5 Powerful Tips To Increase Your Pinterest Following
In this ‘new’ digital age, we've certainly evolved in the way we communicate, absorb or exchange information. We rarely find articles and blog posts of today without any images
or any form of visuals…
This tilt towards the ‘visuals’, is but a natural drive of our brain. It's believed that 90% of information sent to our brain is of a ‘visual’ kind and it seems to process visuals 60000 times faster than it does text.
The ‘tell-tale’ signs of this ‘shift’ from text to visual are even more prominent in most Social Media platforms, where 66% of updates are in fact ‘visual’ content.
And with over 110 million monthly users already sharing 50 billion pins on the social sharing channel, Pinterest is increasingly becoming the ‘go to’ platform for B2B and B2C marketers.
So without further ado, let’s proceed to explore a few ways to help increase your Pinterest following:
1. Adding ‘Pin It’ Button to your site content
This technique will create opportunities for your visitors to ‘pin’ your site content and share it on Pinterest. Whether it’s your blog post or your product description, a ‘pin it’ button encourages engagement and cross-platform sharing amongst users.
Courtesy: Content Marketing Institute
In the example above, a recipe site uses a ‘pin it’ button on its Blueberry Pie recipe page. The above image on the right hand side displays how the picture is clipped and pinned on Pinterest.
Pinning content as such, has also been found to increase the ‘shelf life’ of the content, as each ‘new’ pin comes with a ‘searchability’ function, and an average lifespan for months, once its posted. Thus, the more a pin is being shared and posted, the better are its chances of being found and shared by more followers.
2. The ‘Follow’ button
Another way to channel your website visitors to your Pinterest page, is through a‘Follow’ button. The button helps to divert the website visitors to your Pinterest page and increase your followers.
The website MindBodyGreen, as shown in the example above, places the Pinterest button in prominent ‘eye catching’ places, such as the header, footer, sidebar, etc. This helps them divert their website visitors to their Pinterest page and build new followers.
The buttons can be created by using the Widget Builder on Pinterest, or by using your own custom button to represent your brand.
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3. Following ‘Like-Minded’ Users
An easy trick is to follow a Pinterest user having similar ‘taste’ as yours, who then would hopefully follow you in return to grow your own following.
As soon as you follow someone in Pinterest, an email notification will be sent to them saying they have a new follower, i.e. ‘you’. If the person you’re following resonates with your Pins and ‘content’ they're sure to follow you back.
These like-minded users can be found through Pinterest Search, by looking for boards and Pins related to your niche. An example below illustrates how it is done;
Courtesy: Kissmetrics
In the above example, the term ‘Baby Shower Food’ is added into the search field to display multiple boards related to the search. Then any board is clicked to display its content, along with the follower numbers.
You can click the ‘followers’ to find a list of individual followers, and then click the ‘follow’ button next to the person whom you decide to follow.
4. Collaboration - User Generated Content (UGC)
The idea behind UGC is to make room for the users to express their creative skills and allow them to find new ways to share and interact with your product/services.
UGC can be nurtured by creating Collaborative Boards where your followers can post pictures and their creations to showcase how they perceive or assimilate your brand into their culture and daily lives.
The example shown below is from Starbucks, with its collaborative board of
‘white-cup-art’ – followers use the board to paint, decorate and create new designs with the ‘iconic’ Starbucks cup and post it to share amongst the community.
Courtesy: CMI
Similarly, in the example above, for those of you who enjoy exploring the fashion world, Gap has created this collaborative Pinterest Board, where fashion bloggers and clothing enthusiasts post pics to display how they wear the Gap clothing.
Such UGCs builds up engagement with the brand, and the pins are sure to get re-pinned and shared, thus generating more followers and creating the much needed buzz for your brand.
5. Enrich your Pins with Target Users in mind
With Pinterest, often times we tend to go overboard with pinning our own stuffs. This could actually repel our followers, as the pins would lack variety and seem repetitive and uninteresting.
The preferred way would be to observe what the followers are interested in, then follow the pinners and pin images that your audience resonate with, from time to time.
Proper identification of your user personas will also help you generate boards and resources that your followers would find engaging and helpful. However, you do need to be careful not to sway too far from your niche and related topics – as it could confuse your followers and your brand identity.
To sum it up, Pinterest is clearly looking into the future and has a huge potential when it comes to engaging people with visuals such as; images, infographic, comics, memes, etc., and could also easily jump into the world of videos, animation and storytelling in the near future. Plentiful reasons for any marketer to embrace this platform and start pinning and build new followers!!!
In the meantime, should you like more assistance with your content or would like to discuss anything covered today, we'd love to hear from you.
Call Andy Fox (me) on (03) 5249 5570 or email andy@element7digital.com.au
Our Website is element7digital.com.au
