Pinterest offers hope to the world of online marketing in many ways, offering a great way to increase the power of your website traffic. The platform is very easy to use and is designed to bring out the best content on your website. Any website that conducts online commerce can benefit from creating an active presence on Pinterest, although not all websites should use Pinterest in exactly the same way.
Pinterest provides a place to collect and collect your own links, broken down by categories of your choosing. In other words, it’s all about deep linking and hand-created indexing. The visual aspect is similar to an online scrapbook or collage, which is why users are so addicted to it! Pinterest is a universe of wish lists, favorite clothes, beautiful ideas and well-curated content. It’s a salesman’s dream.
One of Pinterest’s best features is its ability to generate a highly engaged audience through “repins,” which are essentially users who reblog your content and move it to a board of their own. Users are very adept at finding new niches they hadn’t thought to appeal to, and retailers often find that their products cater to certain groups they may have missed.
If you’re not sure how to use Pinterest to increase your website’s visibility, traffic, or increase your sales, here’s a quick introduction, broken down by website type.
Pinterest for bloggers
While Pinterest generally focuses on images, many bloggers have found success targeting their audience by starting boards about their favorite topics to write about. Pinterest works best with content that is easy to share. It’s a great idea to find other bloggers to connect with on Pinterest and ask them to share a board. By using board sharing, you’ll be able to get others to contribute to your Pinterest board, creating new content for your active followers without having to blog all day.
Because Pinterest is a visual social media network, you will only be able to post blog posts with visual images. Search engines also look for visual content, so if you’ve been writing text blog posts without images, now is the time to invest in some good stock art!
Headlines are often just as important as the image you choose. Pinterest allows you to write your own headlines and doesn’t pull that content from your blog. Get creative and experiment with different headlines. You can’t go wrong offering the answer to an intriguing question or promising “the world’s best brownie recipe.” It is also the perfect place to launch memes about your brand or product.
Pinterest for business
Businesses can take one of two approaches to their pins. It’s quite easy to categorize your products and approach Pinterest as a huge online catalog by pinning your products one by one. In fact, many businesses join Pinterest as a business account and choose Pinterest to advertise new products and sales.
Other companies use a different approach. They create topic-based boards and sometimes invite their users to participate in pinning. Sometimes companies create recipe boards of their active followers or hold photo contests. The more you get involved, the more likely people are to follow your business on Pinterest and become interested, maybe even intrigued, by your brand.
If you want to fund real success with Pinterest, don’t just pin your products and forget about them. Find a better way. If you’re selling services, don’t pin an “SEO” icon – no one will want to pin that kind of image again, and you won’t actively engage with others. If you’re a tree removal company, highlight the biggest, baddest tree you’ve ever had to remove. If you sell gourmet food, post recipes and photos of gourmet creations. If you sell business services, create fun memes and infographics that highlight problems and solutions. If you’re a retailer, create boards that highlight your fancy room decorations. Set up boards for seasons and holidays. Invite users to upload pins of your products in use.
Pinterest allows retailers to list the dollar amounts of the products they choose to display, but don’t pin them all at once because they’ll get lost in a flood of other products. Pick a few products to highlight each day and pin them to as many boards as you can. The best thing about this feature is that people will click and buy.
Pinterest for Nonprofits
Nonprofit organizations can make a great case for their cause by using Pinterest. Make sure your content is pin-worthy, interesting, eye-catching, and unique. Pinterest should reflect your mission statement with appropriate boards that showcase the problems your organization seeks to solve.
Boards for nonprofits should be filled with hope, information, and action. Highlight your nonprofit organization that provides vital services. Create infographics and memes that explain why your nonprofit is needed. Showcase your events and the smiling faces of your staff.
Don’t forget that Pinterest allows users to display items for sale. Nonprofits can set up donations this way by adding a dollar amount to uploaded images. Use the most compelling images you have and tell users where that $25 donation will go: to buy a pair of shoes, feed a starving family in New York, or send a life preserver to a soldier in distress in Iraq.
As you can see, Pinterest is a versatile and fun social network where it’s all about what you can show the world. Cultivate relationships with other users and join shared forums to maximize your exposure. Due to its addictive nature, you’ll soon find that users from all over the world “love” your pins and leave comments that give you insight into future promotional efforts. Be sure to monitor your growth, keep tabs on what’s working, and continue to pin all of your visually appealing content on a regular basis to keep your followers engaged and drive traffic to your website.