By pinning your blog posts and other relevant articles to Pinterest, you can direct more people and get steady and consistent traffic to your website over time.

The content you write about on your website should be inspirational, informative and trending. Aim to save content to your boards that are predominately your content. Optimise the content you pin for website success to ensure you rank the best in search algorithms.

What Is Pinterest?   

1. It is a visual search engine for finding ideas and inspiration on various topics.
2. You create various boards of different categories or topics of information, and on these boards, you save content that you wish to share with other people.
3. The content you save on your board is called a pin, and when clicked on, the pin directs people to the relevant link on your website, which could be to a blog post, article or product for sale.

WHY USE PINTEREST?

Pinterest can be an effective online marketing tool to maximise traffic to your blog.  It will drive free organic traffic to your site so that people can read your articles, shop for your products and learn about any other information you direct them to on your website.

THE DIFFERENT PIN TYPES ARE:

1. Article pins are the most common type on Pinterest.
2. Product pins are ideal for directing traffic to your online shop.
3. Video pins can be used to promote your website, online shop, or blog.
4. Story pins cab be a combination of images, videos and custom text which is a great way to grow followers.

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH PINTEREST

1. Create a Pinterest business account.
2. Create your profile and the various boards related to your business.
3. Name your boards using searchable, relevant, and popular keywords. Try and think about the words that your ideal reader is most likely to type into the search bar when searching for your type of content.

• • Use the Pinterest search toolbar to get an idea of keywords related to your topic. Once you figure out what these keywords are, use them to name your boards.
  • Discover relevant keywords using Google Trendz, Buzz Sumo, Moz, Keyword Tool and Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
  • Keep in mind that you can add up to 20 hashtags to each pin description to further help identify what your pin is about. Add hashtags that are relevant to your pin image and your niche.

4. Claim your website as this is a way of verifying that you own the content shared from your website and that your profile is legitimate. Furthermore, by claiming your website, your pins are boosted, and your pins get distributed to more people on Pinterest.
5. Enable Rich Pins to help boost reach and engagement of the content you pin. With rich pins enabled, your pin gets enriched with additional data.

• • A direct link to your Pinterest account will be displayed with a follow button to prompt people to follow you.
  • Pinterest will automatically pull through some additional information from your website, such as the product price, description and availability from your online store and display this information with your product pin.
  • A rich pin alerts people that the displayed product is available for sale. This is great for e-commerce, especially if you have an online shop that sells digital and physical products.

6. Follow and join group boards which will allow you to collaborate with others and share pins on specific topics.

• • A group board is a board from another person’s account. The person permits you to share your content onto their board/s.
  • By adding your content onto a group board, your content becomes exposed to the followers on that board even if they do not follow you. This is beneficial when you start using Pinterest, and you don’t have a large audience of your own yet. Joining a group board will enable you to reach more people in the initial phases, who will then become aware of your content and website.
  • Use PinGroupie or PinSprout to identify group boards you may be interested in following.
  • If you decide to pin other people’s pins onto your boards, make sure the URL they provide works before adding the pin to your board. Only join group boards once you have assessed how well they perform using a tool such as Tailwind.

7. Create click-worthy pins for your brand that you can use each time you edit a pin for a new blog post or article or when you want to create a pin to showcase a product on your website. You can save time by making a few visually appealing pin templates. You can also consider creating custom covers for each of your boards. Templates or pin designs can be created using Canva, Pickmonkey or Tailwind Create.
8. Add fresh pins to your boards and brand your pins with your logo or URL. Add the relevant link to your pin that leads to your website.

• • A fresh pin will have a new image or video. This means that using the same image and URL combination for your pins is not considered as a fresh pin.
  • New images on your pins count as new content on Pinterest even if they link to an old blog post or the same blog post. This is when having a few templates comes in handy, as all you will need to do is keep changing the image of your template to create fresh pins for your various boards.
  • Your pins can have the same headline or main title description, and they will still be considered a fresh pin. What’s important is changing the image or video.
  • When using templates, you can quickly increase the chances of more people reading your blog post by inserting a new image into five different pin templates that will all lead to the same blog post on your website.
  • Pin to your most relevant board first, and then select an additional three and a maximum of up to ten boards to add the other pins to. It’s wise to schedule and spread the pins you post to the different boards at least two to seven days apart.

9. Write click-worthy headlines, text overlays or main titles for your pins. What qualifies as a click-worthy headline? A headline that:
   • promises to solve a problem invokes an emotion, i.e., makes someone feel happy, curious, motivated, inspired etc.
   • has a call to action and a sense of urgency. To create a sense of urgency, add powerful words to your pin. These words should entice someone to immediately click on your pin and see what additional information they can get.
   • is eye-catching with the ability to stop the reader in their tracks as they scroll through Pinterest. If you need some inspiration, check out Buzzfeed and use it as a reference site to see what kinds of headlines grab attention.
   • Pick a font and font size that is easy to read, even on a mobile device.

10. The recommended number of pins per day is 15 – 25 per day. This could be a lot for someone starting out and at the same time trying to figure out how Pinterest works. Try and aim for consistency in the form of, say, 3-5 pins a day or per week for your old and new content until you get more comfortable and familiar with adding more pins to your account.

• • Focus on creating more pins per blog post or product or per article. As mentioned earlier, your one blog post can have three to five different pins made just for that one blog post. You can then pin these to various relevant boards. This strategy allows your pins to go viral.
  • Consider using a scheduling tool such as Tailwind to automate your pins. Schedule out your entire month of pins a month in advance. Log into your Pinterest or your scheduling platform to check messages and analytics and see how your different pins are performing.

   

11. Follow people and brands in your industry. You can follow their entire account or just a board in the account.

• pin consistently
• pin fresh content with engaging graphics
• use the right keywords

 Keep in mind; content is king.

Creating engaging content should be your focus far more than the number of followers you may have. Followers will come with time, especially if your content is excellent.

Remember that slowly does it. Rome was not built in a day. Enjoy the journey as you steadily drive traffic towards your website.

Until next time,

Keep Sparkling!

You may also like