Right now, Pinterest is the fastest growing social media platform when it comes to user numbers. Compared to Facebook’s six percent member growth, Pinterest experienced a huge 57 percent jump in members last year and many sources are projecting that the site will hit 50 million active users by the end of 2016.
Currently, Pinterest boasts more than 30 billion pins and more than 80 percent of them are re-pins from another source. With all of this in mind, it’s obvious that Pinterest is the ideal place for marketers who want to produce engagement.
5 Key Steps to Optimizing Your Pinterest for Best Engagement Results
Here are some foundational tips to help you get started optimizing your Pinterest profile for best visibility and engagement results.
1. Make your Pinterest account easy to find
The first step within this step is to set up a Pinterest Business account.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to make the account as easy as possible for your fans to find. Ensure that your business name is self-explanatory and easy to spell while also including keyword phrases. You should also take the time to verify your site and include links to other social media accounts like Twitter and Facebook for increased crossover and visibility. Finally, you’ll need to fill in the short business description that will appear at the top of your Pinterest home page. Although the allotted space for this description is 200 characters, it can be as short as you’d like as long as it captures the essence of your company. Take Gap, for example:
2. Add a “Pin It” button to all of your content
To increase crossover between your website and your Pinterest account, add a Pin It button to the content on your site. This allows people to connect with and share your content on Pinterest and, since the average pin is searchable months after it’s been posted, you can bet that by pinning your content, your users can help you increase its lifespan hugely.
3. Encourage user-generated content
According to SproutSocial, user-generated content is 35 percent more memorable and 50 percent more trustworthy than other types of media, which means it should play an important role in your Pinterest content strategy. To make the most of user-generated content, create a collaborative board that allows your followers to post photos of how they interact with your product, good, or service. Take Gap, again, which has a board called “Styld.by You” that allows fashion bloggers and other clothing aficionados to show off how they wear Gap clothing, or Starbucks, which has an entire board dedicated to its user-generated white cup art.
Encouraging collaboration is a great way to get your users to engage with your brand and collaborative, user-generated content boards are sure to be a hit.
4. Make sure your boards reflect your business
If you’re a tech company, there’s a good chance that boards dedicated to pie recipes are going to confuse your fans and not get very much traffic. That said, it’s wise to avoid getting tangled in the casual environment of Pinterest and to keep your boards dedicated to the industry within which your business operates. Take General Electric, for example — its Pinterest boards offer users inside looks at complex machines as well as hilarious tech, electricity, and software-related “Hey Girl” memes, and images of the work GE has done around the world. These boards serve two important purposes: they are on-brand for GE itself, and they promote interest from a wide variety of users. To glean the same results for your business, keep your boards focused and seek to fill each of them with quality, useful, interesting content.
5. Make the most of rich pins
For marketers who want to include more information in their pins, rich pins are a great place to start. There are six different types of rich pins and each allows marketers to add specific detail to the pin itself:
- Place pins: Allow users to include address, phone number, and map.
- Movie pins: Allow users to provide details about reviews, ratings, and cast members.
- Product pins: Allow users to include purchase locations, pricing and availability.
- Article pins: Include the article headline and allow users to provide detail about the author, story, and link.
- Recipe pins: Allow users to offer details about serving info, cooking times, and ingredients needed.
- App pins: Allow users to provide information about an application, including pricing and description.
To get started using rich pins, you’ll first need to decide which type or types fit your brand best. Once you’ve done that, you’ll need to prepare your site by including the correct metatags. Then, the only thing left to do is to apply to get the rich pins on Pinterest. For more information on how to apply for and use rich pins, check out this tutorial. Once they’re installed on your site, rich pins can be a fantastic tool for providing a direct link between your customers and your product and, since 25 percent of consumers purchase a product after seeing it on Pinterest, rich pins have the potential to increase your bottom line and drive more sales.
Conclusion
Compared to customers who are referred to a product by Facebook, customers to reach a product via Pinterest are 10 percent more likely to purchase that product. Additionally, 25 percent of Fortune 100 companies maintain Pinterest accounts, which goes to show the platform is truly one of the best places to promote your business.
As it stands now, Pinterest has virtually unlimited engagement potential and users who take these five simple tips to heart will see their Pinterest following and engagement grow exponentially. Whether you’re a tech brand or an eCommerce company, it’s undeniable that Pinterest can help you connect with your customers, make more sales, get people excited about your business and spread the word about your services around the Web. Now that’s something worth pinning about.
