How Pinterest Influences the Buyer and Why You Should Participate
This time last year every marketer was either praising Pinterest on their blog or creating ebooks on why businesses should join. Initially, we didn’t believe the hype and thought the Pinterest craze wouldn’t last. Besides the innovative interface and large, female user base, there just wasn’t enough relevant data that wooed us to get our clients on board. But, thanks to our good friends at Repinly and some other great sources, we can now tell you why it is more important than ever for e-commerce brands and product manufacturers to create a Pinterest board.
Here are some important points to consider:
- Approximately 32% of Pinterest boards are devoted to home goods, design and art.
- Pinterest draws more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined.
- Pinterest users spend more than twice as much as Facebook users ($180 vs. $85).
- 69% of online consumers who visit Pinterest have found an item they’ve purchased or wanted to purchase as compared to only 40% of online consumers who visit Facebook.
- 85% of brand pins occur when users pin images from brand websites.
- 80% of the top 10 retail brands have the “Pin It” button.
Now that we have your attention, here are 10 Quick Tips for getting started on Pinterest.
1: Open a Pinterest Business Account
If you’d like to start pinning for your brand or company, be sure to create a Pinterest business account specifically for them; don’t use your personal account. Be sure to optimize the page with keywords that fit the description of your brand or company.
2: Verify Your Domain
Verifying your domain for your Pinterest account increases engagement and traffic to your site. The way you start is by going to your Pinterest account settings. In the “Website” field type in your URL. A “Verify Website” button will appear. Click it. You’ll need to download the HTML verification file and upload it to the root of your website. If you can’t upload files to your website, you can also verify your domain with a meta tag. With the meta tag option, copy what Pinterest generates for you and paste it into the head of your home page with the rest of the meta tags. Click the “Click here to complete the process” link to verify.
3: Develop a Content Strategy
Viewing your top pins will help build your long-term content strategy. To determine the most popular pins, just visit: http://pinterest.com/source/yourURL.com (replace ‘yourURL.com’ with your brand’s address) or utilize tools like Repinly.com.
4: Add a Pin It Button
If you use AddThis or ShareThis services on your website, be sure to add “Pin It” sharing buttons to your product pages. If you’re using a CMS like WordPress or Drupal, and you have AddThis or ShareThis plug-ins, there should be a settings page for your sharing services where you can specify you want a “Pin It” share option.
5: Write With a SEO Point of View
When pinning or uploading images of your products, don’t be lazy about describing your new pin. Be sure to write a keyword-rich description, in addition to listing the price, adding a link to the item on your website, and including hashtags.
6: Pin Vertical Images
Pinterest is vertical in nature, so choose portrait, vertically formatted images. The taller your image (but not too tall, like those obnoxious 8,000 pixel high infographics), the better it will display and stand out in the vast number of pins on Pinterest’s home page.
7: Pin Thoughtful Images
Choose compelling and thoughtful images. Upload and pin images that strengthen your brand, tell a story or communicate the personality of your brand. The power of Pinterest is all within the images that you use to attract, engage and communicate your brand to your audience.
8: Diversify Your Pins
Have a diverse pinning strategy. Don’t just pin user uploads, or images directly from your website. Be sure to pin content from around the Web. Have a variety of boards with descriptive, keyword rich titles. Also, don’t forget to follow brands, companies and bloggers whom you admire and aspire to.
9: Engage with Other Pinterest Users
Don’t forget to engage with your audience and other Pinterest users. Be sure to comment on pins and respond to fellow pinners who comment on your pin. Be sure to repin content from your followers.
10: Have Fun Pinning!
This tip may seem a bit trite, but it’s true: using Pinterest should be fun, enjoyable and not overly thought out, as this will lead to a contrived presence. Take a look at West Elm’s Pinterest boards. They have, for example, a Chevron board. Though the board isn’t necessarily about West Elm as a brand, it is engaging, extremely cohesive and natural. And because of this, the board has 67,289 followers.
