70 Ways to Market your Business on Pinterest
How do you effectively market your business on Pinterest?
Pinterest is still a relatively new kid on the block, but there has been an awful lot of buzz around the fact that it is one of the fastest growing social media platforms ever. It also generates far more revenue for the businesses that use it, than if they were marketing through Facebook, Twitter, or Googleplus.
According to Semiocast, Pinterest now has over 70 million users, and with a push to increase user numbers across Europe, it will continue growing. Many US brands have expressed an interest in advertising through the platform, and with more relevant promoted pins planned, and detailed analytics for advertisers, it won’t be long before Brands across Europe will also be using it as part of their advertising strategy.
This all sounds great, but how do you get started as a business on Pinterest, or improve your marketing efforts to get more visitors to your website?
Never fear! I have come up with 70 powerful pinterest tactics to get your business marketing more effectively on Pinterest.
Setting up your profile
Business account: make sure you have a business account on pinterest, not a personal account. To setup a business account, go here. You can also change your personal account to a business account.
Profile name: Use your business name if you are a brand. If you as a person are your brand, I would suggest using your name, and then your business name.
Profile image: as with the above, use your brand logo if your business is a brand, if not, then use a photo of yourself. People are always happier to interact with a real person!
About section: Include keywords related to your business, and how you can help people.
Connect to Facebook and Twitter: will help you gain followers, and links to these social media platforms.
Link to your website: if you verify your website, the full URL will show in the page description. It also makes it easier for people to click through to your website, resulting in more traffic. There is a comprehensive article about how to verify your website here.
Setting up Boards
Board names: Keep board names short, include keywords to enable them to get found in searches.
Board descriptions: Include a lot of keywords, and a good description of what the board is all about.
Board Ideas
Ideas for what types of boards you can create as a Company, to encourage more engagement and interaction from your followers, and also improve your brand image.
Company board: Highlight the activities of your business, and your core values.
Tutorials: show clients how to use your products or services. You could create long “user guide” pins showing the different stages, or create videos.
Staff: show the human side of your business, by showing who works for you. Underneath their photos you could include a short bio, but make it interesting and funny! Include any trips that your team take, hobbies, and activities in the community.
Staff contests: Take the staff theme one step further, by including contests that you have running between staff members.
Behind the scenes photos: Everybody likes to see what goes on behind the Brand. Show them where you work.
Testimonials: Great way to highlight how satisfied your customers are.
Resources create boards for classes or webinars that you teach, and post the content to your board, so students can access later. You can also create “quick start” guides to your products.
Charity: Many companies donate to charities, or are involved in fundraising. Take photos of these events, and include in a board.
Infographics: You can include charts and information about your Company, or about a related subject which your followers will find interesting.
Create holiday boards: there is always another holiday coming up! And holiday boards are very popular.
Lifestyle boards: It is important to tailor your brand to what is popular on pinterest. Create boards that people are going to find interesting, but also relate to your Brand.
Boards for your fans or clients: Have a group board where they can post videos, blog posts, and photos of your products. Great way to encourage interaction, and find out what they think of your products.
One on one client boards: You have the facility on pinterest to share secret boards. This is an excellent idea for those in the interior design or wedding planning businesses, who need to share visual ideas with clients.
Best Pins: Create a board just for your best pins, so they can be found easily.
Group boards: Join group boards in your niche, and add your best pins to them!
Pins
Include Pin Descriptions: If you are creating images, and not pinning directly from your website, then you need to include good pin descriptions in your pins. Make sure that you include relevant keywords, as this will enable your pin to get found in searches.
Tag other Pinners in your pin descriptions: Great way to network with other professionals and influencers in your niche.
Add URL to pin description: Adding your website address to the pin description results in more people clicking through to your website. If they click on the image, the image expands, and then they need to click a second time to get taken to your website. Make it easier, and include the link in the description, which they only need to click once.
Pinterest also don’t like URL shorteners, so if you are trying to track your pins with a shortener, don’t! as pinterest will label this as spam.
Include Calls to Action: Often people are a bit reluctant to include calls to action in their text, but they do work! You will get higher click through rates if you ask people to “click on this link” or “follow this for more information”
Source: Add the URL to the pin, underneath where you add the pin description when editing a pin. when pinners click on the pin, they will get re-directed to this URL.
Videos: add videos to Pinterest from Youtube.
GIF’s: Pinterest recently introduced GIF’s to Pinterest, there are still not many of them, but they are becoming more popular.
Rich Pins: there are five types of rich pins at the moment: movie, recipe, article, product, and place. Your pins become more visible, includes your logo, Website address, and larger, bolder pin heading.
Pin from websites: Add relevant interesting blog sites to your feedly account. Check frequently for good articles that you can pin to your boards.
Images
Create the right type of images, and you will get more re-pins.
Avoid faces: Images without faces are repinned 23% more.
Smooth images: smooth textured images are 17 times more likely to be repinned than grainy, rough textures ones.
Light Images: Lighter images are 20 times more likely to be repinned than very dark images.
Medium lightness: very light and very dark images are, generally speaking, re-pinned one-twentieth as often as images with medium lightness.
Colour images: 10 times more likely to be repinned than black and white images.
Images with 50 percent color saturation: get repinned four times as often as images with 100 percent saturation
Predominantly red or orange images: get twice the repins of predominately blue images.
Small background photos: work 2 to 4 times better than ones with a white, empty space as the background. If the white background is more than 40% of the image, re-pins are reduced by 25 to 50%.
Portrait style: images do best in a vertical orientation with an aspect ratio between 2:3 and 4:5. Pinterest tries to rescale or otherwise adapt images that fall outside of this range, making them look bad.
Multiple colours: three times the number of re-pins than images with just one colour.
Interact
Talk with other pinners, this will get you known, and result in more traffic to your boards, and website.
Comment: on other people’s pins.
Like other peoples pins.
Thank people who have pinned your content. Go to their pin, and post a comment.
Popular Pins: Do a search for your niche, then like, comment, and re-pin popular, relevant, pins.
Influencers: Find influencers in your niche, then go and re-pin their pins.
Comment on influencers pins.
Mobile
Get the app so you can pin on the go!
Scheduling
Scheduling your content to get pinned at optimum times has many advantages, including improving your marketing efforts by encouraging more followers and re-pins. It will also save you time! Rather than getting into a pinning frenzy, and half an hour turns into an hour…you can limit your time more effectively if you schedule pins.
You won’t annoy your followers by clogging up their home feed with pictures of cats or wedding dresses, which could result in people getting really pissed off, and un-following you, which is sad. Also, you are more likely to get more people to see your content if you drip feed it, especially if you schedule pins to go out at peak times.
Connect with other social media sites
Cross platform marketing is a great way to get your pins noticed, and shared on other social media platforms.
- Facebook – Add your pin to facebook, with a link to it on pinterest, and a call to action.
- Twitter – when you create a new pin, include in a tweet, with a call to action.
- Google Plus – Add #pinoftheday hashtag to showcase your best pins. Also, add to any communities that you are a member of.
- LinkedIn – add to your profile with a link to the pin on pinterest, or add to any relevant groups that you are a member of.
- Powerpoint presentation: Create a powerpoint presentation of your best pins, and add to sites such as slideserve and slideshare. Don’t forget to add a call to action, and link to your pin on Pinterest
- PDF: Convert your powerpoint presentation to pdf, then add to sites like issuu and scribd.
- Movie: convert to a movie, and add to YouTube with your call to action and a link to your pin.
Website
Pinterest ‘Follow’ Button
A very effective way of getting more followers on Pinterest, is to incorporate a pinterest button on your website, which takes the person clicking it straight through to your pinterest page. There are a lot of different plugins for wordpress, from simple buttons, to snapshots of your profile, with your most recent pins. Find the one that suits you, and add to your website.
Pin It Button: Get a Pin It Button on your website! Then with just one click, people can pin directly from your website to their pinterest page. This further increases your reach, and traffic, without you having to do any more work.
Create an eye-catching image
Create an image that will serve as the featured image for your article, and also can be pinned to your pinterest boards. This way, there will be some consistency, as the image that people see on your pinterest page, is the same as the one they see when they get to your blog post.
Include the title of the blog post on the image. Use long images, as these are more eye-catching. A couple of very good, and free! tools to use to create images are picmonkey and canva
Add Web Address to Pins
Adding your website address to your own images is completely necessary, and is great free advertising! Your pin gets re-pinned, with your web address on it, and could potentially get seen by thousands of people. Make sure it is very visible on the pin, so that people can see it. Another reason to include your web address, is it prevent people stealing your images.
Create a Blog Board
Create a board specifically for your blog, so you can highlight your articles. Make sure to use your blog name as the board name.
Also, if you are a prolific blogger, then break them down into different categories, by creating a different board for each one.
Add your Website to the Alt Tags
Anyone that pins directly from your website, with a pin it button, will have whichever text you have included in the alt tag show up in the pin description. This is because Pinterest pin it buttons will scrape alt tags for pin descriptions. Include some text and your website address. The pinner can delete this once they have pinned the image, but they generally don’t bother.
Embed pins
You can embed your favourite pins onto your website, by creating an embed code here.
Pinterest messaging
Message pinners who engage with your boards on a frequent basis: send them a pin you think they might like, and a message. Include a call to action, e.g. ask them to go to one of your boards, or better still, your website. The aim is to engage and interact with your followers.
Collaborate: work with established pinners to increase your followers, curate pins, and gives new perspective to your pinterest page. Ideally you need to collaborate with someone who follows your boards, and has a good number of boards and followers.
Create a discussion: You can message multiple pinners at the same time. This is ideal for creating a discussion around your latest content-based pin.
Connect with clients: Very handy way to connect with clients, and send them images.
Google Analytics
How effective is your pinterest account in driving traffic? Which pins are getting the most traction? To really get serious about pinterest as a traffic source for your business, you need detailed analytics. That is where google comes in!
Furthermore, Pinterest now have the facility for you to install UTM tracking codes on your pins. It enables you to track individual pins, enabling you to delve deeper in terms of what campaigns are working for you. Read all about it in this informative article from Vincent Ng.
Contests
Great way of getting more followers, and increasing traffic to your website. There is a very helpful article from Hello Society about how to run contests, with guidelines about rules, and new terms and conditions from Pinterest.
If you can think of any other ways to market your business through Pinterest, then please leave a comment below.