What are your Pinterest Goals?
Is your answer to this question to get more followers? Or would you say something like,”I want my blog post to go viral.”
I get it.
With all that expert information out there about social media, we’ve been trained to think about growing our followers. We’ve been told that if we can get a piece of content to be shared that we can get more people to our website.
And all that makes sense if logging on to Pinterest is like being on Facebook or Instagram.
But the truth is, Pinterest isn’t a social media site. It’s a visual search engine where users are actively searching for something to read, download and buy with just one click on a pin.
So if we take what we know about Pinterest being a search engine, let’s answer that Pinterest goal question again.
Think of it like this – if you want your website to show up in a Google search, your goal wouldn’t be to get more people to ‘follow’ your blog. It would be to create content that would encourage your readers to click on your opt-in to grow your email list. You’d want to write compelling sales pages that are answering questions your community is asking to convert more visitors into clients.
You’d be thinking about how you’re going to use keywords and images tagged with searchable terms into your content and sales pages so more people can find your site.
Your goals would be more than just the number of blog followers. They would be something that you measure and monitor like your page views, downloads for your opt-in or the number of sales you’ll make for that new workbook you just created.
It’s the same thing for your Pinterest goals.
Just like you do the work to optimize your website for a Google search to help you grow your business, you also need to do strategic steps to grow your Pinterest presence.
Steps to Create Your Pinterest Strategy
Now that you’ve worked out your Pinterest goals, it’s time to create your Pinterest strategy to turn those goals into a reality.
1. Pin Consistently and Manually
When most of us first started pinning, we were told to pin around 50 pins per day. If we wanted other pinners to find our content, we had to pin as much as we could to reach more people.
The Pinterest feed was moving so fast like our Twitter home page and if we pinned something at 9am then no one who pinned at 9pm would see our images. So we pinned as much as we could as many times of day that we could.
Honestly, most of us who run a business just didn’t have time to pin every hour of every day.
And so Pinterest schedulers were created. They were the answer to getting out as many pins a day that we could without having to log into our accounts all day.
But things are different with the new Pinterest Smart Feed.
Our Pinterest feed is more about what we’re searching for rather than the order of when pins were added to the site. It’s more about the content of our pins and how we’re using Pinterest.
Whether you’re using a scheduler or not, you need to make sure that you make time to consistently and manually log into Pinterest – even if it’s just for 15 minutes like the steps I shared in my 15 Minute Pinning Process workbook!
An important part of Pinterest’s Smart Feed is based on your ranking, which includes what content you pin and how often you log into the site. This ranking helps determine how Pinterest will share your content in the Pinterest home feed.
The higher your ranking, the more often your pins will be shown to people who are not already following you.
2. Design Your Images for Pinterest
I realize that we have so many places to share our images and it’s easy just to create one image and then post it everywhere. But an image that you’d use on Instagram or Twitter, just doesn’t cut it on Pinterest.
AND now that Pinterest has made changes again – it looks like those great big 735 x 1102 images the experts were telling us to create, may no longer be necessary to catch a pinner’s attention in that busy Pinterest feed.
Elements to keep in mind as you create your Pinterest images:
- Use a clean brightly lit background for your image – if your image is a little dark, you can use a program like Picmonkey to adjust the exposure and up the brightness level to make it pop and easier to see.
- Add text to your image – use a text overlay to give us the blog post name or description about the content of your pin. Don’t just show us your stuff, tell us why we want to click on it.
- The size of your pin is now being scaled to a smaller size with rounded corners – with the new changes, it doesn’t look like longer is going to be better.
- Use a clean font and brighter colors – make sure that the text on your image is easy to read, especially from mobile. Using brighter colors like pinks, yellow and reds will draw more attention than using something dark like black or grey.
3. Write Better Pin Descriptions
The new Pinterest changes have seriously cut the amount of text you’re seeing in the pin description of the images you see in the home feed. But when you click on the image, you can still read the entire description that the pinner included with their upload.
Even though we can’t see the whole thing until we click it, pin descriptions are still important with regards to the search function of Pinterest.
Take a look at some tips to help your pins get found by more people searching for your content:
- Make sure you use details about what the content of the pin is about.
- Add keywords that people are actively searching for in the description – and yes, it’s ok and more than preferable that your keywords be included in sentences and not just words with hastags.
- And regarding hashtags – that’s a big NO. Don’t use them in the sentences or even at the end of your descriptions.
- No promotional information or sales call to action like Buy Now or Get 50% off.
And here’s something that I get asked about all the time – do you do a short description or a long one? Which works better?
Short key word rich descriptions of 100 or less words do better for the quick engagement and repins in the Pinterest home feed. But the longer pin descriptions are better for being found in the Pinterest search, which allows your pins to be seen by more people in future searches.
{ A combination of doing both long and short descriptions would make for an interesting experiment that I’ll have to test out one day! }
4. Apply for Rich Pins
Rich pins are pretty simple to spot in your Pinterest feed. They’re the pins that include more information about the content you’re posting.
Rich pins are free to sign up for and they can take your pins to the next level with your Pinterest marketing. Currently, there are 6 types of Rich Pins: app, article, product, movie, recipe and place. I’ll break down each one and how they work:
App pins – include an install button, so Pinners can download your app without ever leaving Pinterest.
Article pins – super important for bloggers! You’ve probably seen lots of these pins in your feed. They include the headline, writer information and your post description.
Product pins – make it easy for people to buy your stuff with real time pricing, availability and where to buy. Pinners may also get notifications when prices drop more than 10%.
Recipe pins – include ingredients, cooking times and serving information to help you share your recipes directly on Pinterest.
Movie pins – if you write movie reviews, this is a great way to share more details about the movie you’re reviewing. This Rich pin includes ratings, cast members and reviews.
Place pins – include a map, address and phone number in their details.
The set up is easy to do and if you have a WordPress site, you can follow these steps:
{ If you don’t have a WordPress site, just go here to get more instructions to set this up. }
First thing you do – download the Yoast SEO Plugin.
Just a note here – if you’re not using a SEO plugin, this is a really awesome and easy plugin to use!
When it’s active, look at the left hand side of your dashboard for the words SEO, near the bottom. Click on that link and choose the Social tab option.
In the Social tab section, click on Facebook and look for the button that says “add Open Graph meta data.” Set it for enabled and BOOM – your site is set up for what they call Open Graph meta data.
This is the tag information that Pinterest’s program looks for when they add the Rich pin details to your pin.
If you get a little confused with the directions above, take a look at this image to show you where to find the Social tab and the Open Graph meta data:
Once you’ve done that step, the next thing you’ll want to do to see if Pinterest recognizes your site. Go to this link in Pinterest where you’ll find the Rich pin validator: https://developers.pinterest.com/tools/url-debugger/
To use the Rich pin validator: Enter in a valid blog or site page into the box and click validate.
Once you apply, you’ll receive an email confirming that your Rich Pin application has been approved. You should see Rich Pins appear within a week after you get your email.
Need some help with your Pinterest Process?
If you need some help with your Pinterest Process, I’ve pulled together a 25-page Pinterest Process Workbook to give you simple easy to follow action steps to give you clarity with your Pinterest strategy.
What you’ll learn:
- Understand how Pinterest decides which pins show up in the feed
- How to get more people to repin your blog posts, products and services
- Step-by-step process to create a personalized Pinterest strategy
- Monitor what’s working and what needs tweaking
You’ll also get a tracking guide that you can customize to monitor your Pinterest marketing plans so you can see which boards you should be pinning to and where to focus your time on Pinterest.
Plus, you’ll get printable tracking worksheets to use every month to track your progress … all of this cool stuff for just $7 bucks!
Click here to get your instant download of The Pinterest Process Workbook.
Anne
What a superbly useful post for me right now! I’m focusing on promoting one of my blogs on Pinterest and this is very helpful. A lot of it I already knew but I was wondering about Pinterest using OG tags. Good to know and I’m going to go make sure they’re activated on my yoast. Thanks!
pfox
I actually use my Google keyword tool to help me fill out my keywords in Yoast. Ironically, the keyword tool has also helped me reach more people on Pinterest since basically, the whole site is just one big visual search engine. Good luck with your blog posts on Pinterest and please feel free to reach out to me if you have any more questions 🙂
pfox recently posted…10 Social Media Marketing Ideas You Can Do in 15 Minutes
Anne
Testing – I think there’s a problem with using the “Reply” to a reply function here.
Anne
Looks like the problem is with not checking the box that confirms you’re not a spammer. I somehow forget to check that and instead of keeping me on the page and reminding me to do that, it generates a strange WP error about javascript not being enabled. You may want to look into that. It’s confusing for forgetful people like me who tend to miss check boxes 😉
pfox
Sorry for any confusion – glad that you figured it out 🙂
pfox recently posted…10 Social Media Marketing Ideas You Can Do in 15 Minutes
Anne
Thanks! I already had Yoast OG switched on and I just applied for rich pins for that blog.