You’ve probably found out by now that getting starting as a manager is not as hard as it sounds.
But inevitably, one of the first questions VAs have after they start down this road is “How do I pick a niche and how can I find clients in that specialized market?”
Today, we want to dig down into how to niche down as a VA by becoming a Pinterest Manager and how to find Pinterest related jobs. We’re not just talking social media management services here, but Pinterest management in particular. See, we’re niching down again.
Before we take up your valuable) time explaining what exactly is involved in being a Pinterest Manager and how to become one, let’s cut to the chase when it comes to finding clients. Because let’s face it, that’s usually what’s on folks’ minds before they decide to dive in with something – can I actually find work as a Pinterest manager and make money doing this?
Where to Find Pinterest Manager Jobs
When it comes to finding clients to pitch for Pinterest Manager jobs it’s not as tough as you might think — and we’ll touch on shortly — this is a very in-demand service to offer.
Let’s start with the best places to look for new clients:
1) Your immediate network
This might not be the first place that comes to mind when you’re looking for Pinterest management clients, but trust us – your immediate network, i.e. friends and family, may be more of a goldmine than you realize when it comes to this niche.
Why? Because as you’ll find out in a minute, literally tons of businesses, including small ones, are using Pinterest for marketing. And if they’re not, they should be!
Chances are great that you know either a business owner or a successful employee of a small business or have a connection who knows someone and can refer you. Take inventory of who that might be and reach out to connect! If they’re already using Pinterest for their business needs they’d probably love someone to step in and manage their presence.
And if they’re not? Sit down and have a chat, learn about their business and use what you’ll learn in the rest of this post to help them see the light – i.e. why they need to be marketing on Pinterest and need YOUR help doing it!
2) Social Media
There are a few ways you could find Pinterest manager jobs using social media.
For example, you could:
- Create a killer Pinterest presence yourself and market your services there by showing everyone how awesome you are at using the platform.
- Network in groups both on Pinterest as well as other platforms, like Facebook, for example. There are tons of groups for business owners, and you can even target your search for Pinterest-specific groups. The key word here is network – meaning, spend time authentically interacting and building relationships.
- Build a great quality presence on another platform and similarly, use it to market your Pinterest management services. The perk here, as with the first item in this list, is that you’d be connecting with business owners who are already sold on the value of using social media to market their businesses.
- Look for businesses with a meh Pinterest presence – and pitch them your services!
3) Localized Marketing & In-Person Networking
We realize that in-person networking may look a little (or a lot) different in your community, but businesses are still doing business, business owners are still networking, and many in-person networking opportunities have taken things online.
The important thing is that these events are still happening, and there’s awesome opportunity when it comes to connecting with business owners in your community and surrounding areas!
The bottom line is that more and more small businesses are getting hip to the fact that they need to be marketing on social media. What’s more, pretty much no business owner wants to do this themselves. You can meet that understanding with the uber compelling marketing power of Pinterest – combined with the fact that you can be the one to bring it all to fruition with your awesome Pinterest Management services.
You can either look for networking events (in-person or online) for businesses in your area, or get out there and start conversations with the owners of businesses in your community – look for ones that seem like they’d be a great fit for marketing on Pinterest. Be authentic in your desire to learn about what other business owners are doing because you never know – if they can’t benefit from your services right now they may know someone who can.
Which brings us to our next great place to find clients…
4) Referrals
In our opinion, referrals are one of THE best ways to find great clients. Why? It’s a great “cut to the chase” approach to connecting with potential clients since someone has essentially vouched for you as well as for the person they’ve referred you to!
If you’re already a VA and are branching out your existing service offerings to include Pinterest management services, you can ask for referrals from existing clients. And whether you’ve been at this a while or are just starting out, you can also look to people in your network as we covered previously.
A few pointers about referrals:
- With existing clients you can ask fairly early on, i.e. after the successful completion of a trial project, for example.
- Don’t be afraid to ask – it doesn’t have to be weird and it’s just part of doing business! It can really be something as simple as, “Hey [Client], I have room for one more client — know anybody that’s looking?”
- Return the favor! Referrals are a two-way street, and your client and/or networking connection will appreciate you sending someone their way also.
5) Job Boards and Agencies
This isn’t our number one go-to when it comes to sourcing Pinterest Manager jobs, but it can also be really effective as there are a lot of businesses out there looking for social media management and specifically with Pinterest.
When it comes to job listing websites, there are some pros and cons. A definite pro is that the gigs you’ll find there are hot leads. Meaning that they’re actively looking for help – like right now!
In our VA Leads community we share both our own proprietary leads (business owners specifically coming to us to hire our graduates) and non-proprietary leads (a daily roundup of quality online VA job listings) with our students.
And guess what? We have business owners reaching out to us on a pretty regular basis looking for… That’s right! Pinterest Managers
So whether you source clients on your own with this method or you decide to go for it and take a step-by-step approach to starting, building and scaling your VA business with The #FullyBookedVA System, do know that you can find Pinterest management clients using this strategy.
And once you’ve found those potential prospects, don’t forget to learn how to pitch like a rock star so you can land and keep those great-fit clients!
Now that you realize this process may be way easier than you’d thought, let’s arm you with the details about why this is such a powerful service to provide and what exactly is involved.
Why would a business need a Pinterest Manager?
Wait a minute! Isn’t Pinterest that website where we get lost looking for chocolate chip cookie recipes?
Well, not necessarily.
Like anything on this mighty internet, Pinterest is what you make of it. Pinterest boasts a pretty impressive user base: officially, 150 million people around the world are using Pinterest, with 40 percent of new signups being men – up 120 percent from 2015.
And businesses should know that 93 percent of Pinterest users report they’ve used the site to plan for a future purchase. That’s a goldmine, whether you’re selling goods or services.
With all these benefits to Pinterest, the main downside is that it can become very time-consuming, especially for someone who is working on building a business from the ground up. If a business owner is spending even one hour a day figuring out their Pinterest account, that’s 25 hours a month that they’re taking away from other revenue-generating tasks.
Not to mention its complexity. Sure, it may look like fun, but if business owners want to reap the rewards from being active and visible on Pinterest, they have to keep up to date with all the changes that go on behind the scenes. (Just like Google, Pinterest is in the habit of changing algorithms quite often.)
And just what are the benefits of a business having a Pinterest presence?
If you’re pinning your own content, that brings more readers to your website. This, in turn, may translate to an increase in email subscribers, more affiliate income, more sales, and, if you’re selling ads based on pageviews, more ad revenue. Get this: Pinterest users are 47 percent more likely to be introduced to new brands than users on other social media platforms.
(Gina’s tip: Here is a quick case study from when I first started using Pinterest to grow HorkeyHandBook. The boost in traffic was amazing, and I turned into a Pinterest believer almost instantly. We still get a big chunk of our traffic from Pinterest.)
So how can a business owner reap the rewards while still keeping atop the complexity and time suck that is Pinterest? Hire a Pinterest manager.
What does a Pinterest Manager do?
A Pinterest manager’s services include building their clients’ Pinterest outreach and maintaining their Pinterest presence.
Okay, that’s a bit generic, so let’s break it down.
As a Pinterest manager, you will:
1. Create stellar pins
You can’t just pin any image. Well, you can, but it won’t bring any benefits to your clients. Creating the perfect pin is as close to an art form as you can get in this job.
A good pin has to have the right size and orientation, a good combination of fonts, enough white space to make it easy to read, and a background image that catches the eye (and maybe even evokes emotion).
You may have noticed that there are a lot of boxes to tick when creating a good pin, so this is definitely something you can help clients with.
Even if your client only posts once a week on their blog or website, that’s no reason for you to be out of a gig.
In fact, creating multiple pins for one post is a great strategy to attract more visitors to your client’s website.
Here’s what Melissa Berry of Sunburnt Saver has to say about it:
I promise you, if you do this one trick, you’ll grow traffic like crazy: make multiple Pins per post. This means if you have a blog post called “10 Ways to Grow Your Email List”, make one Pin with that headline … then make at least two more pins. You can use the same headline, but I like to go to CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer Tool and find a few more headlines that score “green” (above 70), such as: “Growing Your Email List the Easy Way” and “How to Grow Your Email List in 10 Simple Steps”.
It’s an effective strategy because you never know what is going to resonate precisely with your audience – “10 Ways to Grow Your Email List” might work on one person, but “Growing Your Email List the Easy Way” might work on even more people. You’ll get more clicks if you try a few different enticing titles!
Melissa uses this strategy in her work with Pinterest VA clients, and she’s found it really effective in driving traffic to their websites.
2. Write pin descriptions
Writing an SEO-friendly, keyword-rich description will help your pins show up in more searches. And that is really important because Pinterest is becoming more like a search engine than a catalog of pretty pictures.
As a Pinterest manager, it will be your job to write a good description for every pin and every board that goes on your client’s Pinterest account.
3. Schedule & loop pins in your scheduling tool
Do I have to be logged into Pinterest all the time if I’m pinning for my clients?
Nope, no, no.
That would not be a very productive use of your time, would it? That’s where scheduling tools such as Tailwind ( will make your job so much easier.
Once you have a pinning routine and a pinning spreadsheet set up, you won’t have to spend more than a few hours a week pinning. That depends on how many clients you have, of course, but through the magic of task batching, pinning won’t take up your entire workday.
Tip: You can get started with a super snazzy pin tracker in the Become a Pinterest VA TODAY! course (affiliate link).
4. Discover & apply to Pinterest group boards
Being part of group boards is a surefire way to get your pins in front of more people.
As a Pinterest manager, you may be in charge of finding relevant boards for your client, applying to join the boards, keeping up-to-date with the rules of the boards, and keeping in touch with the board owners. That’s no small feat, and that’s exactly how you should market it to your VA clients.
Do Pinterest boards really work? You bet! Here’s what Latasha Peterson of Arts and Budgets has to say about it:
Pinterest is currently my top referral site and has quadrupled the traffic to my blog over the last 6 months. One of the main ways I am using Pinterest to grow the traffic to my blog is through group boards. When I pin to a group board, my pins are visible to not only my followers but also to followers of that board. Which means more exposure and traffic being directed to my site.
For anyone looking to grow on Pinterest, I would highly recommend joining relevant group boards in their niche. Group boards are definitely one of my favorite things about Pinterest because they have the ability to skyrocket any blogger’s traffic when used properly.
Once you’re comfortable doing all of these tasks, you can even re-brand yourself as a Pinterest Manager, which will allow you to add (and charge for) some extra services.
What else does a Pinterest Manager do?
In addition to all of the responsibilities above, a Pinterest manager may also:
- Launch Pinterest business accounts, including boards, descriptions and writing profiles;
- Audit existing Pinterest account and build a growth strategy based on business goals. (Is it wider outreach, more sales, higher traffic?);
- Create a Pinterest marketing strategy for clients;
- Use rich pins;
- Dig into the data with Pinterest analytics;
- Optimize existing pins for search results;
- Create a custom pinning schedule for clients;
- Create promoted pin campaigns, and track the results.
If you’re not comfortable with analyzing data and creating strategy, why not start with offering just the basic services? You’ll gain some experience and some money while you learn. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re big fans of starting where you are and figuring out what you need to know along the way.
How much do Pinterest Managers make?
That is a question we get very often. Let’s start by stating the obvious: don’t charge per pin. You’ll only nickel-and-dime yourself into giving up, and that’s not what we’re here to teach.
The best way to start is by creating packages from all of the possible services we’ve listed above. The next step is to figure out how much time performing the tasks in a package takes for you, then multiply that by your hourly rate.
(Tip: Don’t forget to account for client communication time in your package.)
The rate for an absolute beginner may start at $15-20/hour, while the rates for a Pinterest manager can go as high as $75-100/hour.
If you’re not sure where to start with your rates, check out this in-depth pricing guide that we’ve put together based on the most common practices in the field.
Here you go! Now you’re hopefully on your way to better understanding what a Pinterest Manager does, where to find Pinterest manager jobs and the skills you need to become a Pinterest manager.
Want to dig deeper into how to prospect and pitch for Pinterest clients? Check out the Become a Pinterest VA TODAY! Course. <–affiliate link