10 steps to better Pinterest marketing

I'm no expert Pinterest marketer, and for that matter, neither is anybody else. It's just too new on the social media scene. But I have noticed some things that make sense if you're interested in using Pinterest to market your product or service.

1. Use great photos in your own blog posts so people will be encouraged to pin them:
   Pinterest is a visual marketing tool, so your images are especially important. This is true whether you’re pinning your own or another’s content. Good quality pictures are more visually appealing and will capture more interest, which will likely make them more apt to be repined. You want your content to be shared, right?
   
   
2. Choose clever names for your boards:
   Sure, “Food,” tells users what that board contains, but “Fabulous Food is just catchier, and you definitely do want to captivate your followers.
   
   
3. Carefully select your board cover photo:
   That cover photo has the potential to generate a lot of intrigue, so choose it carefully. It should instantly relay the board contents and be visually appealing.
   
   
4. Tag ecommerce items with price tags:
   I recently read that pins with tags enjoy up to a 40% spike in sales. Adding a price tag is easy. Simply add a $ sign before the price in the caption, and the price will be displayed. So if you’re selling goods online, don’t keep buyers in suspense. That won’t generate more interest. Let them know upfront what your widget costs and drive interested buyers to your site.
   
   
5. Narrow your board topics:
   When my own social media tips board reached the point where I couldn’t quickly find the one that I was looking for, I knew it was time to create social media tips category boards, i.e. LinkedIn Tips, Facebook Tips, etc. Although you can’t nest subcategories within a main category on Pinterest, you can reposition boards, so it is possible to keep related boards near each other.
   
   
6. Follow others:
   Pinterest is a social network, and the whole point is to connect, communicate and share. If you’re not following others’ boards and only pushing out your own material, you’re missing out on opportunities to find great new content that you and your followers might enjoy.
   
   
7. Repin enthusiastically:
   Share, share, share. The more great content you find, the more valuable you are to your network.
   
   
8. Control your home page feed:
   Few Pinterest users create all the boards they need at first. Most people generally build new ones to suit their evolving needs. When you follow a person, you automatically subscribe to all their current and new boards that they create. This sometimes floods your own home page with a bunch of pins that don’t interest you. But that’s an easy fix. Simply go to that person’s profile page and unfollow the boards that are unappealing to you. Problem solved. That person keeps your subscription, but your home page feed is free of unwanted content. Do this regularly to maintain a valuable and interesting home page feed.
   
   
9. Create a board with offers exclusive to Pinterest users:
   Talk about an easy way to track Pinterest leads! Create a board with exclusive offers that people can only find on Pinterest. You can also do the same on Twitter, or Facebook, or YouTube…
   
   
10. Create a contest:
    Take advantage of Pinterest’s tagging feature by encouraging users to repin your content on their own boards with tracking hashtags, and develop a criteria to determine the winner. Or you could use the hashtag feature along with a theme and have people exercise their creativity when pinning content to their boards. Again, you would then have to search for the hashtags, review all the entries, and determine the criteria for a winner.

Pinterst is the hot, new social media, and we're still discovering its marketing potential, but there are plenty of built in marketing opportunities for clever business people.

 

 - Christine Pilch Mancini

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Glenn]

Pinterest allows any brand to get creative. And it also help you engage with your target audience as well as build and grow your social media network and overall SEO value.

[Darryl Tay]

I couldn’t agree more, Christine! In addition, we should make our Pinterest site simple. It’s best to take from Pinterest’s exceptional, neat aesthetic. Make a board that is elegant and clean so that it will be more pleasing and inviting to the eyes of your customer.

[PageMax SEO]

Businesses are beginning to realize the significant role Pinterest marketing can play in getting high quality traffic and more exposure for their products quickly. There was a bit of skepticism if Pinterest would manage to generate enough buzz online or fall into the category of social networking sites puffing up and then fizzing out.