The Pinterest craze is no secret now. Marketers, bloggers and people from all over have jumped on board, using the platform to increase brand awareness and expand their reach. Now boomed into the third largest social media network, Pinterest is an excitingly visual and creative way to share content with over 70 million users.
To truly reach your audience through Pinterest though and take advantage of its growing benefits, it's imperative to understand the rules of engagement. Here's 5 must-read rules for promoting your content on Pinterest to implement today.
1. Timing is Everything
Like all popular social media platforms, the timing of your posts is super important. From a business or content marketing perspective, there are key times to post your updates in order to effectively engage with your audience. But just because the timing is right for your Facebook account, the same doesn't always apply for Pinterest.
Unlike Twitter and Facebook, content pins on Pinterest remain in view for up to a week in the newsfeed. Thus, you don't want to go on a 'pinning' and 're-pinning' craze for an hour because you'll just spam your audience and overwhelm them. Pin dumping is very easy to do with Pinterest so ensuring you have a content timing schedule will keep you on track. Viral Tag and Curalate are both effective tools for helping you to schedule your pins.
According to research, Pinterest users are most active between 2-4pm, and after 8pm weekdays. On the weekends, Sunday is the most popular - although these stats can vary depending on the audience you're trying to reach. If you do feel like going on a pinning binge, you can make use of Pinterest's secret boards to 'hold' pins you want to share down the track.
2. Be Best Friends with Your Pinterest Boards
To get the most out of Pinterest and its marketing advantages, you need to develop a good relationship with your Pinterest boards. This means making use of the board descriptions and pinning content that relates specifically to that board. It can be ideal to create boards that fit into Pinterest's top categories - this way, you're already tapping into the millions of Pinterest users and getting your brand out there.
To start off with, have 8-10 boards with at least 5 pins in each. You want your descriptions to be relevant and comprehensive, so your target audience has a better chance of finding your boards. Use relevant hashtags and descriptive alt text so you have a competitive SEO advantage. Your boards should include a good mix of your own pins and pins from other boards too. When re-pinning other people's pins, make sure you reference the author and website properly.
3. Publish Content People Want to Read
Pinterest is fun. It's loaded with content on pretty much everything you can think of in the most visual format. To keep on track with what Pinterest is about, publish content people are going to want to read. Like with any form of content marketing, people want something that is fresh, appealing and interesting.
Through the content you pin, you want to reveal the personality of your brand whilst inspiring and being inspired by others. Consider the mission of every pin before you pin - whether it's your own or you're re-pinning another user's. Use the descriptions to communicate to your audience why this pin inspires you.
4 Keywords and Topic Selection
Whilst you definitely want to get creative with your Pinterest boards, it's vital to use the right keywords and topic selection. Categorise your content into relevant topics and trending categories and increase its exposure by doing some keyword research.
Before you name your Pinterest boards, use the Pinterest search tool to search for keywords relevant to your brand and content. This will give you some good insight into the number of boards that appear for those keywords. If there are few boards for your particular keyword, it can be a good idea to include the keyword into the board title so your board will feature under the search. If there's hundreds of boards under your chosen keywords, make sure your board stands out with crisp and interesting images and use your other social media networks to cross-promote it.
5. Pin Selectively, Consistently and Frequently
Sounds confusing, yes!? Pinning selectively, consistently and frequently is absolutely crucial to reap the full rewards that Pinterest offers. Whilst pinning can definitely be addictive - and it's certainly hard to control yourself sometimes, it's important you're choosing about what pins you 'pin' to your boards. Especially if they are representing your brand and business. You want the best of the best! Content and images that are high quality, appealing to your audience and most of all - relevant.
In order to engage with your audience effectively, your boards and pins need a sense of organisation. By ensuring you have a pin schedule, and you're picky about what content you're pinning to your boards you'll be able to use Pinterest as an effective channel to market your brand, be inspired and collect your future ideas.