Pinterest may not be the first thing people think of when one mentions social networks but the social media site has a steadily growing user base.
As we have talked about before, Pinterest is a great way to reach out to fans and potential fans and customers for businesses. One just has to plan and execute well to take advantage of the strengths of Pinterest.
Use Pinterest For Business To Increase Traffic – And Sales – Through Your Site
Essential Pinterest Tips [Infographic]
What we have here today is an infographic from Edelman Digital that talks about the best practices when it comes to managing an account on Pinterest.
Here are the tips including some of our thoughts here at Social Barrel on these specific tips.
Plan Ahead
“Think before you pin,” Edelman Digital shares. “Be strategic about your brand’s Pinterest messaging and concept before launching your brand’s page.”
We couldn’t agree more.
As we have mentioned in that long Pinterest guide we linked above, Plan your Pinterest attack before setting up your account. This ensures that your goals are apparent and more importantly, you have a specific course of action to follow to attain those clear goals.
The most obvious goal you have is to promote whatever it is that you want to promote. However, this does not mean that you blatantly promote just your stuff. Learn from the third tip this infographic has and that guide we linked above what we mean by not blatantly promoting yourself all the time.
Optimize Your Pinterest Page
“Remember that search engines are indexing your Pinterest boards now so it is important to place traffic-driving keywords in your description and categories the board correctly,” Edelman Digital notes.
Be sure to tie pins and pinboards you have on Pinterest to keywords you have optimized all your Internet real estate for. Optimizing for keywords on Pinterest makes it easier for the search engines to prioritize you for certain keywords because you target the same keywords across all your properties whether they be a website, a blog or your social media accounts.
Furthermore, do not forget to link your social media accounts to your Pinterest account.
Quit Talking About Yourself All The Time
“As with any social platform, people get bored when brands only share self-serving content,” the inforgraphic says.
It is best if your account also repin content from other Pinterest users, particularly those which your followers may find interesting, or interesting content from your followers themselves. Repinning content from other accounts drives up your visibility with influencers. Repinning content from your followers drives up engagement with the community you are cultivating on Pinterest.
“Avoid solely ‘pinning’ self-promotional content as it appears like spam,” the infographic notes.
As we’ve said in the past, “you should not go overboard with promoting your products through your account.”
Instead, promote a lifestyle, as we’ve said in this comprehensive Pinterest Guide. When we say “self-promote sparingly”, we mean “blatantly self-promote in a covert way” and you do this by promoting a lifestyle and integrating your products to this lifestyle you are promoting.
Pinterest is great at promoting a lifestyle because it is so visual.
Pin What People Are Talking About
Another tip the infographic has is to pin what others are talking about.
“Home decor, colors, organization, infogarphics, quotes and holidays are popular topics on Pinterest. Find ways to connect your brand’s messaging to topics already popular on the platform,” it says.
Learn what your followers aspire for and what they like to pin and then create content that caters to their specific interests.
We here at Social Barrel have advised social media managers before that they should aim to give value to their followers. (Read: 10 Tips To Get More Shares On Facebook) This applies to this tip in the sense that aside from posting content that caters to the interest of followers and potential followers, social media managers should aim for posting content that gives real value. After all, why should I follow your account if I don’t get anything from following it?
Cross Promote, But Carefully
We’ve recently written about 5 Reasons Why You Should Customize Your Social Media Content To The Social Network You Use here at Social Barrel. This is what we were talking about when we said you should tailor content to the platform used.
“Share your pins on Facebook. Google+ and Twitter, but not every single one. Choose only the most interesting images to share on other platforms to avoid over-promotion,” the infographic says.
Why should you choose which of your Pinterest content to share on other social platforms? Because not every content on Pinterest will be effective in other social networks.
As we’ve said in the post linked in this tip, “there is no one-size-fits-all approach.”
Connect With Your Community
“Go beyond the re-pin! Brands should follow, like and comment on other Pinterest users content to maintain a two-way conversation with their audience,” the infographic advises.
Engaging with your community humanizes your page. This is essential in online communications because, well, people don’t exactly see that real people manage these accounts, don’t they? That is unless they work in the same office as you do.
If people see that you like, comment and also follow accounts, they get reminded of a personal connection they have with your account.
Aside from humanizing your brand or company or account, connecting with your community also drives up engagement which is always a good thing.
Use Boards To Segment Your Audience
“Share different boards on your Pinterest page to showcase content by lifestyle or technology,” the infographic notes.
“Different audience segments are interested in different aspects of the brand; use boards to help users navigate and find what interests them most,” it adds.
Aside from helping users navigate your content, following this tip is a way to organize your own thoughts. It provides order to your content and gives off the impression that you put thought into how you present your content.
As we’ve said in 5 Reasons Why You Should Customize Your Social Media Content To The Social Network You Use, “people have an easier time investing their trust in a certain social media account when they know that its managers are making an effort to post useful content.” Anything that boosts trust among your followers should be done, don’t you agree?
Enable Your Community To Discover Things They Love And Go Do Them Offline
“Plain, clear and simple; share inspiring things online in order to drive the same interest and passion offline,” Edelman Digital says.
What does this mean? Let’s tie this with the lifestyle your followers and potential followers are interested in or aspire for.
Once you get the attention of your followers and are successfully engaging them with your content, the main end result should be that they are inspired to do the things they love offline. This means that they do the activities you suggest and hopefully, buy or recommend your product or service.
Furthermore, if your followers see the connection between the things you post and how they can do the same in real life, they will notice that following your virtual presence has concrete use for them (e.g. they can do the stuff they see online in real life).
Use A “Quality Over Quantity” Approach
We agree with what this tip says: “The most effective brands using Pinterest understand that less sometimes means more.”
“Instead of creating hundreds of boards and pinning many items, they strategically ‘pin’ content that is appropriate, creative and shareable,” it adds.
The downside of too much content is overload. Overload makes it appear that your account is spammy. It’s better to capture the attention of your followers because of deeper engagement with a few content than to capture it because it is all that they see in their feeds.
Furthermore, even if you can argue that all the content you post on your Pinterest account is “quality content”, too much content makes your account look too cluttered.
We also remind you again that “value” should be a word you think about when you are about to post a photo on Pinterest. Ask yourself, “will this post offer real value to my followers?” each time you are about to post.
Credit Your Sources
“Pin directly from a source and/or credit the source in the pin caption. This can be as simple as including via ABC in the caption,” says Edelman Digital. [See what we did there?]
Crediting your sources should be done not only because it’s the right thing to do but because it also drive up your credibility.
With these tips in mind, go rock Pinterest and boost your business.
