Learn Pinterest Marketing That Works
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Pinterest marketing may seem foreign to most social media marketers if you are usually used to working on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
Pinterest falls in line with sites such as LinkedIn, where you know there is potential but you just need to learn how to unleash it.
Why Should You Be On Pinterest
- Pinterest is a great marketing platform due to its ease of use and high purchase intent of users
- Pinterest is one of the top 40 most popular websites in the world with over 800 million monthly visits
- 34% of the traffic is from the United States
- There are over 175 million active users on Pinterest
- The Pinterest App is in the top 5 most popular apps on both Apple App Store and Google Play Android users with over 4.5 million downloads and a 4.5 star rating
- 93% of users that actively browse Pinterest are ready to make an online purchase
- Pins have a longer lifetime value than posts on other social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Below, I will take you through some actionable tips that will help get your Pinterest traffic moving in the right direction.
We are using Pinterest specifically to drive free, organic traffic to your website, e-commerce store, lead gen site, blog, or any other website.
Before we start, we must get the basics down; do you have a business account yet? If not, create a free business account.
Once you have set this up, you will see more features and functionality, specifically Pinterest Analytics and Ads. For now, we only care about Analytics.
Also, enable rich pins on your website to make your content display metadata directly on the Pin itself and gives Pinterest users a richer experience with ultimately increasing engagement.
Research Viral Content In Your Niche To Share
Pinterest’s algorithm seems to show pins that lead to a blog post or page with valuable information and more than just a beautiful image.
This means you need to create good content on your website and then create good graphics that accurately describe the content you will be sharing on Pinterest.
Make sure to create pin-worthy images for all pages on your website; specifically, blog posts and informational pages. This means that images that are 600 x 900 pixels take up the largest amount of space on the Pinterest feed.
Use free marketing tools such as Google Analytics to help prioritize which pages on your blog or products in your store are most popular. From here, you can create graphics specifically for Pinterest to add to the webpage. When you share that page on Pinterest, that graphic will be displayed.
To view this when you log into Google Analytics, click on the left-hand side and go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages. Make sure to change the date range at the top right to at least 90 days. You can see below which pages on our website are bringing in the most traffic (this will change so you must consistently check).
What Makes A Good Pinable Image On Pinterest?
Check out the discover page to see what topics are popular and if there are relevant categories for your niche. Once there you can gain ideas of new topics you may want to expand on.
To check out what is ranking at the top of the explore page, see the style of images and text used. This will give you ideas on how to get your images repinned by other users.
Find pins that have lots of engagement as these are the ones you want to emulate.
A great way to do research is to look at your competitors Pinterest pages. You can type in your competitors URL into the search bar to see any pins the brand or people have shared.
If your competitors don’t have Pinterest pages, then look for accounts that are similar to yours. They don’t have to be exactly alike, just similar enough.
Don’t forget to search for your keywords in the Pinterest search bar. Type in your keywords and click search to see what others in your niche are sharing on Pinterest.
Once you have done this you should have a good idea of the types of pins that work best to draw attention resulting in more shares.
Stick with the trends of what others in your industry or niche are posting as this will likely garner your page the most exposure and visibility.
Pinterest Image Cheatsheet
- Pinterest recommends 600 x 900 pixel images with 2:3 aspect ratio
- High-quality images or graphics are preferred
- Add text overlays that accurately describe the image in as few words as possible
- Try to evoke emotion or inspiration by using quotes, visuals, etc.
- Step by step images showing how to do something always performs well
- Showing data such as statistics, facts, infographics, etc. are good options
Make It Easy To Pin Your Images From Your Website
Pinterest enthusiasts usually have a “pin it” button on their browser or smartphone, but most do not so you need to make it as easy as possible to pin your images.
Depending on which platform your website is built on there should be plugins or extensions, both free and paid, that will enable Pinterest sharing of your images. Most free ones are sufficient.
- WordPress has many options for adding the pin button. The simplest way is to add a plugin such as Pinterest Pin It Button On Image Hover And Post.
- Wix gives you detailed instructions on how to install social sharing buttons here.
- Squarespace users can take advantage of the by enabling the save button.
- Shopify should have Pinterest integrations built into the templates, but if not here is some documentation.
If you get stuck, your website developer can usually help or check out freelancer.com.
What these extensions and plugins do is make it so that when a visitor hovers over an image on your website, a pin button will appear making it sharable to their Pinterest page. When this happens, the images are shared with all their followers. If they have 5,000 followers, you should get a decent amount of exposure.
It is also possible to place a static Pinterest Pin button somewhere on the page that you can click. From here, you will be taken to a page with all the images on the page and you can select which ones you’d like to share.
Hover over the image below with your cursor and you will see a red pin appear at the top right. If you found this article useful and interesting, please make sure to share the image below on your Pinterest page.
Pinterest SEO For Profiles, Boards & Pins
It is important to know that Pinterest uses an algorithm to display content to users feeds. Content is not shown chronologically, but rather by what Pinterest thinks you are most likely to engage with.
You must optimize your content to show relevancy to the algorithm. This means that it is important to update your profile page, boards, and pins with the appropriate keywords, hashtags, and more.
Pinterest Profile Optimizations
Naming your profile page is important. You want to make it stand out. It is always good to include what you do after your business name.
If you are a nanny agency, but your business name is “Sleeping Angeles” then you should name your Pinterest page “Sleeping Angeles Nanny Agency”.
Always capitalize the first letter in each word to make it stand out. Do not spam your profile name by adding lots of words, just make it descriptive and straight to the point while incorporating keywords.
Claim your website URL on Pinterest so that it appears on your profile. To do so you will need to add a tag to your website, which will require coding or the assistance of a good web developer.
Make sure to fill out your profile description as much as possible. You can also link your website and some social media platforms, which is always good to do to when you are trying to bring in some extra traffic and establish credibility while cross-promoting yourself on different channels.
Pinterest Board Optimizations
Boards are the easiest way to organize your Pinterest Pins. You can create and organize your boards in a structured way that makes sense.
Break up boards into niche categories. The more specific a board, is the better it will perform.
If you don’t know what boards to create, all you have to do is look at the hierarchy of your website to help give you ideas.
Categories and sub-categories on a website make great boards as they are usually focused on one specific idea.
Pinterest allows you to have 500 boards, which is a lot. The more you have, the more chances you will have to appear when someone is searching for your keywords. Do not make it your goal to have as many boards just to have them for display. Make as many boards that are relevant to what you are posting.
Make sure to add five or more pieces of content to your board otherwise it will look plain and boring. You can add the content slowly, but you need quality content to share.
Do not just add content for the purpose of filling space. Quality over quantity will get you the most engagement.
The more frequently you post, the more active your Pinterest followers will be. If they constantly see new content, it will attract users to visit your profile regularly to check out your latest boards and pins .
Pinterest Pin Title Optimizations
The titles of your Pins are extremely important and should include targeted keywords that describe what the image is about.
You are allowed 100 characters, but Pinterest says that only 30 characters will appear in the news feed. Make your first thirty characters captivating and interesting so users will want to click on your pin to learn more. Take advantage of the 100 character limit without using the same keywords multiple times or spamming.
Writing keyword-rich titles is an art form that takes time, but is well worth it.
Use keyword research tools to find keywords that actually have search volume rather than guessing at what people are searching for. There are free and paid tools that show you exact numbers. You can use a free tool such as Google’s Keyword Planner or paid tools like SEMRush.
Pinterest Pin Description Optimizations
The Pin description is where you describe what the picture is in more detail. Here, you can go on to add supporting statements and other details to get the user enticed to click the link to your website.
Take advantage of #HashTags to draw more exposure to your posts.
You can use up to 20 hashtags in your description, which are essentially clickable links to other similar content. Add the # in front of a word and it becomes a hashtag.
When using hashtags, think of them as keywords. You want to focus on keywords that have search intent rather than general words. For example, if your promotional “dog food” post had a good hashtag, it would be #DogFood and a bad hashtag would be #Dogs
This can be up to 500 characters, but Pinterest says up to the first 50 characters may be displayed in the feeds.
Pinterest Pin Optimizations
It is crucial to create Pins that accurately describe the content they are representing. They need to stand out to get the user to click through.
Use high-resolution images with descriptive text overlays. Be short with the text. Less is better for Pinterest.
Pins have a long lifetime value. Sometimes it can take a few days to gain traction or it can take years until it takes off.
Using evergreen content ensures that your Pins will continue to be relevant to users and help with bringing in traffic.
Being Social on Social Media
Everyone seems to be great at posting and sharing their own content, but it is important to engage with other people. This is the social aspect of social media.
Building relationships on the app is not as hard as you think. Other Pinterest users in your niche will be happy to help you out. Just send them a message and wait for their response.
Set up days of the week to repin other people’s content and they will do the same for you. This allows you tap into each other’s audience for more exposure.
Make sure to comment on other users pins if you have something useful and insightful to share.
Join Pinterest Group Boards
If you are a new user looking to get visibility on a large scale, you should join public groups. These are public boards that multiple users can contribute to.
If contributors have a large following and you Pin something to that board, the contributor’s followers may see your content. This will help get you more followers and more visibility to your Pins.
Contribute on a regular basis to help gain trust and credibility on the board. Communicate with other members to see if you can reshare one another’s content on a regular basis.
Collaboration on boards is a powerful technique, but it is important to join the correct boards. There are tools such as
https://pingroupie.com/ that will help you find relevant groups to join.
Another amazing tool is TailWind, which lets you discover new content, schedule posts, monitor conversations, amplify reach, analyze results, and much more. This a powerful tool that will help achieve your Pinterest goals faster.
Once you find the groups you want to join, you will need to find a way to contact them. Sometimes the description will have an application and other times you will need to find the organizer or top contributors and reach out to them to see if they can add you to the group.
Analyze and Track Successes
How do you know what is working and what is not? Analytics will tell you all you need to know and more, especially if you are running ads.
Pinterest Analytics is only available for business accounts and shows data about how users interact on your Pinterest page. You can learn about your audience demographics, top pins, how many impressions you receive, clicks, conversions, and more. A lot of good info can be acquired here.
In analytics, find pins that performed well and use these as a baseline when creating new pins.
Examine the image, title, description, hashtags, which board it was posted on, etc. to see what caused it to perform well. You will start to pick up on patterns and in turn, be well on your way to becoming a Pinterest guru.
You can see what country your Pinterest followers are in and adjust the timing of your Pins to when they are most likely to be active and engaged. There are lots of cool tricks you can do with Pinterest Analytics. Spend time playing around and learning about the audience you built up.
Analytics Terminology
- Impressions: Someone saw your pin on Pinterest
- Engagements: Total engagements on a Pin including saves, closeups, and link clicks
- Closeups: How many times people viewed a close-up version a Pin
- Saves: Number of times people saved your Pins to another Pinterest board
- Link Clicks: How many people clicked on your Pin taking them to a location on or off Pinterest such as a third party site
- Engagement Rate: Total engagements on a Pin including saves, closeups, and link clicks divided by the number of impressions
- Closeup Rate: How many times people viewed a close-up version a Pin divided by the number of impressions
- Save Rate: Number of times people saved your Pins to another Pinterest board
divided by the number of impressions - Link Click Rate: How many people clicked on your Pin taking them to a location on or off Pinterest such as a third party site divided by the number of impressions
- Total Audience: Shows the data about everyone that follows you on Pinterest
- Engaged Audience: This metric is important as it shows how many of the people following you actually engage with your content
- Content Types – Organic: Pins you created or saved are organic. Also, Pins created or saved by others that drive to your website or Pinterest account
- Content Types – Paid and Earned: These are Pins promoted by you; essentially paid advertising.
Google Analytics Social Media Tracking
Google Analytics is a free tool that shows detailed information about the traffic coming from Pinterest to your website. Learn about what pages they visit, how long they stay on your website, if they convert (call, make a purchase, subscribe, etc.) and so much more valuable data.
To find this data, log into Google Analytics. On the left side, click on Acquisition > All Traffic > Source / Medium and you will be taken to see where all your traffic is coming from. Here you can search at the top right for Pinterest and you will be able to view all of the traffic details pertaining to Pinterest.
You can see there are different Pinterest traffic sources. They are showing traffic from different locations. It is also displaying if the users are on a desktop computer or smartphone.
There is a bit of a learning curve, but there are many great guides and videos about using Pinterest and Google Analytics.
Tailwind Analytics is one of the best tools for Pinterest. It shows you a plethora of valuable information in an easy to read format. Unlike the previouslisted tools, this one is a paid tool.
Pin New Content Daily
You need to keep your Pinterest page active and full of new content. Updating your boards with new pins on a regular basis is recommended and doing so on the daily is preferred. The more you can pin, the more exposure your profile will receive.
You can hire companies to post on Pinterest for you (we offer this as a service), but you still need to manually post once in a while. This gives you more control of the content and your boards.
With new Pinterest accounts, you should split it evenly 50:50 (your pins and other pins). Once you are bigger and more established, then you can start using more of your own content and less of other people’s content.
Promote Your Pinterest Profile Everywhere
It is a great idea to share your Pinterest profile in as many places as possible, especially if you have a large following on one social platform that can help bring those users to your Pinterest page.
Share a Tweet about your new Pinterest page or promote a specific board.
You can also ask other people in your industry if they can shoutout your Pinterest page on their profile as you offer to reciprocate the favor.
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