Five Best Practices for Marketing Your Brand on Pinterest
By Lisa Marie Chatroop, SocialKaty Account Manager
As covered in “Why Pinterest Should Interest Brands”, Pinterest is one of the best new social media websites for brands to add to their arsenal. Created on the premise of visually-appealing “inspiration boards”, this website stands apart from text-heavy social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter by relying solely on dynamic images. Although the site’s premise is different, it’s important to remember that best practices and good social media etiquette still apply. We’ve had excellent results with marketing our client brands on Pinterest over the past few months, thus we’re sharing our top five tips for successfully marketing your brand on this fast-growing social media outlet!
Visualize Quality
It’s important to remember that when using Pinterest to market your brand, quality is the most important factor to keep in mind. Because Pinterest is driven solely by visuals, it’s important to pin only the crème de la crème – in other words, skip the dull stock photography and stick with beautiful, visually appealing or funny images. As you can see via the example below, the more standard image to the left, while very nice, received only one re-pin, while the more artistic image to the right received 48, thus proving that visually pleasing content is key.
Link Your Images
The beauty of Pinterest is that not only do the items you pin have the ability to go viral with minimal effort, but each pin can be made into a linkable image that drives traffic back to your website. The most important thing to do after pinning an item is to go back and insert your URL of choice, as shown below. Once this is done, not only will your URL be displayed below the pin, but users that click on the image will also be re-directed to your site. Best of all, no matter how many times your image gets re-pinned, your link will remain intact, thus repeatedly driving traffic back to your site over time.
Create Cohesive, Bountiful Boards
When creating boards on Pinterest, it’s important to be cohesive. Because you’ll be choosing one of 32 pre-set categories for each individual board you create, you’ll have the best results with boards that follow a specific theme, such as fashion, food, or home décor. Not only will sticking to one theme create more visually appealing boards, but Pinterest users generally prefer to follow boards that stick to a specific theme that interests them.
Another important factor to keep in mind when creating boards is quantity. Because Pinterest has such an amazing built-in viral effect, it’s easy to believe that pinning just a few items sporadically will build a solid following. Although you will begin to notice results within your first few pins, it’s important to keep up the momentum and keep your boards fresh. Boards that have only a few items pinned are simply not as appealing as full, cohesive boards.
Get Pinteresting With Your Captions
Although it’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words, there are many times where the caption simply makes the image. Along with being creative, your caption should also include a descriptive keyword that will allow your pin to be found via Pinterest’s search function. In the same token, it’s important to remember to not over-use keywords, as it’s considered poor etiquette.
As you can see in the examples below, the caption on the first image has been cluttered with keywords, making it appear quite spammy. The caption on the middle image is fine, but this image will likely not be found within the search function due to its lack of keywords. The final image, however, uses strategically placed keywords in a conversational manner, making it both searchable and interesting.
Don’t Over-Promote
Pinterest’s core users are fashion savvy women that are using the site to seek out visually appealing and unique content, thus your time on this outlet will be wasted if you fill your boards with dull stock photographs of your products. While it’s OK to inter-mingle a few product images under relevant boards, never over-promote your brand. If you do choose to feature one or two of your products within a board, choose ones that are visually appealing or unique conversation starters. The board below is a great example of one that successfully intermingled product images within a relevant board.
Although it’s growing like wildfire, Pinterest is in fact still in beta, thus if you’d like an invitation to the site, please comment below with your email address and we’ll gladly send one your way. As the site continues to grow in popularity, we look forward to seeing the variety of unique ways that brands continue to use this site to promote their wares. Happy pinning!
