There’s a lot of talk in the marketing world about social sites Pinterest and Instagram, and for very good reason. Unfortunately, many businesses think that Pinterest marketing is not for them but for many businesses, it is entirely possible to develop a very effective Pinterest marketing strategy and to build a following on these image-based sites which drive high amounts of traffic to your site. It also is not as difficult as you may think, either. If a small mom-and-pop-run website run from someone’s basement can harness the power of pinned images on Pinterest, your business and well-planned strategy can as well. It’s true that some businesses naturally appeal to the demographics of Pinterest and if you don’t think your site or business would quite fit in with the Pinterest community, maybe you’re right, but there’s still benefit to be had. I have even seen pins of products as simple, everyday and mundane as storage containers go viral on social media networks; it really comes down to the creativity and effort behind the campaign. As mentioned before, social media marketing, including Pinterest marketing is one of the three pillars of a successful SEO campaign, and Pinterest is a big player in the social media realm.
Pinterest Marketing Tactics
Below you will find 10 tips on how to use Pinterest marketing to promote your business and to drive traffic to your website. Additionally, we will introduce you to a number of Pinterest tools that you can use to make your Pinterest marketing efforts easier. Be Selective: Don’t feel like you have to pin every single product in your store or every image from your website. Pin the best ones and once you start seeing what people are responding follow the trend they set. Use Teasers: Don’t give up all the information away in one image or one image description. Create pins that relate to your products or service and give just a little info to guide them to your site for more. Remember you want them to come to your site for more information. They won’t do that if you provide everything on Pinterest. Bait the hook and draw them to your site. Add ‘Pin It’ Buttons to Your Site: Just as you social media integration and sharing buttons are now common on websites, be sure to add buttons that make it easy for other people to pin your images. Add a follow button for your Pinterest profile as well. Use Lots of Images: Use lots of images on your site so there’s more for people to pin. We live in a very visual time. It is the very reason networks such as Pinterest and Instagram exist afterall. Make your site very visual. The more visual it is, the more that can be pinned but don’t go overboard and don’t forget that you can pin videos, too! Pin Often, Pin Variety: Pin often. The more you pin, the more people who are likely to see one they like and re-pin, like, follow or comment. Remember that unlike other social networks, images on your boards have a very long shelf-life. They aren’t buried as easily as something on Twitter is. Don’t just pin your own images, though. Re-pin, like, follow and comment other pins/pinners that are relevant to your industry or might be interested in your business at some point. Be personable. Pin Interests: Most people on Pinterest don’t want to “see marketing”. Believe me when I say that applies to many marketing channels. People want to find what they are interested in and they want to “see people” and humanized brands. So as you have time, make boards on topics that interest you and pin and interact on those boards too. Pin Vertically: By vertically, I mean that quite literally. Use images that are taller than they are wide. Studies have shown that because of Pinterest’s gallery layout, it will attract more eyeballs and attention. Using dark borders on your image or adding text can also help. Think Memes: We have all seen them from Willy Wonka to Grumpy Cat. Memes are definitely in. It is not really surprising that many businesses do not use the power of memes. It is a very consumer focused tactic and many fear they will not seem professional if they start using memes in their social media channels. In fact, in my own experience, memes do a wonderful job of showing that a business has a sense of humor and has a “human” side. I have personally seen businesses use memes quite successfully. Pin Mashups: Take several examples of something and combine them into a vertical image showing each on in a different block. This is a particularly great tactic for grouping favorite items, how-to steps, etc. Feature Customers: Make your customers feel special and they’ll keep coming back. Customer loyalty is key and you can build that loyalty in many ways on Pinterest. One good method is by creating a board where you feature a particular customer each week. Something else you can do is hold contests that require re-pinning (or whatever you like) for an entry. Secret Boards: A new feature to Pinterest is secret boards. These allow businesses to unleash their inner James Bond. These secret boards can be used in many ways. You could offer a membership type board where only VIP members are invited to view and contribute to the board. You can even use it as a collaboration area for your employees. You could use it for private clippings and viewings of ideas for your landscaping, interior decorating, wedding planner customers. The possibilities are endless!
Tools for Pinterest:
Running a Pinterest marketing program is a lot of work. Fortunately, agencies such as MarketingModo offer Pinterest marketing services where we will actively manage your Pinterest efforts. All you have to do is sit back and watch the traffic and green flow in. If you are dedicated to doing Pinterest marketing yourself below you will find a few tools that can greatly assist you in your efforts. There seem to be new tools sprouting up for Pinterest each week and lots of current social media tools are integrating Pinterest. Some are paid tools, but there are lots of free ones. While you may want to invest in some of the more robust paid ones in the future, here are just a few free ones that you can consider using when getting started: ShareAsImage: Quotes and sayings are extremely popular on Pinterest. If you aren’t a graphic designer it can be a challenge even to create a basic, good-looking quote. ShareAsImage makes it easy with this tool. Here you can easily create word-based images to share on Pinterest. Simply drag their button to your bookmark bar and it’s ready to use whenever you are. WiseStamp: This is a really cool Pinterest tool, especially for a business. You can display your latest pins in emails that you send. This is a great way to gain new followers. Do you send out an email newsletter? By all means, add this to it and you won’t regret it! Integrating social media and email is always very successful and gives your customers a reason to look forward and open your emails. PinPuff: Pin Puff is similar to Klout, but Pin Puff is only used for Pinterest. What it does is measure a user’s influential potential and even assigns a monetary value to your pins. A nice little factoid that you can use in your reporting. Reachli: With Reachli you can actually track the effectiveness of each pin. Social media analytics are important for a successful social media marketing initiative. It is also one of the most difficult areas to track. With Reachli, you simply set up your pin through the website and it’ll show you how many repins and likes it gets. You’ll see the potential number of people that pin reaches. But what I really like about this is that you can track the number of clicks that the pin has received. Here’s an example from the dashboard: PinReach: I’ve saved my favorite free Pinterest tool for last. PinReach is incredible. The amount of data you can get is absolutely remarkable, whether you’re tracking your own profile and campaigns or even if you want to spy on other people, which I highly recommend you do by the way, PinReach is the tool for you. It assigns a score, kind of like PinPuff, but seems much more detailed and accurate. They have a ‘guide’ to their scoring system that kind of lets you know where stand in comparison to other users. The higher your score, the more influential or popular you are on Pinterest. Here are just a few screenshots that show just how robust this free tool is: Trending pins: Here you can see pins that are trending right now. This shot has been cropped to keep it short, but they show way more than this. This is for trending pins overall. But if you look on your dashboard, you can also look at only your pins to identify your best performing pins, those with the most repins. If you click on a particular pin it will take you to the analytics page for that individual pin. In your PinReach dashboard, you can also identify your influential followers. Here are a few of the other really cool reasons I like PinReach… • Find the highest reaching members with one click • Find the most popular pins • Not only find trending pins, but trending members There are many things on this site that make it my favorite free tool for Pinterest. Conclusion I hope this look at Pinterest and the tools available are helpful as you move forward with your online marketing initiative and remember MarketingModo is your Pinterest marketing expert. While Pinterest isn’t meant for everyone, it can be helpful if your business is visually-oriented. I have never seen it fail anyone. Do you have any other tips for marketing on Pinterest? Let me know in the comments!