Being one of the most popular social media out there, Pinterest is the best place your small business can find. Beautiful images are what people want to see on the Internet. The attention span of most visitors nowadays is measured to be around 8 seconds and this is definitely not enough for a successful sales pitch. With words that is.
This is where Pinterest comes in. An image is worth a 1000 words and 47% of online shoppers in the U.S. have made purchases based on Pinterest recommendations. Pinterest can also boost the SEO of your website, blog or online store. Just use the following tips to expand you business exponentially.
Tip 1: Optimize your Pinterest profile
Think carefully when creating your profile:
- add your real or business name for both your title and username;
- the profile photo should either be your headshot or brand logo;
- verify your website, blog, online shop;
- add your Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as the location of your business, if available;
- and most importantly, create an appealing About section – tell people who you are, what you do, how you can help them.
All of these are immediately picked up by search engines and can increase your potential reach and conversions.
Tip 2: Optimize your images
Upload only high-quality colorful images with powerful messages. Images on Pinterest should be no more than 736px wide as that is the maximum width an image will be presented on the social medium. Wider images will be scaled down and some parts might get distorted in the process. There is no limit on the length however, so get creative.
When uploading images on Pinterest put Alt text and description because this information is also picked up by search engines. It will additionally help people find your images when using Pinterest’s search. If you are properly using keyword-rich file names, alts and description, your Pinterest images will be shown while people search for images on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
Tip 3: Use backlinks in your Pins
You should always put backlinks in the Source field of your Pins. That way people can navigate and see more information about your product, blog or service. These backlinks will also be preserved in any possible repins which will definitely increase your reach.
This will also signal search engines and though the links are nofollow, you will still get some kind of SEO benefit as social media signals are getting more and more attention by the day.
Tip 4: Pinterest on your website
You should spread the word and let more people know about your amazing new Pinterest profile. Tell your existing clients and visitors in a news bulletin, put a badge, a board, a single pin or all of them on your website, add a Pin-It button to your images.
Tip 5: Follow and repin to be followed and repinned
Pinterest is a social medium and above all else you should communicate and be social with other people. Follow boards that may be interesting to your audience and repin beautiful images. Send personalized pin messages with the new message system, leave comments, provide interesting, quality and unique content.
Be active, pin frequently and engage with your audience, and you will be surprised how many people will follow you back, repin your images and share them across platforms.
Tip 6: Use analytics
Pinterest has its own analytics page which tracks not only your Pins reach and conversion but also the performance of the images on your site. Find out which one is the most pinned image and use that to your advantage, see the performance of ad campaigns and use only the most successful ones in the future.
This option is available only for the Business accounts, but time will tell whether the regular accounts will get this privilige as well.
Tip 7: Go beyond the World Wide Web
Promote your Pinterest profile everywhere you can:
- on the marketing material of your business: brochures, posters, magazines;
- TV ads;
- business cards;
- on your store’s window;
- at public events;
- in a conversation with friends, clients, partners.
In conclusion
If this hasn’t convinced you to start using Pinterest today, I don’t know what will. The number of companies using Pinterest is increasing daily and for a good reason. I can even go as far as to say that Pinterest is probably the only social media you will need along with Google+. Even though the different social media platforms are excelling at different things, the Internet belongs to images right now, and currently there aren’t any better platforms for sharing images than Pinterest and G+.
Harnessing the power of images and social media is the future of marketing, are you ready to take the wheel? Let me know in the comments below and please share the brains out of this article, will you?
