5 Key Methods to Find Success on Pinterest
There are limitless recipes and baby shower ideas to get lost in on Pinterest, but if you aren’t utilizing Pinterest for your business, you are missing out on one of the most effective free tools to drive traffic to your website.
1. Optimize your Profile
- Convert your personal account to business to access to analytics that help you discover trends in your marketing.
- Claim your website and social profiles, which helps Pinterest recognize you as a creator and identifies your pins.
- Set up boards related to your business niche
- Do some SEO. Search related words to your product/service and look at the “suggested” search terms. Use these keywords in your descriptions.
2. Prepare your website.
Your #1 Pinterest goal should be to get pinners to click your image and visit your website. If the link they follow doesn’t match what they thought they would be seeing, the viewer will have a negative experience. Imagine saving a recipe for some “Olive Garden Copycat ziti al forno ” that you want to make for supper tonight, but when you click on it later to find the ingredients, the recipe isn’t there. You’d be disappointed and probably heading for some rotisserie chicken for supper instead.
3. Keep it consistent.
Consistency is important in most digital marketing strategies and Pinterest is no different. Try to avoid sudden increases in activity (pinning all the things all at once) or sudden gaps in pinning. It’s best to gradually increase your activity to a level you are comfortable maintaining over time and then making a commitment to stick with it.
4. Study your Analytics
Once you have been pinning for a week or two, look at your analytics and see which of your pins have a high number of saves, clicks, and impressions. You can see which pins are performing best and take note of key features about that pin that might be working better than others- color, font, headline, the image, and keywords play into this.
You can also scope out competition or other accounts who are doing well. Seeing what pins these profiles are pinning can help you better understand your audience and get fresh ideas to adapt for your own strategy
5. Pinterest isn’t for everyone
Due to how quickly information can spread on Pinterest, they recently announced they would be shutting down accounts that link to websites violating their misinformation policy, which includes things like “false” cures for terminal or chronic illness and anti-vaccination advice. They rely on information from nationally and internationally recognized institutions including the CDC and WHO to help them determine if content violates their guidelines. We are playing in space we don’t own, meaning we are playing by someone else’s rules.
Pinterest is not Social Media
These methods will put your best foot forward. But most importantly, remember that Pinterest isn’t social media. While there are some social aspects, the Pinterest homepage is actually more similar to a visual search engine, populated with all the pins you could ever dream of — literally. The Pinterest algorithm uses a smart feed to help you find more pins similar to things you have already pinned, searched for, or from profiles you follow. Treating Pinterest like your other social platforms will not get you the results you crave.
If this all sounds overwhelming or unmanageable, don’t fret! You can totally bootstrap Pinterest, but just like there are website developers and social media managers, there are also Pinterest strategists and VA’s, that would love to take this task off your plate and help your website see the traffic it deserves.
