Pinterest is fast gaining popularity as the ultimate visual platform for you to be inspired and motivated. Besides finding great information and interesting images, Pinterest is also a wonderful place for you to market your business and your brand.
One of the biggest reasons why you should be using Pinterest to promote your business is that traffic from Pinterest can last days, weeks and years. While a post on Facebook can last just hours at most and a tweet on Twitter may have a lifespan of maybe 30 minutes, just a tad shorter than the lifespan of a Mayfly which lives for 24 hours, your Pinterest post can last like forever in comparison.
As a marketer, you would be doing yourself a disservice by not using Pinterest as one of the social media platforms that you should be focusing on to build your audience and draw the right kind of traffic back to your web property.
Lets look at some success stories of brands, publishers and businesses that are using Pinterest and rocking it.
The list of businesses using Pinterest to generate more revenues and exposure of their business can go on and on. More companies are beginning to realise how important it is to incorporate Pinterest as part of their marketing strategy. What more with Pinterest having recently announced that they have reached a major milestone of reaching 100 million creative users in their community.
“Exploring interests is a huge part of how people use Pinterest” ~ Kevin Knight, Head of Creative and Brand Strategy at Pinterest
The number of Pinterest users are growing and we also need to know what they are looking for and what will they be looking for when they are on Pinterest. It has been found by the team at Pinterest that people’s interest generally fall into 5 main categories and they include:
Those are the 5 main things that people look out for and most likely your business can easily fit into at least one if not two of the categories mentioned above. The space is just waiting for you to come in. There are just so many people waiting for more pins to be discovered. This allows you to come in and connect with users visually.
Now lets compare between two searches. One made on Google and another made on Pinterest.
A search on Google would show some images in thumbnail format followed by the links and description of websites that Google feels is relevant to what you are searching for. A search on Pinterest shows something which is more visually appealing and catches the eye almost instantaneously. As such, it is imperative if you are going to share images on Pinterest, you need to boost your image engagement.
Here are some tips from Curalate’s Data Science Team that you can use to ensure that your images get some Pinterest love.
Besides images with the above characteristics, call to actions on images will also increase your engagement to more than 80%, according to Quicksprout. As such, put call to action words in your image to get more people to do what you would want them to do, make their way to your brand and your website.
Below are some call to action words that you can use in your Pinterest images.
Use these call to action words in your images and surprise yourself with the fact that people do take action when persuaded to. And if you look closely at the call to action words listed some of them actually get you to grow your list while others get your pins reposted and shared which means that you can get more traffic to all the great content that you have produced.
While we are still talking about Pinterest and why you should be using the platform to engage your audience and get new ones, I would like to bring you to one important aspect of Pinterest that have gotten the limelight lately: Optimising your pins so that they get ranked high.
In the past, pins that were new appeared highest in the feeds and if you had a ton of followers, you can bet your horses that your pins are going to be seen by many people. Now things have changed and Pinterest have substituted Pinterest Home Feed with Pinterest Smart Feed. What this means is that pins have to go through a few algorithmic hoops before they get ranked high. Lets look at the factors affecting your pins and how they get shown to others:
What Pinterest is trying to do here is basically not waste your time with pins that are irrelevant to you. The issue of “relevance” becomes an important buzzword here. As such you would need to apply some SEO techniques that can help you get your pins the relevance that they deserve. We can see this as a plus as your pins would now be served to people whom you most likely would like target.
Here are some of the actionable steps that you can take in order to optimize your pins on Pinterest:
I hope that some of the pointers that I have shared in this article will make you want to start using Pinterest. Its always great to see some new stuff on Pinterest from some of the newer bloggers instead of just the bigger players. Your thoughts and your ideas count. So wait no longer, get pinning!
– Ardy