Ready to unleash the power of Pinterest? This list includes tips from top bloggers, the Pinterest staff, and tips from a few of my own observations. You’ll get tips that focus on what matters most, including valuable strategies that are rarely discussed but are essential to Pinterest marketers who want an edge over the competition. Let’s get started.
Note: Pin scheduler Traffic Wonker has sadly gone out of business, but owner and CEO Andy Fling has given me permission to share his useful Pinterest research and other information on my site. I jumped at the chance as Andy is the smartest guy I know when it comes to Pinterest!
1) Create Pinterest Boards to Leverage the Power of Pinterest
After you’ve set up your business account, you’ll begin creating boards. How many boards? We asked that question too and decided to conduct a study. Our post, How Many Pinterest Boards is Too Many? shows us that top pinners with 300+ followers have an average of 56 boards. Don’t worry; you don’t have to build them all today. Begin by creating 10-15 boards, with a minimum of 20 pins per board. Your most important boards should include 100+ pins to perform well in Pinterest search. Choose strong keywords for titles and descriptions, and select a category.
Every board you create should be focused on things your customer will find helpful.
2) Choose Engaging Pins
Every pin you add to your account should be valuable to your followers. The Pinterest search engine is a great tool for finding pins that resonate with most Pinterest visitors. You can also visit the accounts of your top competitors to find out what they are pinning. Fill your boards with these pins to build engagement for your account. It’s nice to add original pins from sites you visit, but in the beginning, you want to fill your boards with pins that have a proven track record.
Adding great, curated pins to your account increases monthly views for your Pinterest account, which makes your pins far more visible to potential customers.
3) Review Analytics
Analytics apps help you determine what visitors are interested in, what device they are using when they visit your site, and what sites are referring traffic. To monitor Pinterest traffic, Pinterest Analytics and Google Analytics are highly recommended free tools.
4) How to Gain Followers on Pinterest
Followers are the first people to see your pins. If they like your pins, Pinterest will show them to even more people. While you don’t need a lot of followers to be successful on Pinterest, you do need a few to get the ball rolling. Search Pinterest for people that might be interested in your products and posts. Make it a goal to follow pinners every day until you have 200 followers and then direct all of your attention to things that matter most – quality posts and great pins.
5) Design Great Images
The first step to attracting attention for your posts and products is having high-quality, impactful pins. If you’re the one wearing the design hat, but don’t have any experience as a designer we have good news for you. Our 10 Design Tools for Pinterest Images post recommends many easy-to-use tools that can help novice designers create images that are far better than what mom might consider “refrigerator worthy.”
The perfect pin is:
a) Colorful
b) Bright
c) Easy to Read
d) Tall (600pxx900px or 3:2 Ratio)
Check out these delicious brownies and then do your best to focus on what they’re illustrating. Which do you think is going to unleash the power of Pinterest to drive the most traffic to your site.
Your font should be large and easy to read on a desktop computer and mobile phone. You don’t need to limit yourself to Helvetica, but it is a font you should consider using.
6) Optimize Your Pinterest Pin Descriptions
The most important thing you’ll ever do is optimize your pin description for Pinterest visitors and the Pinterest search engine. The following tips are golden nuggets that should guide every pin description that you write, including tips from a popular Hubspot post and the Pinterest staff.
The perfect pin description is:
a) 200-300 Characters Long
b) Keyword Rich
c) Tells a Story That Makes Pinterest Visitors Eager to Click
d) Includes a Call-to-Action (Example: Click to Learn More.)
Great Description Example: Chunky S’mores Brownies Recipe with marshmallows, two types of chocolate chips, and golden grahams speckled throughout. This is the last brownie recipe you’ll ever need. Delicious! Get the recipe.
This description tells the Pinterest visitors what kind of brownies they are, what the main ingredients are, and how great they taste. The description ends with a call to action – get the recipe.
Poor Description Example: Chunky S’mores Brownies Recipe
This description includes the most important keywords, so it’s not bad. It just doesn’t get people excited. It also doesn’t tell people what they need to do to get the recipe. Yes, they know what they need to do; however, telling people what you want them to do tends to encourage action far more often.
Pins that include a call-to-action get clicked 80% more often.
7) Optimize Pinterest Board Order
If your Pinterest account has been active for at least a few weeks Pinterest Analytics will be able to tell you which boards are more active than others. Move the most popular boards to the top row. Prior to a holiday, move the appropriate holiday board to the top row and then back to the bottom row following the holiday.
I created two new boards for TrafficWonker and put them in the top row. Within a week they were two of my most active boards.
8) Add Pins to Your Most Relevant Board
There are many things that we don’t understand about how the Pinterest search engine works, but Pinterest recently shared this tip on pin optimization.
It isn’t talked about much, so it provides you with a great opportunity to get an edge over the competition. When you add a new pin to Pinterest the board title and board description are added to the pin data. Every time your pin is repinned it will carry this information forward. If your board title and description are optimized for search, including great keywords, your pin will have a much greater chance to perform well in Pinterest search.
9) Add Fresh Pins
Pinterest regards a “fresh” pin as an image previously not yet added to Pinterest. Pinterest will show this pin to people outside of your followers, giving you the opportunity to reach far more people. Consider making new pin images for your older posts and add them to Pinterest.
Here are a few pins that I created for the same post. Each one looks a little different and the titles are varied in hopes that one of them will get some traction. So far pin #1 is winning by a landslide.
10) Stay Active
Pinterest rewards pinners that stay active on the site. The great thing is that you don’t have to be personally pinning. You can get the same reward if you’re automating pin posts with a pin scheduler. TrafficWonker helps your pins to rank higher in search with zero effort. Just fill your library once. TrafficWonker reviews stats daily. Each week TrafficWonker automatically plans strategy and builds a brand new queue with an emphasis on popular and trending pins.
It’s that easy to activate the power of Pinterest to consistently grow your traffic.
by Andy Fling
Founder and CEO of TrafficWonker.com
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