So your brand is on Pinterest, and you have a pretty good grasp of the basic concepts. You regularly pin to several boards with exciting visual content. Your captions are descriptive and search-friendly. But are you really getting everything you can out of this powerful platform? Here are five tips to kick your Pinterest marketing up another notch.
More is Actually More
Pinterest is a platform that rewards activity. Power pinning brands should aim to pin 20-25 quality, relevant pins per day. Pinterest feeds are constantly updating en masse, so providing that your content is unique, you will not irritate anyone by posting at such a high frequency. Now before anyone’s content creation studio team freaks out and goes on strike—20-25 pins a day includes repins. A good 80% of all pins on Pinterest are repins.
Capitalize on Semantic Search
“Semantic search” is a fancy, marketing jargony way of describing a search that understands a pinner’s intent. By utilizing semantic data with their algorithm, knowing the intent of a search term as it proceeds another, and how those relate to other like-searches is basically intelligent (like really intelligent) search. The future is now my friends.
Pinterest has done a great job of creating the “Interest Graph,” or data that measures the actions taken of pinners and likely outcomes of future searching based on how pinners like and repin content. Pinterest’s data allows it to be intuitive enough to recognize that if a person pins a large number of lipsticks to show that person more lipsticks and also other beauty or fashion related content.
What does that mean for your brand? Two things. First, it supports the notion that there is more to Pinterest than posting your product. You should post or repin content about things your target audience also likes. Secondly, semantic search means more qualified engagement and leads. Know this, and create content that goes beyond the most basic “look at my product” messaging. Capture your followers’ imaginations for the most effective engagement with this audience. Think of them as warm leads, blow their minds, and convert more. Remember, Pinterest users spend more than any other shoppers referred by social media.
Here is Pinterest’s Founder and CEO speaking more on the Interest Graph, semantic search, and discovery.
Rich Pins Enhance User Experience
Rich pins are pins that include more information than regular pins. A regular pin includes a user-generated description along with a link to the source of the pinned content, and that’s pretty much it. There are six different kinds of Rich Pins:
App Pins are designed to promote iOS app installs. They include an Install button directly on the pin, so visitors can download and install apps without leaving Pinterest.
Place Pins include additional data about a location, including a map, address, and phone number.
Recipe Pins include ingredients, cooking time, and serving information for foodies to create masterpieces directly from Pinterest.
Article Pins include headlines, author information, and a story snippet or description, making it easier for users to pin to read later.
Product Pins make it easier for users to buy products. They include real-time pricing, availability, and where to buy. Pinners can also select to receive notifications if the price drops by 10% or more. Pins with prices listed get 36% more likes than those without.
Movie Pins include ratings, cast members, and even reviews to help movie buff pinners.
Rich pins are simple to set up by adding meta tags to the website where your content lives; rich pins make it far more likely that users will repin and revisit your content for more great information.
Spread the Love Around (and Share the Work)
Pinterest is a quantity and quality game. Yes, you should pin content frequently, but it also needs to be good content. One way to make this possible (without exhausting yourself) is by utilizing contributors via shared boards. By choosing contributors who are already influencers in the Pinterest space to which you are marketing, you can capitalize off of their ready-built audience. Encourage your contributors to not only pin to your shared boards, but to repin those pins to their personal boards to reach their fans as well as yours.
Extend Your Reach with New Promoted Pins
Promoted pins have been rolling out to brand pages since earlier this year. Since then, its ad platform is growing and expanding at a rapid rate. New features coming soon include promoted video pins (Cinematic Pins), and the ability to promote rich App Install pins. Pinterest already offers cost-per-click and cost-per-thousand pricing models, and plans to add a cost-per-engagement model soon. If you haven’t looked into promoting your pins with some advertising dollars, now is the time.
Pinterest is a fairly new platform with exciting applications. As new features roll out to further enhance the user experience, we as marketers have even more opportunities to create engaging content. Apply the tips outlined above to your current Pinterest strategy, and you’ll be reaping the rewards before you know it.
