Pinterest, the mega popular image sharing website, is proving to be a wonderful thing for many different brands and individuals alike. To the individual, Pinterest is essentially a digital window shopping experience where you can save what you love on your own little platform. To the brand, Pinterest is a storefront where they can get creative in the presentation of their product or service. It's the perfect storm! As a marketer who has been successfully engaging the platform with the brand I work for, Sevenly, I have found that there are three things that a marketer must get down-pat when it comes to creating a buzz within the site around there product: A compelling image, a good call-to-action in the description of the image and the timing of when the pin is published to the platform.
1.) Compelling Image
A beautiful image on Pinterest just doesn't cut it. You'll need a beautiful image that either elicits value, touches a human emotion, follows a trend, or relates to one of the following basic human needs: makes them happier, richer, healthier, or gets them *COUGH* (I know what you're thinking, "weird". But it's true!). We have noticed that the most "compelling" images are simple (often white background), understandable, and relate to trends or current season (for example, one of our pins relating to the current Hunger Games craze received 1,493 click-throughs to the final blog!). As humans, we relate the easy understandability of the image to the ease of understanding the overall topic being covered. So it's no surprise that even on Pinterest, simplicity always wins.
2.) Call-To-Action Description
After an intruiging image, a viewer often refers to what is written in the description of that image. The idea here is to create a cohesion between the image and what is happening in the image. With the goal of appealing to one of the basic human needs (see needs listed in the paragraph above), create a call-to-action here that will compell the viewer to click on the image. This could mean including a phrase like "Click on the image to see how.." or "Check out these 19 ways to...." or "You have GOT to see this...". It doesn't always have to be crazy outgoing, but do make sure that it is compelling to the viewer and that it appeals to one of their basic human needs.
3.) Timing Is Important
The time that you publish the pin is also very important. As with every platform, there are times throughout the day that there are more active users. From our experience with thousands of pins, we find that the most active times to pin are between 2-4pm EST and 8-1am EST.
Pinterest has yet to be completely and unnecessarily saturated with the content of advertisers. Take this information and opporutnity to apply it to your strategy and monitor how the effectivess, virailty of your content and sales begin to climb. If you find anything that can be added to these tactics shoot me an email with your findings and lets collaborate in helping each other!