3 Successful Pinterest Strategies to Augment Your Website’s Traffic

While entrepreneurs gravitate towards Facebook and Twitter, treating them as their lifeline for business success, Pinterest is often ignored. Most netizens think of Pinterest as a glorified scrapbook of visually pleasing images that lean more towards weddings, fashion, and food trends.

As a budding entrepreneur, you will have set your sights on building a big following on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and more. Granted this is a good approach to adopt, why follow what millions of others are doing, when you can use a more interesting platform to garner better attention?

Before we go into the vital Pinterest strategies that boost traffic to your site, let us see why Pinterest has the potential to propel your business growth successfully.

Related: What to Expect from Social Media Marketing for the Rest of 2018

Wake up to Pinterest as your business success tool

You may wonder, ‘Is there a social media platform that is more powerful than Facebook or Twitter?’

Although Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others have proven their effectiveness, Pinterest is the most happening success wagon you should be on at present. It helps to exponentially increase traffic to your site and realize your business success dreams.

Just because you belong to marketing, tech, or blogging sector, you need not think Pinterest will not work for you. Just look at how sites like Successful Blogging and Twelveskip have established their presence with a bang via Pinterest. It remains their main referral for social traffic.

And, did you know Lowe’s, Walmart, and other big brands out there are using Pinterest as their key marketing platform?

With the interest in the platform being in its budding stage, there is sufficient space for entrepreneurs, startups, and bloggers to exploit the endless traffic generating resources on Pinterest like group boards and repins.

Pinteresting facts

The following facts will prove beyond doubt the amazing potential of Pinterest in generating a traffic surge to your site:

• A single pin can attract 6 views and 2 visits.
• A pin is 100X spreadable when compared to an average tweet.
• Life span of a pin is 7 days, while it is around 90 minutes for a Facebook post and 24 minutes for a Tweet.
• Ecommerce websites can generate sales worth 78 cents with every pin.
• And did you know that more than 40% of new signups in Pinterest are men?

Yes, if you look at the hot and happening pins on this platform, you will see topics like education, business, technology, and gaming, holding their own forte amidst home décor, food recipes, fashion accessories, and crafts.

Search Engine with a difference

There is a reason why people, especially startups, overlook the potential of Pinterest. Pinterest is not your usual search engine. It is a perfect blend of social network and search engine.

In fact, not many realize it is a popular search engine.  What you term as posts on Facebook and Tweet in Twitter, its pins on Pinterest.

Here is how the Pinterest search engine works:

• The pins are categorized on boards, which can take on any facet you want like Business success tips or Top business ideas 2017 with low capital.
• If a startup searches using terms such as,‘Business ideas 2017,’ your board is bound to feature in the top results. If your pin is interesting, the startup may repin it on their board.
• Each time a repin occurs, the content gets exposed to the followers of the particular user. Thus, you acquire a broader audience base. This is the exponential increase in traffic that occurs with Pinterest. Just with a single pin you can easily branch out as much as you can.

Now you would definitely concur with the fact that Pinterest is indeed a potent combination of search engine and social networking tool. The pins make it possible to follow, comment, and like across various platforms far more quickly.

Getting Pinterest to work for you

If you are just starting out on your small business and want to draw attention to your website, a business account on Pinterest is the first and right step forward. Even if you have a personal Pinterest account, then also a business Pinterest account is vital.

Why?

In addition to being a powerful search engine/social media platform combo, Pinterest is different and more rewarding than other platforms.

• The Pinterest terms of service have certain guidelines like avoiding posting spam, sweepstakes, contests, etc., and misleading users that Pinterest endorses or sponsors your business.
• Pinterest helps you gain a stronger foothold in marketing with its education materials. You can visit Pinterest Blog to be up to date on recent trends.
• Interactive Pinterest workshops, resources, and webinars are being conceptualized to attract better returns.
• Pinterest Analytics helps to identify the content and strategies that work for you, so you can boost your marketing efforts.

While there are plenty of strategies that can improve your marketing efforts on Pinterest like choosing great images, optimizing them, pinning them at the right time so on and so forth, there are some vital aspects you should not overlook while you are working on your marketing campaign.

Here are three vital strategies that will bring on a traffic avalanche that works wonderfully for your business website.

Pinterest Strategy #1: Add Rich Pins

Businesses that use Rich Pins see a massive increase in their repins and as mentioned before Walmart and other big brands like Target have used Rich Pins successfully. While you may not see an overnight change with a few Rich Pins, they give immense value in the long term.

Rich Pins are of 5 categories

1. Recipe
2. Article
3. Movie
4. Place
5. Product

All 5 have their inherent value that can accelerate engagement and drive traffic effectively. Remember that these Rich Pins are a powerful direct strategy for increasing sales on the Pinterest platform.

How Rich Pins help

With Rich Pins you will have all real time data updated automatically on the pins. When you link the pins to your website, you can direct the traffic to the site easily and generate more leads. For instance, the product pin will feature product information like price and availability of the product, which will be updated constantly. In case of Article Pins, you can get to include your brand logo, product description, and call to action that links to your site.

Here’s how you add a Rich Pin

1. Visit the Pinterest Rich Pins page, choose the Rich Pin type you want from the 5 categories, and make sure you read the category documentation.
2. Include suitable meta tags linked to your website.
3. Validate the Rich Pins and apply for their approval.
4. When Pinterest approves the Rich Pins, they will appear in Pinterest for viewers to see, repin, and increase traffic on your website.

As Rich Pins are a recent Pinterest feature, for a small and rapidly developing business these help in possessing the needed edge over the competition. With the big brands leading the way, it makes sense to use this strategy to see potentially awesome growth.

Pinterest Strategy #2: Go for Promoted Pins

Since a majority of pins are from businesses, you should consider using Promoted Pins feature.

What is a Promoted Pin?

Promoted pins are regular pins with additional capabilities that help boost visibility, thus reaching out to your target audience at an appropriate time and place.

How to get a Promoted Pin

You have to select one of your existing pins, decide on a specific audience base you want to see the pin, and place the Cost per Click (CPC) bid.  Select a specific budget and campaign. And remember to analyze the promoted pins, so you can know whether the promoted pins are working or if you need to make improvements.

Five ways to make your promoted pin work include:

Real time Campaign improvements

As creativity and inspiration play a big role in increasing traffic on Pinterest, you should focus on the following:

• Create top quality images with good color contrasts so your pin stands out.
• Choose images that connect emotionally with your audience so they share it.
• Don’t forget to add a subtle call to action in the description or image overlay for increasing engagement (You have to be subtle because functional and commercial CTAs are not allowed in promoted pins).

Focus on Keyword

Keyword optimization is vital to make your promoted pin successful. Use relevant and out of the box keywords that searchers will use.  When you are selecting relevant keywords, use general, broad, and specific terms.

For instance, if you are promoting a T-shirt brand, use specific keywords like round neck, V-neck, Scoop neck, slogan T-shirts, and collared T shirts, and broad keywords such as formal t-shirts, beautiful scooped neck T-shirt, sports t-shirt, etc.

General keywords include fashion trends, men’s fashion, informal attire, etc. Be sure to monitor your keywords, and keep optimizing them so they are relevant and rank high on search results.

Engage your target audience

To actively engage your target audience, you have to split your campaigns so they match the related audiences and their preferences.  Split by language, location, gender and device, so you target your audience appropriately.

Ensure Longevity

Since the purpose of promoting pins is to attract repins and increase followers, your campaign should be able to withstand the long term engagement. Think ahead, so you do not compromise your ‘Cost Per Action’ goals while you optimize, and maximize the pins and repins in your campaign.

Raise your bid

As you have to pay only when a user clicks through and reaches your site, you should make a high CPC (Cost-Per-Click) bid. This will increase the CTR (Click-Through Rate) and more conversions. You can now optimize the bids in a better way and get to adjust the amount you pay with efficiency and precision.

A majority of Pinterest users use the platform for shopping and not as social network. With users in the search phase during their buying journey, using the promoted bids to establish a powerful presence on Pinterest will get you a higher ROI for your ad campaigns.

Pinterest Strategy #3: Be part of group boards

Group boards are ideal traffic generating tools on Pinterest. The group board is a type of community board that allows multiple pinners to pin. If you choose a popular group board for your pins, you can increase your exposure.

You can increase your followers as more people will see your pins and if they like the pins, they will begin to follow you.

To find a popular group board, use PinGroupie to search. Use a keyword relevant to your product and find out the groups present.

Once you find a group you would like to be part of, you can follow any one of the methods below to join:

• Pin the content of the group board creator or comment on the pins to open up a dialogue.
• Visit the website of the creator and leave your comments on the site. This will increase trust in you and make the creator to invite you to join the group board.
• You can check the invite instructions on the group board and even email the creator and explain your eagerness to join.
• An existing group member can also invite others to join.

Alternatively, you can create your own group board either as a new one or from an already existing board and invite other relevant pinners to join.

In 2016, Pinterest showed the fastest growth among all the social platforms and the momentum is all set to increase further in the coming years. With excellent images and marketing strategies, you can easily increase visibility on this platform and even use it to promote your business on other platforms.  While many marketers are still skeptical about the monetization value of Pinterest, the stats do not lie.

From being just a scrap board for pinning glamorous images, Pinterest has transformed into an immensely valuable marketing tool. It has proven ROI potential, which is much bigger than other social platforms. Having a powerful presence on Pinterest will bring in more returns than you dream of. Since visual marketing tactics bring in more user engagement, leads, and conversions, adopting the above strategies on Pinterest will help your startup hit the ground running.