Do you want to grow your business with Pinterest Marketing? Would you like a complete guide that will help you get started with Pinterest?
If your goal is to increase social media traffic to your website, then you should be marketing yourself on Pinterest.
In this post I show you everything you need to know to get started with Pinterest Marketing.
Pinterest is the second highest referrer of social media traffic, right below Facebook.
It drives more traffic than networks like Reddit, YouTube, Google+ and Twitter. This was discovered when Pinterest had fewer users. Now it has over 150 million users and can drive more traffic if you implement the right strategies.
Hence, today I am going to show you how to get started with Pinterest marketing. You can use the tips I share to increase engagement and drive traffic…
How To Set Up An Effective Pinterest Page For Pinterest Marketing
As with every social network, you get started on Pinterest by setting up an effective brand page. You can easily create one by visiting the Pinterest for business page and signing up.
Here you also have the option to convert your personal account into business account. If you already have an account you would like to use for marketing your business you can proceed with this option, otherwise sign up for a new account.
Once you create your account you can begin setting it up. The main things you need to include are…
Business Name: For the business name, just add your company’s name.
A profile picture: The profile picture you use should be your logo or headshot as your audience will find it easy to recognize you. This will help you attract more followers.
Make sure it is the same as the one you use on other networks too as you need to make it easy for your followers on these networks to recognise you.
Username: Use your company name for the username as well. It should between 3 and 15 characters and unique. If your username is longer than this or is already taken, use something similar to it. It will appear in your Pinterest page URL.
About you: The about you section should be less than 160 characters long. Here you can just add some brief information about your business. Let people know what your business does and the type of content you share on your Pinterest page.
If you have some extra space you can finish with a call to action that asks people to follow you or visit your website. You can include your link. It won’t be a live link like in the Twitter bio, but people can copy and paste it.
The best way to make the most of this is by adding a link to a squeeze page like Brittany Bullen does. The traffic will convert better.
You can also use a URL shortener to save characters and to track the link.
Location and website: After adding all the above information, add your location. Also make sure you add your website address in the field provided and then confirm it as this will unlock Pinterest’s website analytics.
Create boards: On Pinterest you pin images onto boards and the followers of those boards will then see your pins. People have the option to follow you completely or to follow one or just a few boards only. This is why you should set up several boards that interest your audience.
Make sure the boards have relevant attractive names and descriptions, to let people know what you pin. Then add a category to each board to allow the boards to be found on search in Pinterest.
Adding a category will ensure that the pins you add to that particular board will also appear in the Categories section on Pinterest and gain exposure instantly.
Once you begin pinning you can give the board a cover image. You can choose any of your pins to be the cover for a board.
You also have the option to make the board into a group board by inviting contributors. You can also contribute to other group popular boards as this can increase engagement, followers, and traffic.
Jeni Elliot of The Blog Maven has a very well set up Pinterest page. Everything from the business name to the boards are all properly set up. Check her page out while you create yours.
How To Optimize Your Website For Pinterest Marketing
After you set up your Pinterest page, you should optimize your website for Pinterest to encourage visitors to pin images and drive traffic.
There are mainly 4 things you need to do to optimize your website for Pinterest Marketing:
Add images: People can only pin if there is at least one image that is 100 X 200 pixels on your webpage. So make sure you add several images to your webpages and blog posts. More images will give people a choice and make your content more interactive.
Neil Patel implements this technique really well by including several images in his blog posts.
For example in this post on Social Media Marketing Made Simple, he included more than 20 images. Visitors can pin the image they like most.
Neil also included the above infographic in the post. When colourful infographics like these get shared on Pinterest they drive both engagement and traffic. So try to add infographics to your blog posts.
If you do not want to add too many images, make sure you at least add one Pinterest optimized portrait shaped image to every blog post and page on your website. Why? Because portrait shaped images do well on Pinterest and are shared more readily.
On Socially Sorted you can find one on each and every blog post. The following image from the post Top 10 Image Trends For Powerful Visuals That Stand Out is an example.
Add the Pinterest “Save” button: Adding the “Save” button will of course get you more pins as they remind people that they can pin the post.
Therefore, add a lot of share buttons for Pinterest and the Pinterest “Save” button (formerly called the “Pin It” button) to each and every page of your website. It’s one fo the first things you should do when you jump into Pinterest Marketing.
Insert image alternative text: When someone pins an image from your website the image alternative text of the image will automatically appear in the description. So add some persuasive, clear and keyword rich image alternative text to each and every image.
Add rich pins: When you activate rich pins on your website, it will ensure that more information will automatically appear on every image that is pinned. This can increase engagement and traffic, hence, activate rich pins on your website. Find out more about adding Rich pins here.
How To Create Pinterest Friendly Images
As aforementioned, you need to add images to your website in order to drive pins (saves) and increase traffic.
Now I am going to show you how to quickly create Pinterest friendly images that get saves/pins, repins and traffic.
Create images with the right dimensions:
A rule you must follow while creating Pinterest images is to steer clear of landscape shaped images. Only create portrait shaped and square images.
Pinterest actually recommends you to create images that have the aspect ratio of 2:3 i.e. 600 X 900 pixels in size in their How to Make Great Pins Guide. But I have found that both portrait images and square images perform extremely well.
So don’t be afraid to experiment with different dimensions between square and portrait images.
Use unique background images:
One way to ensure that your image stands out is by using unique background images. This is why if you are using photos as background images, take the photos yourself. If you’re using background designs then purchase premium images. They’ll be more unique this way.
A tool where you can find plenty of unique looking background images is PromoRepublic. You can quickly add overlay text and icons and share images to social media with this tool. Promo Republic are currently offering a free trial and sweet deal for Socially Sorted readers. Check it out here.
Promo Republic also has templates which already contain the background image, filler text and other overlays. All you need to do is edit the text, add your branding and download the image.
If you decide to use free stock images, then add plenty of overlays over the image to get it to look unique. Most tools like Canva and Easil have free stock photos, icons and illustrations.
Easil has a huge range of fresh and original free “Easil Stock” photos on their basic plan and Canva now has a large number of free images and illustrations on their Canva for Work level of membership.
Add overlay text:
As aforementioned you need to add overlay text. This is what gets the message across. Think about what you want to your image to achieve and then add text that will help you achieve your goal.
For example if you want traffic, you will need to describe the page the image leads to.
After you are done creating your image, add the branding.
Buns in My Oven is a blog that leverages Pinterest Marketing really effectively (and recipes to make your mouth-water):
The founder of Buns in My Oven, Karly, adds a Pinterest-ready images to every post.
Take this post about Nutella Brownies for example. It has many images on the post, ready for sharing:
The images include a well-designed, eye-catching Pinterest header image, as seen below:
The background image is a unique image taken by the author, it has overlay text that describe the page the image will lead to, and is branded with the website’s URL. The results? This page has been pinned more than 390,000 times.
Karly also takes this a step further by creating some longer infographic style images. These truly stand out on Pinterest, like this one.
How To Strategically Pin On Pinterest
Once you optimize your website with images, you can begin pinning or sharing images to drive both engagement and traffic. Knowing how to create better images will also be instrumental in pinning the right images when you pin from other sites too.
Ideally, for best results, you should pin/share over 20 times a day for maximum engagement, however you may want to start out with just a few pins shared at optimum times.
If you pin only your own content, at this frequency, you will quickly run out of content to pin. This is why you should pin more content from others and intersperse it with your content.
Buffer’s recent research into Pinterest Marketing provies great advice on what and when to pin.
Schedule your most important pins to go out on Saturdays and Mondays as Buffer found that these are the best days for sharing content to Pinterest.
Then build up from there. Ideally, for best engagement you should try to eventually pin 24 times per day, one every hour.
That sounds like a lot, but if you have a tool like Tailwind, finding, planning and scheduling your pins becomes much easier, even at volume. After you have pinned consistently for a few weeks, use Tailwind to analyse your pins. It will find your best time to pin.
With Tailwind, you can quickly add times to your pinning or sharing schedule.
Remember, when you pin from a website always try to schedule a portrait or square shaped image. Only pin the landscape images if you have no other options. As I mentioned before, tall or portrait images share best to Pinterest.
If you want to ensure that the images you pin get the most repins or shares, you should pin original images instead of repinning, as 80% of the pins on Pinterest are repins. Original pins are more likely to be repinned again and again!
Also write keyword rich persuasive pin descriptions before you pin your image. This post explains how to add Alt Text to your images. This will ensure they appear higher when people search for things on Pinterest.
And make sure you pin images onto the right boards i.e. relevant boards where your pins will get exposure from the right followers. If you have some relevant group boards make use of them too.
This is how you get started with Pinterest marketing:
1 Start by setting up your Pinterest page and optimizing your website for Pinterest.
2 Then begin creating the right images and start pinning.
Following this step by step procedure will ensure you get both engagement and traffic from Pinterest.
Over To You!
Did I forget to mention any important tips about getting started with Pinterest marketing? Would you like to share some additional tips with us? Please leave your comments below.
This article was originally published at Sociallysorted.com, by author Mitt Ray.
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