Why isn’t Pinterest working for my business?
I hear this question ALL. THE. TIME.
I hear it in the workshops I teach locally in my town. I hear it in my Pinterest Facebook group and in one form or another, during my monthly online interactive Pinterest sessions.
And it’s usually followed by this overly frustrated sentence, “I just don’t get this. Pinterest works for everyone else but me. What am I missing here?”
My answer to this question is this:
It’s not just you and your business. Others are struggling with Pinterest too because, just like you, these business owners are using Pinterest like social media site.
Pinterest is a visual search engine.
And once you start using Pinterest like you would a search engine, you’ll start to see how you can make Pinterest work for your business.
SEO for Pinterest
If you’ve done any kind of SEO { search engine optimization } work on Google, then you’ve already got a head start to understanding this process. SEO on Pinterest is about doing a little optimization research on keywords for your pins and boards.
The best way to start is to do some key word research on Pinterest is to use their Guided Search in search bar at the top of the site.
When you start typing in your targeted keywords into a Pinterest search, Pinterest will suggest other keywords that Pinners are actively looking for in their searches.
Take a look at these keyword options and see how you can add these words into the sentences { not hashtags! } of your pin description or use them for the name of one of your Pinterest boards. Don’t go crazy trying to add in all the options, just add in the ones that make sense for your content.
Social Media with a Strategy
As a daily user of Pinterest, it didn’t take me long to see that more people are following my content-targeted boards rather than hitting that red Follow All button. I get that because I do it too.
And let me tell you – this Pinterest behavior pattern is actually a good thing! Because when it comes to growing your presence on Pinterest, your boards are the first place you want to spend your time.
Personally, I love the idea that Pinterest allows us to follow boards that interest us. It makes the content we see when we log into Pinterest more focused on what we love and what we want to learn more about, read and see.
And quite honestly, I don’t know the exact algorithm about how this works but when you get enough people following your boards, your board followers get counted towards your overall follower number.
Let me share with you how this works:
My top Pinterest board is called Social Media Strategy.
At the time of this post, I have almost 9000 followers who have clicked the Follow Board button. I say ‘at the time of this post’ because every week I get anywhere from 20- 30 new followers just to this particular board. This board’s followers grow on a daily basis.
So, how did I do this?
Strategy, my friends. I developed a Pinterest board strategy.
For those of you who just met me, I teach small business owners and bloggers how to manage their social media and find ways to include social marketing into their already busy schedule. { virtually shakes hand, nice to meet you! }
When it came time to create my pinboards, I wanted to do something that would show my followers who I am, what I do and how I could help them.
One of the most important things I learned as I worked on my marketing strategy was this:
View each of your pinboards as its own destination.
These are the steps I use to treat every Pinterest board as it’s own destination:
1. Finding My Message
As you’re adding new boards or building on the ones that you already have, ask yourself these questions:
- Why would someone want to follow this board?
- What makes my board different than the other boards with the same topic?
After you come up with those answers, think about this question:
“What’s the message behind this board?”
And then spend a few minutes brainstorming some ideas about what type of content you’ll add to this board.
For my Social Media Strategy board, I stuck to the narrow focus of what I do in my business. I pin tips to help small business owners and bloggers use social media marketing.
You won’t ever see content about how to build a website or sales tips. Website stuff just isn’t my message of who I am and what I do.
The idea is to develop your boards like you’re building a resource that people will want to follow. You’re creating a place that provides your followers with the content they’re looking for to help them.
2. Content of my pins
With my message in my head, I started pinning. I wanted this board to be a social media resource for solopreneurs. To get to that place, I became very selective about the information that I pinned.
I didn’t want this to turn into another board that only pinned infographics. While I dig a good infographic, how many people can say that they open an infographic when they want to learn how to develop their social media strategy?
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too.
Most people will find an article or pull up a blog post they saved when they’re ready to walk through some steps. They’ll read it again and again and grab whatever nugget of information that they need from it.
I wanted my Pinterest board to be that place where people can go when they’re looking for information to help them with their social media marketing.
I run searches for specific social media content on Pinterest to pin on this board. And when I’m doing my research for a client, I’ll pin new content if I find an article to be pin-worthy.
3. Pinning my pins
My pins fall into one of these categories:
- Social media content that shares information to help small business owners and bloggers.
- The blog posts that I write every week.
- Inspirational quotes about running a business by yourself – some days you need some words to remind you why you get up every morning and turn that laptop on.
- And the occasional social media humor pin – who couldn’t use a laugh to brighten their day?
If you follow my board on Pinterest, you’ll notice that I have a certain criteria for each pin. I truly think that’s one of the reasons this board has grown faster than any of my other boards.
I look for the following things before I pin:
1. Believe or not, I read almost every article that gets pinned to that board. I click to ensure the links work and I’m not sending you to a spam page.
Plus, I want to make sure that the information is relevant and valuable to my followers. It makes no sense to pin something from 2007 that doesn’t even mention social media as a marketing tool. How will that help you?
2. I like engaging images and can tell which ones will be shared. When a pin gets shared from my board and lands in someone’s Pinterest feed, even if it’s not my content, it leads back to my pinboard.
Pinterest is just like any other site that allows you to see where the content came from, giving you an opportunity to connect your board with Pinners who are not already following you.
3. Does the pin answer the question, “Is this helpful information and gives the reader specific steps to solve a problem?”
Asking this question helps me to remember the message of my pinboard. It wouldn’t make sense for someone to follow this board for social media marketing and suddenly they see pins for how to run a Google Adword campaign.
I can honestly tell you that I use these tips all the time and my followers are growing every day. And just by doing these small simple steps, I get more referral traffic to my site from Pinterest than Facebook, Twitter and organic search combined.
Personally, I see Pinterest giving Google a run for their SEO money. And how cool would it be if one day we all caught ourselves asking a question and instead of saying it, Google it, we say run it through Pinterest and see what pops up.
PS Want to learn how to turn Pinterest into one of your top marketing tools? This Pinterest Strategy guide is for you! Click here to grab your FREE copy of ‘How I Grew My Pinterest Account to Over 10,000 Followers‘.
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