Grow your Followers

How to Grow Your Following, Engage People and Get Sales with Pinterest

Social media has become an increasingly vital aspect of a business’ marketing strategy. While today’s businesses are likely to utilize social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to connect with customers, they may be less familiar or interested in investing time into Pinterest.

However, the fact is that businesses lacking a Pinterest presence may be missing out. By learning how to create engaging and relevant boards, you can grow your Pinterest following,
keep existing clients excited about your products and brand, and even generate sales.

Build More Engaging Boards

A highly visual form of social media, Pinterest allows users to “pin” images to specific boards. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest enables businesses to target potential customers with extremely relevant content. With Pinterest, users can follow only those boards that are of interest to them. This content segmentation helps ensure that customers don’t become frustrated by irrelevant material and “unfollow” your business altogether.

Creating a wide variety of Pinterest boards with niche topics is a great way to keep different subsets of clients engaged with your business. For example, a clothing retailer might want to build different boards for men, women, juniors and kids. A restaurant might create niche boards for cocktails, happy hour items and entrees. Be sure to give your niche boards amusing, memorable names as well. Instead of calling your restaurant board “Drinks,” name it “Creative Cocktail Concoctions” to help it grab people’s attention.

Of course, a successful Pinterest board requires more than a catchy title. Choose high-quality, unique images and links to encourage users to repin. If you’re taking your own photos, pay attention to lighting and angles (check out this Etsy guide to product photography for more information).

Even if your brand doesn’t sell products like food or clothing (for example, if you run a marketing agency), you can also boost repins by linking to relevant infographics, interesting articles, humorous quotes, before-and-after photos or even just “inspiration” design boards, all of which score well among Pinterest users. The most important thing is to make sure each pin has an eye-catching picture, since you only have a few seconds to gain the attention of potential followers.

Be sure to maintain your profile page as well; put the most active boards on top, and pin engaging, colorful photos to the cover of each board to encourage users to take a closer look.

Grow Your Pinterest Following

Knowing how to create engaging, segmented boards is crucial to growing a presence on Pinterest. However, you can take additional steps to ensure you are drawing the maximum number of followers to your business.

As is the case with other forms of online marketing, a successful Pinterest campaign requires you to use targeted keywords. Because Pinterest allows users to search for topics of interest based on keyword searches, the more specific you are in your pin and board descriptions, the more likely you are to reach interested users.

Keyword integration is also a great way to keep up with trending topics. If a new issue, story or subject is popular in your industry or space, consider pinning something that relates to the topic and integrates relevant keywords. A pin like this is more likely to get exposure through search.

Finally, the most obvious tip: the most important ingredient for a larger Pinterest following is being active on the site. Pin several images daily at peak times (studies have shown various optimal post times for Pinterest, but many say the best time is on Saturday morning).

In addition to pinning their own images, products and content, businesses should regularly repin from other users, websites and resources. Your board should not just be a promotional page for your business, but a source of information and entertainment for users with similar interests. You can also join and pin to group boards to connect with others in your industry.

Make Use of Pinterest’s Many Features

You can take advantage of Pinterest’s many features to help grow your online following. To determine the best strategy for creating new content, determine your top pins from existing boards on Pinterest. It’s a good idea to check your traffic sources regularly. Thank pinners who are giving you large amounts of traffic, and consider following them back.

Additionally, business owners can utilize the new dedicated Pinterest pages feature to highlight popular products and services. Shoppers can see what other users are buying and can identify the most desired gifts for friends and family.

The “Pin It” button is another valuable tool for businesses. Post the button on your website to allow users to pin their favorite items for a later purchase. According to a recent article, Pinterest reaches a wealthier crowd of shoppers who are likely to spend upwards of $179 if they click through to your website.

Get Sales Through Pinterest

Pinterest is not only an effective means of growing your following, but it’s also a great way to generate actual sales. In fact, 70 percent of Pinterest users visit the site to find inspiration for gifts and purchases. By using Pinterest effectively, you can connect with your market and reach millions of new and existing customers.

One way businesses can use Pinterest to generate sales is by taking advantage of price alerts. This new feature automatically alerts users about price drops on products that they have pinned but have not yet purchased. Because users are being notified about products they have already expressed interest in, they are less likely to feel badgered by irrelevant content.

Another great way to gain sales from Pinterest is to use coupons, deals and contests. A company may ask users to pin their favorite products—or images of them using these items—for a chance to win a shopping spree or other prize. Whenever possible, make your contest mobile-friendly, as many Pinterest users visit the site on smartphones. The business you generate from all these repins is well worth the price of the discount or giveaway.

Social media is obviously a crucial part of your online marketing initiatives. Familiarize yourself with Pinterest best practices and determine the best ways to reach more users.