4 Tips To Elevate Your Pinterest Strategy
By Leeyen Rogers
- 1) Pin High Quality Pins
What your company pins reflects on what your company endorses. Make sure your boards are of reliable high quality. Above all, your images should look great (not blurry). If your pin links to a website, check to make sure the link works and goes to a reputable site that relates to the image. For example, if a pin has a title like “3 Photoshop tips for scenic photos,” it should link to the relevant article. So many pins don’t match their links and point to useless or spammy content.
You want to ensure that your company follows best practices and does not accidentally engage in anything that would hurt your brand image. This includes inadvertently re-pinning content that leads users to anything counterfeit, inappropriate, or otherwise unfavorable to your brand. Pin high quality pins regardless of whether they are from your company, or even a competitor. Similar to how food trucks are more successful when they are close to each other, your items will be more successful among other excellent products.
You will grow when trust is earned. Your followers should trust that following you will benefit their experience with Pinterest, and trust that you’re contributing for the benefit of the user and not just to sell your products and make money.
- 2) Create Your Own Content And Contribute New Shared Content
Pinterest is saturated with accounts that re-pin content that is already out there that content pinners may have already seen time and time again. Ideally, you will create your own content in the form of compelling photography and interesting articles. If you are able to pin a lot of original content, be sure to also mix in other people’s content. In the same way that no one appreciates when a company is too self promotional, you should be re-pinning from other account’s relevant boards as well.
However, original content is a big investment and undertaking, especially if your company isn’t visual in nature. So, if original content isn’t something you can do now, try to be the first to share current content, such as new articles, blog posts, and photography.
- 3) Pin At The Best Times
Look at your Pinterest analytics to figure out when you should be pinning. When are you getting the most re-pins? When are you getting the highest engagement? Maximize your content by delivering at peak times, while keeping the content coming at least slowly other times of the week so that your Pinterest visitors will always see fresh content on your boards.
The best times to pin depend on your target audience, whether they set their own schedule or hold a 9 to 5 job. Your timing strategies will differ depending on the type of board. DIY boards tend to do better on the weekends since people tend to have more free time to actually work on crafts. Interior design boards may experience more activity during the day if followers tend to be design professionals who are browsing during work. Across the platform, Pinterest is busiest on the weekends.
- 4) Engage With Other Pinners
Popular guest boards offer an opportunity to reach a new audience and grow your following. Reach out to influential pinners and see if there is some sort of partnership that you can arrange, perhaps re-pinning each other’s top content or guest blogging. Comment, like, repin, and reach out to them outside of Pinterest. Engage with people who comment on your pins.
One problem ecommerce brands may run into is when customers are disappointed to discover a product they wanted to purchase is no longer available. If this happens you can go above and beyond by recommending a similar product to your users, even if its offered by another company. Engaging with Pinterest users and earning their trust and brand loyalty offers brands a very high ROI compared to other social media platforms because Pinterest’s users are more likely to buy.
Leeyen Rogers is the VP of Marketing of JotForm.
