In this article, I discuss the power of Pinterest following my interview with Kate Ahl.
Kate is the proud owner of Simple Pin Media, where she helps content creators and small businesses grow their business using Pinterest. She works from home in a beautiful She Shed, managing over 100 clients and helping them to harness the power of Pinterest to influence organic growth. Kate is also a speaker, blogger, podcaster, coach and a busy mum.
Pinterest isn’t something I’ve talked about in my previous posts, so I was really looking forward to chatting about it with a professional Pinterest pinner! Kate truly is the person to talk to when it come to Pinterest. You can’t deny the rate at which this visual social platform is developing.
When Pinterest first launched back in 2010, it was tempting to brush it off and concentrate content marketing efforts on the ‘big players’. However, Pinterest proved itself to be a worthy competitor for our attention and has over 200 million users per month with 1 out of 2 of them likely to complete a purchase after seeing a promotional pin that caught their eye. To check out the stats click here.
Kate revealed that the change in Facebook’s algorithm in 2013 acted as the perfect launch pad for Pinterest’s rising success. The new algorithm changes meant that businesses struggled to receive the amount of free organic traffic that they once had from Facebook. So, they went on a quest for an alternative platform, and many of them found Pinterest as the perfect replacement to regain the organic traffic that they lost. Recognising this movement, Kate began managing Pinterest pages for bloggers, launched Simple Pin Media and struck gold — now that’s impressive.
Hit play to watch a short video trailer of our conversation where Kate explains exactly what Pinterest is and why you should be using it:
Here are some of the key discussion points with Kate:
Pinterest Is An Online Scrapbook
Pinterest is a unique digital space that can identify as somewhat of a social media platform but very much more so as a search engine. It’s social in the sense that you can gain followers, re-pins and generate monthly engagement but as Kate put it, it’s more of a search engine for introverts.
Users can save ideas, images and articles and categorise them into different boards. They collect and preserve ideas with the intention to take action at a later date. So, whether you want to plan a wedding, discover new recipes or decide on the destination of your next road trip — there’s a board for that!
Driving Organic Traffic
If your primary goal is to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your website, you need to ask yourself this question:
What type of person are you trying to attract?
In other words, who is your ideal customer?
Kate provided a great tip with regards to this — she explained that you can check the source page by typing this link into your search bar: pinterest.uk/source/your-domain-name.com
The source page shows you what is pinned on Pinterest from your website. Now you can see what type of content people are sharing, and this gives you a more precise depiction of what content is valuable and preferred by your followers. It’s genius, I know.
So, what do you do if you discover that your content is attracting a Pinterest audience?
It’s simple.
Repurposing Blog Content for Pinterest
Since we’re huge fans of repurposing content here at the Content 10x headquarters, I asked Kate what advice she would give to someone who wants to know how they should repurpose their blog for Pinterest.
Her first piece of advice for bloggers is to create a vertical image. Pinterest has a vertical ratio image (600 x 900), so try to avoid posting square pictures and stick to the vertical format.
Kate also suggests that bloggers add text to their images. A statement that encourages someone to click on the image and read the blog post is the number one goal here.
Pinning to Other Boards
Engaging with your followers and other Pinterest users is a great way to drive traffic to your profile and your company website.
You can pin your content to your own board, BUT you can also pin it multiple times on different boards. If you see that one particular pin gets a lot of attention from Pinterest users, it’s worth re-pinning it to various boards over the course of a few weeks or months.
Keyword Optimisation
There’s no keyword search tool on Pinterest. However, that doesn’t mean you should toss everything you know about SEO out the window. Instead, you should take inspiration for keywords from the Pinterest search bar.
When you type in a search term in the search bar, Pinterest will give you keyword predictions and recommendations of keywords that people are already searching. Those are the main keywords that you should target because they are popular and more likely to generate traffic to your profile.
You can also use the guided search boxes along the top of your screen to find out how Pinterest categorises keywords on the platform. Once you’ve defined your keywords, you should use them in the following areas:
• Pin description
• Board names
• Board description
Promoted Pins
A promoted pin on Pinterest is evergreen. The shelf life is anywhere from six months to a year, giving you an extended period to advertise your brand to your target audience.
Pinterest doesn’t have as many ad restrictions as other social platforms such as Facebook. However, Kate advises that you avoid adding prices to your pins and anything to do with alcohol as pins like that get flagged and rejected.
The critical thing to remember when creating a promotion pin is to make sure it’s clear and easy to understand.
Repurposing Video and Podcasts
I was curious to hear Kate’s thoughts on repurposing a video or a podcast on Pinterest by using something like an infographic image.
She pointed out that infographics are good at driving engagement, but they aren’t so good at increasing click-through rates. The main reason for this downfall is because infographics tend to reveal too much information, giving a Pinterest user no reason to click because they already know the ‘hook’. It’s better to provide some information while leaving out just enough to encourage them to follow the link to your video or podcast.
Best Performing Content
I asked Kate what makes content on Pinterest perform well.
Here are a few of her top tips to create high-performing content for Pinterest:
KATE’S TOP TIPS
- Give solid tips and tools to your readers
- Answer your readers ‘big burning’ questions
- Share content that helps your readers solve their problems
If your content focuses on these three things, you’ll soon be the king/queen of Pinterest.
In Conclusion
Pinterest has a lot of potential and most consumers using the platform are active users that either want to shop, create or research. If you’re new to Pinterest, it may seem a little daunting or confusing at first, but it doesn’t have to be.
Kate’s top tip for beginners is to build your profile, keep it simple and create ten boards about the top ten things that you talk about. The next step is to start sharing your content on your Pinterest boards and be consistent.
If you want to find out more about Kate or Simple Pin Media, you can join her Facebook group to get all of the up to date information on Pinterest including helpful articles and Facebook lives.
You can also head over to Simple Pin Media and download Kate’s FREE planner that she created with Tailwind.
Thanks for reading!
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Originally published at www.content10x.com.
