If there's something that makes 21st century people entirely different from 19th or even 20th century people, it's their need for visual content over text-only.
Like Instagram, Pinterest was born to accommodate the modern need for visuals.
Images, photos, illustrations, infographics, and e-paintings – they all convey messages to the brain using only people's eyes as their vehicle, and concepts are retained more quickly. The reason for this is that it's easier for the brain to get the ‘bigger picture' with visuals rather than with words, where it has to do extra work to understand a concept as a whole.
So here is the question:
How to Meet Your Audience's Need for Visual Content?
If you've been wondering how to turn Pinterest into a marketing asset, this post is for you.
1. Like Infographics? Pinterest Is THE Place
Create Pin-friendly infographics and promote them to your followers and on your website.
Infographics and Pinterest marketing are a well-suited match. Because of Pinterest's visual settings, it's a natural place for infographics to find an audience and get shared.
In 2017 the Pinterest app (for iPhone, Android and the web) introduced Instant Ideas, a feature that allows users to tap a circle on each pin to show related ideas (example: more recipes with the same ingredients) and tweak their feed. This is good news when you use Pinterest primarily for infographics because
2. Comment on Pins and Answer Comments
You don't have to just like or reshare your favorite Pins – you can also comment on Pins and reply to your commenters.
In his post on Business2Community, Dillon Diatio says that, while Pinterest is mostly a visual board than a social network, you can still build a community around the content you share or reshare, and give other people a chance to become part of it and get Pinterest users to know you for your thoughts, not just your visuals.
Also, comments in general have been a great way to get new followers and create relationships since the birth of the first social communities (forums and blogs), so it will work on Pinterest, too.
3. Use Affiliate Links or Get Creative
After Pinterest's announcement, dated February 2015, that introduced a rule to ban all affiliate IDs on Pins, all bloggers and marketers worldwide are now rejoicing at the news that, as of May 2016, aff links are allowed again on Pinterest.
“In the past, we removed affiliate links from Pinterest because spammers were abusing them,” said Adelin Cai, Policy team leader at Pinterest. “Now that our spam detection system is so much stronger, we’re ready to allow affiliate links again.”
However, if you still want to play it safe, you can get creative and add a layer of content between Pinterest and your affiliate link. Write a blog post or build a niche site where you will review the affiliate product and add images, testimonials (or invite readers who have used the product to comment on the post) and add a big “Buy” button to the page.
The URL you will pin on Pinterest will be that of your blog post.
4. Create ‘Pinnable' Blog Posts
As of 2016, repin counts change from individual to aggregate, so they are no longer reliable as a measure of engagement per-pin. However, there are still Pinterest analytics tools out there – like Pin Inspector – that show individual pin counts, so you may want to complement your Pinterest analytics with a tool of this kind to keep track of how your pins are faring.
In addition to making your posts ‘Pinnable', make them shareable, too!
As of December 2017, Pinterest launched a chat bot for Facebook Messenger so users can share Pins with contacts on Messenger.
The tip is to make it known to readers (and Pinterest users) that they can easily share your Pin with their Facebook friends, too, using this option; if relevant to your goals, hint at this possibility at the bottom of your Pin and your post.
5. Pin Your Business!
In January 2017, Pinterest introduced ad groups for paid campaigns to make it easier for advertisers to assign a budget to specific groups. This new feature will turn help you manage your budget in a smart way, directing it to relevant demographics and geo-locations.
You can test your ads before spending money, so it's worth trying out.
Wonderful advice from Deepanshu Gahlaut:
Tips from the bloggers
Pinterest is a great place to advertise and market your product, connect with existing customers, and find new ones. It's difficult to give a single strategy or tip for marketing on Pinterest or any other social media. Here are few tips every business should use for marketing on Pinterest, I would recommend:
- Set up your business profile with an attractive image and strong bio line. Don't forget to insert call to action here.
For example: “We are the leading provider of **** service. Call us *******”- Verify your business account and include other social media as well such as Twitter and Facebook. This all shows you as a trustworthy source of business.
- Create place boards by using add map feature. For example, create a board named “Contact Us” use the map on it, with exact location where customers can contact you.
- Create a guest board to allows your customers to pin as well.
- Engage more as you can – Follow others, pin others stuff as well, like other’s stuff, and comment on other’s Pins.
- Make use of hashtags, with # symbols. Tag others with @ symbol.
- You can aslo use the promoted pin feature of Pinterest.
- Use a Pin it button on your website.
- Use Pinterest analytics to know the progress of your business on Pinterest – followers growth, what has been pinned, impressions etc.
6. Add Keywords to Boards and Pins. Be Consistent
“My top tip for Pinterest is to pin consistently and add keywords to your boards, pins and profile,” says Brian Lang, owner of Top Pinner for “Baby Showers.”
“We were able to outrank more established competitors that had more than 3x as many followers or more because we pinned almost every day while they did not.”
Add daily (or every two days) pinning to your Pinterest marketing schedule and be consistent with the content you share.
7. Be Interesting, Not Salesy
“Don't try [to] sell your product or service,” advises the team at So Bold Marketing.
When your consumers see this, they will be instantly uninterested and see it as the cold calling of marketing. Give the consumers value added information about your market space and then 10% of what you post should be about the services you can offer.
The secret is putting yourself in the user's shoes. “People will engage with interesting information and facts,” adds So Bold Marketing, “Give the consumer what you would want to see.”
This is even more important when you are in the fashion and home decore niches: your images are top notch in terms of resolution and detail to really stand out.
In fact, since 2017 users can use Pinterest Lens, a tool in the phone app to point at something (using the camera) to get related Pins (for example, you see a fancy table in a store and use Lens to find similar tables), so the more nitid your photos are, the easier for the Pinterest algorithm to retrieve your Pin.
Users can also use Shop the Look, another tool in the Pinterest app to find and shop for the clothing and home decor items displayed in Pins. The shop feature is based on Pinterest's partnerships with brands, so you can leverage this partnership if you own a clothing e-commerce.
8. Diversify Boards
Even though your Pinterest channel is topical and mostly brand-related, you can create Boards on slightly unrelated topics and use them to attract diversified audiences who may find your brand content interesting, too.
For example, if your site or your brand is about preschool educational toys, you can create a board about environmentally friendly art and craft materials – it's not strictly related to your brand products, but it's still relevant for parents who want to encourage their kids' creativity while respecting nature… and they can certainly get an interest in educational preschool toys that respect nature as well.
Pinterest made the job of diversifying and rearranging – even withing a single board – a lot easier since 2018 with its update on new tools for organizing Pins, boards and sections: in addition to sorting boards (relevance first, right?) you can organize Pins into sections within your board to make the most relevant stand out (e.g. a sweepstakes or a product you want to highlight and that users will see first) and even rearrange Pins within the section, so that you can make the ones you want to stand out… well, stand out.
Because the first boards (and first Pins and first sections) get the most attention from users (like they do on Google's first pages in the SERPs), I would say Pinterest just made it a whole lot easier for marketers to get the most out of their Pins.
9. Try Visual Cards
This is an idea I've been fiddling with for some time, actually, and one that I hope to implement soon.
Instead of producing infographics, I thought it would help to create topical index cards you can Pin on your Boards.
What can you use index cards for?
- You can poll your followers in a visual style (that is, ask questions).
- Introduce a new idea and ask followers to comment and discuss it.
- Announce a new product or service.
- Create a Q&A with the main theme written or illustrated in your card.
The sky is the limit.
