TIPS FOR USING PINTEREST EFFECTIVELY
Visit tractorgirl’s profile on Pinterest.
{my latest pins}
Pinterest is a great business tool! It’s useful for driving traffic (about 1/3 of my blog’s total traffic), for spreading the word about special offers, competitions or important articles, and for raising awareness of anything you consider important. I also use it for finding tips and tricks for my own business, for finding new artists to feature, and for just plain old wonderful inspiration.
Collecting lots of pretty images is fun, but if you do wish to use it effectively for business, there are some strategies you need to think about in order to get the most out of your time there. Because when you’re in business, you don’t have endless amounts of time to waste, do you? To get the most out of it of course you need to have a reasonable number of followers, and you need to pin the most interesting and/or beautiful images so that they get shared and clicked on.
My good friend Dannielle wrote an article recently on how she managed to grow her Pinterest following dramatically (you can find it here). She’s got some fabulous tips! I do suggest if you want to get serious about Pinterest, you must read it.
Now, I’m not strategic about Pinterest all the time, and I am not completely obsessed with it either, although I do pop in fairly consistently – around 4 or 5 times a week, somewhere between 15-30 minutes per session. As I write this, I’m heading up to 6,500 followers, and about 5,000 of those I’ve gained over the past year or so [edit: it’s now at about 10K followers].
So, given that you’re reading this because you want to use Pinterest to grow your business, the first thing to remember is to include your site address in your profile, and write something about your biz in the “About You” section. Done that? OK good; now onto the important stuff.
1. Pin stuff that is relevant – cultivate your “tribe”
The idea is to attract people who are interested in the same things as you… so pin a wide variety of images that are relevant to your particular “thing” – if you’re all about crochet, pin lots of yarn-type crafts, and if your work is geometric with clean lines, then pin lots of slick, clean, geometric shaped stuff.
Feel free to pin pics of your own work, but don’t JUST pin your own work – it’s pretty boring for your followers, and you’ll probably run out of things to pin pretty quick too.
When you do pin stuff from your own site, you firstly need to make sure that your images are BEAUTIFUL and shareable, otherwise they’re not a good use of your time. Depending on what your image is, sometimes it can be useful to have a small watermark with your site address in the corner, so that if the description or link to your image gets changed, then it’s still clear where the image originated from.
2. Give your boards titles that make sense
Please, keep your board titles simple – if you have something ‘inventive’, potential followers are less likely to bother investigating your boards. If people are interested in surface design, they’re more likely to follow a board called “surface design” than one called something silly like “printsy prince”.
3. Arrange your boards so that the top row/s are your most popular
The core areas of your business should be reflected in the boards you keep at the top of your page, so that when people check out your profile, they can see exactly what you’re about. You can rearrange your boards easily by simply clicking and dragging.
On my Pinterest, it’s obvious that my two favourite loves are pattern and craft – the labels say exactly what’s in them, and these boards are also right at the top. I’ve also got a bunch of other things I’m interested in there too – Workshop Space & Tools, Architecture & Space, and a series of ones for Small Biz – Tips & Tricks, Visual Design & Branding, and Words of Wisdom to Inspire.
I’ve also some got more general interest boards in there, but they’re towards the bottom of the page, and some other ones that I keep secret – stuff for our new house that we’re building, sewing techniques I want to investigate, and my own business vision board. Definitely add your own secret boards – they’re great for pinning things that are not important/core to your business, or even for things that you’re planning to do in the future.
4. Share the good stuff. Often.
Why people follow you is because of what you pin, of course! So it makes sense to only pin the good stuff – don’t just pin everything you see in your feed. ALWAYS and only choose the best of what you see to repin. Which brings me to my next point.
5. Don’t clog up your feed with rubbish.
If you are using this for business, you want more effect with less effort. So, don’t clog up your own feed with crap! If you are consistently seeing stuff in your feed that you don’t want, it’s easy enough to go to that board and unfollow it.
Be very choosy about boards and people that you follow – if you follow a person, DO take the time to check their boards. Even if they have great taste in photography or surface design, they might also be fascinated by Justin Bieber, or makeup tips, or a whole bunch of other stuff you’re not interested in. And if you’re not interested, Unfollow that board! Leave more room for the good stuff – less trawling, more pinning.
You can also decide whether to follow a person or not by checking how many pins they have on each board – so if they only have 3 pins on “pattern” and 500 on “cute kitties”, I’d reckon it’s a safe bet they’re not really that into pattern.
You can always find TONS more boards to follow (thereby improving your feed) by clicking on a pin that you like, and then look to see what other boards it’s been pinned to. Check out a few of those boards, and you’re bound to find some interesting ones.
6. Share helpful pins
Helpful pins are always good – you want to help your followers of course!! Tips and tricks are always welcome, and they get shared too.
7. Spend time on Pinterest
Like anything, the more time you spend on learning about it and doing it, the better you become at it – the key is consistency. And don’t forget that with Social Media, the keyword is social – you need to be actively participating to get useful results.
Commit a certain amount of time to it (e.g. 20 -30 minutes a day), or make it a goal to make a certain number of pins. It’s pretty obvious that the more you do, the more followers you get, the more that can raise awareness of your business and bring customers to you.
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There is SO much more to getting Pinterest to work for you!! At the very least though, the tips here will get you up and speeding ahead in no time.
I’d love to hear what your experiences with Pinterest have been!! Have you had any bad experiences? Do you have any issues or don’t know how to do something? Leave me a comment and tell me about it.
{p.s. And hey, leave me your Pinterest links as well!!}
{p.p.s. You can find my Pinterest here.}
Julie 😀