Case Study: Lowe’s Pinterest – Pinning to Inspire

Now that Pinterest’s API has been released, brands need to make the effort to promote their Pinterest accounts to stay top of mind, especially for the holidays. Lowe’s Pinterest account is no exception. Lowe’s shares a variety of home renovation ideas, DIYs, decor inspirations, and more on it’s widely-followed Pinterest account. With 52 boards and over 2,000 pins, Lowe’s shares great content that’s relevant to its customers and takes a very creative approach in doing so. Lowe’s collections of well-organized and easily achievable DIY project inspirations has earned them over 3.5M Pinterest followers!

What Lowe’s is doing right

Lowe’s Pinterest account has obviously been very successful with 3.5M Pinterest followers. So how did they get this many followers? They’ve made it easy for people to follow them! They have pin it buttons placed next to every product image on their website, their Facebook page cover photo is regularly promoting their Pinterest, they frequently post about Pinterest on their other social media accounts, and promote their page and content by teaming up on group boards with bloggers and other brands.

Lowe’s Facebook cover photo is promoting their Pinterest Black Friday Deal Reveal board. Great idea!

- Lowe’s has group boards, a board previewing their top Black Friday deals, boards for every major holiday and season, as well as an entire board dedicated to sharing their favorite bloggers’ home-improvement content. Also note that besides their Black Friday Deals board, Lowe’s has very few product pins which is a smart move on their end. Since they have such a great collection of material to share from the “Ideas and How-tos” aspect of their website, any DIY inspiration can easily be tied into their products.

- Lowe’s also has a team of “Lowe’s Creators” who are bloggers that integrate Lowe’s products into their creations. These posts are then shared on their Facebook, pinned onto their Pinterest board, and shared on their Lowe’s creative ideas page.

- Lowe’s has taken advantage of the major opportunity in making a group board with influential pinners and bloggers, like they have on their Holiday Ready Home board.

- Lowe’s boards cover a wide variety of interesting content that their shoppers would find helpful and relative to their lives as well as Lowe’s products. They cover DIY on a budget (50 projects under $50), seasonal home decor and renovations (Ready for fall), customer interests like football (The Big Game) as well as many more.

What Lowe’s could improve on

Although Lowe’s shares amazing content, some of that content isn’t optimized for Pinterest. Small (aka: wide) images on Pinterest aren’t ideal for pinning because they’re hard to see. The optimal dimensions for pins on Pinterest is 736 x 1128 pixels. It’s strongly recommend that Lowe’s input Rich Pins into their website to improve the likelihood of their website content going vira. It’s really easy to do and only takes a few steps.

We also recommend that they input the new hover pin it button for their photos. You can get it here. Finally, we recommend that Lowe’s use custom hashtags when promoting campaigns or promotions, like it’s unique Black Friday deals board. Since many of those promotional pins got great engagement (100+ repins), if they had put #LowesBlackFriday or even just #Lowes, people would be able to quickly recognize that Lowe’s is the place to be this year for Black Friday and they could click the hashtag to see all of their products in one place.

PROS

Many of their pins are going viral (1000+ repins) (Example via their Build It board)

They are pinning at least one pin every day… (see the con below)

They have a wide variety of boards

Lowe’s promotes their Pinterest frequently on their Facebook

Lowe’s posts about their Pinterest frequently on their Facebook page. The 15K+ likes and 2k+ shares speak for themself!

CONS

However, they aren’t pinning as often as they should (15-20 pins consistently every day)

Some of their pins’ dimensions aren’t optimized for Pinterest

They don’t interact with their followers through comments

Lowe’s still doesn’t have a hover pin it button

They don’t have Rich Pins

They don’t use custom hashtags (ie: for their Black Friday Deals board – #Lowe’sBlackFriday)

Overall, Lowe’s has done an outstanding job at optimizing their Pinterest account, promoting their account to grow their following, collaborating with influential bloggers and brands, and sharing their products and inspirations in a fun and exciting way on Pinterest. See Lowe’s as a top example of a brand on Pinterest, whose products wouldn’t necessarily fit the platform well. They could have just pinned some images of tools, paint swatches, and home improvement ideas. Instead, they’ve attracted and retained a huge following by sharing a wide variety of content in a unique and engaging way. Lowe’s is a great example of a successful brand on Pinterest.

Have questions about how you can optimize your content for Pinterest, increase your following, or improve your Pinterest account? Contact us at info@hellosociety.com!

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