designers, and more! (ie: Brit + Co & Target Wedding)

– Target has highlighted the holiday seasons well. (ie: Santa’s Sweets & Treats)

– Following Nordstrom’s success, Target has now introduced in-store tags on their top-pinned items.

A Target in-store top pinned on Pinterest tag! via Instagram

CONS

– Target pins its own content too often. (ie: Home Decor board) Repinning is important too!

– Tip: it’s ideal for a brand to pin it’s own content 20-25% of the time.

– Only some of Target’s products have Rich Pins, aka: bold descriptions & product info (ie: Pins You Love)

– Neither Target’s Facebook nor Twitter mentions their Pinterest.

– Target does not have a Pinterest Facebook App for easy increase in follows.

– Target’s board cover colors don’t mesh well together.

– Tip: Change covers weekly to mix it up and keep pinners engaged!

– Target content isn’t optimized, dimensions are poor (ie: Party with Pinners board)

– Target rarely pins (every week or so and all at once).

– Tip: 15-25 pins throughout every day is perfect.

– Target doesn’t interact with their followers through comments.

– Target doesn’t use custom hashtags (ie: each pin on it’s #SummerUp board should have #SummerUp in description).

Overall, Target has had a great start into the world of Pinterest, but with more cross promotion, more consistent pinning and better image sizes, their Pinterest following could reach the millions in no time. We’ll be keeping an eye on Target’s Pinterest for more great Pinterest campaign concepts in the future.

Target’s Pinterest account