Pinterest is a recent social media platform that has been making a large impact on the social industry. If you aren’t familiar with it, Pinterest is a site that allows “pinners” to create and share pins. You can organize your pins in boards and categorize them accordingly. Some popular pins include wedding, health & fitness, and cooking.
Pinterest isn’t for every industry and business, but it is a powerful social tool for the right candidates. There are over 50 million Pinterest users. Of the 50 million, approximately 80% are women. Businesses that specialize in women’s clothes and cooking are the types of businesses that benefit greatly from Pinterest. Other targeted consumers include stay at home moms, teachers, bloggers, and those who enjoy DIY projects. If used correctly, Pinterest can greatly increase your site’s traffic. Here are 5 tips for businesses to successfully capture and manage Pinterest users.
1. Pin, and Pin a Lot
It is important that if you are going to use Pinterest as a company page, that you have enough content on your page to attract visitors. If you only have a few boards and a couple pins, it is very unlikely that your page is going to receive a large amount of interaction. It is simple logic that usually applies with most things; the more times you are in a pot, the better chance you have at being selected. Pinning a lot also helps your pins get displayed more often in your Followers’ feed as well as search results.
2. Become Engaging
Although pinning a lot can be a great tactic for increasing traffic, if you are ignoring potential clients, you are wasting your time. As you see your “followers” increase, you might notice an increase in commenting and liking activity. Answer questions people post and respond to comments; it lets people know you are real. This goes across all social media platforms. Following and Repining is also a great way to get reciprocal followers. It is a good idea to follow and repin relevant, related pins to get the Pinterest users who posted to follow you.
3. Attractive and Simple Photos
Pinterest pins are usually repined for the pictures and not for the descriptive text. When scanning through the hundreds of photos, you want someone to stop on your photo. It is also smart to brand your photos. Although the link to your site allows people to know where the original picture came from, the logo removes any doubt. Keeping your photos simple is another way to increase engagement. People are searching for eye catching photos, not for a huge paragraph that they have to sort through to figure out what the pin is about. If they are interested to learn more, they will click through.
4. Rich Pins
What is a rich pin? Pinterest recently released an easier way to gain more information about a pin. There are currently 4 types of rich pins; recipes, products, movies, and articles. When a photo is pinned from a website, it now brings more information than just the photo and possible link to your site. For example, if you were to pin a movie that you want to see or have seen, below that movie Pin, would have cast, content rating, and reviews information. There are several benefits to rich pins including the functionality to update price changes. By including a rich pin, your pin will update when prices change. No more confusion of pins when items go on sale. Another simple benefit is that rich pins provide users more information about where the pin is coming from, i.e. your site. Here is a guide to creating rich pins for your company.
5. Make your site Pin friendly
All photos on your site should have a “Pin” it option. This allows your customers to share with their Pinterest community your company’s products or services. This button is a way of encouraging the share, similar to the Facebook and Twitter button. A total amount of the pins appear over the button. This encourages people to purchase your items because they see it is being endorsed by other Pinterest users. Here is an example from PAAS Easter Eggs.
6. Connect all your Social Media Outlets
You should be using all your platforms to feed Pinterest. Don’t limit yourself to just your products and services. Pinning your blog articles is a great way to increase traffic to your blog. When you share your new blog post, you can also share your Pinterest Pin with the link to your site. Pinterest is a great place to share your YouTube, Vimeo, and Vine videos as well. These are just some other options to build up your audience and not limit yourself to just Facebook or Twitter followers.