5 Tips for Promoting Your Content on Pinterest

Pinterest is a visually-driven social media platform that’s become increasingly popular in the past few years. Though the platform was originally ad-free, like most social platforms, it was recently monetized. With users now topping 110 million, there’s no better time to learn how to reach your customers with Pinterest’s organic or paid posts. Here are some tips for getting started.

Step #1: Publish Interesting, High-Quality Content on Your Site

The first step to Pinterest success is to publish images people want to see and content they want to read. There’s no shortage of content online, so ensure the content you publish on your website provides real value to users and is not available anywhere else. Think about who your followers are (According to Pinterest demographics, they’re most likely women). Cultivate a niche that works for your brand and publish content on that topic.

You should always use high-resolution images that align with your linked content. Relevance will build trust with your audience and keep them coming back for more.

Important Items to Include in the Content You Wish to Pin:

• An eye-catching and searchable title/headline
• A high-resolution quality image
• Engaging copy

Once you’ve written, designed and published your content with at least one high-quality image, you’re ready to share it with your Pinterest audience.

If you have a Pinterest plugin on your site, you can do this easily. If you don’t have a plugin, you can submit it manually by navigating to your account and creating or selecting a board with a topic that makes sense. You can also use the “Pin-It” feature on your browser.

Things to Remember When Publishing to Pinterest:

1. Ensure your image is sized properly, high resolution and attractive. Make sure that it’s syncing correctly with the image on your site, or choose a new image that’s more appropriate for the Pinterest platform. You’ll want an image that will cause users to stop and take a closer look.
2. Include the interesting, searchable headline you’ve already used, or come up with a new one that’s specific to your Pinterest audience.
3. Include a link to your branded content-not just the image itself.

Always review your submission to ensure you have completed all of the necessary fields and to double-check relevance to your niche topic.

Tip #2: Optimize Keywords and Topics

The second step is to ensure you optimize your keywords and topic selection(s) when publishing. Pinterest is integrated with Facebook and Google search, giving you a chance to reach a wide audience. Because Pinterest users rely heavily on the “search” function to navigate by category, you need to make sure yours is relevant. Include relevant keywords at this time. Proper tagging will increase your chances of being found in search. The average user spends 15.8 minutes on the site per visit, so you’ll have some time to get their attention. Look for themes that haven’t already been heavily explored to get the most potential exposure. According to the Ad Words keyword tool, users in the United States include the word “Pinterest” in Google search inquiries 3,350,000 each month.

Tip #3: Use Pinterest Ads to Promote Your Pins with Paid Ads

Pinterest Ads give you the opportunity to pay to promote your public pins. Every time you see “promoted by” on a pin, that means a brand is paying to advertise it.

Pinterest allows brands to create ad campaigns based on three major goals: awareness, engagement, and traffic. Brand awareness is paid based on a thousand impressions, while businesses are charged every time a user taps and enlarges, repins, saves pin or clicks on your pin. With traffic campaigns, you pay for every click-through on your pin.

With promoted pins, you only pay for direct promotion. This means that if someone shares your promoted pin and another user clicks on it, that click is free for you. Pinterest says brands get an average of 30% free engagement when they conduct promoted pin campaigns.

The most cost-effective type of promoted posts is cost-per-click campaigns because 80% of Pinterest users access the app on mobile. These users typically enlarge pins before they click them to get a better look. To determine what’s most cost-effective for your business, run split tests with your promoted pins. Each type of campaigns provides the same types of metrics, so you’ll be able to determine the best fit financially.

Pinterest also offers promoted pin users robust targeting capabilities, including by keywords and interests. You can also export your data for future use.

It’s also possible to target Pinterest users by audience. You can upload your email list, and Pinterest will find a similar audience, or you can use a conversion pixel to target users who have already engaged with your pins or visited your website. Promoted pin campaigns cost a minimum of $5, with clicks costing just under $1 to $3 per click on average. Promoted pins show up at a rate of about 1 out of 20 pins on a user’s homepage.

Promoted pins blend in with the rest of the pins in a search, through high bids for keywords will show up at the top of the page. Buyable pins now also have the ability to be promoted.

Campaign Tips

Before you pay to promote any pin, test it organically. Then you can promote the pins that you already know are working. You can also try typing in the URL of www.pinterest.com/topics/ and then a keyword you want to research. This will let you see how many people are following a specific interest or topic. You’ll need to make sure the audience is niche enough that you’ll be seen but has enough traffic to warrant a campaign. With Pinterest analytics, you can discover out how many people are clicking on your pins, doing closeups, and how many repins or saves your pins generate. You can also see where your users are located and their gender, for example.

Tip #4: Promote Your Pins with Video & Rich Pins

Pinterest recently released promoted video pins , which are targeted at mobile users. These pins feature an animated GIF and give the user access to the full video when they are clicked on. Tip: You can add up to six additional pins below your promoted video for no additional cost. These pins display in carousel format under the video, and they can be used to promote the video content or share additional information.

Though video pins send users to externals sites such as YouTube to actually view the video, Pinterest is currently developing its own native video player, which should be released soon. This will allow users and businesses to upload videos directly to Pinterest.

Similar to Twitter Cards and Facebook open graphs, Rich Pins are a free feature that allows users to pin more than just an image. In addition, you can add information about your blog post, product or location directly in the pin. There are five variations of rich pins. Article pins that include the author and link and headline, product pins that feature availability and pricing details, film pins that feature crew and cast details and rating, recipe pins that feature ingredients and other related information and location pins that include maps and address.

According to the Kissmetrics blog, brands that utilize rich pins have seen an 82 percent rise in their repin to pin ratio. Rich pins allow you to drive traffic directly to your website by including and validating them.These pins can even help you grow sales conversions- which is always a good thing in the marketing world.

Tip #5- Pin at the Correct Time

Even though Pinterest posts don’t ever go away, there’s still an ideal time to post. According to HubSpot , the best time to post on this social network is5pm on Fridays, between 8-11 pm on Saturdays or 2-4 am on weekdays. If you’re pinning during the day, try to do so between 2 and 4 pm, according to Social Fresh, or between 8pm to 1am. These are the times when the most users are on Pinterest and will see and react to your pins.

Particular topics will also perform better during certain months. For example, holiday pins will perform best around the holiday, while a sweater pin will perform best in autumn. Use your best judgement to determine if the timing is relevant for your content.

Conclusion

Pinning a fantastic image is not the only thing that will help you promote your products or services. Your pins need to be interested and relevant to earn audience engagement.

Pinterest is an affordable tool that allows brands of all sizes to reap the benefits of a creatively engaged community. Learn more about Pinterest and other social media platforms with our Professional Diploma in Social Media Marketing.

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