7 Tips for Generating More Traffic From Pinterest
Still think Pinterest isn’t the place for your small business? Maybe it’s time to think again.
In late 2016, Pinterest reported that their active user base grew by 50 percent in just over a year, from 100 to 150 million. And whereas Pinterest users used to be almost entirely female, men now make up 40 percent of their active users.
It’s a place where people go to hunt and gather, discover new ideas, plan, shop, and find inspiration. The platform encourages users to connect through shared interests, tastes, hobbies, passions, and values as they’re drawn to images that catch their attention.
Ben Silbermann, CEO & Co-Founder, describes Pinterest as, “more of a personal tool than a social one. People don’t come to see what their friends are doing… Instead, they come to Pinterest to find ideas to try, figure out which ones they love, and learn a little bit about themselves in the process.”
If you follow some simple best practices, Pinterest can be a goldmine for generating website traffic.
1. Set up a Business Account
If you’re using Pinterest to drive traffic to your business website, it’s important that you set up a Pinterest business account, rather than a personal account. If you already have a personal account that you want to use to promote your business, don’t worry; you can easily convert it to a business account.
Your business account will provide access to tools and analytics not available on personal accounts, which will allow you to take an informed and strategic approach to pinning and traffic generation.
Start by creating an attractive profile and confirm your website. This helps people find you and your content and enables you to focus on optimizing for increased traffic.
2. Pin Like a Pro
Using Pinterest to drive traffic requires a different plan of attack than casual pinning.
Create your boards with compelling covers, clear names and descriptions, and arrange them with the most relevant and popular boards at the top.
Add fresh content every day to stay active in your follower’s feeds. And think carefully about what you pin–use a mix of your own quality content and curate top notch content from other relevant sources.
Also, be an active user to increase engagement–follow other users, like, save, comment, and interact authentically and you’ll attract more attention to your brand organically.
3. Upgrade Your Images
If you want to gain more traffic from Pinterest, you can’t afford to skimp on your images or use poor-quality graphics. For the most eye-catching Pins that are most likely to be saved, use high-quality, high-resolution, well-composed, vertically-oriented (tall) images.
When possible, show your product or the subject of your content in-use or in lifestyle photos, or select a stock photo that conveys the right look and feel. Keep your branding tasteful and unobtrusive by including a small corner logo or watermark.
Use photographs that are light or bright rather than muted and neutral or choose sharp, well-designed graphics. Add text overlay of irresistible headlines that provide clarity and give your audience a good reason to click and save.
4. Optimize Your Pins
Add descriptions that inspire users to imagine what they might do with the content of your pin or why it would be useful for them. Don’t forget to include keywords so the pin can be found in Pinterest search.
Whenever possible, use Rich Pins, which are Pins that include additional information directly on the Pin itself. Examples of Rich Pins include Recipe Pins that include ingredients and cooking instructions, Product Pins with pricing and availability, Author Pins that include a title, author and description, and more.
5. Make Your Website Pinterest-Friendly
Enlist the help of your existing traffic to drive more traffic. While website visitors are already there browsing your content, make it easy for them to save your content by taking a few moments to add the Pinterest ‘Save’ button to your website.
No matter how good your written content is, it’s not likely to be pinned unless you also include accompanying high-resolution attractive images to each page or post. Be sure to include alt-descriptions and meta tags to every image, so that the Pin description will automatically populate.
6. Pin more of what they want
As with any good online marketing tool, Pinterest provides access to feedback, tracking, and analytics that enable you to make smart and informed decisions about how to generate more traffic.
To discover what has been saved from your website, go to www.pinterest.com/source/[yourwebsite.com]. For more in-depth information about the performance of your Pins and your audience demographics, check out the Pinterest Analytics in your user profile.
When content drives traffic and engagement, you know you’re on the right track with your Pinterest strategy. So save the same content with different images on different boards and curate more content that’s related or similar. If certain Pins are performing poorly, use that information to figure out what to avoid or tweak next time.
7. Try Pinterest Ads
If you’re looking to attract more traffic from Pinterest quickly, consider trying Pinterest Ads, also known as Promoted Pins. Paying for Promoted Pins gives you the opportunity to create campaigns that put your Pins in front of more people based on targeted audience demographics that you choose.
The team at Pinterest recently announced that they’re in the process of rolling out Search Ads, which will include options for keyword and shopping campaigns that will show up in search results.
With Pinterest, a little effort can go a long way and a well-executed action plan can take you even further. Need help developing traffic generation strategies for your small business website? Contact the team at Solamar today.