Are you using Pinterest as part of your social media marketing? If not, you should be. After more than six years, Pinterest is still one of the fastest growing social media networks, even as other networks slow down or even falter.
Late last year, Pinterest had more than 250 million people using the network each month. In total, it has more than 175 billion pins, an increase of 75 percent since early 2017.
Pinterest Users Are Actively Engaged
Pinterest indicates that pinners are actively engaged; about 98 percent of pinners will look at their favourite pins and then try the ideas out in real life. Pinterest has an unusual global profile. Although it has a global community, fewer than half of its users are based in the U.S. More than 80 percent of Pinterest’s new users are living outside of the United States.
Many people view Pinterest as a soft social media platform and believed that when it first launched it would not be able to compete against the giants of Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. But as of late last year, Pinterest was not far behind Twitter 335 million monthly active users. In addition, Pinterest has added updates such as new board features and allowing users to search pins by skin tone. They want pinners to use the platform more frequently, and that’s starting to happen.
But How Will Pinterest Help My Marketing?
The names Facebook and Twitter have been so ingrained in a marketer’s mind that it’s easy to underestimate or even forget about Pinterest. Equally, it’s hard to believe that it could be more powerful that the two biggies in the social media world, so let’s look at some stats!
Pinterest pins are at least 100 times more spreadable than a tweet. A retweet average is pretty low – only 1.4%. The half-life of a pin is 1,6000x longer than a Facebook post.
Now, let’s look at the top five reasons for using Pinterest for your marketing.
1. As we’ve already said, the first reason is that Pinterest has a high user base. The best part is, that user base isn’t just concerned about numbers the way other social media platform users are. Pinners seek out great images for their interests and are happy to share them with small groups. These same users are very interested in what others are sharing and want to view new pins in their area of interest. Small groups influence each other a lot. So when you enter a Pinterest group of shared interests, or create one, your pinners will influence each other and the best pins can go viral.
2. Drive traffic with Pinterest. Is your website a key resource to fuel sales and marketing? If so, you already know that you need a steady flow of traffic. There are many techniques you can use, including search engine advertising. However, Pinterest is a great tool for driving traffic to your website, profiling special offers and increasing backlinks to your site.
3. Get more inbound links. Every pin you post with a link will link back to the source of the image – which should be your website.
4. Gather information from your audience. The best users of social media know that it’s a two-way street. You will be able to share and draw traffic to your website. But at the same time, by carefully watching what your followers or those you are following are posting, you will find out what inspires them. You’ll learn more about them and their interests.
5. Convert visitors to buyers. Pinterest is one of the best sites to direct traffic to your website, and many of these visitors will move on to buy from your site or contact you if you are a service business. In other words, visitors from Pinterest convert into leads or sales more quickly than visitors from other social media sites.
How to Create Clickable Pins to Increase Visibility
Now that you understand the marketing power of Pinterest, it’s vital to know that you can only maximize the benefit of the platform if you create truly clickable pins. Let’s take a look at some of the best advice on creating clickable pins and pins that people will want to save and share.
First, we go to the masters, Pinterest itself, for advice.
1. Create beautiful pins
No pinners will find a blurry or poor image attractive. Use high-quality, beautiful images. Make your pins vertical so that they work on mobile screens. Minimize visual clutter and keep text catchy but short. Great pin creation tools include Canva, Recite (find simple quotes), and Infogram and Piktochart for charts and infographics.
2. Make them interesting
You need to be seriously creative to make your pin work. So if this isn’t your forte, then use someone who is. A combination of a good description and a stunning image will work best to get a pinner’s attention. A description will motivate the pinner to act and move to your website.
The best pins will be around forever, so make your pin as timeless as possible. This means it’s best not to use them for temporary or seasonal promotions, instead use other platforms for those offers. Pinners usually find pins through search, so be specific with your description.
3. Pins should be relevant, thoughtful, and useful
Remember that every pin is clickable and can drive traffic to your website. Make sure your pin links clickers to the right landing page, and the page content must make the link between the pin and the page clear and relevant so that the pinner knows what to do or where to go next.
Pins can add additional value by being rich pins, which are pins that contain additional details such as maps, ingredients, or product details.
