25 Pinterest Marketing Tips You Didn’t know

AboutKelsey Jones

www.moxiedot.com

Executing a marketing strategy on Pinterest doesn't mean you have to limit your efforts to its confinement. Tell your fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter to come join the party. Incorporate plugins like the "Pin It" button on your website to let visitors know you have an active presence on Pinterest.

Your Pinterest profile shouldn’t be a copy of your website: it can be used to show a more fun side to your business. As well as showcasing your own work, you can use it to show more wide-ranging interests, such as a commitment to environmental issues, pictures of the place you live, local events you support, or your staff’s pick of movies, books or music.

You might be concerned if your business is service based, rather than product based, that you won’t be able to use it to drive sales. But you can use Pinterest to show behind the scenes at your company, with boards about your staff, local environment and industry, or other ways of using interesting images to help people find out about what you offer.

Create images that Pinterest users naturally notice: Tall images get repinned more. Think about it -- they get more space in the news feed when people are scrolling, so people have more opportunities to engage with you. In fact, the 2:3 aspect ratio works better than super skinny, yet tall images.

Show people how they can make something or give them the tools to do it -- no matter what industry you're in -- and Pinterest users will love it. They like helpful, engaging content that just happens to be visual. So think about a board topic that can feature helpful content that will also generate leads.

Make sure your content is compelling enough to share. Users lust after high-quality material that taps into their emotions to a point where they want to connect and experience more. If content is king, then quality content is the almighty emperor with the power to put his highness in checkmate.

You can have a mix of learning techniques on a Pinboard, such as videos, infographics and storyboard images. The content can then be shared both within Pinterest, or onto other networks.

Although Pinterest recommends only using images directly from websites rather than from image searches, making sure your images can be attributed to you not only helps to prevent potential copyright issues, but means that if images are used indirectly on Pinterest, you know that they can be traced back to your website if someone is interested in your services.

You can go beyond product images to get your message out there: You Tube videos can be pinned to boards in the same way as any other thumbnail so you can show off your expertise with ‘How To’ videos for aspects of your business.

Watermarking your images: In order to protect the images you post on Pinterest you can use a watermark to describe the photo and include your information. Some of the tools that can be used include: picmonkey.com, iwatermark, pixlr.com.

People like to laugh: Funny quotes tend to be crowd pleasers for any target market.

Share videos, they get more interactions!

Pin images of trending news, it will help you garner lots of repins and followers.

Your pin's description. Keep the copy short and sweet -- usually between 100 and 200 characters works best -- while also making room for a shortened URL. This is the place where you want to include a shortened, trackable URL in your pin, as Pinterest doesn't restrict these links like it does with the actual pin URL. Providing a link in the description gives your followers even more opportunities to click, and maybe even become a lead.

Let people discover your pins more easily by including a relevant hashtag or two. Don't go overboard though -- Salesforce has found that on Twitter, tweets with one or two hashtags receive 21% higher engagement than those with three or more hashtags.

Generate “Direct Leads” through content on Pinterest that links directly back to a landing page on your website. On that landing page, visitors can share their personal information (a name, email address, phone number, etc) in exchange for an offer -- whether that be an ebook, coupon, infographic, or any other piece of content.

Connect all of your accounts and share. Connect it to your social accounts and you’ll gain several new followers as you share- the more you share the higher your social signals will be.

There are SEO benefits: Pinterest is indexed by Google and should be part of your backlinking and social linking strategy.

This one trait is common across the vast social media landscape – follow a user, and there is a good chance they will follow you back. it's always a good idea to follow the power movers in your niche. You also want to connect with users who have an engaged following of their own because it could mean more exposure for your brand should they follow you back and start pinning your stuff.

Repins encourage following: After someone re-pins an image from one of your boards they are prompted to begin following you as well.

Generate conversation: You have the opportunity to begin engaging with users by following them or furthering your research on their website.

The new analytics feature offers an intuitive dashboard that lets you measure pins and repins from your website, track the number of visitors Pinterest is sending to your website, determine reach, and keep up with your most clicked and repinned content.

Search by tags to find things that are relevant for your business and what people are tagging in your niche.

Ninja pinner – automatically follow people that follow you. Auto-commenting isn’t recommended, but auto following is easy and will make your followers feel the love right back.

Another way of measuring your success doesn't necessarily involve using Pinterest Analytics or any other conventional tracking tools. This method involves determining how the platform itself effects your overall marketing strategy. For instance, is it helping increase your fan base on Facebook? How's it impacting email subscriptions? What about sales? You may not notice immediately, but if you look in the right places, you will see that over time, Pinterest can weigh substantially into your marketing ROI.

Sources

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-generate-leads-with-pinterest-ht

http://www.pubcon.com/15-tips-for-pinterest-with-john-rampton

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/pinterest-marketing-tips-how-to-grow-your-audience-and-measure-success.html

http://socialmediatoday.com/ekaterina/1690291/7-pinterest-marketing-tips-smbs

http://www.toprankblog.com/2013/01/pinterest-101-nmx/