There are lots of different social media platforms such as Pinterest that you can use to boost the traffic of your website. The most common platforms that are being used are Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and of course Pinterest. They are designed for different functions but they also share the same purpose: to connect and socialize with different people especially with your friends and relatives.

When it comes to business, how can Pinterest help? As we all know, traffic is a very important factor that you need in order for your business to succeed. The more traffic you get, the more chances of having a potential customer. And Pinterest is one of the best ways to get the traffic that you want using images and photo.

As you can see, this is a list of different social media platforms and how much they drove traffic to different websites. Facebook was accounted for more than 10% of overall traffic to publisher in September. Well, there’s no wonder why Facebook is the leading platform in social media. But the surprising fact is that Pinterest is on the second rank on the list, surpassing the traffic given by other social media platforms.

Pinterest is known as a pin board–style photo-sharing website. This is like a bookmark for all the photos you want to keep. But let us take a quick look on how Pinterest works.

How Pinterest Works

  • Pins and Repins
    As you can notice, people are posting different photos that came from different resources. They can be anything like events, gifts, quotes, designs, travels, technology, and many more. In Pinterest, they are called pins. They are like little bookmarks that people add to Pinterest. These pins will stay at Pinterest unless you delete it and will be there whenever you need it. The useful part is that it always links back to the website it came from.
  • Boards
    There is also what they call boards in Pinterest. Have you ever seen a corkboard before? Basically, this is where people pin different pictures. You can consider Pinterest as the virtual version of it. In Pinterest, you are creating boards where you will put your pins. You can set up group of boards to share ideas and plans; you can even create a secret board in Pinterest.
  • Follow Boards
    There are also people who use Pinterest to bookmark all the things they want. You can follow their boards and get their latest pins.
  • Home Feed
    When you follow someone’s board, they will be displayed in your home feeds. Basically, when all people you followed updated something on their board, then you will see their updates on your feed.

Now that you have an idea what Pinterest is and what it can do for your business, here are some Pinterest marketing strategies that you can use to boost traffic to your website.

9 Pinterest marketing strategies that will surely boost your website traffic

1. Create Your Own Pinterest Account

The first step of doing Pinterest marketing strategies is, obviously, creating a profile or account for it. You will need profile for this because all of your Pinterest marketing strategies will revolve around it. More importantly, this is what your consumer will see. They will depend more on your profile because people depend their decision based on what they see.

So basically, you need to spend a lot of effort when building your profile.  More importantly, you also need to consider giving all information needed by your consumer.

2. Optimize Your Website for Social Media

Obviously, if you have a business website, then more likely you want some traffic from other sources. As stated above, since Pinterest can help you a lot to gather referral traffic, you can optimize your website for social media. Doing the correct Pinterest marketing and doing the right strategy can also determine whether people will come to your website or not.

You can start by adding a hover “Pin It” button to every image you have in your website. This can help people to pin your images without any hassle. The good thing in that is when they pin an image from your website, you will have a link that links back your website. That is how Pinterest can give you a lot of referral traffic.

3. Customize Your Images

Pinterest environment is more on visuals and less videos. In doing Pinterest marketing it is important to give a lot of effort on creating your image. If you have a business, it is recommended that you create your own image.

Just like in other social media websites, there are certain rules about the sizes. In Pinterest, you can notice that when you uploaded an image, it will automatically be on thumbnail. There are some cheat sheets on the sizes of image for Pinterest. But you can always create your own size for your image.

4. Building Relationships

Just like with any business, building a relationship to your consumer is required for you to be successful. Same in Pinterest, since there also lots of people who you can get as lead, it is important to build relationship with them.

There are many ways on doing it via Pinterest. One way for this is by repinning and commenting on their photos. This means that you appreciate their photos or you also like what they are pinning. Commenting is also a great way to communicate with your consumer. It is not as efficient like Facebook, but Pinterest has also a way on improving your relationship with the consumer.

5. Create Designated Boards

Creating board is a good way to promote different photos and also gives links back to the site where it came from. Creating different board and designating them is a good idea. Why? Well, no one wants to look the same thing over and over.

It is like watching the same channel over and over again, which is not good if you are building your audience online. It is better if you create different board of different topics. It is always possible to do that since there are lots of categories you can choose from Pinterest.

6. Make It Exciting and Inspiring

Now, here’s the tricky part wherein what you will determine whether your post will have an engagement or not. Well as you can notice in Pinterest, there are lots of posts that most of your friends are posting. But you can also notice that not all of them are engaging. What does that mean?

Posts that are interesting will surely catch your attention. But engaging post are different, they can still catch your attention even if you do not have interest on it.

  • How do you make an engaging post?
    There are options here, you can either make it exciting or inspiring. You can also do both (exciting and inspiring).Let’s go first on how to make your post exciting. People are doing the best they can to make their post exciting especially if they are in a business. Having an exciting post can make a difference in your traffic. The more people see your exciting post, the more traffic you can gain.
  • How do people make their post exciting?
    One way for this is by making a giveaway event or rewarding your followers. Some businesses that have their budget usually make an event wherein they will reward followers who shared their post. Well, think about it. Who doesn’t want to win a reward just by sharing right? This is just one way of making an exciting post.
  • How about the inspiring one?
    An inspiring post is one of the most common posts that you can see around. Why? Well, because it can target almost all people since it is meant to inspire. There are lots of images that you can get in the web; mainly, people use inspiring quotes to inspire other people on Pinterest.

7. Image Name, Image Title, and Description

You can notice that in Pinterest, there are fields that you need to fill up when pinning a photo. They also play a large part on doing Pinterest marketing and management. Well, they don’t only serve the purpose of having a description or title, actually they serve another purpose. If you are not aware yet, Pinterest has its own search engine, right?

Just like other social networking sites where people usually do searching, they have different search engines and most of them have their own algorithm on knowing how good a content or photo is.

Since Pinterest has its own algorithm, this means that there are factors where Pinterest look to know the weight of your post. Well, I can’t say I know the algorithm because I doubt someone will know except for Pinterest itself. But I can say that there are factors that can affect your search rankings in Pinterest.

The image name or the filename itself, the image title, and the description of the image can affect your search rankings in Pinterest. Yes! Even though I don’t know how the Pinterest algorithm works, this factor has surely something to do with it. Since no system can read any image for its algorithm, most search engines value more on text.

8. Make Your Pinterest Profile and Boards SEO friendly

As addition to above, making all your content in Pinterest search engine optimization (SEO) friendly can also help you rank in the searches. But making it SEO friendly not only can rank you on Pinterest but also can help you rank on other search engines.

It is simple, if you want to make people find your content then make it as SEO friendly as possible. Why? Well, no one will find out what you have done for your business without those search engines. Being friend with them can give you a boost. Yes! Basically, when search engines find your content, they will rank it according to its relevance, which can help a lot when it comes to traffic.

9. Follow the Etiquette on Pinterest

Pinterest has also its own etiquette and rules. If you don’t want any trouble on Pinterest, be sure to follow their simple rules. Here is the etiquette on Pinterest that you should follow:

  • Be respectful
  • Be yourself
  • Give credit
  • Stay alert
  • Let us know

Your thoughts?

Have you used Pinterest for your marketing strategies? What benefits and techniques that you find more efficient? Let us know by commenting below or share your feedback about this article.